Joining ABR: Our new Editorial Intern reports on his first week

Mark Gomes

Beginnings like the one I have experienced as nascent editorial intern at the Australian Book Review are the stuff of dream fiction and inspirational memoir. Only a week has transpired of my six-month, Australian Publishers Association-funded placement at the magazine, and already I am irrevocably changed in terms of self-recognition and editing knowledge. I am by no means a fatalist, but the feeling I have is of uncanny arrival at a place I am meant to be: of shapeless aspiration made flesh, or rather, made stacks of review pages to be copy-edited. Out of hours have passed in an unreal fug as the realisation of my appointment and what it means in real terms of opportunity sets in. To be plain, this has been one of the best weeks of my life, and I envisage with great joy how I am to be ultimately transformed by the internship.

Allow me some biographical and publishing industry context to explain what may sound like hyperbole. I have spent the better part of ten years looking for a break in the world of Australian letters; first as a freelance writer and then, like so many editing and publishing graduates, lingering in trade publishing divisions other than editorial. Work has been constant and diversionary – detours in science publishing, the visual arts matrix and music criticism included – but with each new hustle the carrot of literary involvement telescoped away, or so it seemed. Try as I might, publishers’ and magazines’ editorial and proofing services, I learnt, are inevitably sewn up in-house or provided by long-serving freelancers, retired staff or those on maternity or paternity leave. Thus, I could only steel myself in wait for serendipity’s embrace.

ABR is a lean and exacting operation and the ideal place to learn editing and publishing procedure. Peter Rose, Rebecca Starford and Lorraine Harding have welcomed me as one of their own, and immediately set me to work across all aspects of the magazine’s production. I have everything to learn about commissioning, editing to house style, proofing, layout, administration and the magazine’s esteemed family of contributors. So far I have been most impressed by the sheer efficiency of planning required to publish to monthly deadlines, and, as a corollary, the general pace at which the publishing cycle unfurls. With luck and some serious mental grist, six months will be time enough for me not only to master the refined ways of ABR’s production, but also to creatively contribute to its future.

Extra and interesting certification of having arrived at the perfect place to conduct my internship was further provided last Thursday, when I attended an ‘Introduction to Australian Publishing’ seminar run by the Australian Publishers Association. This marvellously informative day featured presentations from an array of established industry professionals, each one an expert in their chosen discipline and running the gamut from commissioning editorial through marketing, publicity and retail book selling. Some of the major publishers were represented, and although I loved every minute of their racy anecdotes about big money deals, celebrity authors and company machinations, in the end they fortified my uncanny feeling that there is no better fit for me than ABR in terms of sensibility, publishing content, mission ethos and personnel.