Yesterday, we revealed the world’s highest-paid authors, but what about the editors responsible for digging through piles and piles of manuscripts in search of the next promising talent? Or the ones working late to edit the breaking news that will show up on your e-reader?
According to the anonymous job Web site, Glassdoor, New York editors in the publishing industry (which includes books, magazines, and newspapers) have an average salary of $53,500 a year. An editor at Penguin averages $55,125 a year while an editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt averages $49,920 a year. An associate editor at Random House averages $44,920 a year; this figure is based five different salaries ranging from $42,000 to $49,000.
Earlier last week, Folio magazine released its 2011 Editorial Salary Survey for magazine editors. The results revealed a significant increase in editor-in-chief salaries in three out of four geographic regions; the West saw average salaries drop to $72,400—down from $83,000 in 2010. Editorial director salaries in the New York area averaged $108,900 (a spike of about $10,000 up from last year). A gender gap between male and female editorial executives still remains, according to the numbers, despite the increase in both salary pools. In 2005, New York magazine published “Who Makes How Much,” a salary guide giving us a brassy look into the bank accounts of media’s biggest names. Salaries ranged from $650,000 for a newspaper editor to $1 million prominent title at a Condé Nast publication.
Readex Research, the company that conducted the survey, revealed that digital duties added the most to editor job descriptions this year. The duties ranged from editing for iPads to social media site management. Britt Aboutaleb, a style news editor for Elle magazine, oversees the news section of Elle.com, and spends about 60% of her day editing and then the rest of it working on writing Web site features. In between that, she squeezes in as many market appointments and interviews as possible. “I’m also officially addicted to the speed of the Internet,” she said. “I suppose the downside of that, though, is that if I’m away from the computer for more than an hour, I spend the rest of the day playing catch up.”
However, an editor’s life—at publishing companies both big and small—is no easy or glamorous task (even if you are Jackie O, who, in fact, was an editor at Viking and Doubleday). Respondents in Folio’s salary survey admitted to feeling overworked and under-appreciated. But the secret for editors, it seems, lies in having a good eye and a passion for creativity.
Jeremy Davies, a book editor over at the nonprofit Dalkey Archive Press, says he averages about 55 hours of work per week. “This might be more than other staff members, but then I guess that the totals even out to be fairly similar at the end of the year when you count conferences, event coordination, and production work over the weekend,” he said. “Part of the terror and magnificence of publishing is that there isn’t really a way to anticipate what will end up falling into my lap on a daily basis.”
So what exactly does it take to be a book editor? At Dalkey Archive Press, a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, Davies says he expects a book editor at the Press to have a solid grounding in the transitions represented by the company. “There is such a thing as a ‘Dalkey’ book, and an editor has to know one when she sees one,” he said.
“But, to be sappy about it, we’re looking for love and a commitment to a kind of lifestyle—by no means a cushy one—and not necessarily just competence.” The job, he says, is not possible to describe in one sentence: “It’s a meaningful stare, perhaps. With one eye wandering.”
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