I started as Department Assistant, was then promoted to Staff Assistant 6 months later, and I was eventually prmoted to Assistant Acquisitions Editor for a non profit Engineering publisher in New Jersey. I simply found the advertisment in the local paper (Newark Star-Ledger) and sent off my resume.
I was recruited by a headhunter to work for a For-Profit genuine publihser (still overseeing an Engineering publishing program) in NYC after a few years of good working experiences with the NJ NonProfit publisher. Profit vs. Non-Profit (NP) are not as different as one may think. We still had a bottom line to meet at the NP publisher, but I received many more manuscripts than I had to go out and acquire.
The Editor position I held with the NYC publisher was really a sales job in that I had to visit college campuses and attended Professional/Technical conferences to try and recruit new authors to my publishing program.
After about 2 years working for the NYC publisher, I left the publishing world. I don't know that my experience is indicative of the publishing world in general, but the job with the NYC publisher, specifically the commute from Central New Jersey into NYC, the large amount of travel [up to 3 weeks out of each month] and the less than desireable working conditions completely turned me off from working in such a position again. However, I have heard fiction publishing is itself, an idiosyncratic beast and have considered entering that realm of publishing should the absolute perfect scenario present itself.
NonProfit & Professional/Technical/Reference Publishing
I was recruited by a headhunter to work for a For-Profit genuine publihser (still overseeing an Engineering publishing program) in NYC after a few years of good working experiences with the NJ NonProfit publisher. Profit vs. Non-Profit (NP) are not as different as one may think. We still had a bottom line to meet at the NP publisher, but I received many more manuscripts than I had to go out and acquire.
The Editor position I held with the NYC publisher was really a sales job in that I had to visit college campuses and attended Professional/Technical conferences to try and recruit new authors to my publishing program.
After about 2 years working for the NYC publisher, I left the publishing world. I don't know that my experience is indicative of the publishing world in general, but the job with the NYC publisher, specifically the commute from Central New Jersey into NYC, the large amount of travel [up to 3 weeks out of each month] and the less than desireable working conditions completely turned me off from working in such a position again. However, I have heard fiction publishing is itself, an idiosyncratic beast and have considered entering that realm of publishing should the absolute perfect scenario present itself.