My career

Although the publishing industry is in decline, there are still people who want to enter this industry out of love for words, out of a little affection for publishing, and for literati.

Of course, apart from lower income and busy work, the publishing industry is not all bad. At least, it is very suitable for those who like reading, but have a quiet personality and do not like to socialize.

I am very supportive of people who want to enter the industry. After all, they have thought carefully and have their own ideas.

So as a newcomer who knows nothing but enthusiasm, what are the requirements to join the industry? (Take proofreading as an example)

1. A bachelor’s degree is sufficient. Publishing houses have very strict academic requirements. For example, at the publishing house I work for now, most of the proofreaders are master's degree students, let alone editors. But for general publishing houses, only a bachelor's degree is enough. For those who already have extensive proofreading experience, the academic qualification requirement can be lowered.

Nowadays, the population of college students is quite large, so this condition is easy to meet.

2. Any major is acceptable. Publishing houses are often divided into many sections, especially those that publish textbooks for all majors in liberal arts and sciences. But relatively speaking, most of them are in the liberal arts, because most of the books on the market are social science books.

Perhaps some people think that publishing houses mainly recruit graduates majoring in editing and publishing, right? No. Students majoring in editing and publishing do not have any advantage. On the contrary, students majoring in Chinese language, literature and history are more popular because they require talents with solid basic knowledge.

Even if you are an unpopular science graduate, you can still be competent as long as you have solid basic knowledge. There is a biology teacher in our club who changed careers and came to do proofreading.

3. Solid basic knowledge. This is also the most basic and important point. You don’t even know that there is something wrong with this word or sentence, so how can you correct it? Even if you don't understand, you still have to be sensitive and feel that there may be something wrong here, and then use tools to find out at a glance.

When the publishing house recruits people, it will prepare a set of written test questions, some of which are difficult and some are easy. Some will be very comprehensive, including typos, pinyin, numbers, punctuation, etc.; there will be multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, and paragraph modification questions. And some are just a few paragraphs, allowing you to spot typos and wrong punctuation.

Often a set of test questions will eliminate a large number of unsuitable people, but for those with solid basic knowledge, these test questions are nothing more than a piece of cake. The interview seemed less important.

With the third point, the first two points become less important.

Now that you have met these conditions, how do you find a job in this field?

Publishers are the first choice. There are about 500 publishing houses across the country, of which more than 300 are in Beijing. Therefore, if you want to join this industry, you still have to go to the capital, or at least the provincial capital. Guangzhou is pretty good, with nearly 20 stores.

In addition, you can work in magazines, newspapers, and book companies. Relatively speaking, book companies are the easiest to get into, and they are also very training. As a newcomer, if you can't get into a publishing house, you can choose to join a book company.

They all publish recruitment information on websites such as Zhaopin and 51job, while publishing houses mainly publish recruitment information on their official websites and the official websites of their groups. There are even examples of people who took the initiative to go to the location of other people’s publishing houses and asked if they were recruiting people, and were successful.

Finally, I would like to give some advice:

1. Proofreading is very poor. People who want high wages should not enter this industry. In Guangzhou, my salary is only nearly 6,000 yuan. In addition, I also work part-time as a manuscript reader, which can earn about 2,000 yuan. In short, it is still not up to the average salary in Guangzhou.

2. Proofreading is very busy and tiring, so you have to be mentally prepared. Almost everyone has several manuscripts queuing up, and our agency reads at least 1.2 million words every month. Reading ancient texts and history is very difficult and tiring. I don’t know how many brain cells die every month.

3. The manuscript is terrible and the content is boring, so you have to calm down.

Nowadays, many authors write manuscripts with many typos and illogical sentences. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that they are caused by typos. When I got it in my hands, the quality was really bad. Sometimes when you look at it, you can't help but complain, and it even arouses your desire to write, because you feel that you can write better than him.

4. If you are troubled by a series of occupational diseases, please pay attention to rest. One is vision loss. Reading manuscripts every day makes my eyes very tired. My eyesight is still declining and I suffer from dry eye syndrome. My eyes hurt after reading for a while, which is miserable. The second is cervical pain. Many colleagues have deformed their cervical vertebrae due to working at their desks for long periods of time, which cannot be cured at all. So we must pay attention to rest.

Every industry has its pros and cons, but as long as you persist, you will always gain something. Especially for those who want to achieve self-employment, this is a good path.