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demystifying publishing

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Good morning! I have gotten several pokes from a lot of you, asking where I've been. Do y'all post every day? What is up with this? Anyway, I've been off dealing with real life (particularly sticky lately), plus gearing up to launch the Winter 2007 trade season at Tor, buying a bunch of new books, working until all hours of the evening, all that fun stuff.

Oh, and watching The Evidence. The conceit is boring, but Orlando Jones? In purple pants? He is very very dapper. He is a dapper crime solver! Where is the bad? I have no patience for the pain of Rob Estes's character, but Orlando Jones makes up for it. DAPPER CRIME SOLVER. Those are really the only words I can use.

To keep me fresh in your mind, here is Q&A. Please keep in mind that it is 8 AM and I have no coffee yet.

Q: How does one get started in publishing? (question from

jadzia325)

A: One gets started in publishing by moving to the city The Company Of Your Dreams is located in, and submitting your resume. If you want to work for Tor, you come to the New York area. If you want to work for a company out of Boston, move to the Boston area. If you want to work for a company out of Los Angeles.... you get the picture?

I guess I'd recommend reading mediabistro.com -- I know that Holtzbrinck's HR publishes our open positions there. I think there are a few companies posting to craigslist.com too.

Internships are really helpful, especially because a lot of the time people who think they want to be in the editorial department actually want to be in the marketing department or something (and vice versa), but most places don't only hire interns. You will, of course, have to start at the bottom. That means making around $25,000 - $30,000 per year. That's not a lot of money, and it's very difficult to survive in NYC on that salary, and it only gets harder.

A lot of people who come in to interview for entry-level positions (and sometimes even higher) have very unrealistic expectations. Entry-level is seriously only one step above an intensive internship. You read slush and do filing and write cover copy and chase your assigned editor(s) down to make sure s/he (they) get everything done on time and every once in a while you have to get the coffee, take notes at a meeting, dress up pretty to impress someone -- really! 95% of your time is slush, filing, and data entry.

We don't actually expect people coming in at entry-level to have experience. That is why it's called entry level. I've helped hire a bunch of people for Tor's editorial department, and what we expected from them was a willingness to learn and a commitment to books and enthusiasm.

I don't know how other companies do it and what they look for. When we am hiring people, we almost immediately dismiss the ones who have only ever done things related to "literature" -- we are a commercial fiction house, and we want people who are versed in commercial fiction. We also tend to ask people about what magazines they read. You can tell a lot about a person based on their magazine interests. And we want to know what people do outside of books... I can't remember exactly, but one of the reasons we hired

claireeddy's assistant was because her resume was so interesting -- cocktail waitressing (she can multi-task!) and professional ballet (she is good under pressure!) and something else.

It was a smart resume and a clever cover letter. She made a good impression on us during the interview process, and she wrote some really good sample cover copy that wasn't perfect but showed a hell of a lot of potential. We said, "YES SEND HER YES!!!"

(That's because Claire and I tend to talk in caps lock.)

Of course, that said, we at Tor tend to hire our interns.

2muchexposition and I are prime examples of that. I was Jenna Felice's intern, just as Liz was mine. I can think of at least two other interns right off the top of my head who were also hired, but they were publicity interns, plus the art department has hired their last intern, too. And I have an intern right now who I would love to hire.

That's the best way to show off your skills -- go to a school in NYC and get hired as an intern for the company you'd like to work for, and show them that you're a damn rock star and they'd be fools not to find a place to put you.

Anyone who has gotten a job at a publishing company who would like to share how they did it, please feel free to post your experiences in the comments, and I will link to them up here! More information is good!

ETN: Many people have posted their experiences in the comments:

safirasliv talks about Ballantine/Del Rey here;

indigosarah talks about academic publishing here;

claireeddy talks about the response to writers who want to work in publishing here;

zingerella talks about editing textbooks in Toronto here (with bonus info from

tnh on trade publishing in the comments over there);

madrobins talks about her jobs as

tnh's and Tom Doherty's assistant at Tor, and also about working in comics, here;

castiron talks about academic publishing here;

gloryhunt talks about being a Tor intern and moving into academic publishing here;

barbarienne talks about getting a job in production (as a text-design manager) here;

deannahoak talks about her career in publishing here;

readwrite talks about his career in publishing here.

I am not going to keep linking -- but people may keep posting, so make sure you scroll down!

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And this highlights the importance of being nice to not only your editor, but your editor's assistant, the intern, and the person who answers the phone. Not only are these folks not paid NEARLY enough to put up with your attitude, writers, they might be the next ones looking at your bubble-wrapped and duct-taped baby of a manuscript and remembering you were the idiot who was mean.

Also.

It's generally a good idea to be nice to people unless they are not nice to you.

--M

Ohhhhhh. . . you were Jenna's intern?

