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undergraduate magazine I had published. I
like to think this liberated the
undergraduates’ magazine to be as freewheeling
and creative as I hoped they
would henceforth be, but to be honest I
don’t know what became of it after I left
university.
Getting into publishing
Once I had graduated I applied for a
number of graduate trainee posts with
large London book publishers, but without
success. However, many publishers still
look to recruit a small number of staff this
way, and I would recommend this route to
anyone keen to get into publishing. The
pattern is to move you around a number of
different departments, whether your stated
interest is in sales, editorial, or any other
publishing function, so that you get an
overall view of how the company works in
a way that few are lucky enough to enjoy.
My first move into publishing was in a role
and on a publication that was completely
outside the direction in which I had been
aiming: I became Assistant Editor on a
monthly financial magazine. I know nothing
about the world of finance, but as the
magazine had a tiny circulation and only
two full-time staff, the job involved many
additional responsibilities, such as
commissioning, editing, proof reading,
marketing and production (I was sent down
to the printer to see how the magazine’s
articles were first turned into lines of hot
metal type – an anachronism even in the
1970s.) I hated the job and didn’t last long,
but I had gained an excellent grounding in
the mechanics of creating, producing and
selling a publication.
I decided to make a determined effort to
get into book publishing again. As my
degree was in English it was natural for me
to approach literary publishers, and I
started with all the ones whose names I
already knew, then the ones who published
my favourite authors, but got nowhere. I
then moved on to non-fiction publishers,
where I struck lucky, and have been ever
since.
Looking back, I am glad that the world of
non-fiction publishing was kind enough to
draw me in, as I don’t think I would have
taken to fiction. I had very high-minded
ideals of what made good literature and,
for example, would have rejected any
Jeffrey Archer typescript outright, thus
proving myself a complete commercial
failure as a fiction publisher. Instead, I
found I enjoyed working with
photographers, illustrators and book
designers to create pages that were as clear
and as visually stunning as possible, and
liked the fact that we were working
together as a team to create something that
was both attractive and informationpacked.
Little or none of this happens with
a work of fiction. To generalise hugely, in
the world of fiction publishing the sales
department decides what size of page the
novel should be printed on, how many
pages the book should have, and will look
to the designers to come up with an
arresting cover. The marketing and
publicity departments produce ideas for
generating interest and sales of the book.
Your job as an editor is to have an excellent
knowledge of what is selling well, and a
finely tuned sense of what makes a good
piece of fiction. Once you have made a
sound case to the company to sign up your
author, your work on that book is mostly
complete, and you must get on and hunt
down the next talented writer. Some
people live for this, and it can be
profoundly rewarding to spot and nurture
new talent, as well as to work with and
develop the output of established authors.
Going with the flow
The mechanics of printing have, of course,
developed hugely over the years that I have
been involved. Having come in at the very
last gasp of hot-metal setting, I have seen it
move from camera-ready copy to
photosetting, from supplying typed sheets
of text to typesetters to the virtual
eradication of typesetting as an industry
once authors started supplying their text
on floppy disc. Once upon a time printers
proofed up your text, now you generate
the pages in-house, and send printers the
text and illustrations exactly as you want
them to appear. The competition, too, has
been nibbling away at fiction and nonfiction
publishing’s pre-eminence in
communicating words and pictures, from
talking books, videos and DVDs to the
internet and – probably soon – e-readers.
The texts of many out-of-copyright books,
including a number of classics, are freely
available on the internet, and while they
don’t have the physical appeal of a book
they have the advantage that one can carry
out a number of mechanical tasks that
some scholars find useful, such as word
counts, word frequencies, and so on.
Anyone thinking of going into publishing in
the next few years has to take two things
on board: firstly, the book publishing world
has shrunk and will continue to do so, and
secondly, following on from this, a
publisher nowadays is someone who
publishes the material he owns in a number
of different formats. For many companies,
the money made from selling physical
copies of books is one of the smallest
sources of revenue; income from digital
sales, on the other hand, is steadily
increasing, previously unheard-of
publishing roles such as Digital Sales
Director or Electronic Publisher reflect
this.
The right rights
The buzz phrase now is ‘Content is king’.
Publishing the content in the 21st century
is so changed from what it used to be that
the very word ‘publisher’ is almost an
anachronism; perhaps a term like ‘media
provider’ is more appropriate, and
commissioning editors will become
‘content scouts’. For years it has become
important for publishers to own the
majority if not all of the rights to anything
they handle. These rights include the right
to publish in all languages, in any country,
in book, magazine and serial rights, film
rights, rights to publish (as a whole or in
extracts) by all electronic means (both in
existing forms and in forms yet to be
invented), and the rights to license
illustrations to, for example, picture
agencies or newspapers. While publishers
still need people on their staff to bring new
ideas into the company, an increasing
percentage of new jobs are in marketing,
and in working with new digital
technology; in other words, going out and
selling subsidiary rights to the maximum,
and having the technical skills to work with
electronic handling and transmission of the
different types of content.
Simon Tuite (LN 1965-70)
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