Case studies: Editorial assistant: Lucy Smith

Lucy graduated from the University of Southampton in 2010 with a degree in English. She works for Crimson Publishing as an editorial assistant.

After graduation, I completed a number of short-term unpaid internships, a month at a time, before securing a year-long paid internship at my current company. After nine months in the role, I was lucky enough to be promoted to editorial assistant.

The subject of my degree is very relevant in my current job. Editing involves a lot of rewriting and a good eye for detail, which are skills you need during an English degree. I think English is the preferred degree for editorial but there are people with history and business degrees. A lot of the skills you need are transferrable from any degree.

My days are very varied and my tasks depend on what projects the rest of the team are working on. I'll certainly do some admin, amending publication dates on our database or processing author contracts. I'll also do some author liaison, emailing our authors regarding payments or the status of their manuscript. I may have a cover brief, which involves writing a design brief for the layout of a book's front and back cover and also the back cover copy blurb. I'll also dedicate time to editorial projects, spot checking, proofreading or development editing a manuscript (to help one of the commissioning editors), or completing picture research.

The longer I've been in the role, the more actual editorial projects I've been able to take on, alongside my admin. As we are a small publishers, I've had lots of opportunities and have become involved in e-books and rights as well as editing two of my own projects. Ideally I want to do more development editing and eventually work my way up to the role of commissioning editor.

I love working with a range of books and seeing a project develop from the conception of an idea to the final physical book. It's really varied, which is great as no day is completely the same. I love working with great content and good authors to create books that we can be proud of.

There are lots of different elements to my job and sometimes it can be difficult to balance them all and to manage my time effectively. Also working in publishing has opened my eyes to the challenges of commercial viability, which I was initially naïve about. It's a continual challenge to make our books profitable. It's also difficult sometimes to manage our authors' expectations when the sales of a book don't quite live up to their hopes.

The best things about working in this sector are that the people are really friendly and you're working in a creative environment. There are opportunities to learn about a range of departments and to progress to a number of different roles. You can develop a specialism in an area of books you are passionate about, for instance, business books.

Publishing is a very tough industry to break into and you will need to be prepared to work for free or for a very low salary initially. Relevant experience is essential so try to complete as much work experience as you can before applying for permanent jobs. If you do decide it's the career for you, your perseverance will eventually pay off and the result will be rewarding work in a creative and fun environment.