r/publishing

Sadly, I live up north near York. Every single possible job I could apply for is in London OR close to London. There’s no way I’m able to commute down there daily or move with my wage now.

I’ve been wanting to get into publishing either as a designer or marketing assistant, as I have experience in doing both simultaneously (I also have a BA in fine art and graphic design which has gotten me nowhere), but I find it hard to actually get a job up here?

Anyone from the UK/North Yorkshire have advice on where and how to network? I have 0 connections at the moment and am working in retail barely making ends meet as it is! Thank you :)

Quick situation and looking for a gut check from people who've been here.

A while back I had a short piece published in an online lit journal. Later I expanded it into a full novel which a publisher is now picking up. They're asking me to take the original short story offline because of the overlap.

Just wanted to ask if this was the norm and if it's socially acceptable to request the journal to remove my work? It's a relatively small-ish purely digital journal if that matters (0 compensation too haha).

I’m currently an undergraduate student pursuing a triple major in English Literature, Publishing & Editing, and Creative Writing. I’ve only just moved on from my freshman year, so I haven’t even really learned what jobs are actually in the publishing field yet, I’ve only taken very basic classes, but I’d love to work in the publishing field one day.

Funny enough, a big thing that inspired my career path (aside from my interest in literature and writing) was watching the movie Elf. I always thought Buddy’s dad, Walter, has such a cool-looking job at his publishing company. Obviously, I would be much nicer than him! I’m wondering what kind of job Walter had in that movie, since it’s never really specified. What jobs did his colleagues have? I remember watching the movie when I was young and thinking about what it would be like to work there!

For those who work in the publishing industry, can you tell me whether Bluesky has gained any traction as a platform for promoting books, or is it still just too small to compete with the likes of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in that regard? It seems like authors have migrated there from X, but publishers mostly ignore it.

There have been such an explosion of titles in this area that I was wondering if the above work is in-house...or freelanced out. Thanks for any help you can give!

I’m currently working as an attorney, have been only since November 2025, and my undergrad degree is in Writing. My dream has always been to be a writer, and I’m feeling a little unfulfilled as an attorney so far. Are there any jobs that could better position me in the writing/publishing world? And does having a law degree help or make me look any stronger as a candidate in these jobs? Thanks!

hello! i’m uk based and i’m looking to go into corporate publishing, but i’m not sure which undergraduate degree is best suitable for it. i’m tied between english, marketing, and communications. what do you think?

I have followed her for a long time and really enjoyed Animal and Three Women. We met at a few promo parties years ago and I thought she was so cool and smart. Looking at her ig posts these days, it seems like she is either struggling against a huge conspiracy or crashing out. Does anyone know which? Or if I’m missing something massive? I want to support her new works but also some of her posts are really bizarre.

Hi, I'm (F27) finishing my English Major this year, and my dream has always been to become an editor. However, I know it's hard to get into such a close-knit community and, honestly, I don't have the money to pay for my Masters right now. I've heard some people talk about entering the publishing industry by doing marketing or becoming a data analyst, do you know of any online course that could help me with that? I've seen some Coursera/Google ones that offer a certificate, but the comments say that they're basic and it won't land you a job 😔 I'm kinda lost here, and I reaaally want to get into the publishing industry, one way or another

About to publish on KDP Amazon. No budget for a lawyer, looking for practical advice from people who've been through this.

The book: Nonfiction. Argues that most systems (tech, healthcare, workplace tools) are built around the "average" person, which creates real problems. Uses real company examples sourced from public records.

What I've done:

All people fully anonymized

Companies named only where info comes from public sources, with a references section

Medical disclaimer wherever health topics appear

General disclaimer at the start

Reviewed specifically for legal risk multiple times What I'm unsure about: Some examples show company failures, e.g. "Company X invested $Y in a project that didn't work, here's why." All from public sources.

Questions:

Does anything here stand out as a red flag?

Anything I should double-check before publishing?

Did you do anything beyond this for similar books? Goal: to share an idea, not to make money. Not looking for "hire a lawyer", I know that's ideal. Asking what reasonable due diligence looks like for an indie author on a budget.

I'm a literature student who has been cold mailing publishing houses for a year now. one of them finally replied! It's Rupa in New Delhi.

Can you please give me some tips? I have never really given a formal interview before. It's an in person interview. What do I talk about? What questions will they ask me? What should I wear? Anything helps. The interview is tomorrow so if anyone could help a little.

Thank you so much!

Those who received and completed the 2 week work experience that Penguin does every few months - did it help you in getting a full time role in publishing soon after?

- they do this in the uk, so any answers from uk would be helpful thanks!

I keep seeing people quote these crazy low per unit prices for printing and I don't think they're being honest with themselves about the real number.

I just did a run of 200 paperbacks, 250 pages, 6x9, and the printer quote was around $3.40 a copy which sounded great until I added everything else. Proof copy was $40, shipping the proof was another $25 because they wouldn't just send it media mail, and then the actual shipping for the 200 books was $180 because they don't do free shipping at that quantity, so my real per book cost was closer to $4.70 not $3.40.

If you're pricing a book to sell at $14.99 and you're calculating margins off the headline per unit price you're going to be unpleasantly surprised when the invoice lands. I see authors do this constantly in their break even math.

