108 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
Soapbox
“As an assistant for four years, my two cents are this: Do not focus on your love of reading....
Instead, you should be focusing on the unsexy parts—your office skills,
your ability to communicate, your willingness to learn, and your resourcefulness.”Letter to a (Future) Assistant
A seasoned editorial and agency assistant says a love of reading won’t get
newcomers in the publishing doorBy Ayla Zuraw-Friedland
any other entry-level job in any other
industry?” My answer is: they don’t.
Despite its mysterious allure, publishing is
basically venture capitalism for books.
There are perks of being an assistant, for
sure: the galleys stacked 30-high around
my apartment are proof of that. There have
to be some perks; it certainly isn’t the pay,
the hours, the job security, or a sense of
work-life balance that keeps any of us in
the industry.
None of this is to say that you should
renounce your love of literature or books, nor
do I agree that “paying one’s dues” necessi-
tates being mistreated in a job. Being aware of what’s on the
market and what different writers are doing will inevitably make
your job as an assistant easier—I would say about 50% of the
work I did as an editorial assistant was comparing books to other
books (it’s like X book meets Y book, but in outer space, etc.).
That would be really damn hard to do if you don’t read! Caring
about the final product of what you’re working on will inevitably
make the parts that feel like a slog a little less miserable—the
endless lists of book sales to search on BookScan, compiling the
marketing mailing lists, the data entry, emailing authors to say
that as much as you enjoy the photo of them they sent holding a
rooster like a hawk on their arm, you cannot use it as an author
photo because you cannot see their face behind the bird’s wing.
I want more people who truly, truly love reading to be in
publishing. There are a lot of avid readers looking to get into
publishing who aren’t white, cis, straight, or neurotypical, who
have a lot to offer the industry in the ways they solve problems,
think about storytelling, and look at the world. To get past
gatekeepers looking to maintain the status quo, people who not
only love reading but have the potential to give this industry a
much-needed kick in the pants have to leverage what they can:
their cover letters, their first impressions, and whatever other
ways they can show that they understand what is to come and
are interested in changing it. ■In every informational interview I’ve partici-
pated in, students and interns begin in the
same way—what they most want me to know
about them, even before the school they’re
going to (or in one case, even their name):
They love to read. When I hear this my heart
sinks. I don’t want to put these applications
in the “no” pile, but I know I have to. In
declaring that they should be hired for a job
in publishing because they love to read, they
betray that they have no actual idea what an
assistant job in publishing entails.T
o be clear, I do not fault anyone for
writing cover letters like this. I wrote some truly heinous
cover letters that spent more time waxing poetic about
learning to read the Berenstain Bears on the subway than they
did actually clarifying any of my qualifications or skills. This
oft-repeated mistake seems to be more a product of the shroud
of elitism that publishing as an industry hides behind than it is
of the people who most want to work within it. There is lots of
speculation as to how to get your foot in the publishing door. In
the course of four years applying and reapplying to assistant jobs,
I’ve read lots of advice. Like anything else, some of it is good and
some of it is, well, less good.
As an assistant for four years, my two cents are this: Do not
focus, in your cover letter, on your love of reading, your passion
for the power of storytelling, or your favorite books on an editor’s
list. Instead, you should be focusing on the unsexy parts—your
office skills, your ability to communicate, your willingness to
learn, and your resourcefulness. Hiring managers or editors or
head publicists are not necessarily looking for great literary
minds; they are looking for someone who will competently check
and respond to emails, write marketing copy, read slush, answer
phones, mail books, wrangle contracts and forms from authors,
negotiate text and image permissions, walk the director’s dog,
or literally any other task the hirers don’t feel like doing.
Optimistically, you will spend about 2% of your time reading
things that are not emails, and those stolen hours will feel like a
blessing.
You might be wondering, “If I’m doing all of this adminis-
trative work, how do entry-level jobs in publishing differ fromAyla Zuraw-Friedland has worked as an editorial assistant and assistant
editor at Beacon Press and Oxford University Press, and is now an agency
assistant at David Black Literary Agency.