Let’s meet Sarina Lepore, Gemma’s shiny new intern from the Pace University/MS in Publishing Program. Sarina took time to talk to me about her projects at Gemma and her plans for the future…. we certainly are glad to have her on the team!
Trish: Hi Sarina! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sarina: Sure! I’m from Staten Island, New York, and I am currently a Master of Science in Publishing student at Pace University. Before Pace, I received my bachelor’s degree from SUNY Binghamton in Upstate New York in philosophy, politics, and law. Now I’m just excited to take on the publishing world.
Trish: What led you from philosophy and law to publishing?
Sarina: Originally, I thought I wanted to go to law school because I always loved reading and writing, and I thought that I could use those skills in law school. But I soon realized that I really loved storytelling more. That’s how I decided publishing was the route for me.
Trish: Interesting! And why Pace University… Can you talk a little bit about that? What are you studying? How do you find the program?
Sarina: When I was researching publishing programs in the City, Pace was the first one to pop up. What drew me to the program was how many connections they offered students to people in the publishing world. In my first semester, we had what they called “speed mentoring” sessions throughout the semester. Students signed up for hour-long sessions, sometimes instead of class, where we would get to talk to people from the publishing industry. And it was just great to have quick introductions like those. I connected with people on LinkedIn, and it was really, really helpful. Pace also has the one-to-one mentor program, which is what initially drew me to the program. Last semester I had a mentor who worked at Little Brown Books for Young Readers, and that was really insightful.
In my first semester, I took a lot of fundamental classes. I studied editorial principles and the financial aspects of publishing, which I think really helped me get my foundation.
Trish: So, your experience at Pace is very practical, and you quickly hook up with industry people. That’s great! It might be too early to say, but do you have any idea about where you’d like to focus your career?
Sarina: I would love to grow as an editor. That is my goal, but I do have a lot of interest in marketing and production. I’m still learning about everything, but I would love to be an editor.
Trish: And then you began an internship with Gemma. Can you talk about how that happened?
Sarina: Yes! My Pace professor Associate Director Jennifer Romanello has been helping me find internships since I started the program. I reached out to her right away. She’s been very helpful, and she connected me with Gemma. I was so excited to start this internship because she had told me how the class I was taking (information systems in publishing) could apply in this internship. I had been working with AI in class, so I was very excited to learn more about it.
Trish: Well, we’re thrilled to have you. Can you talk a little bit about some of the projects that you’ve been working on for Gemma?
Sarina: When I first started, I worked on SnapReads!, which are serialized book adaptations, written at the first-grade reading level. It looked like it would be so much fun to work with AI using the system called Roshi. At first, it was a little tricky to figure out the prompts to take large texts and turn them into shorter texts at lower reading levels. But I think over time I’ve really gotten the hang of it. And what I like about it is I feel like I can work at a much faster pace. If I were to create SnapReads! by hand, it would definitely take a lot longer. So, I do think the Roshi system and AI in general have helped me a lot there. I’ve really enjoyed working on the SnapReads!
Trish: What would you say is harder: to get the AI to give you the right number of words or the right level?
Sarina: I think the bigger challenge is getting to the right level. AI does a very good job of giving me the exact word count.. Getting to the right level is harder. I’ve had to use much more specific prompts to get the sentence structures correct. I learned to prompt the system to “use fewer complex words” or “use more words of one syllable.” That’s what really helps get the reading level down.
Trish: So, the specificity of the prompts is crucial, which, you know, funnily enough, is an editorial skill. When you think about it, are there any dangers that you can see in using AI to create these SnapReads!? It’s a rhetorical question, but I’d be interested in your ideas.
Sarina: Right. I do think that if someone is not willing to put their own work into a project like this, SnapReads! could lose the author’s intent or tone. That’s where you still need a human to be able to preserve that. I think overall, AI helps the process run faster and more smoothly. But I could see how, if someone was not paying attention to aspects like making sure the story is cohesive or that the tone is still correct, the result could be stories that aren’t what readers are looking for.
Trish: That’s very well said. So, you advise there still needs to be a human in the loop. When you say, you know the right tone or making sure it preserves the author’s voice, how do you do that? Is that intuitive?
Sarina: I think part of it is intuitive, but more. For the first SnapReads! I worked on (Bake Sale by Suzanne Kamata) I really wanted the story to still feel romantic and cute and fun. Something I look for is vocabulary. So maybe the AI-generated text might say something like So-and-So was nice. The word “nice” could be changed to something like “kind” to keep the same romantic feeling I felt when I first read the story but at a lower level.
Trish: I remember how surprised I was that you made something created by AI remain tender. And that’s not that’s not something that a machine could achieve on its own. A good way to think about AI in editorial going forward is that it’s another tool. Like a pen.
Sarina: Exactly.