To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

I *might* be able to work with authors...not sure about the coddling, but I might be able to talk to them if they're halfway reasonable?

I...couldn't. Not at all. I'm okay with writing comments on somehting I read and occasionally sitting down and telling someone what I liked and didn't like, but I've lost all patience and tact over the years. And I definitely couldn't call/e-mail/meet up with a bunch of authors and prod them into getting me their manuscripts on time. Gah.

The copyediting from home, though...that's exactly the kind of editing job I was thinking would be good, actually. Need to find out more about how you get such jobs. (I did used to know someone who did that for textbooks, though I've not talked to her in years.)

I'm a little worried about the fact that my attention span has been shot to hell by high school and college, but beyond that, I think I could totally do the copyediting thing. I know very little about how one goes about getting a job like that, though.

I dunno...I really enjoy reading new stuff and poking at it and like the idea of publishing it, but I think my temperment is vastly better suited to a library job, a graphic arts/design job, or copyediting at home. I'm complete crap at "networking," and much prefer to just do my own thing on my own without having to be nice to other people. (On second thought, maybe not the library job...or perhaps a research librarian position, where I only have to interact with the dedicated folks in a back room somewhere...)

BTW, the "Demystifying Publishing" entries at alg's journal have been quite interesting and educational about the field, particularly at a big publishing house.