: 29 March 2002 :

“And they call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie
I don’t want to go to Chelsea...”

I’m looking at the website for the Society of Young Publishers, as part of my flailing and uncoordinated attempt at finding a job. Most of the time I’m reasonably forgiving of typoes, and indeed of godawful layout, but this is the SOCIETY for YOUNG PUBLISHERS. Of all the sites out there, you’d have expected this one at least to pay close attention to detail. But no. For instance, it’s fairly obvious that there's something wrong with “Committee Memebers withouth portfolio”. I’m not making this up, it's right here. There are inaccuracies, too, like “John Lancaster” for John Lanchester. A quick look at the news page will also show you what I mean about layout - on the whole it’s OK, and black type on white always works quite well, but the logos at the top of the page are a jumble and the society’s logo is just rubbish. Don’t try to read the constitution unless you have a strong, um, constitution. (Ha! I kill me!)

This might seem like nitpicking, but this is a site that really shouldn’t have these mistakes, and speaking personally it doesn’t move me very far towards wanting to pay £15 to become a memeber. (Yes, that was deliberate). I’m reminded of that quote by Groucho Marx which always gets hawked around and which you’ve probably heard too many times, so I won’t bother to repeat it.

Something else that annoys me is that they only have branches in London and Oxford. Granted, there aren’t many big publishing houses that are based anywhere else in the country, but the website doesn’t actually seem to have any information about careers outside of London or Oxford. In fact, the Online Resources page is just a list of links, and I wouldn’t mind this but for the fact that the sites it links to aren’t that helpful anyway. One of the links is to the Guardian’s site, which on my first visit tried to tell me that there were no vacancies in Scotland.

Grrr. They make me so angry. I hate Them, with Their conspiracies to stop me finding work.