How do I break into publishing?
Publishing is indeed a tough business to break into–I had numerous extracurriculars related to publishing, writing awards, a publishing internship, and an English degree from a top liberal arts college, and it still took me years after graduation to get my first “big break” (as a editorial assistant). I’d encourage you to see if you can find a way to bypass this traditional path while building up your credentials to do what you really want to do–say, look for an accounting job at a publishing house while volunteering for an online sci-fi fiction zine and taking a few publishing classes.
May not seem like much of a consolation, but the starting salaries for entry level jobs at most major book publishers have broken the $30K mark by now. And it’s worth noting that most editorial assistants do (and learn) much more than faxing and making copies. Only a year and a half experience in the business world would hardly qualify you to skip from editorial assistant even to assistant editor and that’s if that experience were editorial. You can transition, sure, and it’s a good time to do it, too. (You’re still young but not super green–good combo for people looking for assistants). But you’d have no idea how to do the job of an editor above assistant level, and there’s no way to learn how to do it except by being an assistant. That’s just how the job works. People with many times your years of experience in more closely related fields start at assistant level for editorial. As a literary assistant at an agency, you may actually make less money at first. But you can move up much
