Welcome Back, Booklovers! Today I'm back with an interview. Earlier this year I said I wanted to do more interviews not just with authors but people in various roles within publishing. Sabrina is currently working as an assistant editor at Grand Central Publishing.
What do you do in your role as an assistant editor?
It might just be easier to list what I don’t do in my role as an assistant editor! In present-day publishing, I’m pretty sure every job position has absorbed extinct supporting roles that used to exist. The number of books published in the U.S. has grown rapidly, yet the number of professionals in the book industry has not seen anywhere near that same growth—if any. So as much as I’d love to say that I read and give feedback on manuscripts all day, that’s honestly a small fraction of my role. Just like an editorial assistant, my primary responsibility is still assisting editors and ensuring their titles are published—creating profit and loss reports for potential acquisitions, assembling deal memos, providing additional edits, transmitting manuscripts to production after assembling the front and back matter, acting as a liaison (between production, editorial, authors, etc.), creating fact sheets for sales conferences, running sales reports, inputting all the book information feeding out to online retailers, the list goes on… But if you’re lucky enough to get the team support (and enough money) for a book you’re championing, you can acquire too.
Books have always been my safe space. I’d grown up a shy and anxious kid that felt much more at peace reading a book than hanging out with others. (Also why I’m not often on Romancelandia watching the latest dumpster fire.) Naturally, that carried over into college where I dreaded putting down my books or closing out of Literotica. There were way too many all-nighters pulled reading fiction rather than studying. It was then that I knew life’s too short to struggle through a lousy workday in order to get back to your favorite imaginary world. I wanted to read romance as much as I could, so I’d go straight to the source. I smile whenever I look back on my naivete—actually thinking I’d get to read books all day!
What is your favorite part of the job?
My favorite part of the job is working with other book people. I’m not saying that everyone in the industry is pleasant to work with. It’s far from that. But the people who you connect with—and even those you don’t—all have an origin story that began their love of books and brought us here. No one is in this industry for money, fame, etc. We’re simply enamored with books. And we’ve all found ourselves in the same (or similar) situation. This realization that the book industry isn’t what we expected. So I’ve become quite close to some of my colleagues through our various struggles in and with this industry. Though my agenda to join book publishing was to socialize less and read more, I’ve found amazing people who want to make this industry the place everyone was searching for. Maybe that’s a bittersweet answer, but it’s the most real one I have.
What’s a common misconception about your job that you want to set straight?
The misconception that editors can just acquire whatever books they want. I don’t think there’s anyone in this industry who can just acquire books without the support from other editorial members, publicists, etc., and substantial proof that the content sells. Time and time again, we’ve seen those (of all levels) disheartened over letting go of or losing a book that they wanted. Plenty of editors have written rejection letters for books they loved.
What types of stories do you enjoy working on?
Stories with characters that bring forth all of my sympathy—imperfect characters who live in a harsh world and are finally finding their fairytale. My taste in fiction covers a wide range. As long as the story is arresting, it doesn’t matter if it’s literary, historical, romance, women’s fiction, or erotica. I want characters so fleshed out that you begin wondering if your emotions pouring out are truly from the words on the page or because you’ve become the character in your mind.
What do you consider the biggest challenge right now when it comes to publishing?
The lack of diversity on the shelves and among publishing professionals. I know this may be a topic that people are exhausted of seeing, but marginalized people—in whatever capacity—can’t just decide they’re tired of it and move on with their lives. That is their life. This industry has a bigger responsibility than just being profitable. We all know how much power books hold when it comes to shaping a child’s mind. It’s going to take more than a few years of diversity being seen as a trend for it to really become the force that it can and should be to help move society forward.
Is there a book, movie, or tv show that makes you laugh over its unrealistic portrayal of the publishing industry?
The popular K-drama, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, follows the unorthodox love story between an antisocial children's picture book author and a sweet, ridiculously cute caretaker at a mental health clinic. In the show, the author’s agent is also her editor and the publisher and CEO of the company that publishes her books. Not only did that seem like a wild conflict of interest, but her agent/editor/publisher/CEO somehow had time to follow her to a small town just to hound her for an overdue manuscript! I’ve seen editors stress about late manuscripts as on-sale dates steadily creep forward, but that truly took it to a new level!
What’s your advice for anyone trying to break into the industry?
If you can get your hands on an internship for a book publisher (big or small) and book industry connections, they’ll make a serious difference. I had two internships before graduating from college, but it would still take getting an internship with a book publisher and doing informational interviews with book professionals to get my foot in the door. Be confident in asking for referrals!
If anyone would like to follow my Sabrina or connect, you can find her here:
Instagram @SabrinaFayeBooks
Twitter @BySabrinaFaye
That story about It's OK to Not Be OK was funny
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