How I got a job in publishing with no connections

And the New Writing North Newcastle writing conference

After spending one of my best ever weekends at the New Writing North screenwriting weekender, I’m excited to be one of the speakers at the Newcastle Writing Conference next weekend. I’ll be doing the Practice Your Pitch Live session and industry 121s too.

There will be lots of talks from incredible authors, among many others: Naomi Kelsey, whose book The Darkening Globe is just out in hardback, AA Dhand, who brings Bradford alive in his Virdee series, and a headliner from Graham Macrae Burnet. You can see the full line-up here and if you’re anywhere near Newcastle, I’d highly recommend it!

You can get tickets here! Come and say hello if you are there.

The other thing I’m doing this month is an online early careers skills panel for the Society of Young Publishers North and South West, on Thursday May 22.

Tickets are available here and are £3. During the talk I’ll be discussing the first six months of my first job, the skills I used, and how I settled in once I was there.

Like many others, actually getting my foot in the door of a publishing career was tough. Not because I was lacking. But because of the sheer volume of applicants, having no connections, and because I very much felt like an outsider, it took me eight months to get my first publishing job. And I was 26 by that stage, had graduated, worked as a local newspaper reporter, passed my NCTJ and NCE qualifications, and was training as a sub-editor, yet none of that seemed to stand me in any decent stead against the hundreds of other applicants.

Here is my advice for six ways I got my first publishing job with no connections:

2. Consider any sideways routes in

At the outset, I had imagined my career path would be incredibly smooth, perhaps assistant —> executive —> onwards within a couple of years. Once I realised that first stage might prove more complicated than I’d anticipated, I knew I had to get creative. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to work in publicity or marketing but I had no experience in either!

My first job was a 12-week term as a website assistant. That was stressful for me, as I didn’t know if I’d have a job at the end, and I needed to pay rent, but I had to take a leap and hope something else would come along if it ended. I reasoned to myself that if they were going to train me for three months, they would be unlikely just to let me go afterwards if I worked hard, was cheerful, and learned quickly, and it proved so. I have been continuously employed ever since. Most companies don’t want to train up good staff just to lose them, so if you can get a first job, it opens doors. Some people recommend getting any entry-level job - in sales or production or rights and then moving over in editorial, but that is a personal choice.

2. Ask yourself: do you REALLY have no connections?

I didn’t have any friends or family who worked in publishing. I didn’t live in London, and I didn’t know any authors. What I did have though, was an understanding that I’d need to get used to networking. A chance conversation with someone working as an editorial assistant led me to ask them to meet for a coffee, and I asked whether their publisher ever took on work experience candidates. I felt slightly too old to be doing work experience aged 26, but I got myself on the list that spring anyway, and did unpaid work experience later on in the year. I am anti-unpaid work experience, but it was the norm then, so I took a fortnight of holiday from my job to do it, convincing myself it would be worth it in the end. It did later lead to a job offer so it was useful, and I was able to find out about a temp agency who took on clients in the creative industries, so I then signed up with them.

3. Take the opportunities available

I began applying for entry-level publishing jobs while working as a journalist, but the hours of my job were so long that I would frequently have council meetings or the dreaded election all-nighter or weekend working that meant I just had no time for applications. Instead, I joined the Society of Young Publishers, and went to some of their talks at my nearest place at the time, in Oxford, to hear some industry experts. In the end, I left my job as a local news reporter and decided to temp: the wages were the same, but the hours were better. I specifically asked for jobs in creative-type places to help build my CV. I did admin for the Royal Schools of Music, next door to BBC Broadcasting House, and later got a temp job building websites for Yell.com, giving me solid experience in site building (and shaky coding knowledge) which I still find useful.

I also applied for an SYP mentoring scheme for people trying to get into publishing. By the time I started getting my CV publishing-centric enough to do interviews, I had deep enough experience to get second interviews and then a job. I found when I was job-hunting (this was before blind recruitment) that interviewers were so spoiled for choice candidate-wise that they didn’t see my publishing-adjacent editing, writing and digital skills as being very relevant, so I needed to do a couple of placements to have publishing experience. I did one at Quercus, and one at Transworld, and in the following years both companies eventually offered me a job.

4. Value your own worth - and be specific

I remember doing an interview at Random House Children’s Books and the interviewer asked me which adult books I enjoyed. Because I would have been happy working on ANY books, I was incredibly vague and just said ‘Oh, I read everything,’ imagining that if I said something they didn’t like they might not give me the job (they didn’t give me the job anyway). What I SHOULD have done, I realised later, was to show a bit of my personality. At that stage I was reading lots of Roddy Doyle, absolutely loved Jenny Colgan and Marian Keyes, loved self-help (still do!). But I didn’t share any of that in case it didn’t land properly. By valuing my own opinion and showing what I cared about, it might have opened the interview out into something more like a conversation, but because I was so desperate not to get anything wrong I probably didn’t bring any character. By contrast, in another interview later, the interviewer asked which book I had read most and I told them the truth: Maeve Binchy’s marvellous Circle of Friends. I found out later that one of the other candidates had said their most read book was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Good for them, I say, but that’s quite deep backlist.

5. Learn about publishing trends

You don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of the Bookscan charts, but showing some commercial knowledge will make you valuable as an interview candidate. Get a copy of the Sunday Times the week of your interview. Go to the library and see if they either have a copy of The Bookseller, or will tell you their most borrowed authors. Chat to your local bookshop staff and ask the booksellers what is selling well for them. And my finest advice - if you’re waiting on a publishing job, getting a job as a bookseller will stand you in excellent stead.

6. It’s a numbers game, so make yourself count

Like many others I understand the despondency and ‘WILL IT EVER HAPPEN?’ despair of job-hunting. The currencies of being pleasant, hard-working and thoughtful don’t go out of fashion. Start a Bookstagram or a Booktok account to keep track of what you’re reading. Show friends your CV and get feedback. Can you take a little portfolio around to interview with you? It’s old-fashioned but definitely makes candidates stand out. Follow up on interviews if you’ve got more to say (go via HR rather than contacting directly).

And if you have any questions, add them below and I’ll try to answer anything that arises!