49 Writing Jobs, Internships, Volunteer Opps, Fellowships, and More

Jobs for Writers (1.30.25) | How to break in with an indie publisher, volunteer opps at lit mags, internships at Webtoon and Warner Bros., and still-open paid fellowships

Jan 30, 2025

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Welcome to Sub Club’s Jobs for Writers!

In case you missed it, I was formally introduced to the Sub Club community over the weekend. It’s all very official. And again, I say: Hi! I’m very happy to be here!

New Editor: rachael clemmons has joined our team

Benjamin Davis and rachael vaughan clemmons

Jan 26

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There are plenty of jobs today—traditional publishing yes of course, and also opportunities in comics, academics, and science—and this week’s How to Break In has some frankly amazing insight into the non-editorial side of publishing. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Got a job that needs a writer or writer-like human in the publishing world? We know several thousand writer-like humans who might be interested.

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Looking for all sorts of jobs, but would really love to see more volunteer positions at literary mags 👀. Whatever you have to share, you can find details and submit your opening here.

How to Break In

This week, we’re featuring Chris Carosi, Sales Manager at Heyday. After undergrad, Chris went straight into a Poetry MFA in San Francisco. Since then, he’s always prioritized working with or among books. “I had every weird job while I was in school and a little bit afterward,” Chris says. “But I always had one job that had to do with books—I worked as a bookseller, in a library, at a distribution house, and at a literary magazine. And I was broke.” Real talk!

Below, Chris chats with us about the importance of making real connections, the benefits of working for an independent publisher, and the reality of working in publicity and sales.

rachael vaughan clemmons: What's your background?

Chris Carosi: I'm from a working-class background in Pittsburgh and I went to undergraduate for writing and then pretty much straight into an MFA in San Francisco, studying poetry. I did a few internships and after a long time and some connections, I got an awesome and low-paying job in the publishing world.

[I started] at City Lights Publishers where I was a publicist and did social media. That experience led me to a sales role at another publisher in the Bay Area, Heyday.

rvc: One of the things I’ve recently accepted is that connections can really mean everything. How did you approach making those connections?

CC: I'm convinced that connections are over half of it. When I first moved to San Francisco for an MFA program, I learned very quickly that I was not quite ready for the big city. I was not really an extrovert by any means, but I was comfortable around books and literature so I decided that an internship or two in that realm was a good idea.

I was lucky enough to be accepted as an intern at ZYZZYVA, one of the best literary magazines period. And because I was broke and didn't have anything else to do, I stayed on for an extra three months and became friendly with the editor and managing editor there. This connection yielded my first publishing job four years later because I was recommended as a good candidate. So being available and reliable and friendly made a mark for sure!

It's possible to succeed in any career or endeavor on raw talent and hard work. But nothing can compare to getting to know people in the community you want to succeed in and them going to bat for you when the time comes. For me, this simply meant being myself, being open to [becoming] friends with the people I met, and being honest and hospitable. If people like you, they remember you.

rvc: Okay, so your first publishing job was at City Lights as a publicist. What did that look like?

CC: Being a publicist in general is very challenging because, especially at the small-press level, it can be a lot of work for little return as far as the attention the books get from the public.

As a publicist, you're essentially creating opportunities for the books you're working on to get noticed by the public. You're sending advance copies to reviewers and following up, you're pitching excerpts and author interviews to various publications, you're booking author events at bookstores, and you're blind emailing a lot. It's quite the slog.

And because every book project and author is different, with different opportunities at play and different strategies, you learn how to spin plates! My problem-solving skills and ability to pivot or think four or five steps ahead at my job now are all from the intensity of being a publicist. People really depend on you to fix things, so I usually tell people I was a mechanic at City Lights.

rvc: How would you compare that to your current role as a Sales Manager at Heyday?

CC: Being a sales manager is much more low-key, at least in my current role, because you're not as much a part of the months leading up to a book's publication. Rather you're focused on the nuts and bolts of how the books are selling and where they are selling. If publicity is all about what could be, sales is more about what is.

I work with the authors on purchasing books and [I also work] on various unique accounts, like parks or nonprofits, that have no idea how to get our books. And since we are distributed worldwide by Ingram, I have access to all these numbers through them. So I’m working numbers and projections and providing counsel to the publicity and editorial teams. I’m also in charge of our books’ metadata, which is all the info about a book that goes out to various places on the Internet—description, author, price, book cover, page count, etc.

I love being a sales manager because it's more about the reality of how a book performs in a certain market. I'm now privy to how new books are acquired, and I've seen a lot of proposals from potential authors, so I can sometimes diagnose how successful the project will be or even if it's ready to be published in its current form. I'm not skilled enough yet to be an editor, who has to imagine the best potential version of a book and how it should be written. But [I can] understand what is already out there and what readers are drawn to.

rvc: What are the benefits of working for an independent publisher? Do you feel like you get more of a sense of community?

CC: Yes, absolutely a greater sense of community. I have never worked for a big New York house, but I don't think people think of Penguin Random House authors as being a “team” or “family” of authors. But with Heyday, our books seem to move around each other and talk to each other. And our whole list, going back 50 years, is like one big conversation about California's nature and its people.

Heyday is helping Native Californians tell their story, and most special is our attention to California Indians through our books and the magazine we publish, News from Native California. I'm a small part of that larger conversation that's been happening well before my time and afterward, but it still feels good to be a part of it.

rvc: Do you have a specific idea of where you want your career to go from here?

CC: I'm over 10 years into working in publishing and I couldn't be apart from books. My goal is to stay in the literature world at all costs. Books gave me true freedom and mental security. And I want to feel that energy for the rest of my life.

That conviction is key to my personal life. I'm a poet as well, so this keeps the drive going. If my career slips out of that world, I have the other, and vice versa. As I said, I'm no extrovert or very “career-oriented,” but I've found ways to keep the train moving. I'm flexible at this point except I don't want to ever go back to publicity—eight years was enough. So I guess that leaves sales, operations, editorial, and other managerial roles.

Working in publishing opens your eyes to other avenues you hadn't thought about, like being a sales rep or working in distribution which are publishing adjacent. Everyone I have met in those roles are huge book nerds and experts, and yet they deal with the day-to-day operations of the book world. There's a whole infrastructure to getting books in people's hands and so I think there are plenty of other areas to explore.

Did you manage to snag a job in or adjacent to the writing industry? Well done! Please tell us everything for a chance to be featured in How to Break In. Selected entries will get $50 or a one-year comp.

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