Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast exploring the topics of business, education,
technology and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Join me weekly as my team and I produce content that's informative, positive, fun and uplifting.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
Hello and welcome back to Students Incorporated.
We're glad you're here and thanks for tuning in.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
For our first segment, we're joined by co-hosts, Premi and Rebecca.
And we have the privilege of talking with Ms. Sam Fox of HarperCollins Publishers out
of New York City.
We'll get to hear a little bit about her career journey into branding and marketing
and find out some of the ins and outs of what her job is like at a large publishing company.
Then for segment two, we'll continue with part three of our story, The Secrets of El
Dorado.
So stick around as we have an exciting and jam-packed episode.
But before we jump into our discussion with Sam, let's hear our quote of the day and
get some headline news.
Hey everyone, I'm Rebecca and your quote of the day comes from David Bradham.
He said, Marketing is telling the world you are a rock star.
Publishing is showing the world you can play.
This quote highlights the contrast between marketing and publishing.
Marketing is about claiming excellence, like declaring you are a rock star, while publishing
is the act of proving it, like demonstrating you actually do have musical talent by performing.
This emphasizes that genuine credibility and reputation come from showing actual skills
and value most just from promoting or talking about it.
And that's our quote of the day.
Now onto some headline news.
Thank you, Rebecca.
Now here's some headline marketing news from around the world.
With 2023 having significant inflation, beverage and food company, Acai's chief marketing
officer has recently talked about the importance of brand trust.
Per context, Acai had to raise prices by 15 to 20% to keep the company stable during the
rapid inflation.
However, the price increase comes with drawbacks in demand.
As APEcon students would know, customers are less willing to buy products if the price
increases.
In the power of marketing, Acai's strong brand image in the beverage industry allowed
it to have a strong customer retention rate even with the added costs.
The CMO, Grant McKenzie stated that the stronger your brand, the better your ability to take
price.
In addition to mentioning the company's marketing efficiency, McKenzie has also mentioned the
importance of effective marketing, which was highlighted in this specific scenario due
to how well the company's marketing strategy contributed to its customer retention.
Moving on, a fast food chain, McDonald's.
Their reps recently spoke at the Market Research Society's annual conference on March 12th.
According to McDonald's, they had become trusted by three-fifths of the UK public and
had set out to capture the remaining two-fifths through the use of comedy and creativity by
adding elements of humor in their new campaign called Keep Up with the Times.
In this campaign, they depicted the negative views on McDonald's as outdated and misinformed
when it came to the quality of their food, something that McDonald's say they placed
a heavy emphasis on.
This marketing decision was an attempt to penetrate further into a customer-based displays,
the methods that companies use to modernize themselves and gain more customers.
And finally, moving on to our last news piece, in their latest software update, Google has
recently updated their search engine core this month, which will reduce the damage done
by the harmful uses of AI technology that skews search results and take over expired
domains that are then converted into hubs for links, which are both considered spam.
Google's core update has also added host sites that rely on other sites to market their
content to their list of targets.
The update rose out next month and will likely help with interruptions and inconveniences
caused by the new surge in technology and digital marketing that are a source of many
internet users' annoyances and would hopefully remove the massive amounts of spam advertising.
And that ends our headline news.
We are back for our first segment of this episode.
We have the privilege of talking with Ms. Sam Fox of HarperCollins Publishers all the
way over in New York City.
Premi will kick off this segment with our first question.
Hello, and thank you so much for coming on the show.
Could you please introduce yourself and give us a brief overview of what you do?
Hi, thank you for having me.
My name is Sam Fox.
I am the Director of Content Creation and Marketing Strategy for HarperCollins Publishers.
Before coming to Harper, I was the marketing brand lead at Teen Vogue.
And the majority of my role is managing a team of digital marketing managers, social
media managers, video producers, and other types of marketers to create content about
our wonderful books and share it across all of our platforms so that we can connect the
fans of our books, connect with the fans of the books that we publish.