You may appreciate this post (http://pegkerr.livejournal.com/130013.html) I made with my memories about her. I can't remember, but I don't think I've pointed you to it before.

I'd often thought I would enjoy such a position. Now I'm looking forward to retirement in mere months from a life of being a computer geek, you give all the secrets of how to attain such a position. Life is mean. [g] You've given a very good view on the workings of many places. Bottom line: be in the city of choice. apply. be willing to learn.

Meanwhile, at my office, I have fellow editors sending stuff like this:

Eye kan hep yoo iff yoo kneed hep wit edditing stuf goodlee.

I got my long-ago entry-level job at Ballantine/Fawcett/Del Rey (only three names in the string back then, which lets you know how long ago it was; isn't it like 50 now?) because a friend who'd graduated from my school a few years before me was leaving for a less lowly job and told her manager, "She came through the same department I did, therefore she is also smart, literate, and able to deal with immense amounts of insanity, because she put up with the same professors who trained me to handle impossible deadlines and eccentric behavior."

And then another fellow alum got me my next job, with much the same sentiments and the addition of "And she worked for So-and-So at B/F/DR."

That was about 20 years ago, but I imagine knowing someone still helps!

I'm an editor at a history/social studies textbook publishing company in Connecticut. I had an internship in college at Cambidge University Press in NYC, and then got hired here as an editorial assistant. Working for a small company like mine has major advantages -- I filed and copied for about two months, and then, whoosh! They ran out of editors for a project, and I got sucked in, and haven't gone back to grunt work since. Textbooks aren't where I want stay forever, but I've learned a LOT about project management, writing (writing for kids will clean up your writing in a HURRY -- no hiding behind facy, vague turns of phrase), and editing. Another great thing about the textbok industry is that the books belong to the editors, not the writers. And you write A LOT of stuff because, well, then the company doesn't have to hire a writer. ;)

Do I understand properly that if you want to _write_ fiction, then your application to work at a company that _publishes_ fiction will be at a disadvantage?

Do you get the "How do I get your job?" question often?

Here's my take on it (http://crazyindustry.blogspot.com/2005/03/becoming-editor.html), to which TNH graciously added a U.S. Trade perspective (which was very helpful, 'cause more people want to edit fiction in New York than want to edit textbooks in Toronto, for reasons I simply can't imagine.)

I have my coffee to hand, and must wrangle permissions.

Echoing the intern thing, pretty much for any field. Both of my job offers after graduation came from internships.

Interning also told me that I was happier being an in-house publications and marketing person than working for a book publisher, which was a really, really good thing to find out sooner rather than later.

I heard about my first publishing job--as

tnh's assistant--because I knew Melissa Singer, and she mentioned that a spot was open, and I was tired to having to hunt for freelance work all the time. My own background (running summer programs at Harvard, working in an investment bank, acting, writing) suggested that I could keep a bunch of plates spinning. I can't say what else she might have seen in me--though we did share a sensibility and sense of humor (always vital in the trenches of production). When I left to have a baby I kept doing freelance work, creating back ads and doing the backlist catalog, and just at the point where I wanted to get out of the house and back to work, Tom Doherty called and suggested that I come be his assistant, which I did.

I should add that when I went to work as an editor at Acclaim Comics, I did so because

tnh called and asked me if I was happy in the job I was in at the time (at Metropolis magazine) and suggested that if I wasn't, they were looking for editors at Acclaim. It does help to know people. Still, if you're not the right person for the job, knowing people will only get you so far.

This is a great entry! Very informative and makes me question my desire to be an editor, lol.

thanks for this really informative post! :) i have nothing to add, only that i have wanted to work in the editorial department of a publishing house (reading slush actually sounds like fun to me, and solitary, which i like, oh, even if it's BAD slush!), but nixed it for other practical but dead-end jobs.

i do have a question, though. do you know anyone who is deaf/hard of hearing in the publishing field?

I got my first publishing job somewhat by accident. In 1994, I applied for a bunch of administrative assistant positions at the local university. One of those positions happened to be an editorial assistant's position at the university press; they hired me, and I've worked here ever since.

Most of my coworkers started in the same way -- applied for and got an entry-level position, gradually moved into a less entry-level position. A few folks did an internship and were hired after their intern year; a couple folks had backgrounds in commerical publishing before they came here.

The university press world has some major differences from the commercial publishing world (for starters, most university presses would consider a paperback that sells 2,500 copies a resounding success), but a lot of the skills one learns at a university press would transfer to the commercial world; slush is slush, review copies are review copies, and ONIX is ONIX no matter what publisher you work for.

