done--almost entirely about magazines (and kinda long). : >

being in Boston is a problem tho...

email me and i'll tell you who to email with questions about various fields.

Hi Miko,

I am an editor/office manager/sales person/logistics person/IT department/finance person/webmaster/janitor at a small indie press. I have a film degree. I got the job through connections and basically by being willing to do things that the other dillitantes editors didn't want to do or were not capable of doing. Then I brazened my way into editing by being a lifelong book nerd. Getting in sideways seems to work best at small presses because there are so few people for so much work. Personally I don't want to work at a big press anyway (unless it's maybe TOR, call me TOR).

Boston/New England has some good presses, look around and call them up. Technical knowledge seems to help a bunch as does being willing to intern and then busting your ass. The pay is so low, basically all the jobs are entry level no matter what stage of your career/professional life you are at. I mostly love it. I'd happily answer specifc questions via email or here as well.

I freelance now, but I used to be on staff at a relatively small trade publication. A few of my colleagues were people who had made career changes. They all started at a bit above entry level, but moved up the ranks pretty quickly.

You would probably have no trouble getting hired by a smaller publication. Even if you have to work at someplace like Boston Bingo Weekly for awhile, you'll quickly be able to get the experience you need to move on to something a bit more your style.

My e-mail is in my profile. Feel free to contact me.

specific questions as well.

You guys are great, thanks. It may take me a while to email you all and start moving along, but I will.

the money's bad everywhere i think, unless you freelance. (and then you have to cover health and stuff)

I have a lot of friends working in media. I know the money's not like in banking, but compared to nonprofit administration, it's actually a better-paying field.

Good lord you must pay them!

It's just about that bad, D_W.

I love when it comes around to Annual Fund time, and the president turns around and asks us to contribute to the museum.

Hi Miko -- I'm an editor in the publications dept. at the LA County Museum of Art (and freelance as a writer and editor on the side); I work mostly on books, but also do a lot of exhibition materials, brochures, etc. over the years. My path here was kinda roundabout. My BA is in English and I worked for a short while right after college in marketing and sub rights at an academic publisher in New York. Pretty soon thereafter I went to grad school, and got an MA in American Studies. After that I moved to Chicago and worked a bunch of odd jobs for about a year (cocktail waitress; SAT tutor; office manager for a commerical photographer), plus published a few clips in local music mags until I got a junior copywriting job for the marketing dept. at an insurance company. I stayed there for several years, where my boss also mentored me a bit as a proofreader. I also started taking small proofreading/editing freelance gigs on the side -- working on a colleague's website, for example, or volunteering to proof/copy edit the newsletter for one of the political activist groups I was a part of.

Then I wound up getting a job in content development for a distance learning company, which meant doing a buttload of research/writing/editing on a sort of semi-technical level (plus continued to volunteer/freelance on stuff.) I also got a few more copy writing gigs, primarily through a friend of mine who works in the music biz in L.A. Once I moved out to L.A. myself, I basically just framed myself as an all-around wordsmith, and got a freelance research gig at LACMA. It was supposed to last six weeks, but I made a point of making myself indisepnsible to the project (and to the department in general), which meant they kept giving me more research and editing projects to do, till finally after a year or so of extending my freelance contract they hired me full-time nearly 5 years ago. (I also kept picking up freelance writing and editing gigs on the side, almost exclusively through networking at that point.)

So that's my tale -- it's not the conventional way into publishing, but it does go to show that you can frame experience in a whole host of ways. Taking classes is a good way to network, too -- lots of continuing ed. programs may have short courses on the basics of copyediting and/or proofreading, and even creative writing classes can lead to freelance gigs -- I freelanced as a copywriter/reviewer for AOL for years via a friend I made in a humor writing class at UCLA. Also, what about putting up flyers on a campus offering to proofread dissertations? I've proofed some diss's over the years and it's a handy way to become familiar with various style guides, too (Chicago, MLA, etc.).

Of course, feel free to email me with any questions!