Changing Careers from Teaching: What I Have Learned About Publishing

In my last post, I talked about how I am changing careers from teaching secondary English and seeking out horizons new. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was just how many people got in touch with me to say that they had done the exact same thing. Fellow career changers, unite! Clearly, while it feels scary and for many there is a lot of mental work to be done in order to get their heads around no longer being ‘Mr./Miss So and So’, there are plenty of people who have been successful and are happy in their new careers. It can feel a bit lonely when everyone around you has a traditional job-at-a-company-where-you-work-in-your-chosen-field and you’re the only one starting all over again in something new, so it was really heartening to hear that so many have made the leap from teaching to something new and have no regrets.
So last week, I got down to business and began looking at the publishing industry. I started where I feel most at home: with a book. A friend who works closely with publishers recommended ‘How to Get a Job in Publishing: A Really Practical Guide to Careers in Books and Magazines’ by Baverstock, Bowen and Carey, and it has been incredibly helpful in working out how publishing actually works. Whereas before I knew it involved selling books to bookshops, marketing and editing, that’s kind of where my knowledge ended. Using this book, alongside looking up jobs and careers in the publishing houses in London, has really allowed me to get a clear idea of how it all works.

Publishing is split into different areas according to different types of media. There’s trade publishing, that deals with the kind of books you find in bookshops: fiction, non-fiction, celebrity autobiographies, cookbooks etc. There’s education publishing, providing textbooks and resources to schools and higher education. There’s journals, publishing research from academics in highly specialised publications, and there’s journalism which includes all kinds of magazines and newspapers. Just being able to categorise it like that has helped to give me a clearer picture of what I want to go into.
An obvious choice for me is education publishing, as it would mean I could use all my education insider knowledge to help market textbooks and resources that teachers will find useful (i.e. time saving). However, marketing within trade publishing would also be perfect for me: I’d have to read so many books! As part of my job! The dream! However, I’m also not ruling out magazine publishing, especially when jobs pop up at magazines relating to things I’m passionate about.
So now I know which areas I need to be looking in within publishing, my next step is pretty much the first rung on the bottom of the ladder. I’m applying for some internships to get more of a feel for the industry and some different types of companies, and hopefully they won’t be put off by me being slightly… er, older… than their usual interns. Actually, from what I can gather from the research I’ve been doing, companies tend to be more than happy to take on older interns as they tend to be more reliable and have more life experience, there just don’t tend to be many older applicants for these entry level positions. Maybe it’ll help me stand out.
It is quite tough leaving a job that you have trained for and have years of experience in, in order to start again at the bottom somewhere new. So I’m going to swallow my pride, practice making really good coffee and big up my photocopying skills (another surprise teacher skill — years of scaling up/down worksheets so that they can be stuck perfectly into pupils’ books have made me pretty handy with a photocopier. Double-sided to single-sided, staples, A4 to A3, you name it), and do my best to get some first-hand experience in publishing.
Now I feel pretty certain about what publishing is all about and how I would best fit into it, I need to think about whether or not it is for me. On the plus side, I would get to work with books or with magazines every day and continue working in an area that I am passionate about. A lot of the testimonials I have read from people who work in publishing describe how the culture tends to be very friendly and supportive, and it is also an industry that is constantly changing and adapting to meet current trends and changes in how people access books, magazines etc. It all sounds very exciting and I am sure that I would be very happy working in publishing. However, as it is popular with English graduates, it is highly competitive and not always the best paid. So while I am going to continue applying for jobs and internships in marketing and editorial, this week I am going to be looking into marketing in general, and will report back to you with my findings next week.
