Anyone here work in publishing?

[TonTonMacoute]

DS graduated summer last year and wants to work in publishing.

He has been working for the last year as an unpaid intern for a small one man publisher, so has been getting a lot of useful experience. He has been applying for jobs regularly all this time (don't know how many, but around a hundred) but he is just not getting any interviews at all. He had one, with an academic publisher and they really liked him but thought the job was a bit below his level of experience and that he would be bored.

We had a look at his cv and it looks pretty good, but what chance does he have if no one will even interview him?

Just wondered if there are just many fewer jobs in publishing since my day, I worked for several publishers in the 80s and 90s) or if anyone could throw any light on how he could boost his chances.

I worked in editorial in fiction for one of the big 4 publishing companies. I got into fiction after 2 years in science journals imprint of the same company. Before that I did an MA in publishing and got a distinction. It was great but I ended up leaving after 5 years of no pay rises and no sign of promotion. It's just so hard to live on those salaries and I don't think it gets much better higher up. Good luck to him, I think the MA helped me, plus I looked the part I suppose. That mattered more then I think.

Magazine publishing is dying out. It was and is a very badly paid industry. Don’t bother.

Hi there

I work for a publishing/media company based in South London and we recruit graduates every year, in all areas of the business (not just editorial).

Feel free to message me for further info.

How good are his foreign language skills? Does he have an EU passport? It’s worth researching the ownership structure of various publishing houses/imprints. Eg en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_(publisher)

Is he only looking at b2c? There are so many b2b publishers out there, many small, who could give him his start. I'm a b2b magazine editor of 10 years following an unrelated science PhD. Never interned, was headhunted for my current role. B2b also has loads of travel involved due to the trade shows :)