How Young Adult Editor, Claire Stetzer, Turned Her Passion into a Career

Every day as a book editor is a new experience for Claire Stetzer. While she wishes she could sit at her desk reading manuscripts all day, her job also includes a whirlwind of weekly meetings. Stetzer is involved in every step of the publishing process and makes sure that the author’s goals and needs are met.

Stetzer is an editor at Inkyard Press/ HarperCollins in New York City. As an editor of the young adult genre, Stetzer hopes to share her love of books with a younger generation by making sure more diverse stories get out there.

Stetzer’s love of books began when she was a teenager reading Young Adult stories from authors such as Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot. Her passion for books helped her find a job at the local Penguin Bookshop in her hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania. While working at the bookstore, Stetzer got a first-hand look at what books were selling well and how they were marketed. This experience eventually helped her as an editor.

After high school, Stetzer went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where she studied English and Creative Writing. While at Duquesne, she took writing workshops and fell in love with the editing process. However, Stetzer didn’t know what to do with her degree until a professor directed her towards New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute. “I fell in love with publishing, and I fell in love with New York,” she said about her experience.

Stetzer began her career at Sterling Publishing, a company owned by Barnes and Noble. While this job didn’t involve the editing experience that Stetzer wanted, it did provide her next step: working as an editorial assistant in the children’s book department at Bloomsbury Publishing, where she worked for almost six years.

Stetzer described the editing process as an extended conversation with the author. As she puts it, she is “the author’s go-to person,” as she knows everything that happens with the book. When deciding whether to take on a book, she usually looks for a simple, one-line “elevator pitch” that sounds interesting. When the editing process begins, Stetzer always has suggestions, but it’s ultimately up to the writer to decide. While the book usually goes through several drafts before it even gets to Stetzer, it’s bound to go through more before the writing process is over. She defines her focus in making sure the story works best as a reader versus looking for grammar mistakes--she leaves that to the copyeditor.

Stetzer says that the proudest moment was the first time her book was published. She fondly remembers returning to her hometown and seeing the book advertised in the very same bookstore where she used to work.