Do you want to work in publishing, but don’t know where to start? Here’s the Book Break guide to all the many wonderful jobs in publishing – from editorial to comms to foreign rights. No matter your skills, background, or reading tastes, there’s a perfect publishing job for you!
So you want to work in publishing well if you love books and want to work around books everyday there are so many more different types of publishing jobs than you ever might have imagined so this is book breaks guides to the massive range of different jobs you can do to work in the publishing house and of course there are even more different types of publishing jobs
You can do outside the publishing house like being a bookseller or being a literary agent but if you want to work in an office like pan macmillan here are just some of the things you could do so let’s start with probably the most famous publishing department editorial so outside of publishing a lot of people kind of think that this is the entirety of what publishers
Do and it’s not not by a long way but it is a very exciting and of course a very important job so let’s talk to some editors there are three main aspects to an editor’s job fairs commissioning so receiving manuscripts from agents for consideration and being part of the decision-making process as to whether or not to take them forward for publication there’s editing
So working very closely with the writer to make the book the best possible version of itself and then there’s publishing working with all the other departments in-house to take the book from stack of paper on my desk to a finished book in the shops so being good editor means understanding trends knowing the gaps in the market i’m being able to see the potential
In your manuscript even before it’s in its final form it’s a lot more than just knowing where the apostrophes go there that is part of it as well most people enter editorial at the beginning by working as an editorial assistant and working either to assist a whole editorial team or one or two editors in particular i came here as a crate boxes intern and a group i
Thought the greatest people in the world so if they’re charity and basically they have fund internships with companies and they’re specifically for people from a pame background so they helped me get a foot in the door here now it’s publishing the system and then i basically just didn’t move so on to the next department production so once the editors have got the
Manuscript exactly where they want it to be and they know that readers are going to love it production other people who turn it into an actual book so the clues in the name basically whether ones that produce the books directly this means of printing and shipping we’re here to help you decide what formats what final specification you might want for your product we
Can help you work through prototypes to make sure that it all technically works and we work really hard to make sure that we get you the very best costs so the production team are responsible for why you so love holding these books in your hands yes we make books but we kind of do other stuff as well this is a project that would have gone through several rounds of
Prototyping to get it right just getting in blank copies and it’s basically we’ve just created a paper structure looks like a drug now the next department is quite closely linked and that is design so the people on the design team design the book covers and this is something that you can do freelance or you can work in the design team in a publishing house so as
A designer at campbell we do novelty books i’m the designer who briefs the illustrator i have an idea of what i want in each spread but it’s the illustrator who draws all the pretty characters and nice pictures that we want so for this one and my magical dragon age in comes up with all her little characters and but the first stage i would do would be like we want
A gate and what’s popping up and then that’s the really exciting thing where you get farmers back and you see what were your little sketches come to life i also went and have a nosy around the adult design department and saw all the amazing crops that they actually make to design the book covers so cool now our department that i had definitely never heard of
Before working in a publishing house is the brand team it’s an unusual role it’s really about bringing more focus to the most commercial authors that pan mac publishes and so that’s partly through extra credit project management in-house and bringing teams together across all the different departments in the business and it’s full state offering a bit more kind
Of author care and support for our authors and listening to their point to you and we also do a lot of work commissioning market research and bringing that information into the business okay next moving on to rights so while all of that production side is going on going back to when the manuscript was first finished the right team negotiate other people’s rights
To that manuscript main bit of our job is working with lots of foreign publishers across the world to sell our books into translation but also in rights we do things like production requests cereal which is where i license part of our books to be accepted in newspapers or publications if you’re interested in the world at large in europe and what goes on in the
World and i think that’s a really good place to start if you know your way around a contract the rights team is the place for you now for another big one sales they get our books out there they sell our books to customers from small independent book shops in villages all around the country to big high street chains and supermarkets a big part of the job is going
And actually talking about our books to retailers other people in the company it’s their job to get the consumer to pick up the book our concern is trying to get it into the store in the first place so the people couldn’t come pick it up so they’re enthusiastic they’re talking to people a lot if you’re a people person the sales team might be a great fit for you so i
Absolutely always love books but it also love maths so for me for sales was getting to use and i also love talking so like talking mat and books working as here as a publishing is perfect for me so now moving on to working incomes so commerce as the department that i work within but we’ll get to that in a minute but overall comes is responsible for making sure that
The world knows about these books the thing i enjoy most about my job is that it’s very creative and i would say no day is the same every day it’s completely different one day i could be out filming an author the next day i could be working with designers and i knew advertising creative what i love most is that comms works with all the different teams across the
Whole of publishing in a really creative and fun way i think if you’re looking to its publishing now come in with fresh ideas new energy show up what you have to offer so this is all about getting the world excited about these books identifying the perfect reader for each book and then making sure they hear about it as a communications executive i do marketing and
Publicity i think comes as the best print which working the kids you get really close contact with the authors and then in children’s case as well as the illustrators so you have a really good sense of them as people and what they want their book to be so you have good insight into the making of the book and also into what consumers are looking for and what readers
Like now with incomes you’ll find the team i work on and that is the digital team a my job sets within that i am the creative producer of book break working in the digital team means that we spend a lot of time thinking about our consumers and their daily activities and how we can remind them that they love to read the digital team consists of people who work on
Content for the blog people who make videos like um social media email marketing and the metadata team the best part about working in the digital team is definitely you get to be creative you can try different and new things and people are always coming to me ideas we can’t always do them but it’s nice to have that positive spirit and finally there are the people
That make our building run who we really would not be able to function without so typical day reception involves all the things you expect from reception so greeting visitors answering the phone we have to have quite a good overview of everything that’s happening and know your who does walk in the company this is the books think surrounded but people are obviously
Really obsessed with but i’m really enthusiastic so that gives you an idea of the massive range of different types of jobs and more being created every day as publishing is constantly changing and evolving mine definitely didn’t exist when i first was looking for jobs after i graduated so it’s a really exciting industry to work in and definitely do leave any comments
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What Jobs Can You Do in a Publishing House? | #BookBreak By Book Break