Wow, that sounds amazing.
Can you share a little bit about your journey from university to where you are now and what
inspired you?
Yeah, of course.
So I was actually a dance major in university.
I was training to be a professional dancer, so clearly very different from what I'm
doing now.
But I did, I had an English double major and I always loved reading and writing.
Then I was an editor for a college newspaper.
So by the time I was ready to start thinking about graduating, I decided that despite all
of my training, I was no longer interested in pursuing a career in dance.
And I started looking into journalism instead.
And so I ended up doing this fellowship for the end of my senior year at AOL.
And in that role, I learned how to discover and write breaking news, manage social media
channels, interview celebrities for special features, all that kind of stuff.
And I ended up going there full time when I graduated and learning so much from that.
And then I received a call from Teen Vogue about six months later asking me to interview
for a position that they were looking to fill.
And the catch was that rather than it being an editorial position, it was a marketing
position on the social media marketing team.
And so at first I wasn't sure I wanted to switch to a marketing role, but I took the
interview and when they told me all of the amazing things that Teen Vogue was planning
to publish and these big moments that they wanted to establish and all these stories
that I wish I had had when I was a teenager, I decided that I wanted to be part of this
regardless of what the role was.
And that's how I found myself in marketing.
But in the six years I spent at Teen Vogue, I fell in love with marketing.
And I became just really passionate about the brand's mission and figuring out how
I could use the marketing skills I was learning to help young people understand how they can
make an impact on the areas that they care about and how they can feel seen and heard.
So then I decided to take those marketing skills and bring them over to the publishing
industry because I loved books more than anything in the world and was curious about what it
was like to work in publishing.
And so yes, I switched over to that industry where I'm now handling a lot of our marketing
and really just what I realized through all of this is that at the end of the day what
inspires me and the reason I do it is because I'm passionate about helping these young people
and working on brands that focus on making young people feel seen and heard.
That is so inspiring.
I love that so, so much.
And that's crazy too for like a dance major and then like following all the places to
where you are now.
We were wondering if you could describe your experiences from past work and how that has
helped you in your current position.
Yeah, definitely.
I think, you know, I think no matter what you're doing, even if it's something that's
a completely different industry or role, you can take things that you've learned previously
and bring them into the next.
So for me, working at AOL taught me how to run social media platforms for a brand and
what the reporting and analytics side of all of it looks like.
And you know, I took that with me to Teen Vogue and then, you know, then I was able
to amp up our social media marketing strategy and, you know, partner with influencers on
various platforms.
I learned a lot about influencers when I was at AOL.
And then working at Teen Vogue, I learned how to brainstorm, propose, and execute all
these different marketing campaigns and brand partnerships and how to be a team leader.
And most importantly, I think at Teen Vogue, I learned that marketing at its core is another
form of storytelling and that the most successful marketers are the ones who care about the
brand's story and want to share it with the world.
So I took that with me to my current position and try to inspire my team to, you know, do
everything through the lens of storytelling.
And I think the sales numbers matter, but at the end of the day, sales isn't just about
getting people to click on an ad and purchase your product.
You know, when an audience engages and interacts with your brand, they're more likely to turn
to you when they're looking to buy products, which in my case is books.
So that's just a little kind of spiel on how, you know, all of it has tied together and
how even though it seemingly doesn't make sense, it does work when you put it in that
perspective.
Does it?
I think a lot of marketing is storytelling because I think that's a lot of what we
learned to hear in marketing class.
It is storytelling.
And then yeah, and then storytelling to sell books, which is another story, right?
What does your job description look like?
What's an average work week look like for you?
Every week looks very different.
And you know, I purposely try to find roles where that's the case because I like to get
my hands dirty in different areas that really kind of get involved in different things on
a day to day.
So in any given week, I might participate in brainstorms with the social media and video
teams to come up with really fun concepts that show off a certain book that we're trying
to market to our readers.
