Friday, December 7, 2007

Some Insight into British Publishing Careers

One of the ways I dig up ideas for my blog is a bunch of Google alerts, which let me know whenever their web crawlers run across something that contains my specified keywords. Often the results I get include pages relevant to publishing in the UK. I have tended to ignore those because I assume most of the people reading this blog are Americans (correct me if I'm wrong).

I love the UK. Heck, I used to live there. But I'm guessing it would be pretty difficult for an American editor to get into the field over there. Not only do they spell a lot of things differently, but their whole writing tone is different than ours (overly wordy and stilted by comparison, but with a lot of odd "cutesy-isms" thrown in).

Nonetheless, I couldn't resist sharing this link to the Publishing Skills Group's Work in Publishing site. For the aspiring British publishing professional, there's a wealth of information on the industry, training, qualifications, career paths, and job postings.

Come to think of it, I can name at least three Brits who worked for a time in Pearson's Indianapolis office. I wonder whether they had a tougher learning curve than us natives. And for the record, if there's a UK publisher out there that could use an American editor, Jason and I are ready to come back at the drop of a hat!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not meaning to be contentious here; I'm just puzzled. If you're not fond of UK writing style ("overly wordy and stilted ... but with a lot of odd 'cutesy-isms' thrown in"), why would you want to work with a UK publisher?

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf said...

Sorry—I didn't intend to post as "Anonymous." I'm a freelance American copyeditor.

Lori Cates Hand said...

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I didn't like their writing style (because I really do). I was just trying to say it's different than what we're used to and I might not be able to emulate it.

Hey, the best writers in the world were British. Who am I to pick on their style? :)