Get a job, sha na na na

I put off mentioning this here until now — I guess so as not to jinx it before it was made official — but I kind of got promoted at work.

A few weeks ago, my boss surprised me by announcing at a team meeting that we were looking to hire a developmental editor. We have a lot of new projects coming in, thanks to some recent acquisitions and new directions the company is moving in, but our group has never had a developmental editor working for it. We’ve had assistants leave the company to become editors at other publishers (including one a little unexpectedly right before the new year), but I wasn’t expecting this for our own little group.

Still, it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and I applied for the position. So now you’re looking at the new Developmental Editor for Routledge Mental Health. I’m both excited and terrified by the prospect.

A lot of the work will be similar to what I’ve done as an Editorial Assistant over the past couple of years. The job is in a lot of ways the same position, only ramped up, as another DE at the company put it. I’ll be responsible for working one-on-one with authors to establish clear development plans for their books, actively reading and offering comments on manuscripts, actually getting in there with my trusty blue pencil while also sussing out the competition to help improve our books where needed.

When exactly I start, and when I stop being an assistant, is…well, still a little up in the air. My boss is still interviewing applicants to replace me in my old position, and that person is going to need training, and there’s going to be a transitional period as we work out exactly what the parameters of the new position are. I think, technically, I start on Tuesday, but we’ll see.

Like I said, it’s both exciting and terrifying.