I might spend time in the studio helping to film that content.
Maybe I'm getting on calls with authors to discuss marketing plans for their upcoming
books and how we'll be working together, meeting with authors at various events or in the office
to take videos of them hyping up their books, giving presentations to company leaders to
share what our numbers are looking like and how we're strategizing for upcoming books
we plan to market, working with retail partners and influencers, you know, campaigns that
we're doing with them or planning big brands.
That sounds really busy, but so, so, so, so cool.
I cannot get over how you can meet so many authors.
I don't do all of those things at the same time on a single day, so it is fun out.
Moving on, if you could walk us through the process of developing a marketing campaign
for a new book.
Yes, definitely.
So when you're developing a marketing campaign for a new book, it's all about determining
what your main goals are for that book and figuring out the right ways to reach those
goals.
So for example, if we're working with a brand new author who's never published a
book before, we would want to focus on, you know, a getting people to buy the book and
B introducing the author to, you know, book readers everywhere.
So therefore our campaign might include retailer partnerships and general advertisements that
drive direct sales on adding the book to lists on our website where it makes sense and also
working with the author by bringing them into our office and taking a video of them introducing
themselves and sharing some fun facts that readers should know about.
But if we're working with a bestselling author who's publishing their 20th book, you know,
we might focus more on sort of their fandoms and reaching the readers who already know
and love this author, which means we probably need more into like influencer posts on TikTok,
sending early copies of the books to mega fans, sending the author on a tour around
the country to meet with fans in their towns and things like that.
So it's really kind of case by case depending on what the book is and who the author is.
Oh yeah, that makes sense for like different authors to process what look a little different
and like personalized to that book and that author, right?
And then author tours, book tours around.
Oh, that's crazy.
I love that though.
That must be so, so, so fun.
And do you get to go on these tours as well?
Normally I don't, but I did get really lucky.
In 2022, I was able to go on a week long tour with six of our bestselling authors all around
the country.
And the author is called White Out and Black Out series.
It was very, very cool.
I remember asking you, I remember asking you, it was like, I love this book.
Have you heard of it?
And you're like, have I heard of it on tour?
I just read this book called White Out and I was like, I was just on tour for a book
called White Out.
And I was like, no, no, actually, and then this happens all the time.
But book tours, so, so, so cool.
In what ways does a publisher collaborate with the author, especially in the marketing
of the book?
So for this, you know, that's a great question.
It really depends on who the author is and what book they're publishing.
You know, we always start a marketing campaign for a new book by getting on a call with the
author, walking them through our plans so that they're looped in on everything that
we're doing and they can provide suggestions, they can ask questions.
We might also ask the author to get involved by filming some content with us or attending
events depending on what's needed.
So sometimes, you know, we get on the call and that's really all we're going to see of
the author for the majority of the campaign.
And sometimes we get on the call and that's just the start of a relationship where we'll
be seeing them very often.
And that really just depends on sort of what the main goals are for their marketing campaign
and how involved we need them to be.
That's really insightful.
And like you said again, right, like each book or each author, the process would look
a little different.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And how would you measure success when you're running a marketing campaign?
Are there certain metrics that you collect?
Yeah, so this is a really great question because I think it reaffirms why it's so important
to start every marketing campaign by establishing what our goals are for that campaign.
So if a goal was to generate as many book sales as possible, then we would measure success
by looking at sales growth during the timeframe of that campaign.
If the goal was to generate buzz and excitement for an upcoming title, if you weren't as concerned
about sales in that sort of pre-order phase, then we'll measure success by looking at the
engagement metrics of the content that we produce to see how many people interact with
the content.
So success can look different for different campaigns.
It's always important to be clear about what success metrics you're prioritizing before
you dive into the work of the campaign.
Could you share about any campaign that went really well and maybe some that did not and
why?
I can.
I won't share the names of the books or office so as not to embarrass anyone or share any
information that they might not want me to.
