AMA: I work in book publishing

[booksandstories]

Recently advertised for a job joining the team I lead and received 200+ applications so I thought there might be interest in book publishing!

I work for one of the Big Five book publishers and have done for several years.

I work across fiction and non fiction.

Ask me anything!

For the question regarding the lack of response to emails - publishing is understaffed. Publishers are redundancy-happy. It's a notoriously unstable industry to work in. I would agree that a squeaky wheel gets faster responses, simply because I never reach the bottom of my inbox. God knows what's in there!

Fascinating thread!

Have you had authors who panic at the last minute about publishing and want to make changes right up until the end? Do famous authors get post-publishing blues?

How do editors learn how to do developmental editing for plot and pace? Is it just following beats like in the Save the Cat?

Have you ever had a good writer come from nowhere and produce a great book with no writing training whatsoever?

Do you think Instagram is having an impact on sales?.I'm amazed at the amount of photos and staging of books.
I follow the Duchess Reading rooms and purchase the 4 chosen books immediately when the titles are released. Presumably book clubs of that scale are pretty significant re sales.

If it is Penguin Random House:
Who does the car with the LIT1 plate belong too? (someone who works on Sundays)

@HelenMirrensWeightedBlanket - I'm an editor. I work for plenty of self-publishing authors. Most know they need their work edited and proofread.

How can you read - properly - so many books?! Don't you work?!

A book goes from commissioning editor to copyeditor. Then it goes to the designer/typesetter. After it's been typeset it goes to a proofreader. Sets of proofs also go to the author and publisher. The corrections are collated into one set, and the typesetter produce second proofs. These are usually checked in-house.

Errors sneak through because people are human and don't catch everything; because freelancers who work for publishers often accept low rates, so the best freelancers don't work for big publishers; because big publishers often have a very tight schedule so not all errors can be dealt with.

@booksandstories -
If not, there is a day-long course you can do - bigger publishers will pay for you to do it. Then you need to contact publishers (managing editorial) and they will give you samples to try. They usually start copyediting and then try proofreading.

Do you really think that a day course is enough to learn proofreading or copyediting??! 😱😱

My experience has been that you start with proofreading then go on to cooperating. Why do you think the opposite works better?

*copyediting!

No, I don’t work, and I’m a fast reader.

Ooh I love this thread! Thank you!

How often do you read?

Who are your favourite authors to read?

Oh! Also ... do you read from a kindle & listen to audiobooks as well as paper books?

Great thread, thank you OP!

Why are kindle books often the same price as physical books? They don't have anywhere near the same production or distribution costs so I'm always surprised by this.

My dd really wants to get into publishing. She had an eng lit degree. She works as a self employed copywriter and in sales for a magazine. Any advice as to how she can get in to book publishing?

Fabulous job!

What happens to all the content errors I report when reading my Kindle? Do they all get read / acted on?

From another area of publishing - it's due to economies of scale in printing and distribution. Publishers have deals with printers and mailing houses to produce/mail vast quantities of books, so that the cost of actually printing and mailing a book is a tiny part of the overall cost. All the money is at the human end of the work - the commissioning, copyediting, the cost of the advances, the marketing.

I can imagine!

Neil Oliver does lots on GB News now, is all I'll say!

Would you correct an author using sat instead of sitting? Especially in a children's book? Or other grammatical errors?

There is no specific one-size-fits-all formula, but:

A nicely resolved plot, with a satisfying ending, particularly in romance, thrillers and crime

A few unexpected twists along the way to keep readers on their toes

Well paced plotting of drama and character development

More than anything, sometimes authors think they have to reinvent the wheel with their writing, but in commercial fiction readers often just want books that reflect their own taste.

Most of the enormous big hitters in recent years are building on what came before - for example, The Girl on The Train was quite like Gone Girl in its tropes: unreliable narrator, unhappy marriage, crime taking place that no one else can solve. It's about taking all those devices and making something new. You can see that Richard Osman uses that through his books to tell a new story that calls back to similar authors in the genre (not least Agatha Christie).

It all signposts to readers that this is a book they will enjoy.

I am considering a career change to start working in publishing (mid-40s). What roles should I be looking for to start at the bottom and work my way up - Editorial Assistant?
My background from uni is in lit and lang.
Any other advice for new starters?

My DD has always wanted to write, she's in 2nd year of A levels and plans to do a degree in English Lit and creative writing. She's realistic in that she'll need day job following her degree and would look into editing and publishing, is it hard to get into straight from Uni?

Well... agents will always say you need to have finished the manuscript. But Marian Keyes only wrote three chapters and her outline and just submitted that, then wrote the rest really quickly once an agent showed interest!
If I were you I'd join a writing group - you'll get feedback that can really help.
For agents, if you are in Ireland there is a smaller pool, but British agents will take in Irish authors. You can look at authors in the genre and see who agents them to have an idea about which agencies might work best. The Writers and Artists Yearbook is helpful too.

Perhaps we have!

I think it would out myself if I shared my favourite authors to work with! Let's say those who take a collaborative approach, take the task seriously but not themselves, and are able to have a conversation tend to be easier.

I think sensitivity/authenticity readers have an important part to play in many books, particularly where an author is writing about people they don't know in their lives.

It's useful to know a book is not going to be incredibly offensive to a social group.

It does slow the process and I don't think sensitivity reader's reports should be the be all and end all but there are lots of crashingly offensive things that would be picked up if anyone from certain communities had read the book before it went to print.

I do think books and characters should be able to offend; though, if that is what the author intends.

This

The big companies use very experienced editors and proofreaders who they might have worked with before. You prob need in-house experience to get work

the reason mistakes still appear is last minute changes. An author might want to change something and it gets typed in and doesn’t go back to an editor. It happens a lot.

Great thread OP! So interesting thanks