The other thing nobody tells you is the price drops dramatically between 100 and 250 copies, the jump from 50 to 100 is also pretty big, so if you can afford to print just a few more than you think you need your unit cost gets way better and you have stock for the next event or signing without paying setup fees twice.

What are you all actually paying all in for a typical run.

This is the sort of thing which tends to be exaggerated on the internet, so if anyone here actually works in publishing, I would like to hear your opinion.

There is the metropolitan legend that fiction publishing these days has a lot of rigidity of ideology; one would struggle to publish a middle-grade, for example, that is openly about Catholic people and reflects Catholic values rather than the trending secular values of the moment. In short, there is the idea that C. S. Lewis or even Tolkien would never get published today.

Is this an actual thing, or just a hyperbole of the internet as I suspect it might be?

I'm not sure if I'm getting old or if the industry has just collectively given up on human contact, but trying to get an actual person on the phone at most book printing companies right now is borderline impossible.

I've been comparing quotes for a 500 copy hardcover run for a small press project, and out of the seven companies I reached out to, only two answered their phone. Three sent me to a contact form that promised a 48 hour response. One had a chatbot that asked me to describe my project in 200 characters or less. The last one had a voicemail saying the mailbox was full, which is its own kind of statement.

Honestly the chatbot one made me laugh out loud, because how exactly am I supposed to compress hardcover specs into 200 characters. Do you want trim size or paper weight, you cannot have both.

I understand support costs money and most printers operate on thin margins, but I am trying to spend four figures with you and I have legitimate technical questions about lamination and paper stock that I cannot resolve by clicking through a FAQ.

The two companies that actually picked up ended up getting my business across two different projects. Not because their pricing was better, but because when I asked a slightly weird question about end sheets they didn't make me feel stupid for asking it.

Is anyone else finding the same thing or am I just calling at unusually bad times. Drop the companies you've actually had good phone experiences with, would love to assemble a working list for the press community here.

Hi guys,

I’m an editor from a European country and I work for a literary magazine, in which we regularly publish poems, prose, plays and translations. I joined the magazine three years ago, while still a graduate student of comparative literature, and absolutely love it, although it is a lot of work and mostly unpaid.

My favorite part is the editing process, where I work closely together with the writers and translators. Surprisingly, I find the writers (the ones writing in my native tongue as well as the ones who are being translated) mostly very relaxed and easy to talk to, whereas I often feel like I have to walk on eggshells with translators. Here, seemingly minor misunderstandings have in the past led to hostile e-mails and even accusations, which I guess comes from their precarious work conditions and constant struggle. Although I find this unfair, since I myself work precariously too and am even more invisible than translators, whose names we put on the cover, I try to be kind and understanding.

Yesterday, a translator (via e-mail) snapped at me again, because I compared her translation to a previous one, overlooking the word-to-word-translation she sent me in an earlier e-mail. I acknowledge that the mistake was on my side and apologized, since I did overlook her first e-mail, and offered to go through her translation alongside the word-to-word-translation again. But her tone made me feel like I made a way bigger mistake. It may be strange comparison to make, especially since in this example we are both white females, but I felt like my whole approach was problematic, similar to when you notice a blind spot regarding your own sexist or racist beliefs.

So what I'm trying to do now is to reflect my role as an editor of literary translations. What is expected from me? How should I enter the editing process? How and how much should I communicate with the translator and the author? What are my responsibilities, what are the ones of the translator? Would love to hear the perspective of literary translators and fellow editors.

(I know, the most important thing is enumeration, but unfortunately, we are sitting in the same boat here.)

Hi everyone! I've got an interview lined up to work at a literary agency as an assistant. Would greatly appreciate any and all tips on interviewing, especially any questions to ask the agent during the conversation. Thanks in advance!!

One thing I occasionally wonder about with the modern querying system: Is it actually fair to agents, or even a good use of their skill set, that they’ve effectively become the industry’s first-line slush pile screeners?

That wasn’t always the arrangement. Publishers historically handled the slush pile themselves, but over the 80s and 90s, as open submissions closed and editorial staffs shrank, that filtering function gradually shifted onto agents. The modern query system seems to have formalized around that shift without much consideration of whether agents were actually the best people to perform large-scale unsolicited manuscript triage.

In almost every other major commercial industry, product/IP development and filtering are strictly separated from B2B sales. Yet here, the job agents are usually best at is not the same job querying asks them to do. Agents excel at packaging and positioning projects, understanding editors and imprints, negotiating deals, managing careers, and generating competitive interest once a manuscript is already viable (Sales).

But accurately identifying which cold submissions represent the highest long-term literary or commercial potential from an overflowing inbox feels like a very different skill set; that feels closer to admissions screening, talent scouting at scale, or developmental editing (IP Selection).

Which makes me wonder whether some of the dysfunction in querying comes from the industry collapsing two very different functions into one role. Agents became both elite sales intermediaries and mass-volume gatekeepers. And as the submission volume exploded, the system naturally became fast, heuristic-driven, opaque, and overwhelmed.

Is it possible for publishing to ever separate these two jobs again? Or is forcing agents to act as the first-line filter just an inevitable reality of how traditional publishing handles its shrinking margins?

Does anyone have any networking opportunities or events in the Houston area? With all the editorial and marketing internship applications I’ve done, I doubt I’ve gotten one. But I’m open to any advice or tips anyone can give.