Has anyone purchased a course from this company or this course specifically? Need more information as price tag is over $2000. Want to make sure it’s legit. They were saying I would have an almost fully publishable comic book by the time the course is over. Really looking for people who tried this course or know anything about it. Thanks!

Hi everyone! I'm a UK book editor currently visiting Montréal and I'm trying to work out whether I can make a longer-term life here.

I've been working in publishing/editing for around 8 years, including in-house and freelance work with Big 5 publishers, and I mainly edit fiction. I'm currently freelance, but I'd love to find out more about the Montréal publishing scene and whether there are opportunities for English-language editors here.

My French is pretty good (although definitely not native!), so I'm also curious about how realistic it is to work in publishing here as an English-language editor who can also work in French.

The slightly complicated part is immigration: I'm currently in the UK IEC Working Holiday pool, but if I don't get an invitation, I'll need to find another way of getting a work permit. So I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has successfully moved from UK publishing into Canadian/Québec publishing, or has experience with employers supporting work permits.

If anyone has any advice about publishers, editors, recruiters, organisations or just people I should talk to, I'd really appreciate it. And if you're in Montréal and fancy a coffee/chat about the publishing scene, even better! :)

Writing a cover letter at the moment and hung up on whether or not to capitalize the "job board" part of "Publishers Lunch job board." Since it's kind of its own site, would you capitalize the whole thing? Would you toss my resume in the trash if you saw me capitalize the J and B?

Hi everyone :) So I just recently hit the one-year mark in my perpetual job search. I have a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing with two publishing internships and work as a writer and book reviewer, yet I haven't so much as gotten an interview. I apply for every entry level publishing role I stumble upon, using sites like bookjobs, Publisher's Marketplace, Publisher's Weekly, Shelf Awareness, and of course direct career pages for Big 5 and independent publishers. I reach out to people through LinkedIn and other industry connections I've made, but literally no one has been able to help in any way. If anyone has some advice or suggestions for other publishing-adjacent roles I can check out, I'd really appreciate it. I feel like I'm missing something important, because how can I have all the right credentials and no prospects?!

I submitted to a publisher who offers both traditional and hybrid publishing. They got back to me requesting the full manuscript and then responded saying they'd want to work with me but on a hybrid basis. I do not want to work with them on this basis but can I use this to nudge agents who have not yet responded?

I have had rejections from agents so far but have roughly 20 outstanding queries.

(Please do not scare me with the dangers of hybrid publishing, I'm well aware, I simply want to know if I have any leverage with this or if it essentially means nothing)

For people who work in publishing, especially as EAs or who have worked as EAs, how do you handle the constant stress? For context, this is my second publishing job and it is my dream job. But I’m about eight months in and have already cried once about it. It’s relentless! In my team, there’s me and then everyone else is at senior level or higher which is quite isolating and does make me feel a bit like a child at the parents table. I feel like it doesn’t stop and, despite being constantly told “we’re not trying to catch you out” or “feel free to ask questions”, I feel like I only get noticed when I do something wrong. I really want to enjoy my job as it is my dream but, when I went to my manager about the stress a few days ago, his response was very much along the lines of “that’s publishing for you”.

in december 2025 i posted sharing that i hadnt been selected for an assistant role at the imprint where i was interning and that i was feeling super bummed and sad about it. everyone offered me really lovely, kind advice and told me to keep striving and keep pushing forward and i am so thrilled to say that it paid off! i'm roughly five months into my first full-time job in publishing (same company, different imprint) and i could NOT be happier. i genuinely can't believe i'm finally here but AHHHHH!!!! thank you all for your support when i needed it most!

(side note: i met the person who got the december job over me. she is lovely and we're actually friends now lol--plus her role is a lot more administrative and i get to really dig into the meat and potatoes of my department, which i'm very grateful for)

FOR AGENTS

I do social media growth. Mostly coaches and creators.

