Hi, I really love your blog and creative puns! Can you tell me more about your job? I want to learn more about being an editor. What did you major in? What kinds of options did you have and is your job a specialized editing job or not? Are you secure in it and besides questionable vampire erotica written by people who seem not to ever have interacted with another person before, do you like it? I kind of want to be an editor but I don't know too much about it. Thank you so much!
So I’ve talked a lot about how I got into editing before, and I always feel like I’m bursting people’s bubbles. Because I am not the poster child for a successful career. I am in fact the opposite. I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Literature and Linguistics, just as my friend got promoted to Senior Editor at her work. She needed an assistant, I did a competency test or five, and I got hired on to work my way up from run-around monkey, to final line editor, to occasionally working on copy/sorting the slush pile.
Most houses want you to have a Masters in Publishing. But because I had friends in the house, my lack of qualifications were ignored, and I was competent and worked hard so they were happy to let me learn the old way, like an apprentice. As with many things in this kind of industry, it’s who you know, not necessarily what. I got certified in proofing, editing and a whole bunch of other formatting and tech stuff and was pretty much running at full steam ahead and loving it.
And then the second wave of the 2008 Economic Recession hit the UK again in 2013 and the House moved me from employee to contractor...and then contractor to occasional worker...and then me and my friend struck out on our own because the House couldn’t afford to keep us and let go of six other people as well, and well, put it this way, my friend is living on welfare after a complete mental collapse, and I went back to catering events and waiting tables to make ends meet. Freelance is incredibly hard work, especially when you have authors who are not used to having to pay you up front for your fees and suddenly don’t think you’re worth it.
So no. It was not a secure line of work. And freelancing certainly isn’t. For me to make half of what I made in House, I’d need to work 60 hours a week. I used to work 30. But people don’t want to pay for skilled services, so when you turn round and tell them “yea I’m $25 an hour” (Which is still $20 less than what I used to get) they balk and say “What, for fixing grammar???!!” and then flounce off to do their own thing. Which is why so many self published books have the narrative flow of mud.
The money I make now from freelancing is...well it’s not enough to even get taxed under the IRS, they basically laugh it off as chump change and pat me on the head for telling them. But that’s also in part because I am far too sick to work the hours I would need to work in order to make it work. So I’m very lucky for my husband’s income, and also the people here on tumblr who throw money into my tip jar every now and then, and now my patreon too. If it hadn’t been for people donating earlier in the year I wouldn’t have been able to afford vital medical testing, and we’d have had collectors harassing us for my ER bill in January. (Because nothing rounds up a near death experience like collection agencies demanding money—America! F Yeah!)
That all said? I genuinely love editing. I love working with people on their creative babies, I love watching writers grow, I love watching a book take off. I love keeping an eye on the careers of people I did work with and seeing them do well. I loved all of it, questionable vampires and all. So if you really really want to do the thing? Talk to your careers counselor at school about current requirements, apply for every single internship you can find. And be prepared to work your absolute ass off. But if you love it? It’ll be worth.
