I provided a sensitivity reading for a friend who is published by a major company in 2025 as a freelancer. We had a brief discussion of payment over email where they said they would send me a contract for payment (lots of waffling about not having enough in budget) but I never received this or any payment. Is it still worth pursuing or should I drop it?

Hey, I am a junior in college with one multimedia internship under my belt, and my dream is to work in publishing and eventually become an author. I applied for a penguin internship just because I figured I might as well, but I'm having trouble planning more realistic career paths. Is working in publishing realistic? If not, are there other jobs that would be more realistic for me as an English major? Would really appreciate advice from anyone with more experience as I don't know many people in this field.

Tl;dr: editor is ghosting me after offering for my book

So this year I finally got an agent after many years (I’ve been writing for smaller publishers who don’t require agents). Book went on sub in about February, we waited and waited, only one editor was interested. I met with her, and told my agent to go ahead with the offer. This was in July. Editor contacted agent a few times to pass on information about the sort of contract offered and asked about sales information for my previous books, etc.

This all happened over the summer, which can be slow in publishing. My agent and the editor were both away at various times, as was I, but when September rolled around and I’d still heard nothing, I started to politely harass my agent.

And she cannot get the editor to reply.

Now, as I said I’ve been an author for a long time (since the days of printing out manuscripts and paying for postage) and I know how slow publishing can be. (I once wrote a whole book before my then-editor replied to say she didn’t like the outline I’d sent her.) But currently, my agent cannot get any response out of this editor. The last contact we had from her was at the beginning of August. Agent has emailed and phoned but it goes to voicemail. I’ve even asked a friend at the same publisher to check the editor is still working there (she is) and isn’t sick or off work for any reason (she isn’t).

My agent, who has been in the business even longer than me (between us we’ve racked up about 50 years) is baffled. She’s never been ghosted like this by an editor who was very keen to buy the book. We both know they can be so slow to reply, or even fail to reply at all, to a submission, but this is way beyond the submission stage.

Agent has now called editor and said if you don’t want the book, just tell us. (I’ll probably end up self publishing and I hate self publishing.) Still nothing.

Is this a new thing editors are doing now? Has anyone else experienced this?

Hi all, I’m a creative writing student and I’m doing some research on genre representation in the publishing industry. The question I’ve chosen to ask is : ‘Are public platforms like booktok reducing diversity in what type of story is published?’ By this I mean are genres able to be purely just romance or horror or sci-fi anymore or do they always have to be a buzzword hybrid now, and are algorithmic tropes once almost entirely confined to fan-fiction becoming the only plots we are seeing go to shelves? I wanted to ask an online community myself to get some primary research to cite for my essay so I’d love it if you could give me your takes on this topic!

Hi guys! I graduated two years ago and have been looking for a job in publishing ever since. Nothing seems to be sticking. I’ve been getting interviews, but lately, even those emails have stopped coming. Rejection after rejection, that’s par for the course. For more context, I’ve had three publishing internships, am currently working freelance, and have two degrees in writing and publishing. I was wondering if anyone else is in a similar position or has been through this and decided to pivot away from publishing. I’ve applied to digital publishing and magazines, but a lot of those roles seem to prefer candidates with a journalism degree, which I don’t have. I’d really appreciate any advice on other fields that might align with my background and experience. I’m open to exploring new paths, but I’m not quite sure where to start.