What You Need to Know to Work in Publishing
What You Need to Know to Work in Publishing
A post to forward to your niece/sibling/neighbor/college roommate's kid
Hey friends,
Someone recently reached out to me to ask if I had any tips for their daughter on how to make publishing a career. I don’t, however, have a list of specific steps that will lead a young (or not young!) person to successfully pay rent in NYC as an employee of a publishing venture. I have not had a new job in eighteen years, and absolutely do not know what your cover letter needs to say or how to format your resume so that it gets a hiring manager’s attention. I have not worked full time for a company that employed more than twenty people since the early aughts. Don’t ask me how to climb the corporate ladder.
BUT, I can share what one needs to know about publishing to ready themselves for the job hunt. There are certain realities of publishing that have not changed in decades, and they do not align with the realties of any other industry. Fun! So here’s the inside scoop.
Publishing pay is low. I know! It sucks! Per a PW survey last year, the average starting salary for an entry level position was $47,583. The median rent in NYC right now is $3650. A recent college grad I know looking for an apartment in Brooklyn had a budget of about $2500, to split with a roommate. A family of four I know looking for a rental apartment in Park Slope had a budget of $4,000, and they weren’t swimming in options. According to an online calculator I found, the take-home pay for that average salary is about $3200. More than half your paycheck will likely go to rent. It’s expensive to live in NYC!
You don’t have to live in NYC to start, but most do. Before the pandemic, working remotely as an entry level employee would have been impossible. Now, publishers do hire new people to work hybrid or fully remote for their first jobs. Personally, though, I would not do that. You lose a lot from not being in the actual office (even a few days a week), even just by not being able to bond with your “class” of other entry level coworkers.1 There are readings and parties and advocacy groups like the Young Publishers Association in NYC. There are, of course, publishing opportunities in other US cities.2 There are big agencies in LA, Atlanta, and….other places. There are publishers in San Francisco, Naperville, IL, and…other places! There are university presses at most large universities. If you want to make books your career, though, you’ll have the most opportunities in NYC, at least until you get established.
Some people go to a Publishing Course to get their foot in the door. I didn’t even know these existed when I was in school, and if I had, I probably would have gone into debt to go to one (which is not a good thing). Not because they are the best and only way to break into publishing, but because I was a little lost and figured those places would give me direction. And they do! But they are expensive. The NYU Summer Publishing Institute is $4,700 for a six week course (and an optional $475 in housing costs through them). The Columbia Publishing Course includes room and board, but comes in at over $10,000 for a six week course. And what do you get out of that? A ton of knowledge! An intro to all the different parts of book and magazine publishing, so you can see what you want to do. Lots of friends! And possibly an inside track on jobs. I know that the people who run these two programs absolutely connect with publishing people to fill open positions, but those positions are also publicly posted. Attendees might get a leg up if the person who runs the program says to an editor “Oh yeah, I think this person will be a great assistant for you,” but it’s not a done deal.3 Both of these programs would have cost more than what I spent on my graduate degree, a two- year MA in Fiction Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Those who can swing this will benefit from it. Those who can’t aren’t sunk, though.
A great thing about publishing is that lots of entry level positions are flexible in terms of career track. Those who want to work in Editorial (where one eventually edits books), should be dismayed if the only jobs open for months are in Marketing, It’s not impossible to start in Marketing and eventually make a jump to Editorial. Or the other way around. It might take a few years, but it’s possible and not frowned upon. In fact, I think those who work in different departments are even more valuable employees than those who stick to one track. An editor who’s worked in sales? Be still my beating heart. It never serves to go into an interview like “Oh, this job sounds cool but I’m just using it as a stepping stone to what I really want to do.” That can be true; just don’t say it in the interview!
What about literary agencies? There are LOTS of literary agencies, in New York and elsewhere, but they don’t often have that many employees. They might employ one to five assistants, depending on how many senior agents there are. Sometimes assistants are the only salaried people on staff, and everyone else works on commission. That, too, is the career path for literary agents (a commission, not salary job) and if the idea of having to hustle to pay rent for several years (it took me five) after an assistantship causes great anxiety, agencies might not be a good fit.
The most surprising thing I learned while getting a job in publishing, and sitting in on many interviews over the years, is that no one cares if you read Proust. Reading only literature and not <gasp> genre books is not proof that a candidate is erudite and a genius and has impeccable taste. Literary fiction doesn’t make publishers any money! It’s been my experience that those who can speak passionately about any kind of book they like (Romances! Manga! 19th century mysteries! Pop science books! Picture books!) make great employees, and those who actively look down their nose at certain kinds of books do not.
What about internships? They exist! They are not often full time or come with full time wages. (Some don’t pay at all but there are new-ish laws about that.) Many big publishers have formal programs and that can be a great place to start. It’s not like finance, though, where Goldman Sachs takes 100 interns and gives 98 of them jobs after.4 I’ve known many people who’ve had multiple internships before they land a full time job.
If this hasn’t been the most depressing newsletter in the whole world, here are the places I tell people to scope out publishing jobs:
I’m sure these things are on LinkedIn, too as well as on individual publishers’ and agency’s websites. I found my first NYC publishing job on Craigslist, lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Publishing is great. I’ve made it my life, career, and basically my whole personality. Maybe that’s not the best way to go! But there’s nothing else I can see myself doing. Who wouldn’t want to be around books all day?
Do you work in publishing? How’d you get your job? What advice do you have to give?
Good luck, job seekers.5
OXOXOXOX,
Kate
I’m not a full-bore BACK TO THE OFFICE person, but I think it’s valuable for entry level people.
Sorry, rest of the world, I only know about US publishing.
Is this fair? No! But it’s also how basically all other referrals and recommendations work.
That’s how it works, right?
No, we’re not hiring at Morhaim Literary.
As someone who is fairly junior in the publishing world (assistant at a literary agency), the thing I try to remember is that everyone is here because they love books. So don’t waste a ton of space in your cover letter going on about that passion. Focus on the skills you bring in and what you hope to gain—like databases, client relations, project management, etc. Skills I brought from my other careers and made me look more valuable.
Something also important to consider, from someone who was in publishing for several years. It is an incredibly unstable business. Imprints are closed every year, rounds of layoffs are common, and you’ll find yourself out of a job more than once. And getting back in can be just as hard. I love publishing, I do, and I loved the many years I worked there, but now as I’m desperately trying to find employment again, the instability of the business compared to others is something to consider.