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Last updated Mar 01 2025
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Editorial Assistant Reviews
What is it like working as an Editorial Assistant?
January 2020
Difficult to find jobs and companies pay low salaries. Large numbers of applicants hustle for very limited job openings.
Editorial Assistant in Cape Town:
Pros: Working from home, flexi-time.
Cons: Low salaries.
November 2019
I like this kind of work.
Editorial Assistant in Burnaby:
Pros: interaction with like minded individuals, interesting research relevant with interests and formal education
Cons: the commute, feel the pay is low for my input
August 2019
At the heart of book publishing in Canada.
Editorial Assistant in Edmonton:
Pros: I work with 10 publishers that publish a range of genres, including fiction and nonfiction, nature reference guides, cookbooks, children's books and Indigenous titles.
Cons: There is a lack of time flexibility.
January 2019
A Foot in the Door.
Editorial Assistant in Sydney:
Pros: Great people to work with, convenient location, opportunity to learn a lot across a wide variety of jobs
Cons: Management is completely disconnected from their employees and has no idea how to run a company in the modern age. Terrible office space: dark, badly lit, always having problems. Low pay and management will continuously pile more and more work on you and you have to accept it in order to get a moderate pay increase.
January 2019
Stressful but hopeful.
Editorial Assistant in Johannesburg:
Pros: It's my hometown
Cons: The traffic and life work balance isn't great
November 2016
Mentally exhausting and very low pay.
Editorial Assistant:
Pros: I generally like doing most of the work; it's interesting if a bit on the administrative side.
Cons: The problem is the volume of work, and waking up on weekends from nightmares about forgetting all the tiny, tiny ongoing tasks you are tracking that have multiple variables impacting your role in the larger project.
July 2016
Learning to swallow your pride.
Editorial Assistant:
Pros: Being an Editorial Assistant is rewarding in that it teaches you to be incredibly organized, hone your formal correspondence voice in numerous emails, and gain a clear understanding of the publishing process/order of operations. In my case, I am learning a lot about medical journal publishing (I work for a Doctor who specializes in Sleep Medicine). The pay can be decent if you work in a city.
Cons: You have to be incredibly careful about making mistakes, perhaps more so than in other entry level writing jobs. There is a lot at stake when you send the wrong email and accept a manuscript that was meant to be rejected, or if you become overwhelmed by language editing and can't find that one article that your boss needs. The key is to ask lots of questions and only act alone if the boss has shown that they trust you. Otherwise, always ask questions and triple check everything. You do need to stand up for yourself a lot--just because you're entry level doesn't mean that you don't have a voice. Don't allow yourself to get trampled on by your older, more experienced coworkers.
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