Meet the Team – Dannielle

On my one-year anniversary as part of this wonderful team I thought I’d share a little bit about me and just what exactly I get up to here.

I live on the New South Wales Central Coast with the cutest fluffiest German Spitz dog you ever did see. For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination with words, their origins, meanings and how they come together into wonderful stories and tales, all bound together by the wonderful people that work in publishing. I’m so enthralled in fact I dedicated my entire undergraduate degree to English, writing and linguistics, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in 2018.

Now, given this fascination, your immediate thought does not go to, “oh she’s going to go into sales!” now is it? Let me take you on the wild-ride that has been my career development here at Exisle.

It all began when I applied for the extremely lucrative Australian Publishers Association internship in 2018. I had absolutely no expectation of getting it (but I totally used the word fascination line in my application by the way).

Suddenly, I found myself on the short list, and on my way an hour and 20 minutes out north-west into rural New South Wales, to the country town of Wollombi for an interview at an Independent non-fiction and children’s publisher known as Exisle Publishing. I quietly giggled to myself as a drove through dense bush land, dodging wombats (who I’m sorry to say, were quite dead), through farmland and finally landing in the cutest rural town.

And yet, there was Exisle Publishing, branching globally out from an office behind a Hunter Valley cellar door, publishing the types of books the big publishers do not.

I fell completely in love with the Gilmore Girl-esque nature of the town and its people. I guess the wonderful team at Exisle saw that; and so, I was incredibly excited to begin working as part of the Exisle Australian team, as the publicity and sales intern. The grunt work was my domain and boy did I relish in it! From mail stuffing, researching of keywords, writing Trade Information Sheets and even getting to write a blurb (Mind Kind, check it out!). I became encompassed in sales and special sales (selling in to stores and companies that don’t immediately think to sell books) and pretty soon my role within the company began to become cemented.

I also fell in love with the books we were publishing. I learned some handy presentation and memory tricks from Stop Talking, Start Influencing (walking back through a doorway really does help you remember why you went in the other room in the first place!) and quietly bawled as Barkley passed in Saying Goodbye to Barkley (having been a dog lover my entire life, lost a dog and loved again, I identify with Olivia more than I thought possible). I love that our books aim to intrinsically help people, no matter if its just needing a lift up (Animal Happiness Series), A little bit of Social Courage, or helping kids understand why Grandma Forgets.

Now, as our Australian office has moved on to bigger digs on the Central Coast (closer to home, yay!), one year on my domain encompasses looking after our sales and special sales, liaising with our New Zealand team and our warehouse, and ensuring our EK and Exisle websites and social media platforms are up to date with the latest product information, among many, many other tasks I won’t bore you with. There’s still a lot of research involved and data entry (which I secretly love), but it’s always a team effort here at Exisle, and that’s what I love about the company most. No one is ever slotted into one role. While we have our primary duties, we are always helping each other out. One day I might find myself writing up a publicity extract, or doing a data audit or bouncing around promotional ideas with our UK and US team. There’s always an element of surprise day to day, making me sure my role will keep on evolving. I wouldn’t have it any other way.