Career change from publishing

[Backwardsriver]

Has anyone made it out of publishing into a (better paid!) career? All my work experience is as a book editor (arts) but I've really lost the love for it and ended up in a pretty dead-end niche.

I'm in my 40s and on mat leave at the moment and desperate to switch careers into... something! Does anyone have any experience or ideas, or knowledge of fairly general training courses that would broaden my skills?

What has your role involved?

Any commissioning, design, business planning etc. are all transferable to other things.

If you just want a well paid job, look at project management (if you can face it - this is something I really wouldn't enjoy). If you've been looking after books from commissioning stage to press then that's project management. In publishing it is general poorly paid; in other sectors as a project manager you'd earn at least twice as much but you'll need a recognised project management qualification on your CV really.

Thanks for replying! Actually project management courses are just what I'm looking at right now. Yes, what I've been doing has been broadly project management-y in terms of seeing books through to print and dealing with freelancers etc but in such a small and archaic work environment that I don't feel I have any real technical skills.