But I can be kind of vague about it and say that we worked on a campaign where we wanted
to generate excitement for the book.
It was the final book in a really big series and we decided to create a book trailer that
showed a bunch of the elements from the book.
So we had like the capsule and the dragon breathing fire and all these really cool things
that made it look more like a movie trailer than a book trailer.
And we set that video up to play on billboards all over New York City in addition to our
social media channels.
So it was a really cool moment for me like being in the subway and seeing a video that
my team produced like playing on a billboard.
And you know that we had the opportunity to go to the office to make TikTok videos in
which we all begged her to tell us how the series ends.
But like the concept of the video that we didn't know she obviously never actually
tells us.
But the video was super viral which was awesome to see that you know we clearly found something
that fans were excited about.
And then that same day we took the author to a bookstore where hundreds of fans were
waiting to ask her questions and take photos with her.
So altogether it was really kind of a 360 campaign that did really well.
When it comes to campaigns that don't perform well I think the biggest mistake is trying
to do something that works for another book or author that was extremely different from
the book and author that we're working with now.
So for example you know if one author's video introducing all of their book characters did
really well for them that doesn't mean it'll do well for another author who saw that video
and wants to try something similar.
So maybe the plot doesn't lend itself to that concept.
Maybe the author isn't as comfortable on camera.
Maybe the genre of the book reaches an audience that isn't that interested in that type of
video.
So really it's our job to recognize that no two books are the same and no two authors
are the same.
And we have to really kind of cater to the strength of the books and the author.
Yeah that makes sense.
For different books yeah and even though like an author might see like something similar
but it might not work depending on the plot because every story, every book is so so different
and like so unique to itself and its elements too.
But talking about like campaigns that didn't work well that's crazy.
Seeing like you said like on the billboard that is that is absolutely crazy and honestly
that is the coolest idea because really some big series and and their plot so is authors
are just too good at hiding.
Hiding little details and then they never tell.
And like those are some fun things about marketing too and like you know we all see billboards
like you go to New York City, you go to Times Square, you see all these billboards and you're
like how do they get there?
You know who makes that happen?
And then you realize that all you really have to do is Google it and you might be the person
who makes that happen you know.
And that's what's really fun about marketing is taking those things into your own hands
and kind of being the person who just gets that stuff done you know.
Yeah.
So moving forward, what trends and or challenges do you foresee within the field of marketing
or the publishing industry?
Great question.
I'd say within the publishing industry the big thing that we're seeing, we're seeing
a lot of celebrity book clubs emerging.
So I'm really curious to see how that impacts the industry at large.
You know Reese Witherspoon has Reese's book club which has been around for a while now
and it has had a really significant impact in what readers were buying from their local
book stores.
We're also seeing more online and social media purchases.
I think that's something across all of marketing not just in publishing as well as the rise
of influencers on social media.
You know these are social media creators who have established these big followings who
you know have kind of created these communities online who listen to them and take their advice
and take their product recommendations.
So a huge thing in marketing right now is working with these people to kind of more authentically
share your products with their audiences.
I don't see that going away anytime soon.
And then you know this is a new trend in books but another thing we're seeing a lot is books
getting turned into movies or TV shows.
I don't know if any of you all saw like the semi-trend Pretty which is a huge series.
There's you know the Kissing Beer Center and To All The Boys I've Loved Before and you
know all of those.
And so you know that always ends up generating its own sales to the books.
Yeah that makes sense and I think I love that like authenticity right you said is like coming
up more and it's not going away.
So I love that.
And people are definitely buying like if I go to like Book Talk or like Instagram like
there is like its own separate like sector just for books and then like book reviews
and then like talking about books.
And so I can definitely see like so many people buying books from those platforms or those
venues a lot more.
And our final question is what advice would you give to a person who is thinking about
getting into the marketing field or the publishing industry?
So it's actually funny that you just mentioned Book Talk because I think my biggest piece
of advice is to get on Book Talk.