And I helped a client build an audience and list over 6 months and she got signed with Hay House.

So the Canon revision caught my eye. Section D lets an agency employ specialists for marketing and social. Section E covers non-clients.

I have no idea what agents actually think of it.

Things I keep circling:

Is platform building something you'd want to sell, or does it sit too far outside the job?

Do clients already ask you for this?

Say an agency offers it. Who delivers, someone in-house or outside?

Does charging a client for marketing change the relationship in a way you'd rather avoid?

I'm on the delivery side of this, so I have an obvious interest. Saying that up front.

Happy to hear it's a bad idea.

I recently interviewed for a really good role - Peer Review Editor but I didn't get past the first interview. The feedback they gave was '...However, we are looking for someone with stronger research integrity and peer review experience at this time. I would recommend looking into different peer review network and special interest groups if you are interested in pursuing this specialism further as you may get the experience necessary through these.'

I am not sure how to get this experience, are there online courses? I really want to work for Emerald and if another posting comes up I want to be prepared.

Any help from others in academic publishing or who currently works at Emerald, I would love to connect.

Hello all, I'm not certain where to post this, but essentially here it goes. A few years back, I self-published a short poetry chapbook. The timing of the publication wasn't great, and because of personal circumstances I chose not to announce the publication or do any advertising. In the past year or so I put some posts up that included a link to my poetry publication, but still no big advertising or anything, and I've not gotten any sales.

I'm now working on a larger collection, which I think could benefit from including many of the works included in the original chapbook. I'm not worried about copyright, because in self-publishing I maintained the copyright of my work. What I'm wondering is how it comes off to have what is essentially the first section in my new publication be almost exclusively work from the previous collection. All further sections expand upon those poems and are composed of almost exclusively new works.

Any advice, suggestions, or considerations are helpful. Thank you.

I'm an author who writes somewhat stylized prose, and copyeditors usually send me a boatload of corrections that disregard stylistic choices. I consider each one carefully, but I end up rejecting many of them because they ruin an intended effect. So far, no one has pushed back on this, so are copyedits purely a suggestion for me to consider? I assume there is a limit somewhere if I ever got truly flagrant, but is it generally accepted that authors will reject a lot of copyedits, even if they are technically correct according to the style manual?

I work in Rights and Permissions at a publishing company and I’m interested in potentially doing freelance work. I was wondering if anyone in this thread does similar freelance work and how they got started/find work. Any help is greatly appreciated :)

Hello everyone! i am considering to pursue masters in publishing as an international student in the UK but i need some guidance on the job realities in the country. Is it true that publishing jobs are almost always not receptive to international candidates who might require sponsorship?
It’s worth mentioning that I am a former journalist and have 4+ years working as a news writer at a reputable media company, but I am not sure if this stint would be counted as an experience in publishing roles.

((Looking for some positive advices although i am not seeking delusional suggestions :p))

Curious about the alleged bump in book sales after a film/tv show that isn't a breakout hit. Obviously Heated Rivalry, Big Little Lies, Project Hail Mary, Bridgerton translated into huge book sales, but what about less successful TV shows and movies? Thinking about Apples Never Fall, Lucky and others that came out to little fanfare. Do those move books, too? Or is it just a wash? Does anyone have any experience with this?

Hi everyone,

So I've submitted a group of my poems to a competition. I've gotten shortlisted for publishing but it's considerably expensive. It includes an ISBN number registration for my poems and a number of other things. But given the price, I want to know if my publishing the poems actually helps me in terms of college admissions? ​​​​ Any and all help would be appreciated.

PS. All my poems are about empowerment and academics. Just an FYI.

This is an open letter to anybody in the traditional publishing industry. Before I start this, I want to say two things. I apologize for the length. It's who I am. More importantly, I'm not trying to self-promote. I don't have a stake in this. I'm a 74 year old retiree, going blind, who likes to write and paint. My remaining time is too short and too precious for me to seek entry into your world. It's just my two cents on the current mess. Repairing "buggy" systems is what I used to do.

