What’s It Like Being an Editor? A Chat With Indie Publishing Insider Karen Giangreco

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What’s It Like Being an Editor? A Chat With Indie Publishing Insider Karen Giangreco

Video + Podcast (49 mins)

Ali Almossawi

Mar 20, 2025

Transcript

Issue No. 37

1 A flashback

Many years ago early in my career, I was at a conference in a sort of vestibule area one morning, waiting for them to open the doors to the main hall. Standing against a wall, sipping out of an empty cup. Not quite knowing how to engage with people around me.

From the crowd, someone made what felt like a beeline toward me. Medium height, round face, broad smile. Hawaiian shirt. That I distinctly remember. He said his name was Bill.

We got talking. He told me about his current project—an app people could use to mail actual, physical postcards to each other. A labor of love, he called it.

And that was it. We talked for ten minutes. No agenda, no pretenses, no judgments. Just two people. Talking.

The doors eventually opened, Bill and I said goodbye, and I walked into the hall.

Half an hour into the program, the MC came on stage and said, “Now, I’d like to introduce our next speaker. Bill Atkinson.”

His work, I’d learn, was legendary. He needed no introduction.

And just like that, a seed was planted.

I’d eventually work at the same place he worked at. And I’d eventually be in the position to seek quiet people who had that twinkle in their eyes. And make their dreams come true by hiring them.

Seek the quiet ones, off in a corner. You never know what impression you’ll leave on a total stranger.

2 Publishing, books, and renaissance souls

A little break from the usual—over the years, I’ve been asked by aspiring writers about the publishing industry and the book-making process. I figured it would be interesting to share an off-the-cuff conversation I recorded the other day with someone who’s been in publishing her whole career.

My guest this week is Karen Giangreco. Karen is General Director and Roving Editor at an independent publisher in New York City and has been in the industry for 15 years. I’ve had the great pleasure of working with her on two book projects.

There’s much more we could have covered that we didn’t get to in this episode. Things like the intricacies of cover design. Feel free to drop your questions in the comments.

You can watch the recording by tapping the play button at the top. The video will be cross-posted to YouTube. Let me know if you’d like to see more of these interviews.

We’ve done three so far this year. The first one (Brian Regan) was audio-only, the second one (Basima Tewfik) was Zoom-recording-manually-laid-out-in-Final-Cut-Pro, and this third one, as you can tell, looks much more polished. I’m enjoying learning about the process.