Thinking about a career switch, and a lot of publishers seem to be looking for sales reps. Should I regard that as a warning? What’s the field like? I’m looking mostly at textbook publishing, but just about anything would be ok. Please share any knowledge you have about getting into and working in the field.
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I’m most familiar with working at the editorial end. For that, you have to live in New York and bang on doors until you can get an editorial assistant jobs. That’s really just a gopher, and the pay is not enough to live in NYC (often, editorial assistants share apartments), but it does get your foot in the door and if you show talent, you can get a reasonable job in a few years.
I don’t know much about sales reps, but it’s probably no different from any other type of sales. Do you have any sales experience?
Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO. Maybe you’ll get more action there. (And besides, books as merchandise don’t really belong in Cafe Society.)
I spent 20 years in the publishing industry and have recently made the switch out of it to financial services. The industry has been, for at least a decade, been transitioning to it knows not what. There is simply no overall agreement on what and where the industry will be in 10 years. The only thing that’s clear is that it will be smaller.
You don’t say what sort of publishing (books, magazines, newspapers, printing, web, whatever) or what type of sales (ads, products, access, whatever) but I’d be glad to provide advice if you do so. There are a lot of variables there.
I have some experience in medical publishing. I can tell you that some of our acquisitions editors (people who recruit authors to write books) started out in sales. They traveled around a great deal and got to know all kinds of instructors who thought they had good book ideas.
Jonathan Chance is correct that publishing doesn’t know where it’s going.
- This is more true with books than with journals, because information in printed form is expiring at a faster pace than ever
- Books in the printed form are being replaced by digital books. If the digital rights mechanisms for books are as easy to crack as those on music and movies, sales of digital books will tank,
- Texas largely determines the content of school textbooks. Do you like Texas and/or Texans?
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I have a friend who works for a textbook editing company. They recently went bankrupt and were bought by another, bigger textbook editing company. It sounds like mind-numbing work for offensively low pay, and the fact that her 30-year-old company went bankrupt makes me suspicious of the viability of that particular sector.
Many thanks to you guys for some good info. To be more precise, i have a background in newspaper journalism, and currently work in education. I was thinking about going into textbook sales. I’m looking at being laid off from the school district where I work, which will be my second layoff in four years, involving two different careers. (That’s how I lost my last newspaper job.)
I seem to have an uncanny ability to pick fields to work in that have little to no future. sigh Textbook sales seemed like the kind of thing I could do, given my background and desire to live in a major city instead of BFE. But it sounds like it really isn’t a safe bet.
Jonathan Chance, leaving it after 20 years doesn’t sound like a great endorsement, and it’s never good to go into a field that’s shrinking. Hmm. Did you decide to leave because you saw a poor future ahead?
I used to work for a major national bookseller, now bankrupt. I made $32,000, and living in michigan, that was a decent, not great salary. The trade book sales reps made a LOT less than that, and lived in NYC. We would shake our heads over that all the time. No surprise the biz is rife with trust fund babies who just do it as a hobby and have no need to earn a living.
I had a roommate who was a textbook rep for Norton. She was on the road ALL the time, and flattering sleazy old men was a big part of her job. Other than that, it seemed ok. I really have no idea what she made - we had very cheap rent but she might have chosen to have a roommate because she was never at home, rather than for purely financial necessity.
There are many factors that come into play and it is difficult to give a pat answer. It is a great field for men and very good for women in that there seem to be a great deal of equal opportunity in it. There are many more women in mid and upper management positions than in many other professions.
There are many facets and many different jobs involved in any publishing company and nowadays many varied types of companies that work in publishing in one way or another. It is a very varied and very rapidly changing field. If you provide more information on what type of job you are interested and generally your educational background, maybe I could offer a little more information in the next post. Generally, I would say that the easiest positions to get would be for sales/acquisitions. The more difficult, which would require certain educational requirements, aptitudes and experience, are editorial/production related. There are so many types of publishers now but it’s still true that technical publishing has generally been much more feasible to enter into than mainstream or fictional publishing. With the Internet, things have changed a great deal…it’s not about print anymore and so people with unique and extensive web publishing experience may break in as well. On the down side, outsourcing is shrinking job opportunities as publishers turn to that outlet in order to reduce publishing/printing costs. As you can see it’s tough to answer your question. I will say, I have been in the industry for over 20 years and overall I am happy because I love being an editor, but besides the know-how, you have to be able to handle often long hours and major bouts of stress. Hope that helps a little…
You need to find a niché and you will be just fine.
Look at my example. I was working as a small specialized reseller/ebookstore struggling for miserable life, being on a brink of disaster about five years ago and I had to find new niche.
Well, I found that in my country no one ever published basic manual/handbook for using Macs in local language. Go figure. It took me years to learn all about macs (I was only occasional user by then), write and publish 2 books in 5 editions in this time, which are primarily (75%) sold at local iStores (all four of them). Currently I am expanding business to ebook editions (yes, again it took me half a year more to learn how to make epub books and how to publish them on iBookstore and Amazon).
And with that, why not going big. Like translate and publish your work in other languages …
Here is my first try in English: http://www.amazon.com/iPad-2-Creative-Beginners-ebook/dp/B005KISWES/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326974776&sr=1-1 (I hope I am not broking any forum rules, if so, please remove link, or just copy/past the title here then, if that is ok.)
Not that I bathe in money, but after 3 or so years while my relatives had faith in me, I could finally pay my rent. Last year I made around 12000 - 15000 which would be somewhere around average salary in my country.
Of course, in your case that niché does not exist, so you should find another. I do not know. Collect jokes and publish them, or learn all about grand white eel hunting, then learn how to write and publish a book, and than sell it at all four grand white eel fishing resorts. 
Yes. After many years as an exec I spent the last few owning some newspapers. We made some money but I knew it was limited. So I sold out and switched over to being a stockbroker. It took some training (a little less than a year) but I’m in an industry that has a clear path to success instead of one where the only path is downward.
It is my belief that, while there will always be a certain market for writers of fiction, the money in it will steadily decline over the next ten years until it is no longer desirable from any angle other than labor-of-love.
As for non-fiction such as journalism? That’s already on the way out. Eventually we’ll see (in the US) four or five national-level newspapers with affiliated magazines. Everyone without that sort of reach will either be very small (small independent weeklies with local reach) or extremely specialized. And those will strongly trend towards the web where the costs (and the salaries) are much lower.