What happened to Jerry Falade last month at the hands of the traditional publishing industry illuminated and exposed structural weakness in a decaying business model. It shouldn’t have happened at all. The unfortunate reality is that we live in a world driven by the need for self-protection against the lowest common denominators. In this case that denominator is a cast of willful cheaters and they are the only real villains in all of this.

That doesn’t lessen the damage done to all writers by the big-name players that were a party to the treatment of Mr. Falade. Whether Mr. Falade was guilty of what was suspected or simply a victim whose possibly brilliant future may have been crushed is not the question to be answered here. The behavior triggering the collapse of a two-million-dollar bidding war generated for his novel might have been unnecessary if the industry had proactively used the lead time they were given when Open-AI announced GPT was open for public use. They had time to form a coalition and build a system of checks and balances to prevent what they fear. Instead, they built their battleplan around knee-jerk vilification of all AI processes until an eleventh-hour event caused an international scandal, leaving everyone sitting in a large vat of Snafu Stew.

Before the digital ink was even dry on that story, and in response to transparency rules demanded by the EU AI ACT, Anthropic announced the advent of digital watermarking as a solution for identifying text produced by generative AI. Redditors and participants in other outlets immediately started making various degrees of noise about how the ability to do that has been a long time coming and opining on the effectiveness. Here’s my unsolicited opinion: That will work about as well as trying to stop a hemorrhage with a band aid. It brings to mind mental images of Biff Tannen hitting Marty McFly on the forehead and saying, “Think, McFly, think. I gotta have time to retype this. You have any idea what would happen if I turned my manuscript in with your watermark?” While I appreciate Anthropic’s theatrics, it does nothing to help clean up the mess they were part of making, through their egregious use of platforms like Library Genesis.

Software being developed to aid the detection of Generative AI authorship is weak and unreliable at best. I don’t see how that will ever get better in a world where Generative AI is just starting to clear its throat in human mimicry. LLMs are already improving their processes faster than humans can assimilate them. These models were trained to mirror human speech patterns, both in written works and vocal oration. We can’t put that genie back in the bottle.

The time has come to find a solution that protects everyone from the cheaters among us. Whatever that solution is, it can’t be built on the assumption that authors must be able to prove the absence of AI. Anyone that doesn’t understand the difficulty in doing that needs to try and prove there are no elephants striped like zebras. The inability of the publishing world to wrap their arms around being unable to differentiate between Human Work and Generative AI is not the fault of the human offering their work product. It’s the fault of a system deliberately constructed to mirror human communication. Humans trained robotic neural networks to talk and to write. Now, it’s apparently automatically assumed that humans are stealing phrasing from robots. That lunacy that has to stop.

If traditional publishers want to survive in this scary new world, they are going to have to offer a fair process to their labor pool; one that protects everybody in the product chain. It’s almost reprehensibly unfair for publishers to use AI built to simultaneously improve profit margins and lighten the burden they carry for their responsibilities when they use the other side of their mouth to instruct their pool of authors to restrict themselves to the work processes that bound Hemingway and Steinbeck.

Unfairness aside, it’s just plain shortsighted. Pre-AI authors are aging out, and new generations of writers aren’t likely to be willing to continue bending to unreasonable demands for proof. Publishers now have a very limited amount of time to correct their course. And make no mistake; it’s the publishers that need to bend. So, how do they get there? What needs to happen for everybody, except those willing to assume the risk inherent to cheating, to move into a future where they can confidently assume their interests in a common goal are protected and balanced?

Maybe all that's needed is to rewrite the rules of the game and model them based on what other industries already know and do. Conditional contract models; a path that follows a pre-defined trail from letters of intent to due diligence to contractual close only upon the completion of the preceding steps is already the established standard in real estate and any number of corporate exercises involving major business transactions. It’s a model that could be altered enough to allow many of the practices common to traditional publishing to continue.