There's such a rise in both influencer marketing and social media marketing.
So TikTok and Instagram in general but especially Book Talk and Bookstagram which are kind of
these niche spaces that book nerds have carved out for ourselves are really the spaces that
publishers are paying attention to.
So if you use those platforms for fun in your everyday life and you understand how they
work and what makes someone successful on the platforms you'll already be an asset to
the publishing industry when you go to apply for your first job just by living it and experiencing
it and understanding the consumer.
And I think you know when it comes to marketing it's all about empathy it's all about putting
yourself in the shoes of whoever you're marketing to and saying you know what would encourage
me to buy this product or follow this account.
And so you know when you're in the same social spaces that you know your audience is in that
enables you to kind of be empathetic with them and figure out cool ideas that you know
other people who aren't in those spaces might not be thinking about.
That's super powerful.
Thank you so so much again for joining us we're so so honored for you to be here and
you've taught us so many things it's been super insightful and so powerful and inspiring
to see what you've done and the advice that you give so thank you so so much.
Of course thank you.
And that ends segment one of this episode.
A big thanks to Sam for joining us virtually from New York for this interview.
Stick around as we continue with part three of our story for segment two right after this
short PSA.
Hi this is Sam Fox.
I work in marketing at HarperCollins Publishers and I am a guest on the Students Incorporated
podcast this week.
Make sure to check out the new books that have recently come out or are coming out soon.
We've got Infinity Kings by Adam Silvera, Under its Red Rock by Nidhi McGinnis and The
Lilies by Quinn Diacon Furcato.
We are back for our second segment and we will continue with part three of our story
titled The Map.
But first Premi will give us a quick recap from our last episode.
In the last episode Lily, Ava and Sierra head to the sciences department at the college
hoping to get to the bottom of Chen's mysterious texts.
As it turns out they meet Professor Charpton from the sciences department and he lets them
know that Chen is an assistant to one of the professors in the history department.
When they arrived they met none other than Professor Hawthorne from the history department
who Chen had been a lab assistant for.
Professor Hawthorne had said that Chen has not been answering his calls either and says
that that is very unlike him.
He then finds an old piece of paper with ancient Chinese characters.
He realizes later they matched the characters from a document in the filing cabinet from
a long long time ago.
These are the two things on his mind as he makes his way to Ethan's cafe, that and his
favorite sandwich.
And that's where we left off.
Thank you Premi and without further ado let's get back into our story where we join Ava,
Lily, Sierra, Ethan and the professor.
Sierra Ava and Lily are back in the cafe.
Sierra has clocked back in and is busy again behind the counter taking customer orders,
cleaning tables and doing dishes.
She catches Ethan out of the corner of her eye waving her over to his laptop that's
sitting on one of the counters behind the main bar area.
Hey, check this out.
Ethan tells Sierra as he points to his laptop screen and shows her a map of the squiggly
lines on it.
Oh, can I have that thing back that I gave you before you left for your lunch break?
He asked.
He then goes on and thanks her for testing out his newest tech device, a small tracker
that looks like a paperclip.
This small device is a medium power, medium range transmitter that transmits a symbol
ping every 30 seconds.
Ethan kept the power and range just under the US regulations so that the device would
not have to be co-licensed.
Basically, Ethan wants to sell the device to his old company in the hopes that the stock
price will increase, which in turn will increase his personal nest egg.
Plus, it's just a really cool device.
Sierra looks intrigued and a little skeptical as she says, wow, that's pretty cool.
So you can basically track anywhere that device goes within a certain range?
Ethan goes on.
Yeah, and that other cool thing about it is that its range is quite large in comparison
to all the other products on the market.
It's small and powerful.
I've made several prototypes and I'm just now testing them with the software I wrote.
The mapping software I created then shows the location of that device in real time.
So that's what you are looking at, where you went the last hour and a half during your
lunch break.
