How exactly does one become a book editor? I sat down with Charlotte Green, the Senior Assistant Commissioning Editor for Psychology and Social Work titles in the Oxford office, to discuss some common questions about her role, her interest in publishing, and her time at Oxford University Press.
When did you start working at the Press?
In May 2007. I was lucky enough to get onto the OUP internship scheme, starting immediately after my final exams at university. I’ve worked here ever since. Initially I worked as an Assistant Production Editor, staying with the production team for 18 months. A position then opened up in the editorial team and I transferred across.
When did you first become interested in publishing?
From age dot. I always wanted to work with books and words, so publishing fitted that bill. I was the child falling asleep at the front of the classroom because I’d stayed up most of the night hiding under my bed sheets with a torch, finishing my current book. I just always knew I wanted to put books out into the world.
Even now books are getting me into trouble at home. My partner has a one-in-one-out policy when it comes to our bookshelves, which is a constant source of argument.
Why were you drawn to working on psychology books?
I think everyone is an amateur psychologist at heart. Walk into any cocktail bar on a Friday night and you’ll see groups of girls giving each other advice. Likewise in pubs or the grandstands, boys will be doing the same (but probably in far fewer words). People are fascinating. Being given the chance to work on the books that bring research in those topics to a wide audience, that is a true honour and I count myself lucky every single day that I get to be a part of that.
What is a typical day like for you as an editor?
The simple answer is that there is no such thing as a typical day; that is one of the reasons why I love my job. The only constant is communication. I spend most of my day communicating with people. Whether that be through email, on the phone, or in person; be it with other members of OUP, or external suppliers, or my authors, I spend all of my day chatting and that is amazing! Naturally I also spend a lot of time reading. Again, I read from a publisher’s perspective, not an academic’s, so I won’t be reading to spot factual errors, but instead for readability and formatting errors
What skills do you find to be the most important in your work as an editor?
Communication. Everything else you can learn but you are either born with outstanding communication skills or you aren’t. I receive between 100 and 160 emails a day. My phone will ring upwards of 10 times a day. I have no less than three hour-long meetings a day. None of that can be achieved unless you can radiate an aura of calm authority and get your meaning across in a confident manner.
How has academic publishing changed since you started working here?
When I started I worked in production. At that point we just had one focus: we were given a stack of printed A4 sheets and told to make a book out of them. There was no guidance, no hand holding. I was just abandoned with a (often very heavy) pile of paper and told to go forth and create a book. Eight months later the editor might stick their head around my office door and say, got that book yet? Now there are huge expectations, not just surrounding the advent of digital, although that plays a massive part in it. But everybody wants things more quickly, more cheaply, and just more of it.
What are you reading at the moment?
At work I’m reading chapters from three different volumes., one of which is Christopher Eccleston’s The Psychology of the Body, which will go into production in February/March time and publish late 2015. Each chapter of Chris’s book takes a different aspect of the human body (such as breathing) and looks at how psychology can affect its functionality.
At home I’m reading Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott, which is an autobiography of a girl growing up in Botswanna during the AIDS crisis. It’s both funny and sad and I would thoroughly recommend it.
If you could have a dinner party with your favourite famous psychologists, who would make the guest list?
The first invite would have to go to Professor Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo led a team of researchers in the early 1970s looking at the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. He conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), in which 24 male students from Stanford University were randomly assigned the role either of guard or prisoner. Zimbardo and his team watched as behaviour changed dramatically: prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and the guards readily harassed those in their care. It looked at human behaviour and forced us to ask, what would we do in a position of authority? You can watch original footage taken from the experiment here:
My second invite would go to someone who isn’t a psychologist in the traditional sense, Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Levi’s 1947 memoir If this is a man (UK edition) or Survival in Auschwitz (US edition) and its sequel describe his experiences as an Italian Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz and then life after the camp’s liberation. Levi’s biographies provide insights into a human being’s behaviour under duress. What it takes to survive and how one copes with the random nature of survival.
My final invite would go to Professor Colwyn Trevarthen. He is a psychologist working in the field of infant development who has been instrumental in some pretty major policy changes in early years education here in the UK.