Assistant Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
To tell you how I got into publishing, I could start by mentioning that my mother always had a book in her hand, and taught me to do the same—or that I spent most of my time lost in books like One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte.
These experiences definitely shaped me to be the kind of person who would find myself in the world of publishing but, honestly, the idea of a publishing career didn’t even pop into my mind until the day I watched Margaret Tate and Andrew Paxton (played by Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds) banter on the silver screen in The Proposal.
I remember that being a particularly difficult time for me. I’d just spent the last year working at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary while taking pre-med classes at night. Although I was proud of the idea of becoming a doctor, I wasn’t eager to go to work and class every day, but I didn’t like the idea of quitting either. Then one weekend, as I watched Margaret and Andrew throw humorous insults at each other, I noticed Margaret’s hardcopy manuscripts sprinkled across her desk. I was fascinated by the part where Andrew was trying to convince her to buy a manuscript that he loved. I remember thinking, Is this a thing? Does this career actually exist?! That night, I looked up the industry guides that my school had available, and ta da, there it was—an industry guide on publishing. Seriously…never doubt the power of media.
Of course, deciding to be an editor was much easier than actually convincing someone to let me be one. Once I was finished with my classes, I hit the pavement and had an informational interview with anyone who’d meet with me. My first informational interview was with Michael Pietsch, the then publisher of Little, Brown and Company. He was kind enough to put me in touch with another editor, and a direct contact in human resources. Even with those new contacts, I knew I was going to have to intern and get some experience, so luckily I found a unique internship at The New Press.
I spent a month in each department: editorial, publicity/marketing, production, and finance. The internship at the New Press made me perfectly qualified for an in-house floater position that opened up at Hachette Book Group at just about the time my internship was ending. Like my internship, I would be available to work on various projects within any department in the company.
While working as a floater, I was lucky enough to receive Alvina Ling as my mentor in the Hachette Mentor Program. I spent the next six months picking her brain about the life of an editor, reading submissions, and drafting jacket copy and declines. Often Alvina would ask me if I still wanted to work in editorial, and every time my answer was the same. Yes!
Once the six months were over, she agreed to keep meeting with me, and this continued for another six months as well, until an editorial assistant position opened up working under her and another editor. I interviewed for the position, and luckily I got the job.
Five years ago I hadn’t even known publishing existed. Now I work for one of the best companies in the industry. Since my start as a floater, I’ve acquired my first book, Lola Levine is Not Mean (November 2015), along with other books in the series, all featuring a spunky biracial and bicultural second grader.
I know what it’s like to feel lost in deciding what you want to do with your life, and I feel very lucky to have found my way to this cool place surrounded by other book lovers. What I’ve learned is that it’s important to keep your eyes open. You never know where you might find the answer, because it might just be in the form of two funny actors in a romantic comedy.
Hey, it could happen.
Nikki Garcia is an assistant editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers where she works on books for all ages. During her time at LBYR, she has had the honor of working with picture book authors such as Peter Brown and Frank Viva, as well as novelists such as Wendy Mass, Matthew Quick, and Holly Black. Born and raised right here in New York City, Nikki graduated from St. John’s University, and thankfully didn’t have to travel very far to make her dreams come true.
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Publicist at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Saga Press
When I was looking for my first job, I’d ask as many people as I could how they got their start in publishing. I would collect stories from internship mentors, interviewers, people I met at networking events, whoever, in exchange for bright-eyed enthusiasm. As I found out, there’s no single path to publishing, but rather a network full of detours, twists, and forks that make up our small (yes, small) publishing village.
On the surface, my path seems straightforward. My junior year at Columbia, I joined my college’s alumna mentor program as I began pondering life after college. Since I specified that I was interested in publishing, I was matched with the excellent and wonderful Juliet Grames, now associate publisher of Soho Press. Juliet was invaluable to me. At her advice, I did three internships before graduating in 2010: at an agency, in children’s editorial, and in adult trade marketing. She introduced me to other people in publishing, and I lived in her spare bedroom in Harlem while job-hunting in New York.
