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How to Get Ahead in Publishing (1985 Edition)
During the summer after I barely graduated from college, I moved to New York and interviewed with a few publishers. I loved books and I knew a little about the industry, plus a school acquaintance was an assistant at a literary agency and helped me land the first interview. Of course, she also said, “WHY?!? You can’t make any money doing that! It’s a lot of work and there’s no payoff!” She couldn’t have been clearer yet I did not heed her passionate advice. No one was going to stop me from being crushed under the heel of a soulless corporation! (Or from mixing metaphors.)
For an entry-level position in those days, much emphasis was placed on the typing test. Though I have always used the hunt & peck method, I’m pretty damn fast so I was hired at NAL, a paperback house most recognizable for their Signet and Signet Classic imprints. That they gave me a job confirmed one of my suspicions about the real world: 65 words per minute outweighed that D- in my final semester (ever) of school (forever). (And ever.)
Even if I’d applied myself more rigorously to academia, a B.A. in English was not preparation for mass market paperback publishing. I worked for three editors in four genres: historical romance, movie tie-ins/novelizations, westerns and YA. Mind you, this was YA then, not YA now. The books were aimed younger and felt old-fashioned even at…
