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The Society is a member of the Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd)

Dear Ed archive

June 2009

Dear Ed

You’re a miserable sod! I bet you couldn’t even come up with ten good things about working in-house!
Very Happy In-house, of Port Melbourne

Dear Very Happy

It was gratifying to find that I had a reader, so thanks for the challenge. I haven’t worked in-house for some years so some of this might read like Dear Ed Climbs the Faraway Tree. Also, I worked for several local publishers that were so exceptional they don’t exist anymore. Mergers, buy-outs and corporate equity have made some parts of the Australian publishing landscape unrecognisable, but I’ll give it a nudge. Herewith ten good things about working in-house, all of them to be cherished.

1. Birthday lunches. Ah, remember these? You’d pre-book a restaurant, then squish five people into each car to get there, returning two hours later feeling overfed and slightly guilty, but with a bond that no management talkfest could ever create.
2. Working relationships. While not exactly a fiery furnace, relationships forged between teams of designers and editors working on books together outlast most marriages.
3. Paid holidays. What a concept! You mean I used to get paid not to work? That my employer valued my contributions to such an extent that they encouraged me not to work so that I could come back refreshed and contribute even more? Amazing.
4. Camaraderie. It boosts camaraderie no end if your boss is a basketcase or a lower-order psychopath. If the sound of your boss’s footsteps make your heart rate increase then it’s odds-on the staff will bond together to survive. Which brings me to …
5. Laughter. There’s not a lot of laughter when you sit in an office on your own. When I think back to the most despotic place I ever worked, all I recall is laughing like a drain. But, yeah, it was a different era: 1996 PBC* to be exact (*Pre-BeanCounter).
6. Cycling to work. This is the absolute best way to get some activity in your editorial day. You arrive at work oxygenated and 100 per cent awake and you can chew through the morning’s work in an hour.
7. Teamwork. I love working in a team. It’s unique, something to be cherished. The whole idea of having one entity with four brains and eight hands can, when harnessed, create absolute publishing magic. (See my book Big Teams: Why Do They Always Contain a Wally? for further detail.)
8. Deadline buzz. That feeling you get when a bunch of people are all working eyeballs-out to hit the same deadline and the whole company feels like it’s just shifted into hyperdrive.
9. Christmas parties. Sure, they ranged from the daggy to the inspired, and you may not necessarily have wanted to see that guy from Marketing wearing a Tarzan loincloth, but the whole company would buzz with anticipation before and keep buzzing with stories afterwards. Memo to HR: A happy worker is an effective worker.
10. Work is a noun, not a verb. It’s a place you go to and come back from, and with a bit of luck you can leave work (v.) at work (n.), where it belongs.

Well, thanks for the trip down memory lane. Next month I’ll be reading excerpts from Dear Ed Goes to Kirrin Island.

Ed