It looks like you went to the college campus and spent some time in two different buildings.
Sierra is standing there with a straight face.
She's not really wanting to hear all the technical details about the device, nor is she super
thrilled that she was unknowingly testing a tracking device for one of Ethan's side
projects.
Don't get her wrong, she likes it and thinks it's cool, but she's also thinking about all
the other tasks she has to finish during her shift before she can clock out and go home.
Meanwhile, Ava and Lily are back sitting together again in the cafe.
Since most of the double tables are occupied already, they're sitting up at the bar counter
opposite of where Ethan and Sierra are having their conversation behind the bar.
Lily is asking Ava a lot of questions about some of Ava's past articles she's written
for the bee.
Professor Hawthorne answers the cafe and heads right to the counter to place his order.
I'll take my usual, thank you, as he tells one of the other cafe employees who's working
the register.
He notices an open seat at the bar counter and goes to sit down.
Right then, he realizes it's next to Ava and Lily.
Oh, we meet again, he says, as the two girls turn around to see who the person is that's
going to sit next to them.
Do you mind if I sit here?
He asks.
I usually sit up at the bar when I come in for lunch, since I'm typically in a hurry
and I'm by myself.
No problem, Lily replied.
Ava notices right away that Professor Hawthorne had brought his briefcase and had it sitting
up on the counter where he got situated.
She watched as he struggled to find a place to set the briefcase down.
Professor Hawthorne opened up the briefcase and pulled out the old manila folder and a
folded up piece of paper and set them on the counter in front of himself.
He then shut the briefcase and set it down on the floor next to his bar stool.
Since bar stools stand higher than regular table chairs, he had an awkward time sitting
back up straight after setting the briefcase down on the floor.
Ava watched all this happening and then saw Professor Hawthorne accidentally knock the
middle folder off the counter as he was sitting back up.
The folder and the old manuscript that was inside fell on the opposite side of the counter
behind the bar.
Professor Hawthorne said under his breath, but loud enough so Lily and Ava could hear
him, Oh man, well, look at that.
I guess you can't take me anywhere.
Lily quickly offered to help pick up the papers that had fallen out of the folder, but felt
a little timid since they had fallen behind the bar.
Ava quickly scanned the cafe looking for a staff member of which they were all busy doing
something else in another part of the shop.
Ethan had gone to the back room to take a phone call a minute earlier and Sarah was
busy taking several customer orders up at the cash register.
Ava quickly reacted and said, I'll grab them for you since Sarah won't have a problem
with me sneaking behind the counter for a second.
Ava went around the back of the bar counter and started picking up all the papers that
had fallen.
She noticed that all the papers look quite old and worn.
She thought to herself, this looks interesting.
I wonder what Professor Hawthorne is up to.
After she had gathered all the papers off the floor, she noticed several paper clips
sitting on the counter next to the laptop.
She picked up one of the paper clips and attached all the pages together and then walked around
the counter and handed the sack of paper to Professor Hawthorne.
There you go.
She says,
Thank you so much, Professor Hawthorne tells Ava.
As he's waiting for his lunch, he asks Ava and Lily, how do you all know each other?
Ava responds first.
Sarah and I grew up together in Coloma, but we went to different colleges.
I'm back here visiting right now for work.
The Bee has me doing a series of articles on the Gold Rush Festival this summer.
Oh, I see, says Professor Hawthorne.
Lily chimes in and says, I come to Ethan's a lot, especially during the school year,
to study and hang out with my friends.
Sarah was always so kind allowing us to sit at the big table and study.
Of course, we needed to buy drinks or food.
Oh, by the way, I really enjoyed taking forensic archaeology from you last year.
It was super helpful to learn about how archaeology can assist criminal investigations.
Professor Hawthorne responds to Lily.
Oh, thank you.
That's actually one of my favorite classes to teach because it's practical, more skills
based and less academic than most classes that I teach.
