this is the one that shocked me the most i don't agree with what people are saying on this
i can't believe people said this
hello and welcome back to my channel today i'm going through the skills you need to
work in the publishing industry so if you're a publishing hopeful and you want to rush up
on those transferable skills these are the ones that me and other publishing professionals have
said that you need so i put out a survey to about 50 other publishing professionals
that kindly answered it and told me which skills that you need to have so i listed a range of
skills and got them to tick all the ones that they think are the most important so there was no limit
on like this is the most important one you have to have or anything some were definitely more popular
than others some of them i completely agree on there's a couple that i was quite surprised about
as well but i'm going to share with you those results today so i kind of completely agree with
the winner here the most important skill that you needed to have according to my survey was
communication when you work in publishing you often deal with all of the different departments
especially for example if you were to work in the editorial department you work with the authors so
you have to communicate well with them making sure that you're caring for them really well
you have to contact the production departments the rights department sales marketing publicity
everything and so being able to communicate effectively via email in meetings anything
like that is so crucial for the publishing industry and as well because you're working
with internal and external stakeholders so me for example i contact printers a lot for example
so being able to communicate with them effectively is essentially really really important to work
in publishing the next one was organization i 100 agree with this especially in my role and
as an entry-level role i think it's really important to be able to stay organized be really
on top of your workload know how to navigate like spreadsheets like maintaining organization of
those doing any to-do list managing your calendar anything like that i think is really important
again i think just the fact that you rely on other people a lot of the time when you're
working through the publishing process if you're waiting on someone else or if they're waiting on
you it's really important that you stay organized on top of that the next one is working as a team
and then just quite similar to that and the results was working independently and
i do agree with that as well because everyone is within a team in publishing no matter what
publishing house you work at and but you do also have to manage your own workload especially in
my role for example as a production assistant i have my own workload to deal with and but it's
within a team so i have to stay organized et cetera and manage my own workload and
be able to just yeah kind of like manage my own time but at the same time it's been able to work
in a team so if i've got an issue knowing how to approach that knowing who to ask knowing like
who to contact if i have a problem knowing how to support my team the best way that we can as i just
mentioned time management was on there as well i think this is really important i'm quite surprised
that this was so high i guess because the whole thing about publishing is you work to a pub date
all the time so publication date and with the critical path like you have the key stages there
and if you don't hit one of those key stages it could eventually affect the publication date so
i suppose everyone is kind of working under time pressure all the time there's always deadlines for
everything that you do like i mentioned because of the fact that you work with other teams all the
time they might be waiting on you to do something equally you might be waiting on someone else
to do something as well so i think yeah i completely agree time management is really
important so they're kind of like the main ones it seems like the top one two three four five six
and so i would say if you're a publishing hopeful and you're looking to show your skills incorporate
this somewhere i mean it will probably say on the job description as well which you should always be
referring to it would probably say that you have to work as a team and i think showing examples of
this will be really beneficial so show that you can work as a team but show you how you
can work independently how has your independent work affected the team like like in a positive
way communication how have you shown that you've communicated with someone really important or
navigated something within a really tight time scale like time schedule i think anything like
that any examples you can give will be really beneficial because publishers always do look for
making like making sure that you have transferable skills and according to my survey these are the
most common ones so if you have examples of that great then there's passion i don't
think anyone would be in publishing if we weren't passionate about it i mean it's not exactly the
most well paid profession and i think everyone is in publishing because they love publishing
they love books they love journals whatever it is that they work in when i've kind of helped people
looking at their cvs and cover letters etc i see a lot of time people proven their passion you know
have you got a bookstagram where you do all your reviews on there i think there's a lot
of ways that you can show your passion i mean for me personally i use this youtube channel as a way
to show my passion and that i'm passionate about the industry and i'm passionate about educating
other people on the industry yeah passion i think everyone probably has it if you're looking for a
job in publishing you probably already have the passion again it's just about proving it then
there's awareness of the industry 100 and i think almost this one should be more important as well
because you need to know what's going on around you to be able to affect the decisions that you
make today so i think it's really important that you keep on top of that the industry as a whole
so looking at the bookseller getting going to all these events etc but also knowing what's
happening in the the whole world so brexit for example if that's going on are you going to
publish a book about brexit because that's what everyone's talking about coronaviruses they're
going to be loaded but i mean i'm sure there's going to be so many books about coronavirus