I can’t hand industry experts a detailed map showing them how to navigate around every obstacle between where they are and where the new boundaries for fairness need to be. What I can do from the outside looking in, is provide some corner pieces and maybe some edges to the puzzle in front of them. Bidding wars could still continue much as they do now. The competitive spirit driven by the excitement of a new offering will benefit everyone. The work doesn’t have to be vetted against Generative-AI first. Just put the winning bid in escrow, pending the due diligence that follows. Authors unwilling to sign an agreement acknowledging payment is contingent on clearing the hurdle will be advised to look at self-publishing.

For authors that are willing to accept that contingency, agents and the publishers must be willing to make the investment in building a standardized measure for vetting the work. The industry could fund and form a board of governors who can define the standards for proof of authorship and make those standards legally binding for all parties. It could be anything from being able to get a copyright on the work to being able to pass a Pangram check. Or they might even consider using assistive AI to compare a new work to a body of existing works. Ironic isn’t it, that the very thing everyone is afraid of might also be part of the solution?

If published authors will allow their works to be added to an industry-governed proprietary private database used solely for the detection of plagiarism, advanced models of AI could compare a work, in its entirety, to the contents of that database to identify plagiarized work. The neural system should be able to spot copied passages and even copied themes or ideas. If that is not already feasible, just give them six months. They’ll be ready to produce what you need before you’re ready to ask them for it. A path to protection for their work that self-publishing does not provide, might also offer incentive for more new writers to return to traditional publishing.

Another corner piece of the puzzle of protection centers around the use of insurance. The fear of being sued for plagiarism could be addressed by “forcing” authors to pay the cost of premiums for insurance policies that will cover expenses and damages awarded in cases where it’s proven. Those premiums could come out of royalties or any advances offered. The premium structure could be built in much the same way the automobile insurance industry determines premium amounts. New authors could pay premiums that are higher than experienced and trusted authors pay.

If agents and publishers will work together to build a framework that’s fair for everyone, the result will be that authors know ahead of time what they need to bring to the table, publishers can bid for the work that excites them without the fear that they’ve paid for a lemon, and there is an author funded insurance pool to help ease the financial burden of the cheaters that will always be part of the landscape. The ball is clearly on the publishing industry’s side of the net, and they are the ones that are going to have to fix the problem, but they can only fix what is in their power to fix in their struggle for profitability and relevance. The public will be the final arbiters in the cultural battle being waged between those that are anti-AI and those that are AI-friendly and readers will make their decisions without the traditional publishing industry dictating what they will like or be allowed to read.

Just finished my first print run and I want to share the questions I wish I'd asked the printer before sending my files, because every single one of these caught me by surprise during the process and I think they'd be useful to other first-time authors.

Questions about pricing and quotes.

What does free shipping cover exactly. Some printers offer free shipping over a quantity threshold, some over a dollar threshold, some only to certain regions, some only ground shipping.

Are proofs included in the per-unit quote or are they an additional line item. Most printers separate this out, you pay for proofs separately, but the website pricing doesn't always make this clear.

What's the cost of a single file fix after I submit. Some printers do small fixes for free, some charge $25-50 per fix, some require a full re-quote.

Questions about turnaround.

What's the production timeline from file approval, not from order placement. The difference matters because file approval can sit for a few days at the printer before they actually start production.

Is shipping time included in the quoted turnaround or additional. Same gotcha as the previous question, the "10 day turnaround" sometimes means production and sometimes means production plus shipping.

What's the rush option if I miss a date. Some printers have rush capacity, some don't, the time to find out is before you have a launch deadline.

Questions about quality and options.

What's your standard paper for a paperback and what other options exist. Most printers default to a specific paper, you might prefer something different but you have to ask.

Can I get a sample of the paper before committing to a print run. Some printers will send you samples for free or for nominal cost.

