Should I go for my masters if I want to go into publishing?

Question

I know that more education is always better, but I was wondering if anyone out there worked in the publishing field. I'd like to go into editing fiction and I'm considering getting my masters, but I don't know if it's going to be worth the trouble. Is a masters needed to move up in the world of publishing? Could I do it without spending the extra time and money in school? Or is there a sort of glass ceiling for people with BAs only?

Answer 1

Well, a master's degree certainly never hurt anything. It really depends on what kind of editor you want to become. If you want to be a manuscript editor and work with the more technical side of things, I would say that it's less necessary than if you want to be an acquisitions editor. As an acquisitions editor, you are responsible for courting new talent, bringing new authors and/or books into your publishing house, making suggestions to the author, etc. This is the real publishing glory (not that there's any such thing). To do this, I highly recommend a master's degree. It's not necessarily a requirement for EVERY publishing company, but it certainly helps.

Regardless of whether you pursue post-graduate eduction, there's one thing you have to remember: you will have to work your way up in publishing. You cannot just walk in and get an editor job. You often have to work for years before getting that far. I've seen plenty of people with master's degrees fetching coffee just to get their foot in the door. Publishing is very hard to break into on any sort of rewarding level; it really takes years of thankless work for it to pay off.

Something else you might consider are your reasons for going into publishing. If it's because you like fiction and the arts and are just a booklover in general, be prepared to have a lot of illusions about the business shattered. It's really the dark, money-money-money side of books.

I don't say any of this to discourage you, keep in mind. I think it's great you want to go into publishing; I loved it! Just be prepared for a long hard road. However, if you are passionate about books and are okay with dealing with the less sensitive aspects of producing them, it's a truly rewarding career.