Pub Talk with Jane Palfreyman

Pub Talk is an interview series where we chat to some of Australia’s most experienced and influential people in publishing and the arts.

You first entered publishing in 1985. Could you tell us how you got your start? I understand that you learned almost everything on the job.

Yes. (Laughs.) It was a long time ago. There weren’t any courses or anything like that back then. I started out as a sales rep for Pan Macmillan because someone had given me the really good advice that you can’t stick around waiting for your ideal job—which for me was editing—so just try to get into the industry any way you can. So that was my first proper job.

I was driving all over country NSW selling books, which was a great way to start in the industry, seeing how different markets work. And then I was a rep at the airports, and the publishing director was going to Frankfurt or something, and we had drinks, and I told him that I had a literature background from uni and that I was interested in getting into editing. When he came back, he said, ‘Okay, we’ll give you a go’. And Penny Hueston, who was working at Pan Macmillan at the time [now senior editor at Text], gave me a manuscript to edit, looked over my edits and was like, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ (Laughs.) So I became an editor!

Everyone does learn on the job, all the time, but that was an incredibly lucky break. For people who want to get into the industry, just getting in any way you can is still the best thing to do, and then just show enthusiasm in your area of interest.