Professor Hawthorne goes on, Coloma is a small town and it's a close knit community.
Everybody knows everybody and you got to be okay with everybody knowing your business.
For sure, Eva replies.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to go to university away from home actually.
Oh, that and Cal State has a great journalism program.
By this time, Sierra was done with some of the rush orders, grabbed Professor Hawthorne's
order and walked back over to where they were all sitting up at the bar.
She handed Professor Hawthorne his sandwich and iced tea and interrupted and said, So
have you found out what happened to this guy Chen yet?
Professor Hawthorne was just about to take a big bite out of his sandwich when he heard
Sierra's question.
He put the sandwich back down on the plate and pointed to the manuscript papers and the
note sitting next to his plate on the counter.
He said, No, but I did bring a note Chen left me last week and an old manuscript to study
over lunch.
There may be an interesting connection between the two.
Lily was looking over toward Professor Hawthorne as he opened the folded piece of paper which
had what looked like some sort of formula along with several Chinese characters scribbled
on it.
Lily blurted out, Those are Chinese characters.
Did Chen write these?
As Professor Hawthorne begins answering her questions, she noticed that the characters
are not the typical and modern Chinese characters she is used to seeing.
Professor Hawthorne continues, Chen gave me this note as he was leaving work on Friday
and didn't say much about it.
He just said that he wanted me to have a copy of something that he was working on and if
I could just hold it for him for the time being.
I didn't think much about the note at the time.
I glanced at it briefly and noticed there was some weird formula written along with
some series of Chinese characters.
I tried my new Image to Language translation app to my phone to see if I could read the
characters but no luck.
The app did not recognize the characters so I folded it up and put it in a safe place
in case Chen came back for it sometime.
Ava, who was sitting on the stool between Professor Hawthorne and Lily, asked Professor
Hawthorne if she could take a photo of it and send it to one of her colleagues at the
Bee who is an amazing researcher.
I'll just send a photo of two or three of these characters but not all of them and I'll
see if my buddy Ted can do his magic for us.
He owes me a favor anyway, Ava says.
She quickly snaps a photo of the several Chinese characters and sends Ted the photos along
with a short message that reads,
What type of Chinese characters are these?
You know you owe me?
Followed by three smiley face emojis.
As Ava is taking photos and sending Ted the text, Professor Hawthorne takes another bite
of his sandwich, puts it down on the plate and then starts thumbing through the manuscript
papers that are paper clipped together.
The manuscript is about 120 pages in length.
Makes some interesting claims about the gold from this area and also includes detailed
illustrations of different locations surrounding Sutter's Mill, the surrounding mountains
and some back horse trails.
Sierra glances over towards their direction and notices they are all talking and looking
very serious.
She decides to pause for a moment on her way out to the cafe's sitting area to clean up
a few tables.
As she walks up to where the three are sitting, she asks lightheartedly,
Did you solve the mystery yet?
Ava pipes up, nope not yet.
I'm actually trying to figure out this weird clue from Chen's note.
These Chinese characters I'm not familiar with, Li says.
Hmm interesting, Sierra replies.
Xi Dan says, Chen has nice handwriting though.
Right at that moment and as Professor Hawthorne started taking another bite of his sandwich,
he pauses as he finds what he's looking for on the manuscript.
There on page 87 are some of the same Chinese characters written on the margins.
Some of the characters look similar to the characters in Chen's note.
Professor Hawthorne thinks to himself, there's no way this can be a coincidence.
Ava, who's sitting right next to Professor Hawthorne, looks down at the manuscript and
blurs out and asks, whoa, are those the same characters that are on Chen's note?
Yes, it appears that way and I have a hard time believing that this is just a coincidence,
replied Professor Hawthorne.
Lili and Sierra are also looking over at page 87 of the manuscript that's open on the
counter.
Lili asks, what's page 87 about?
Sierra repeats the question, yeah, what's on page 87?
