Editorial Assistant Jobs

An editorial assistant performs a range of administrative and editorial tasks necessary to get publications published. An editorial assistant experiences all aspects of publishing by assisting senior editorial staff in the administration of the commissioning, planning, and production of books, journals, magazines, and a broad range of publicity materials. An editorial assistant liaises with other in-house teams, writers, photographers, printers, designers, and production staff to negotiate and monitor timescales for stages in the publishing process. An editorial assistant deals with the administration of work commissioned to freelance writers, picture researchers, photographers, stylists, and illustrators. An editorial assistant organizes and researches projects according to tight deadlines, summarizes written material, corrects manuscripts, and obtains rights to use materials from other publications. An editorial assistant rewrites or modifies copy to conform to a publication’s style and editorial policy and marks copy for the typesetter, using standard symbols to indicate how type should be set. An editorial assistant reads galley and page proofs to detect errors and indicates corrections, using standard proofreading symbols. An editorial assistant confers with authors regarding changes made to manuscripts.

An editorial assistant position requires a bachelor’s degree and at least two years of experience in areas related to publishing, maintaining information, and administrative tasks. An editorial assistant should possess the advanced writing skills needed to compose letters, memos, and other miscellaneous correspondence. An editorial assistant should possess strong proofreading skills and have extensive knowledge of grammar and punctuation. An editorial assistant should be familiar with major word processing software programs.