By Andi Luo

Doing an internship was not my first choice when I decided to knock on the doors of publishing. Part of it was me being ignorant of the industry, part of it was everyone telling me not to be exploited by ‘the system’. But after battling with reality, I realised that an internship might just be what I needed to get a foot in the door. And I’m happy I did it because it offered me a chance to see and experience a career in publishing by doing the work and talking to industry alumni. A chance that could be worth a lot more than a few months’ salary, if interns even get one—but don’t believe that unless you’ve got no other choice like me.

The publishing industry: a tough nut to crack for newbies

When I first started to look for publishing jobs, I found out that it had become a quite closed community. The publishing industry, based on search results from every job-listing website, was not at a fast-growing stage where it needed a lot of new talent to help expand its territory. Quite the contrary. Few people were leaving, and even fewer entering. When I searched ‘publishing’ on Seek, the roles that were actively hiring either required a high level of experience or had nothing to do with publishing. And then, just as I was slowly losing hope, I got an email from my university course coordinator sharing a list of internship opportunities. ‘To gain experience and build connections,’ the email said. And I thought I couldn’t care less about being exploited by ‘the system’; I just wanted to get into ‘the system’.

So, I updated my expectations and decided to give it a go. I applied for a dozen, and I mean a dozen, internship roles at different publishers and got offered one by a traditional educational publisher. By then, I was overly intimidated by the journey of job hunting and became too cautious to appreciate the opportunity. It was after I had finished my internship that I allowed myself to reflect and dig deep to get the best out of this experience. And there were many fruitful encounters along the way. Some of them fuelled my passion for publishing while others posed as red flags.

Educational publishing: first impressions and the quirks

The first thing I want to point out for newbies like me is the difference between educational publishing and trade publishing. This is important because it may break your fantasies if you are a fiction enthusiast like me. When people like me fantasise about publishing, we are thinking of scenarios like opening manuscripts in cafes and talking to authors about their unpublished ideas—things that happened in legendary editors’ biographies. And that may be true for people working with trade publishers. But what educational publishing offers is something way less creative or exciting. For example, what I did for most of my internship was typesetting and proofreading textbooks for year 7 to 12 students, meaning entering maths equations into different digital platforms and comparing curriculums from different states line by line. It felt tedious at times, and it required a lot of self-motivation to dive into that routine.

The second thing to be aware of is that educational publishers usually are bigger companies with clearer structures of hierarchy. They are formed this way mainly because they are closely linked to the education system which is run by the government—the highest hierarchy organisation that I know of. What this means for newbies is that being in an entry-level position means you are supposed to do basic and repetitive tasks with limited flexibility. But this could also mean that you will be equipped with a full set of knowledge of how different departments come together like gears to support a publishing business, as long as you pay attention to those weekly catch-up meetings. In comparison, there are a lot more trade publishing or non-academic publishing companies that can deploy a much smaller and flatter structure to save on costs and boost efficiency. This will result in giving the employees more accountability and bigger responsibilities, regardless of their experience levels. For newbies, this could mean being thrown into the professional world with minimum knowledge of what you are supposed to do, but it could also mean growing as a professional very quickly due to the amount of hands-on learning you’ll have to accomplish.

The last thing I hesitate to bring forth is the stability of a job. The hesitation is due to both my lack of authority in that topic and the paradox of any job actually being ‘stable’. But in reality, the risk is higher for a small trade publisher to survive in the market. Just like any other small business, they either can’t keep up with the market or mess up their finances. On the other hand, educational publishing does have the advantage of students needing more study materials all the time, making them slightly more likely to endure difficult situations.

Work vs. passion and everything in life

What helped me tremendously when I was struggling in my internship was talking to people in the office. People working in publishing often talk about passion and how their jobs help them maintain that passion, and it was the same for my co-workers in educational publishing. They held pride in producing the next textbooks for students and their attitude affected me a lot. It reminded me constantly about why I was there in the first place.

‘I like what I do,’ said the publishing lead of my department.

‘I like the people I work with,’ commented the two-year editor who sat next to me.

And many others with the same attitude and sincerity. They helped me figure out that there are no ‘perfect’ jobs and that the standards for a ‘good’ job vary for every person.

We cannot all be the luckiest ones who are doing exactly what we love, but we all need a carefully calculated balance between surviving and thriving to enjoy life. I believe that balance may be easier to find for people who work closely in or near the field of their passion. And getting to that conclusion is the biggest achievement I got from my internship.

Andi Luo is a writing and editing student. A person who consciously seeks out new challenges in life.

Cover image by Bruno Martins. Used under the Unsplash License.