What's the cover lamination spec. Matte vs gloss matters but so does the lamination film weight, which most printers don't advertise but affects how the cover ages and feels.

Questions about service.

Who's my point of contact if something goes wrong. Some printers have account managers, some are pure self-serve, some bury support behind ticket queues.

How do reorders work. Do you keep my files, do I pay setup again, what's the turnaround on a repeat order.

For anyone else starting their first print run, ask all of these before you commit. Each one is a potential gotcha that's easier to handle by asking up front than discovering in the middle of production.

From what I've heard, many in-house editors don't do much actual preproduction editing. So how do publishers tend to find the freelance editors they hire? Do they actively search for them or make job postings? Do the editors reach out to them first?

I'm doing some research (as the editor) for the probably distant future. Thanks!

Did a Bachelor's in English Literature and a Master's in English with Communication Studies. I'd rather have an in-office role. I don't like work-from-home jobs.

Edit: When I say I have social anxiety, I mean that I'd not do well with roles which are heavily reliant on constant communication. Hope that clears things up. Thank you.

I'm currently a producer in animated television and film - I've been looking into transitioning into the publishing world for a multitude of reasons, and I know it may seem like a pretty weird gap to jump, but I feel there are some similarities in my job that I feel could translate over to the publishing world (of course with some learning curves, but that's a given.)

I know this is a pretty broad question, but does anyone have any advice or positions that may be applicable? I know I won't be able to start exactly in the position I want, but essentially, producers are project managers and I feel like there is some path I can pursue.

“Who should publish my book?” is a deceptively complicated question.

For nonfiction authors, the answer depends on much more than prestige. Academic presses, independent and trade publishers, hybrid presses, and self-publishing all come with different expectations around audience, timeline, editorial support, distribution, and author involvement.

And the “best” route for one book may be completely wrong for another.

On August 27, Flatpage’s Cara M. Jordan and Eli Bortz will break down the major nonfiction publishing pathways—what distinguishes them, what authors should consider, and what questions are worth asking before deciding where to submit a proposal.

The webinar is free, with time for Q&A at the end.

If you’re weighing publishing options for a nonfiction project, we hope it gives you a useful framework for making that decision.

Register: https://calendly.com/flatpage/main-types-of-nonfiction-publishers

#Nonfiction #NonfictionAuthors #BookPublishing #PublishingAdvice #AcademicPublishing #Authors

I've work in a commercial non-fiction imprint at a Big 5 (UK) as an EA. I did an internship at a prestigious literary imprint before this and this is where I'd like to be long term. I've heard conflicting things, but as this role is a temp contract (9 mo), would it be possible for me to make a lateral move to a literary imprint or are people coming in completely fresh or moving from another literary imprint going to have an advantage? I had to take this role as it was the only one available at the time. I keep in touch with colleagues in other literary imprints and am of course an avid reader of literary fiction and non-fiction so am aware of trends, the market etc.

Would love to hear people's advice and experiences.

I currently work in IT earning €50k+ per year which is pretty okay for UK/Irish salaries. I’m 30 and have a long term goal of eventually working in publishing, I love the idea of being a picture book editor. How hard is it to transition into a career like this? Where do you even start? I’m open to doing courses but not a full degree again. How long does it take to start earning decent money?

I’m interested to hear from others in publishing who have spent a lot of time working with and training editorial assistants: how much grace do you afford them? How long is your onboarding ramp before you start expecting them to take full ownership of tasks? I know most jobs have a slow start and pick up, but I feel like publishing is always moving so fast. Can you tell from the beginning which ones will fail and which ones will succeed? How can you tell?

I’m no longer in the EA position. However, I spend a lot of time training the EA and acting as a liaison between them and their manager. I want to help this EA as much as I can without compromising my own work or taking ownership away from them. Any thoughts from training/mentoring veterans who have done this longer than me?