Amanda Girvan – Editor

I've worked in publishing in various roles for eight years. I enjoy proofreading which is tribute to my love of puzzles and problem solving, and currently work as a Project Manager for Newgen Publishing UK. I've worked on books by Ladybird, educational texts by Cambridge University Press, Pearson, and Aspire Learning Resources, and I completed my internship with Fremantle Press.I'm very professional but also enjoy getting to know who I'm working with and keep things light hearted. On a recent and enormous project with Cambridge University Press, my sole contact became many contacts throughout the CUP team, and I loved getting to know all of the people I was working with from different departments, including design and development. So much so that when I left for maternity leave in January 2021, not only were we sad to say goodbye, but I also felt that a friendship had been formed and shared my happy news when my little boy was born.Truth be told, I didn't always know that I wanted to be an editor. I almost fell into it. I knew that I needed to be in a creative field and left my safe job at Swinburne University to study publishing at Curtin University in Western Australia. I thought I was going there to learn to be a professional writer, instead I thrived on tasks like proofreading and copyediting and was soon wondering, 'How do books get made?' My course coordinator, Anne Ryden, was ecstatic when I landed an internship with Fremantle Press, an internship that had been closed for many years, and on the next Open Day I was elected as the spokesperson for my course. Getting my foot in the door for paid work wasn't easy, I didn't know many in the industry and it took a year of persevering before Jenni Welch at Aspire Learning Resources found me and gave me a chance. It's definitely an industry that you fight to stay there because you love it; there's so much competition and so many talented people, I believe what makes me so great at what I do is that I wear my heart and soul on my sleeve.I'm not an editor because I want to be an editor. I'm an editor because it's a necessity.