Editing in the Publishing Industry

In a world of increasing technology and screen-oriented media, the publishing industry may seem in peril. Publishing houses produce books in hard copy: bound pages with covers and margins, illustrations and carefully considered fonts, of a certain size and weight with a tangible nature important to English majors and other literary connoisseurs. The emergence of ebooks from Amazon and Apple spurs some of us into a preservationist tirade. We like to dog-ear our pages, scribble our notes in the free spaces and collect more than one edition of a favorite text. Or for those who prefer their library pristine, carefully preserved and leather-bound works may be a bookshelf staple considered an essential element of one’s personality. It’s tempting to see the world in black and white: with the dawn of ebooks, real books are doomed. In fact the issue presents daunting complexities, but nothing indicates that the publishing industry and the iPad or Kindle cannot find a way to live in harmony.

Careers in publishing persist. Authors are getting published; editors have plenty of submissions to consider and the resources to produce them.