Veloce's International Intern

Whilst Veloce is firmly rooted to the Jurassic Coast – and very nice it is too – our books are sold worldwide. Of course, we couldn't do this by ourselves, and we have some fantastic global partners helping us spread our books far and wide. 

Recently, we were lucky enough to have an intern from our German publishing partners, HEEL Verlag, in Bonn-Oberkassel. We've been working with Heel since the early 1990s, and, as a part of his apprenticeship in digital and print media with HEEL, Henrik Johaentges came to work as an intern at Veloce for three weeks. Take it away, Henrik:

"My name is Henrik Johaentges, 22 years old, and I come from Bonn/Germany. For the last three weeks I was an intern at Veloce Publishing in Poundbury. Towards the end of my apprenticeship as a media agent for digital and print media at Heel Verlag in Germany, I had the chance to complete my internship abroad. 

"The contact to Veloce came about after long business relations and a good co-operation between the two publishing houses. Both, Veloce and Heel, have a strong focus on automotive books and they sometimes publish each other's books in their respective languages. Hence, I worked here in Poundbury from 7th to 25th August 2017.

"I hit the road towards England by car, four days prior to the start of my internship for vacationing. When I arrived in Poundbury, after short stopovers in Folkestone, Southampton and Bournemouth, I first decided to explore the village. Even though everything was well cared for and new, it was at the same time still held in an old, British style - what I really liked. The village was built according to the principles of Prince Charles as an urban role model for sustainable development. Pretty unique and impressive.

"The Veloce House is located in the Business Park in the south of Poundbury, just a 5-minute walk away from my Airbnb accommodation. Veloce is in this building since 2009, after moving there from smaller offices in Dorchester. Founded in 1991, the company has now a total of 16 employees. On the ground floor are the warehouse and the reception. The other offices are located on the first floor. The publishing house has three imprints in order to split up the publishing programme: Hubble & Hattie (animals), Battle Cry (military) and Belvedere (general). 

"On my first working day I was asked to arrive a little bit later at 9:30am, the usual working hours were from 9am to 5pm. At the beginning I was introduced to the Veloce team and welcomed by everyone with open arms. Then I was guided through the building to get an overview of the structures at Veloce.

"Afterwards, I was introduced to my main project during my time at Veloce. I had the chance to work on a new Mazda book [The book of the Mazda MX-5 Miata], which is expected to be published in March 2018. The first task was editing the new photos with Adobe Photoshop, as the image quality
had to be improved. In the following days I started to insert the pictures and the text into Adobe InDesign and put the different chapters together. This took me more than one week, but I believe the results were convincing. Then I made some small adjustments on order to make the document printable. The last task was to create the dust jacket for the book in InDesign as well. Overall, I really liked these tasks because I had never worked with Photoshop and InDesign before.

"Towards the end of the second week I was asked to scan old photos for a new Jaguar Book [Jaguar E-Type Racing Cars], which will be published in March 2018. After I finished scanning all the photos, I edited them with Photoshop, because most of them had not the best quality. This took me until my last day, but I learned a lot of new features in Photoshop and I also had several other smaller tasks for in between.

"During the third week I was given introduction on the work routine at Veloce. I got an in-depth look in the social media/marketing work of the publishing house. I learned about the different social media channels and what mainly counts using them. Furthermore, I got an idea of different kinds of eBooks and what to consider when creating them for different devices. On my last day I learned how Veloce acquires authors for new books to come and which systems they use to save time doing that. It was great getting to hear about these important topics for a publishing house. 

"On the weekends I spent most of the time exploring the surrounding area of Poundbury. The weekend before I started working I visited Weymouth, a nice town right on the coast with a beautiful harbour. I did a great hike along the coast of the Isle of Portland, which is the southernmost point of Dorset with a big lighthouse. Needless to say that I also stopped at Chesil Beach, an 18 mile long shingle beach which links Portland with the mainland near Weymouth. 

"On the second weekend I rented a bike and made a tour from Poundbury to Burton Bradstock and back, which was about 50 miles. The next day I set off to Durdle Door, which is a dramatic rock arch. The hiking there along the coast was the most amazing and spectacular thing I experienced during my free time here. On my way back to I also stopped at Maiden castle, a hill fort from the Iron Age, from where one has a great view over Poundbury.

"During my last weekend I visited Lyme Regis, The Pearl of Dorset. This special little town is mainly known for "The Cobb", a huge harbour wall, and for the fossils that can be found in the cliffs and on the beach. Finally, I walked to Dorchester on Sunday, which is the capital of Dorset and situated directly next to Poundbury. Unfortunately I could not spend a long time there due to the bad weather.

"I can definitely say that Dorset is a diverse county. Whether going on the beach, hiking along the coast, going on a bike tour or visiting beautiful towns. It's difficult to get bored here, at least if the weather is good.

"The time in England was an amazing experience for me, both from a professional and personal point of view. I was able to get an insight into the British culture and the lifestyle in the county of Dorset. At Veloce, I learned a lot about the work routine in a modern publishing house from a foreign country, as there are quite a few differences between the German and the English ways of publishing. I really appreciate that I was allowed to get responsible tasks from a new perspective. During my internship I could improve my English skills both in writing and verbally. In particular, I learned how to work with Photoshop and InDesign.

"Lastly, I would like to thank everyone from the Veloce Publishing staff for always being available for questions, making me feel comfortable, and giving me an enjoyable time. A special thanks to those from Veloce and Heel who gave me the opportunity for this internship by establishing a connection."

We would like to thank Henrik for choosing to come and intern at Veloce: working in a foreign workplace can be daunting, to say the least, but Henrik took on the challenge admirably. We'd like to extend the invitation to return at any time. 

As soon as you like. 

We're waiting ... !