The field school made me realize both how difficult it is to find a job in publishing but also, strangely, how sometimes easy it can be—it seems like a lot of the hiring process comes down to luck, good timing, or good personal encounters. From the outside looking in, the whole corporate hiring thing looks daunting, and with good reason. When you submit your application to a company like Macmillan, you’re up against thousands of people who are probably more “qualified” than you, at least in terms of experience. It becomes incredibly important to actually put faces to names and get yourself in through informational meetings and just old-fashioned conversation. Learning about how competitive the process is actually reassured me: I’m not in fact unwanted or unqualified or doomed. There are just so many people that odds are not in my favor.
I loved hearing, especially from Harper’s and Laura from Alcove, that the best indicator of a person’s success is their love for literature. Just know about books, they said. Just be genuinely dedicated to contemporary literature, and you’ll instantly have a leg up against all the people who are applying just because. The sense of community in each of the places we visited, even at more traditional/corporate offices like St. Martin’s and Penguin, was really cool to see. It seems like bosses know their staff quite well, and that everyone has each other’s back. And it’s awesome that you’re allowed to say you want your career to go in another direction, like, say, from marketing to editorial, and that your supervisors support that and help you get there.
I loved learning about each publisher’s “mission;” I think I’ve said this in another blog post or on Perusall, but I hadn’t realized how seriously different houses take their missions. Feminist Press was a really inspiring space to be in for this reason—you could tell how excited Nadine was to be involved in publishing feminist work—and so was Ugly Duckling Presse.
I still want to go into editorial, but I think I’ve accepted that the trick is to get your foot in anywhere you can. And that it’s actually a good idea to try out different jobs in the publishing industry, because it might turn out that you’re better at marketing or sales or international rights, etc.