Publishing career

[Aheadfullofwords]

Does anyone work in publishing? My dream job is as a proofreader. I'm about to start year 2 of my degree in English Literature and Creative Writing with the Open University. And I was wondering how one gets into that career.

I think you will find that this is a career which will very soon be obsolete. Spell check and specialised computer programmes have supplanted proof readers. Just like no one is now employed to set type. Editors will still be needed to prevent authors being too wordy and their books too long.

I disagree! The human eye and touch out weigh all these AI programmes.
Anyway, I was specifically asking those who work in publishing. Not just for a random Joe's opinion.

I work as an editor / proof reader. It is competitive and does not pay well unless you have a niche area to work in. I work in science so never short of reasonably well paid work. There are lots of specialised areas.
I think AI will threaten areas of the job, but that might mean having to work with AI or use it to your advantage. I don't see it threatening my role, unless publishers stop publishing.
If you mean you want to work on best selling novels, this is competitive and you may need to try to edge into that from another area.
There are publishing courses you can do, CIEP and publishing training centre are recognised and reputable. There are lots of others that may not be.

Literally spent the day typesetting 😂

I'm a scientific copyeditor. I'm currently looking for another job as, despite being very good at what I do, there are AI programs that can do it incredibly quickly and almost perfectly, and have even been trained on hundreds of thousands of scientific papers. Unfortunately, most publishers think it's 'good enough'. I would recommend considering another option. X

@yorktown See my post above. Several publishers have already developed their own AI editing software. It will edit as many papers as you like for a tiny fee a month (think £12 or so), and it returns it within an hour. Like I said, it isn't perfect, but the publishers who developed them obviously approve the quality.

You are going to need to know that “outweigh” is all one word.

Ignore the person saying it's becoming obsolete, you only need to look at the rubbish Word suggests to know that the human touch is going nowhere fast

I work in Production Editorial for an academic publisher if you'd like to pm me any questions. Can confirm that the pay is low and doesn't involve any real proofreading (we employ freelance copyeditors), but being freelance isn't hugely well paid either...

I’ve worked in (mostly academic) books publishing for about 20 years. Proofreading isn’t to my knowledge really a job anymore - at least not in the UK. For most books the authors check proofs themselves, sometimes with help from technical assessors based in India or Manilla. I don’t know what the norm is in trade publishing.
Even in my day I got a publishing degree on top of an English MA just to get my foot in the door. These days our new recruits seem highly accomplished in terms of well-roundedness - not necessarily extra degrees and qualifications. Look for any entry level positions in any dept - my newest colleague at the same level to me (I’m an sen acquisitions editor) started in our customer services team and she’s just soaked up as much as poss about the business as a whole, moving sideways and upwards. She’s going to be great and I think I’ll be learning from her despite having been an editor of one sort or another much longer! Publishing is a very data-driven business these days so any familiarity with data analytics or market research could be a string to your bow if that sort of thing interests you.

An AI program knows to use program for IT contexts not programme.

Yes I am aware, but I was also quickly typing on my phone while cooking tea. I'm glad you've wasted a few minutes reading and typing an irrelevant post 😉

I work in trade publishing for a big publishing house. All of our proofreading is done by freelancers, it’s not an in-house job in most publishing houses so just be aware of that. It’s poorly paid, as are most jobs in publishing. Honestly I would think very carefully about whether it’s a job that will allow you to do things like buy a house, have kids etc if those are things you want. It’s not really a career in that there’s no ladder to climb, you will become more expert as the years go by of course and you may enjoy the work if you end up proofing the types of books you like, but you may want to look at other types of editorial work too like structural editing and copy editing.

Thank you for your reply. Yes, sorry, I should have elaborated, it is the book market I want to get into with regards to publishing. How interesting your subject area must be with regards editing/proofreading.

AI is definitely going to be used more and more, especially for proofreading. Less so for structural editing I’d say.

DH worked in specialised editorial and production (Science, Medicine & Technology) for over 20yrs. It's not well paid and a lot of internal jobs nowadays have moved to Far East (cheaper workforce), AI and automated or pushed back onto authors to do. Freelance work is more flexible but the rates of pay haven't increased in years. Project management or data analytics might give you transferable skills to broaden your career options and offer career progression.

Thank you for replying. It's quite sad that things are moving towards the AI side. Yes they are programmed by humans, but they certainly don't replace our keen eye for detail.

Thank you for your reply. I'll message you shortly. That reply from the person talking about it becoming obsolete made me roll my eyes, particularly as they clearly don't work in that field. Oh yes, the good old Word suggestions, punction and grammar...say no more.

Thank you for your reply. This is really helpful to know. I'll certainly have a look around and see what is out there.

"Outweigh" is one word.

Thank you for your reply. This has been helpful to read. I'm actually 38 and have the children etc already, but it's something that I have always wanted to do. Definitely a lot to think about with it though. And exactly why I wanted experts like yourself to answer.

Thank you for your reply. Ahh how interesting. What you have said has been really helpful. It's certainly an eye opener in regards to not only how the world of publishing is moving, but scarily how much AI is taking over certain job roles.

I am a freelance copyeditor and I also do proofreading. They are two separate parts of the editing process and you'll need to have a look at the difference. (Copyediting is more general, and more fun, IMO.) I would second the advice to contact the CIEP - their courses are respected. There are also some editors' forums on FB, such as Editors' Association of Earth (EAE) and Academic Editors. They can be very helpful in answering queries. They tend to be mainly based in the US although there are British, Aussie and Irish editors on there. Good luck!

It's also interesting that a few of you mentioned data analytics, I am quite interested in that. It's certainly something that is imperative to companies isn't it.

Thank you for your reply, it's another really helpful piece of information. I'll certainly have a look into those.

If you want to work as a proofreader, the first thing you need to do is Google. You will spend half your working life looking things up!

Check out the CIEP and the PTC, as you will need training. You also need excellent general knowledge, excellent knowledge of grammar, working and punctuation, knowledge of style conventions, the ability to communicate well and market yourself, and run your own business.

There is plenty of work out there, but it's hard work getting established, and this is likely to get worse over the next years as AI progresses. You might be better thinking about copyediting instead.

Why not start here? www.ciep.uk/about-the-ciep/faqs.html