A day in the life of a Books Editor with Simon Prosser

Join Rhianna as she talks to Simon Prosser about what a typical day is like as a books editor at Penguin Books Simon is a Publishing Director with decades of experience working with authors such as Bernardine Evaristo, Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and Micheal Magee.

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Bonus Episode 2: Transcript

Rhianna Dhillon:

Hello, I'm Rhianna Dhillon. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Penguin Podcast. I'm back with another never before heard moment from Ask Penguin. Because we've had so many amazing guests and fascinating moments, this series, we couldn't fit them all in. As host of the Penguin podcast, I have the immense pleasure of meeting some of the brilliant people behind your favourite books and putting your questions to them, and we get a lot of questions about what goes on behind the scenes at Penguin. Back in 2024, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Simon Prosser. He is publishing director at Hamish Hamilton, one of the many imprints that are part of Penguin, and he's the editor of so many prize-winning writers. Names like Zadie Smith, Bernadine Evaristo, Ali Smith, Arundhati Roy. The list goes on and on. Now, I dunno about you, but Editor is a title that I hear a lot, especially recently on this job, but I'm not always a hundred percent sure what it means on a day-to-day level. So, I asked Simon to talk me through a day in the life of an editor. But actually first I wanted to find out what exactly is an imprint.

Simon Prosser:

So an imprint is like a label, so it's like a record label within a conglomerate. So the Penguin Random House is the conglomerate that's divided into division, quite a number of divisions. I'm part of a division called Penguin General, and within that division there are I think five imprints. There's Hamish Hamilton, there's Viking, there's Fig Tree, there's Penguin Life, and there's actually Sandycove, the Irish part of our business as well. And some of those imprints were started within Penguin. Some of them like Hamish Hamilton were I think possibly only Hamish Hamilton within Penguin General was started outside. It was an independent publisher, started in 1931, I think it was, by Jamie Hamilton, who was a sort of posh Scott, and it was quite a large publisher actually, and remained independent for many, many years. Had a office in Covent Garden with a pub sign outside it that's hanging behind my desk.

Rhianna Dhillon:

Amazing.

Simon Prosser:

And then it was bought by International Thompson, which was a group that also bought Michael Joseph, another penguin imprint and then was sold onto Penguin. So I try and look always back to that history of what Hamish Hamilton was. And within it I cherry picked some writers that I think map onto what I do, and I'm very proud that it, we're coming up to a hundred years that the imprint has been going, first as an independent and now as imprint owned by Penguin.

Rhianna Dhillon:

So with all of those things that you just described, all of the different elements of your job, do you have an average day at the office and if so, what does that look like?

Simon Prosser:

There probably is no average day, although it usually includes a version of all sorts, not nearly enough reading, I can promise you that. I love reading, but finding the space in which to read the office is very difficult. You have, imagine me as a kind of air traffic controller, that's the thing. So all these different projects and they're all at different stages. You could be submitted a manuscript by an agent who you trust and you've worked with a lot and they say, this is brilliant. You really must read this and it's going to go fast. So that's there. It's this thing you could be doing right at the start of the whole process. You could then have another book that you are in the process of competing in an auction for, which means other people have felt as keen as you have and the agent is doing their job, which is trying to get the best home, but also as much money as possible for the author.

So they're going around. So you could be at that stage, you could be at the stage of negotiating the contract, so you've actually won the auction happily, but then you're negotiating the detailed terms of it. By that I mean sort of all the various kinds of royalties, the rights that are allowed, all of that. You'd be thinking about deadlines, timescales, word length. You could then be happily working with another author who you have signed up and they've done a first draught of their book and you've been sent it and you want to read it and help with that. You could be reading a second draft, you could have received a final draft on the same day from someone else, and that final draught, you need to be preparing to go to copy editing, which is the next stage of the process where you have an editor like me is happy with the book. Then a copy editor, which is something I used to be back at the very start of my career. That's the person who goes through and marks up the book for the printer for house style, who is looking very carefully at things like timelines, spellings, punctuation, repetitions, archaic, anachronisms, all sorts of things. You could then be getting page proofs through for the book from your production department type set, taking a look at those, and sometimes you want to produce bound proofs of those to circulate to the world. So you are working with a team of people to do that. At the same time, you are having to talk to your publicity colleagues to start setting the publicity up, your art department colleagues to design the cover. You are writing a blurb for the book. There's bound proofs are going out, and you're trying to get endorsements from people. So that will help. And so you are perhaps writing to individual authors saying, I think you'd like this. Will you maybe say something about it? You are then pressing go on the print.

You've finalised everything, the book's going to press, you are working with your colleagues. How many are we going to print? Where's it going to go? Is there any more we can do? What's going to happen? Then the book comes in and then it goes off to be reviewed and the reviews come in and then you're looking at those reviews. You're looking at Amazon, you're looking at the sales figures that are coming through day by day. You're thinking, okay, what are we doing, are we doing everything we can be doing. You're talking to the author, to the agent, and then just to jump ahead. 10 years. 10 years time, the book has worked you hope and you are still reprinting that book, but perhaps the author's got a new job and you have to update the biography, or they've decided they want to write a new introduction or some retailer gets in touch and says, can we do a special edition? And that's really, I've given you the very happy version of the story. But any moment on any one day, all of those things could be happening and possibly are, even on a list the size of Hamish Hamilton's.

Rhianna Dhillon:

Simon. I'm exhausted listening to that. That is everything that you need to do, you could be doing in one day. All of those, you have to be across all of those different things. It's very impressive.

Simon Prosser:

Thank you. Don't always manage it. No, I always write to-do lists and then never ever have ever done. Then I start again the next day and on you go, and then you learn to prioritise and you learn what's urgent and you get very good at being diplomatic to the people you're having to let down.

Rhianna Dhillon:

So he said you must spend all your day reading, but actually it sounds like there's absolutely zero time for you to read. So when do you get a chance to sift through these books that end up being in your boutique imprint?

Simon Prosser:

Well, the truth is, what you have to do is you have to say on a particular day, like Monday or a Tuesday or a Friday, and you say, okay, that day I will literally only do the things that are super, super urgent, and I will make sure to carve out six hours or eight hours to read. Luckily, I love reading.

Rhianna Dhillon:

Are you a fast reader.

Simon Prosser:

I've become much faster unless something's really good and then I slow down. So I got very good at reading quickly, and that's super helpful to know whether something is catching my interest, and if it does, then I slow right down and look at how they're doing it and whatever. But I still read it in the evenings and the weekends and if I really, really have to on holidays. But that's part of the job.

Rhianna Dhillon:

That is a real bossman's holiday.

Thanks again to the brilliant Simon Prosser. I could genuinely listen to him talk all day. You can hear more of my chat with Simon by scrolling back in your podcast app. He joined us to talk about prize-winning reads and recommended plenty of books that have picked up a prize or two. In the same episode. You can also hear the inside of you of what it's like to judge one of the most prestigious literary prizes, from Booker Prize Judge and award-winning author Sara Collins. We'll be back in the spring with a new series of Ask Penguin where I'll be putting your questions to writers, editors, and book lovers. So get your thoughts and questions over to us now, which authors would you love to hear from and what sort of book recommendations do you need? wWe can provide or even what would you like to know about Penguin and the people who work here? You can email Penguinpodcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk or just click the link in the show notes. We'll see you soon. And in the meantime, happy reading.