Speaking from Experience: Andrew Steeds

After a spell in teaching and education research, Andrew Steeds worked as a publisher in three of the major UK educational publishing companies before going freelance in 1992. He now runs Simply Put, a company that offers writing, project management and consultancy to organisations that want to communicate more effectively with the full range of their readers.

Andrew teaches a number of PTC courses, including Copy-Editing Skills, Rewriting and Substantive Editing, Editing for Business, Getting into Grammar, Grappling with Grammar and Proofreading for Editors.

How did you get started in publishing?

I joined Thomas Nelson as an editor, at the relatively advanced age of 28. It didn’t seem simple at the time (it was my first interview but about my twentieth application) but, in comparison with today’s situation, it clearly was. Nowadays, you have to cross deserts of fire and scale mountains of ice just to get an internship.

What is the biggest lesson you have learnt?

That what you, and indeed the writer, consider significant and interesting isn’t in fact as important as what the reader finds significant and interesting.

What project are you most proud of?

Co-ordinating the publication of a document called Language in the National Curriculum, under the tutelage of Ron Carter: my first freelance project, condemned by the then Conservative government, and the most suicidal schedule I have ever worked to.

Why do you think tutoring for the PTC is important?

It’s a crucial way of synthesizing experience with youth, showing today’s apprentices how you have done things and have them change your view of that craft in the process.

Your biggest prediction for the industry this year:

I was always a better editor than a publisher, so I’m a dork at predictions, but out of the shady grey twilight of the industry a shiny, magical dawn will emerge to enchant us all over again.