After graduation, I laid out my plan for intense networking: interviews both informational and professional, panels, coffee dates, lunch dates, Kid Lit Drink Nights and KGB Fantastic Fiction Nights, basically anywhere I knew publishing people would be. Five months later, I began working as a publicity assistant at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
But even on my networking-heavy path, there were divergences. Though I had loved books all my life, I didn’t even consider publishing a career possibility until I met Juliet. My Chinese immigrant parents had always encouraged me to go into a technical field, and for my first two years at Columbia I’d majored in environmental engineering. When I’d transferred to anthropology, I was met with confusion and anxiety. Less “What is anthropology?” and more “Can you get a job with that degree?”
Chastened but not surprised by this response, I decided to write my undergraduate thesis on books and the transformative power of reading and libraries in immigrant communities. Yes, I thought, I will use academia to validate my personal choices. I learned about Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital: cultural, social, and economic.
I learned that I had a fairly good base of cultural capital, combining the values of education and a hard work ethic I’d learned from my parents with the the knowledge and worldviews I’d gained from voraciously reading books.
Financially, my parents had dragged themselves out of poverty into a comfortable suburban life in New Jersey, and had saved enough to send me to college without loans, so I considered myself lucky on that front, too.
As for social capital, well–that’s where the networking came in.
Looking back, I’m keenly aware of the opportunities I had as a Chinese-American woman–and the hiccups I had to overcome. A love of books is not enough to work in publishing. Some candidates can’t afford to accept an unpaid internship to get their foot in the door, let alone three. Some need to consider higher paying industries to pay off their loans or take care of their families. Others don’t live near New York, or have any publishing companies near them. And some, like me, never knew what publishing was until the “aha” moment when I realized that people worked to make this book I was holding in my hands. And these reasons are inseparably tied to diversity of race, ethnicity, class, geography, and more.
I am the sum of my acquired experiences by learning, reading, and talking to others. I keep an open mind about others’ paths–whether they came to publishing later in life, or after working in another industry, or moved from rural Missouri–knowing each one is equally valid and worthy. Through the efforts of CBC Diversity and a focus on diverse recruitment, I hope that publishing village turns into a metropolis.
Faye Bi works as a publicist at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Saga Press. She tweets at @faye_bi.
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This post is only meant to be representative of my own personal experience—that of an editor of a small YA list at an indie press—working to sell rights at the 2015 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. It is wildly subjective, tainted by extreme bias (towards the “D” word of Diversity; capitalized for this post), and informed by very little time for reflection, spent almost exclusively stuffing my face with delicious food.
With that said…
Good Diversity News from Bologna
I found that the vibe was different in the best possible ways from 2014. For instance, whenever I discussed books involving LGBT characters, there was no mention of Diversity whatsoever. There was, however, plenty of discussion of the story, of the voice, of the surprises—the reason we all got into this business (I think/hope?) in the first place. The only time people brought up Diversity, in fact, was because of a fear of American cultural references that other markets might not understand. Some might have wondered why I was smiling when at first they essentially told me “not sure…?” But (I think/hope?) I was persuasive in convincing them to give a read, at least.
Not-So-Good Diversity News from Bologna
Everyone I met with, across the board, pretty much looked like me. (All were better groomed; most were female.) But among American and European publishers and agents, there was homogeneity reminiscent of the minions from the Despicable Me franchise, who were also present.
Lovely Encounters at Bologna
Finally, apropos only of the current political climate, I stumbled upon this booth for the first time in my six years of going to the Bologna Book Fair. The publishers from Iran were mostly there to sell rights, like I was. The two representatives at the booth—one male, one female; neither who looked like me—were lovely and gracious. They weren’t interested in acquiring YAs, though; and to be fair, I was not interested in acquiring picture books. We wished each other well and looked forward to seeing each other next year.
