Image by the Italian voice via Flickr
After reading Clarkson Potter’s book, I applied for every publishing position I saw in the paper.
We lived in Southern California at the time. There wasn’t exactly a plethora of publishers. And they all wanted college grads. I applied anyway.
The first place I interviewed with hired me. It was a legal publisher, James Publishing. Not exactly what I had been hoping for.
I wanted to edit fiction. Particularly science fiction and fantasy. But it was editing. More than that, it was my first editing job ever. I was thrilled!
I was hired as an editorial assistant, and within six months I was promoted to editor.
The hours were horrendous. The pay was abysmal. The books … well, they were books for lawyers. [Insert lawyer jokes here.]
Two years later, I found a now-defunct social networking site, and made a connection with an editor who worked with one of my favorite science fiction/fantasy publishers. When she asked about what did, I mentioned that my job included a lot of proofreading, but I didn’t mind because I was good at it.
She just so happened to need a good proofreader.
By late 1988, I was proofreading for Baen Books after working 50+ hours a week at James Publishing.
The hours were horrendous. The pay was abysmal. The books, though, they were science fiction and fantasy. I was finally doing what I loved.
I was getting paid to read books I actually enjoyed. No way was I going to complain about that!
