So, You Want To Be an Editor
I Can’t Think Why You Would But Here’s How
I wrote an article along the same lines as this one a while back but, as usual, found I had more to say on the subject. I’ve been socking away that “more” since then and today the overflow cup itself runneth over so today’s the day you get the more that has been socked. The previous article was on skills that are helpful to build if you’re interested in becoming an editor; today’s is about experiences you can seek out to try your hand at it before making a career decision or to add to your resume before you begin applying.
First, a few notes on the publishing industry and on doing labor for free. Don’t let anybody talk you into doing labor for free—not even me—or for exposure. When you’re just starting out at something new, it can be hard to find a way to break in. The publishing industry is set up in a certain way that makes it hard for people to break in outside a well-established path. That path often includes an unpaid or low-paying internship. This is by design.
The publishing industry workforce is woman-dominated (74 percent cisgender women) and like many woman-driven fields, publishing jobs are considered “passion” jobs: Jobs you are expected to do because you’re passionate about the work and not because they pay well. Many of my colleagues have left the industry for better-paying work, and many who remain have confided in me that they would not have been able to make this their career if they did not have a spouse whose salary covered expenses. That’s not to say there aren’t well-paying positions, because there are, but the field as a whole does not pay well.
The unpaid or low-paying internship is designed to draw in the people who can afford to work for free or peanuts for awhile to get “experience” that they can put toward their first low-paying publishing job. The system deliberately and effectively weeds out people who need livable wages to support themselves.
All this is to say, there are other ways of securing relevant experience without doing an unpaid or low-paying internship. If you want to come in from a different field, and you don’t have the luxury of someone else paying your bills while you switch careers, taking an internship isn’t practical. There are other ways to get this coveted, relevant editorial experience without taking on an internship—ways that require less of a time commitment from you, can be done on your own schedule, and in my considered opinion will be much more enjoyable than filing copyright registrations or updating records in a manuscript processing system.
So you want to slide over to an editorial role in the publishing industry—in-house or freelance—without taking on an internship for six months to get your foot in the door? I’m on your side. I dislike internships. It’s no longer de rigueur for people to stay in the same career for 30 years so I don’t think people need internships to “try out” a career and see if they like it. Get a job, do it for 6 months or a year at a real wage, and see if you like it and if you don’t, get a different job and do something else. It’s a job, not a life sentence.
How can you break in without that unpaid stepping-stone internship? I can only speak for myself, but I’ve rarely hired a junior-level publishing employee right off an internship. I’ve hired a lot of those folks in my day so I can tell you exactly the kinds of experiences I spotted on resumes that were directly applicable to the type of work done in editorial and production departments at publishing companies. These are things you can seek out if they’re available to you or, if you’ve already got the experience in hand, I will offer some tips on how to spin them for maximum effect on your resume.
Customer Service
Importantly: Not every job that has a customer service aspect is a customer service job. Most paid work and a lot of unpaid volunteer work has some kind of customer service aspect to it and editorial work is no different. The author is your customer. You have to coax and cajole them into doing what they need to do, you have to manage their mood swings and blow ups, you have to make sure they’re happy at the end of the day so they don’t go stomping off to another publisher with their manuscript (or their next manuscript). This is an important skill for everyone who works in an editorial or production role and most people have picked it up somewhere by the time they are an adult.
Anyone who’s had a retail or food service job has picked up this skill. Anyone who has done volunteer work has probably had to manage “customer”-type relationships. Ever been a camp counselor or sold Girl Scout Cookies? You can spin that into a customer service experience that directly translates to author management skills. Babysitting? Author management skills. Managing authors is all about getting someone to do something they’re often reluctant (or too busy) to do, in a timely manner, even though you have no actual authority over them. It’s shockingly like babysitting.
One of the most effective editors I’ve worked with at dealing with difficult and temperamental authors came from a background as a teachers’ aide for students with learning disabilities. She could manage an author meltdown like no other.
Critiquing and Beta Reading
I’ll concede to say that not all editors are writers; not all editors are interested in writing. Some are. If you write, or want to, then a great way to build up editorial skills is to participate in mutual peer critique and beta read swaps with other writers. The main purpose of this is to get feedback on your writing to help you develop it, but in that process you also learn a lot about evaluating and critiquing a manuscript, finding its strengths and weaknesses, and communicating them to the author in a way that is authoritative but not, you know, soul crushing. One hopes. Reading critiques of your own writing help develop your writing but they also teach you about critiquing and editing and delivering editorial feedback effectively.
If this is something you’ve participated in and you want to highlight it as resume experience, make sure you’re using the correct terms for it on your resume. It wasn’t incorrect to call it a peer critique swap at the time but it’s totally fair to call it “delivering editorial feedback on manuscripts in progress” for the resume.
As I noted in Find Your Creative Partners, there are tons of places to look for people willing to swap manuscripts. You can find individuals and form a partnership or sign up for a website like Scribophile. You need not provide your own writing in a swap if you don’t write and are just interested in trying your hand at a manuscript critique. Reading someone’s manuscript to deliver a critique is more enjoyable (probably) and better, more applicable experience (likely) than doing an internship where you fill forms or answer correspondence all day.
Volunteer With a Publication
Wait, volunteer with a publication? How is that not doing a free internship? Many literary magazines and contests employ volunteer readers to review submissions in the first-round for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down review before passing them on to an editor of the publication. This is the kind of thing you could do for a short time (read contest or anthology entries) or on an ongoing basis (read literary magazine submissions).
If you’re able to secure one of these opportunities, you’ll get to review publication-quality work and likely will get access to editorial feedback on how well you do it. This is great experience to convey into a junior editorial or agency position—the ability to sift manuscripts and spot the gems is an invaluable industry skill. A quick look around turned up plenty of prestigious publications open to volunteer readers, such as Ploughshares, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Southampton Review. This is the kind of volunteer work you can do right from your home computer with an internet connection, no commute necessary.
Find Editing Opportunities in Your Current Situation
Last but not least, whatever it is you currently are doing with your time, seek out editing opportunities there that you can put on your resume for the next job. Are you a college student? Volunteer to help out in the writing lab or writing center. Are you engaged in paid work? Many jobs have public-facing writing going out regularly even if that’s not the main focus of the business. Email blasts, advertisements, et cetera. If you have bandwidth in your current job, see if you can pitch in on those. If your company puts out a regular advertisement or newsletter, reading it over for typos won’t take you too much time and you can add proofreading to your resume as part of your job.
Whatever you do to build up your publishing adjacent skills, make sure to build a portfolio. Keep track of the publications, manuscripts, ads, newsletters, and websites you’ve reviewed, edited, or proofread. That list will be invaluable when you make your move on a publishing job or when you set up your freelance business website.
If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at editing and see if you like it, I’m confident the suggestions herein will be more fun, more fulfilling, and less labor-intensive than an internship. Bonus: If you find out you actually hate it, these are all just as easy—or easier—to quit doing than an internship. Remember: Quitters are winners and winners quit things that don’t work for them.
The real life pro tip is always buried at the end.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.