At that moment, Ethan comes out of the back room and notices the three girls and Professor
Hawthorne's all staring down at something.
He stops and says, looks like a serious meeting here, is your sandwich okay Professor?
Yeah, Ethan, it's great as usual, thank you.
Just then, Ava's phone dings with a message from Ted.
She says, hey guys, Ted just texted me back and he thinks those characters look like they
might be part of an old code, but an old code that isn't used anymore.
His text also said that he found a really old article in the Bee's internal online
archives that references an old Chinese telegraphic codebook that was used in the late 1800s for
the purpose of encoding and translating Chinese characters to Morris code used for a telegraph
machine.
So sooner did Ava get those words out, Professor Hawthorne stood up and said, Ted's exactly
right.
This manuscript, even though it may have some inaccuracies, does contain plenty of other
helpful information about this place, including that many of the workers who helped complete
the railroad line through this country after the gold rush were immigrants from mainland
China.
Professor Hawthorne turns to another page in the manuscript which describes the difficulty
many of the railroad workers had being so far from home, not knowing the local language,
no way to communicate with other family members, and so forth.
He goes on, if I remember correctly, the Orient in the East did not get access to use the
telegraph until the 1870s, at which time the telegraph cables were finally laid, which
then connected China to Russia, Europe, and North America.
Meanwhile, and during this entire conversation, Ethan has his back turned to the group and
is tapping on his keyboard, almost appearing as if he wasn't even listening.
However, he picks up his laptop and turns it around towards the group.
As Ethan points to his laptop screen, he says, look what I found online, here's the entire
Chinese holographic codebook from the late 1800s.
Looks like it's obsolete, or at least that's what Wikipedia says now.
Well, maybe you could at least translate those characters now so Sierra can get back to work,
he says with a half grin.
The team translates the Chinese characters from Chen's note first.
It's a grouping of two sets of numbers alongside two English letters.
N 38 51 21 and W 120 26 55.
I know exactly what these are, said Professor Hawthorne to the group.
These are coordinates, latitude and longitude, degrees, minutes, and seconds.
Ethan, can you look up these and see where this is?
Asks Professor Hawthorne.
Ethan quickly types in the coordinates online.
The coordinate is pointing to a place named Silver Creek by Junction Reservoir off the
old El Dorado National Forest Road, Ethan replies.
It's southwest of the larger Union Valley Reservoir.
Ethan looks up at the others for a half smile.
So is this some sort of secret message then?
The response, so what do we do now?
What about the characters from the manuscript, could you look those up as well?
Ava asks Ethan.
Ethan translates the characters from the manuscripts N 38 55 28 and W 120 24 12.
He enters in the two sets of coordinates and then says, the other set of characters translates
the coordinates as well.
Those coordinates point to Rops Peak, a 6600 foot mountain just north of the Union Valley
Reservoir.
Professor Hawthorne pulls out his phone again and tries to call Chen.
He's wondering to himself if there is some connection between what the author of the
manuscript is communicating so many years ago and now to what Chen is trying to communicate
or found.
Ava is taking notes as she secretly hopes this is something bigger than just a missing
person case.
Her editor at the Bee would love it and maybe even give her a promotion.
She's cautious not to get ahead of herself though.
By the way, we aren't even sure if this even is a missing person case since Chen hasn't
technically been missing for 24 hours yet.
Sierra is studying the code table that Ethan still has open on his laptop screen, wondering
how and why Chen decided to use a coded message, sort of like making a map but without using
the typical topographical symbols.
And that ends part three of our story.
Thank you for listening.
Tune in next episode as we continue with part four titled Histories and Legends.
As we end this episode, we want to again give a big thanks to Ms. Sam Fox of HarperCollins
out of New York for joining us in segment one and for sharing with us her journey into
branding and marketing and for also giving us some great advice along the way.
As always, this podcast will not be possible without the hard work and support of our international
student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright free images, videos, and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
Be your Students Incorporated, because your voice matters.