How to work in publishing

When I worked in publishing in New York in the late 1970s and early '80s, the way to break in was to become an editorial assistant to an editor who was either powerful already or soon to become so. (Of course, how a newcomer would know that is a difficult question to answer, and sometimes the hotshot editor's career would fizzle or go in a different direction, and there you'd be, perhaps without a mentor/patron.)

This job involved a great deal of repetitive secretarial work on no salary and reading tons of manuscripts. With luck, your recommendations on which mss. to buy, if they proved correct, would be rewarded with greater responsibility, until you became an editor in your own right. Apprenticing yourself to an agent was another way to go, but that meant becoming an agent, not an editor, though people do go back and forth between those careers once they establish themselves.

Early on during my career, I made several mistakes, all of which held me back. First, I had the ridiculous idea that editors edit, and that I'd be one of them. So I concentrated on working with manuscripts. I got to be a good line editor, as it's called, which has helped me immensely in my writing and allowed me to work for a couple magazines, on staff and freelance. But it's not what acquisitions editors do, chiefly. Rather, they buy manuscripts, and if you didn't know that end of the business, you could be a whiz with a blue pencil, but so what? When I turned free-lance copyeditor for book publishers, I saw the truth of this up close, working with many manuscripts that had supposedly been "edited" when the correct term would have been "assembled."

The second mistake I made was to turn down an offer of an assistantship at an up-and-coming literary agency. The reasons I turned it down were the lousy pay, of which I'd had a few years already, and because I still thought I'd be the next Maxwell Perkins. Hah. Shoulda taken that job. I'd have been much happier and probably more successful, but what did I know?

Whether things still work this way--or work this way in the UK--I can't say for sure. I don't know what there is outside of London and Edinburgh, and my very uneducated guess is that those two cities are where most of the action is.

I've been told that the publishing course at NYU has helped more than one aspiring editor get a start. Maybe there's something across the pond that's similar.

Good luck.

My own experience is in the US, so I'm afraid I can't speak to UK-specific resources, but I can address some basic points. First, while the job of agent is not an entry-level position, the job of agent's assistant is. Editorial assistant, too. In virtually all cases, you should prepare yourself to be paid only a pittance. Do you like ramen? Interning can be helpful in forming contacts and getting an overview of the business, but it's not a requirement. Not everyone can afford to work for free.

While most people entering the publishing field have some sort of literature background or degree, it's not mandatory. You need to be an avid reader, organized, willing to do a ton of secretarial work for several years without much responsibility or autonomy, and prepared to spend nights and weekends reading and, eventually, editing. If you can talk intelligently about the kind of books your prospective agency/publishing house work with, that can make up for the lack of an English degree. An M.A. in publishing is absolutely not necessary--plenty of people start in the business without more than a B.A. in some sort of bookish field.

I agree with the points above regarding editorial assistant and agent's assistant as being entry points for the publishing industry. Education is a help with these, but chemistry (and patience) are probably more crucial to getting and keeping these jobs.

The other avenue I've seen is via the publicity department. At the publishers I deal with (in my multiple guises), I've seen a number of people move from publicist to editorial assistant to junior editor with an often surprising swiftness (and often not within the same company: one fellow I know went from senior publicist at one company to an editorial assistant at another to a junior editor at a third...).

willietheshakes said:

The other avenue I've seen is via the publicity department. At the publishers I deal with (in my multiple guises), I've seen a number of people move from publicist to editorial assistant to junior editor with an often surprising swiftness

Click to expand...

The swiftness part can be tricky, particularly if you don't like ramen. Or find that you don't after a couple of years of it.

Hence my use of the phrase "often surprising"...