Interning (at Tor or elsewhere) is the start of the road to editorial fortune and fame. Because I interned at Tor, I was picked up as an intern at Milkweed Editions in Minneapolis, which led to my current job editing textbooks... Okay, yeah, I know. Dullsville. But if you're also a writer, reading SF/F/H slush all day can lead to severe burnout. Also, academic publishing generally pays better.

It really does help to live in the city where you'd like to work. I had heard from Paul at Tor about a position at Asimov's, and during the interview, they asked me when I could come back for a second interview. Considering that I lived in Minnesota at the time, scrambling to get back to New York on a few days' notice would be difficult. Hence, no job.

P.S. I found my current job while surfing the Internet for job postings at 3:00 a.m. Even if you don't currently know of any publishing houses (or literary agencies) in your area, you might be surprised at what you can find if you search a bit.

thanks for reminding people that not all publishing occurs in NYC. sure, the big houses are all there, but there are small and medium presses EVERYWHERE. many with niche lists that could fit any number of people's particular passion. moreover, the big houses often have branches and offices in other regions.

also, while most folks think of editorial, marketing, or publicity when they think of "publishing" job, but [especially with smaller publishers] a foot in the door can be had in such glamorous operations positions as customer service, order processing, or even inventory work. it's not as sexy as editorial stuff, but it is still "publishing", with all of the inherent perks. and with smaller outfits, promotion from within is usually the order of the day. [so says an operations geek at a medium sized publisher/distributor]

finally, pimping your friends who might already have book ties is never a bad thing. not nepotism, but just basic networking. if you have friends in publishing, they'll tell you who's hiring, what to expect, etc. or i suppose you could be LJ friends with

alg and read all about it. :)

also, Publishers Weekly's job site (http://jobs.publishersweekly.com/jobbank.cfm?type=all) is a good place to browse periodically, if only to see what kinds of jobs exist and what qualifications are. visiting your local library and reading PW there also is a good way to begin to know who's who and what's what.

I posted my how-I-got-here tale on my blog.

I'm with you on the move-to-city-of-your-choice. I'm so lucky I'm a NY native.

::sly grin::

Know anyone hiring entry level in San Francisco?

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.

Publishers Lunch is another good source of job openings (currently listing 110 positions) in the publishing industry.
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/jobs/

Well, I just this year started as an Editorial Assitant for Modern Langauge Studies, an academic journal of literary review/critique. I walked into a professor's office to talk about a class I wanted to take, my interest in editing and publishing came up in conversation, and it turned out he was the senior editor of this regional publication.

I walked out twenty minutes later with the four-year internship (and I'm staying on this summer doing paid work).

It's kinda neat, to say the least.

Summer of 2007, I'll be applying for internships in the Big League. =D

I posted mine here. (http://deannahoak.livejournal.com/65930.html)

alg's description of an intern's job was, I suspect, supposed to sound unattractive. It sounds like heaven to me! And I am a natural at living on bugger-all income, have an eclectic resume, vastly prefer commercial fiction over literature, and actually like writing pretend backcover blurbs. I can even spell and punctuate.

I suspect I would be better at the editorial side of writing than I am at the creative side.

What a shame I can't read NY house slush piles from Eastofnowhere, Downunder.

Al

Sooo good to see you back. Hope life is getting better.

Lady M

My first job in publishing was at a legal publisher in Seattle. A neighbor who worked there suggested I apply when I told him I was looking for a job. He knew that I was widely read, and I told him I could spell. I took a proofreading test, told the manager I wanted the job, and was hired as a proofreader. After a while I moved up to being an "editor," essentially an in-house copy editor. The material, mostly municipal codes, with occasional other state and county lawbooks, was on the dull side, but the work turned out to be very good training: I had to take extremely messy material and whip it into shape quickly.

When I moved to New York, I right away got work as a temp legal proofreader, and eventually was on staff at a large corporate firm, but the stuff I was reading there made municipal codes seem like The Demolished Man. But it turned out that several of my Seattle homies, including

pnh and

tnh, had also relocated to NYC. When I mentioned that I was doing legal proofreading, they hooked me up with the house they were working for, which was doing literary criticism--sometimes a bit dry, but actually interesting reading. Another friend of ours was an editorial assistant at a mass market house and gave me the name of their production editor. At last I was working on actual trade books!

Yes, I now had Trade Book Experience--the necessary hidden power a freelancer must have.

I gradually expanded my freelance contacts: sometimes through networking, sometimes through cold calling and taking tests (and some of those tests can be tricky, let me tell you).