but yeah i think just a general knowledge of the industry as whole and how other departments
work will really really benefit you and this creativity i'm quite surprised that this is quite
high because i do think yeah it is a creative industry it's kind of like an arts industry
but and i don't think all roles in publishing require creative skills and finance is still
like a large part of publishing but if you all say like a royalties specialist you don't really need
to be creative for that in my opinion i mean maybe a royalty specialist will now come at me and say
yes you absolutely need to be creative to be in my role but i think the more creative departments are
probably like marketing publicity when you're organizing campaigns etc maybe cover designers
because they have to use obviously their creative skills to create the covers email sql i think this
is one that is really important and i think you can brush this off brush this up in any job that
you have beforehand you don't necessarily have to have direct publishing experience to get this
skill nailed knowing how to contact people in things like your signature make sure that's really
clear make sure that you give like if you need to give a deadline make sure that's really clear that
you're being nice at the same time especially if you're working with people like authors
every publishing house cares so much about the authors and you need to show that if you're
contact with them directly you absolutely need to show that problem solving i do think this one is
i mean it's kind of like in any job i think it definitely comes up in publishing a lot where
there's there's exceptions or there's a particular title that's being difficult or different there's
always things that come up especially in my role where it doesn't kind of follow the traditional
path or the traditional workflow or whatever and i think that yeah being able to problem solve is
really key so if you've got any examples of that show that on your cover letter show that
on your cv whatever it is how you came up with the solution or how you as a team came up with
a solution how you solve that problem and then sort of the other ones on there so flexibility i
mean i do agree with that learning from feedback i think is really really important as well i mean i
i'm i feel like i pride myself on that if someone gives me a piece of feedback i do take that into
account resilience professionalism writing i mean it's quite ironic that you work in the publishing
industry and everyone's put writing i mean in the lower third of how important it is obviously it
probably depends on your writing skills more when you're like in an editorial department
confidence i completely agree and i saw something about this on i think it was on twitter about um
can you work in publishing if you're introverted and absolutely you can it's not all about
being loud and being confident there are plenty of roles where you can always take
a back seat and you can be behind the screen you don't necessarily have to be people-facing
yeah i mean confidence obviously does help in anything you do especially if you're say
you're working in sales you'll probably have to do a lot of sales pitches a lot of presentations
talk at different meetings so confidence is obviously useful but i can completely understand
that's more of a personal skill where i say like time management you can work on that quite
easily i would say was and confidence is quite a personal thing they'll probably take quite a
toll on you personally so i think amazing if you do have a lot of confidence but obviously it shows
from my story here that it's not absolutely vital good listener was on here as well presentation
skills this is the one that shocked me the most i can't believe people said this using software
was one of the last ones on here if you work in publishing tell me you don't use a piece of
software every single day that you didn't use before you joined publishing biblio collection
point focal point whatever it is you didn't know that before you joined the publishing industry
there's publishing software that is industry specific like biblio and we use that all the time
i mean you join the publishing industry and you have no idea what biblio is you have no idea what
this ancient system is that people are using and it's like this whole world i just think i'm really
shocked that people said that using software is not that important because i think no matter
what department in you're in you're probably gonna have to use a content management system
you're probably gonna have to use this system for invoices for sharing your files for storing your
files anything like that so i don't agree with what people are saying on this because i think
using software is a really important skill but having said that if you're a publishing hopeful
and you're looking to get into the publishing publishing industry i understand that you wouldn't
have necessarily used that software before but i think just generally to survive in the publishing
industry you need to know how to use your company software if you can brush up a different software
even using things like excel microsoft word and powerpoint anything like that i think is
really beneficial so if you don't use the specific publishing industry software brush up on the other
software skills then there's honesty social media i mean again i think that's more like department
specific so you'd use that in publicity a lot for example negotiation leadership and design
is right at the bottom not a lot of people said you need design skills i think people probably
work with design a lot they'll look at covers they'll know maybe what works and what doesn't but
yeah i guess i suppose if you're not working in the direct design department you won't
necessarily need those skills so i hope you found that useful there definitely are a lot of skills
that you need to have to work in publishing but i think it is you know you don't have to have a
university degree to work in publishing i am proof of that you didn't need a university degree so i
think it does rely on transferable skills and a lot of these you can get from other jobs other
experience that you do so if you are looking to get into the publishing industry just make sure
you've got these skills under your belt make sure you've got examples to hand how you can
prove that in your cover letter in interview etc i hope you did find this useful do let me know
down in the comments below if you did find it useful and hopefully see you in my next one bye