So far I had done only proofreading, as far as trade books were concerned. But I carefully studied the manuscript of every book I proofread. By the time an author's original manuscript is typeset, it often resembles a graffiti-covered bathroom wall--you know, the kind where each writer says something to top the previous one: First the editor makes edits, sometimes very sparingly, sometimes virtually rewriting the whole book, usually somewhere in that vast space in between these two. Then there might be a separate line editor who whips the prose into better shape. Then the copy editor goes to work, often writing her or his queries directly in the margin. (Tor doesn't do this, but many houses do.) The author then may reply to the marginal queries and do additional rewriting, sometimes considerably. The production editor may do some cleanup of loose ends, or the original editor may also add a few last-minute edits. The designer may also insert codes or type specs, and the compositor may also write occasional codes here and there.

If you learn to recognize who is who, this can be the best copy editing course in the world. And as the proofreader, part of your job is to watch out for what all these people missed, so you really kind of have to study it in detail anyway. Eventually, I felt I was ready to copy edit as well as proofread.

Eventually, I was recruited to work at Tor by

tnh. I did that for about two years, then felt I needed less structure for a while. Another house was kind enough to put me on staff as a part-time production editor, though it was a tough commute to an outer borough.

After all this, I had enough contacts to freelance indefinitely. In recent years, through other people I've met, I've managed to copy edit at some major magazines as well. Magazine work is very different from book work--more intense and fast-paced, with strict style guidelines, though not necessarily quite as interesting--but generally better paying. I find the ideal situation to be a bit of both magazines and books. I'm toying with the idea of a full-time job again--I think I could use a little organization for a while--but I'm not quite there yet...

Anna -
Thank you for answering my question. I appreciate that you take your time to explain so much to us. I really enjoyed the post about P & L.

Thanks again! :)

When I came to NYC, too many years ago, I had a little experience as a bookkeeper (very little), a good head for numbers, and a love of books. An accounting personnel agency sent me to interview at a small imprint of S&S. They couldn't pay much, but they made BOOKS. I was hooked.

I worked my way through an MBA while in that job, loving every minute, even though the books weren't exactly fun to read (securities industry texts, mostly). When I finished my MBA, and it was time to move on, I used Bert Davis to help me find the right niche. Once again, they couldn't pay much, but they made books I LIKED TO READ. And I would be involved in most parts of the process one way or another. I was hooked again.

I spent 8 years there, running their finance, accounting, and operations. That tended to include all the stuff that wasn't editorial, production or marketing. It was a blast in itself, and then there were the books.

Lessons I picked up along the way:
--Don't expect a living wage, but do expect to enjoy living the life.
--Look at what your boss and his/her boss are doing. Try to figure out why they're doing it that way, and what else might be going on outside your view.
--Look at what allied departments are doing. Try to understand the whole process, and where the pieces fit together. Ask lots of questions.

I love my job in publishing, and work just a bit further uptown than you (think Rockefeller). However, I must admit, there is no way I could sit down with the patience that you have in writing all this out. You should be commended and clearly are deserving of some kind of shiny metallic-like award. Kudos. I'm amazed and horrified.

Perhaps another info link for you to add... when people ask me about submitting without an agent, I always point them to this article:

http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/02/25/slush/print.html

Heh! Have fun at BEA...

Nichole

I come from a city (over-sized town) in Australia that I call a one Publisher Town. I've moved to the big cities to try and get jobs in publishing and my books published. When I left school I slipped into a period of blue-collar work, rather than university, so I'm a bit left behind when it comes to having the qualifications BUT I've learnt that the publishing industry, if seen as some grand castle you can get in to, is only going to crush you. It takes connections to get to the cool places, so I've decided to create my own publishing entity - bit by bloody bit. I am my own Intern, Editor, Illustrator and gladly, Despatch and sometimes Delivery Man! What ever way you approach it, We all have to work hard.

I'd previously heard

tnh answer this question the same way, that the best way to get started in publishing is by moving to the appropriate city and working your way up from the bottom. I wonder why this is so?

I've had a career in IT and, while I have a suspicion that my spelling and grammar are better than 99% of those in my field, I don't have any aspirations in publishing. However, I am curious about it. In IT, people move from job to job and city to city relatively frequently and more and more commonly work from home via the Internet. I have worked for companies in two countries other than my own and once got offered a job at home while I was in the USA.

I would have thought that widespread use of the Internet, email, and cheap teleconferencing would have led to editors for big pubishers working in various cities or at home, manuscripts being submitted by email, publishers offloading much of their precious big-city office space, and so on.

I live in Adelaide, which though it is the state capital is rather a small town with a commensurately small publishing industry. I really want to create books but I cannot move to New York to do so, and Sydney and Melbourne from the research I've done have closed circuits. Ah, well if I keep asking... and perhaps one day I'll be able to do some of this from here with the aid of the marvellous internet.

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How I manipulated events for the privilege of being overworked and underpaid

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My response to the eternal question

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NonProfit & Professional/Technical/Reference Publishing

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interning - I wish

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Getting to be an underpaid bean-counter

Slave to the publishing biz...

Create Your Own Publishing Industry

Why is it so?

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