三友圖書有限公司

The book industry usually offers a warm, quiet work environment. Some companies combine retail stores with classrooms, providing not only books for sale but also courses or workshops.

Employees may have the opportunity to participate in authors’ craft classes or lectures, learning while they work and developing their interests and skills.

Editors and related professionals need to read a large amount of material and approach it from different perspectives, considering how to differentiate books from those already on the market.

The work can develop logical thinking and organizational skills, making it suitable for people with broad interests in knowledge who enjoy learning new things.

During the editing process, you work with authors, designers, and others, learning how to integrate different ideas into a complete work.

For those who are interested, publishing a book can bring a sense of accomplishment and pride.

During the writing or editing process, you will often encounter situations where the logic is difficult for others to understand, resulting in repeated revisions and requiring strong logical thinking.

High professional skill requirements

Editors need to help authors organize the logic of their content. If their own thinking is unclear, they can easily become trapped in an “endless cycle” of repeated revisions and overtime.

This work is suitable for people with strong organizational and logical skills and clear, structured thinking. Those who do not fit this profile may easily experience frustration and burnout.

1. The direct supervisor is a bit strict, but is willing to teach.

1. You have to arrive early every day to clean the environment.

2. Once you join, it is an endless overtime nightmare. Work starts at 8:30 in the morning and continues until 9 or 10 at night. You will not be explicitly asked to work on holidays, but the daily workload assigned to you is overwhelmingly large, so you still end up spending the entire holiday working. Holidays are effectively meaningless.

3. An editor is supposed to format and proofread an author's writing, right? But the way things are done here is very unusual: the author only needs to provide a book title (I don't remember whether it needs to include a table of contents), and the editor is then told to research enough material online and explain it in their own words. In the end, the author's name is put on it, and that is called a book.

4. The atmosphere in the workplace is extremely, extremely, extremely cold. Apart from necessary work-related matters, colleagues hardly talk to one another at all, making every day at work very painful.

The environment is great, and it is divided into a store and classrooms. If there are courses, internal staff are also allowed to attend. When making handmade books, you also learn from the author by creating approximately one work. Overall, you can learn many things here, but people who do not like handicrafts or lifestyle-related activities may find the work difficult and painful.

Here, you learn to think from different perspectives, because the company emphasizes producing books that are different from other publications. You may need to read related books, examine the logic in those books, and rethink it. People with strong abilities to organize and synthesize ideas, who want to learn about a wide range of subjects, would probably be quite suitable for this workplace.

Bring your own toilet paper and stationery. Only basic shared stationery is provided (paper, clips, and similar items).

The working hours are quite long. You have to constantly adjust your condition and arrange your time. However, if your manuscript is rejected, you have to rewrite it using your own time. Sometimes you fail to grasp the key points, and the manuscript is rejected as well. Here, you may discover that your logic seems understandable only to you. When writing, your habits may also make your work difficult for others to understand. Supervisors will ask for your opinions (with the intention of encouraging us to think), but when you get stuck, you can genuinely be stuck. Often, these situations lead to working overtime to revise things (although if you truly cannot manage, the supervisor will still provide guidance).

I feel this workplace is only suitable for people with well-organized logic, because editors also have to help authors organize their ideas. If your logic is weak but you think you are good at it, you will remain trapped in a frightening cycle of working overtime.

The environment looks beautiful, and there is a small photography studio. During your first week, everything will feel wonderful. If you work quickly and efficiently, the editor-in-chief will spare no effort to praise you in front of everyone.

It is a responsibility-based system, and many colleagues end up working until eleven at night. Although I arranged my schedule so that I basically left at eight, when I ran into obstacles, I also ended up working until ten (the scheduled end time is 6:30 p.m.). You also have to clean every day. Even though you already arrive early and leave late, they still insist that you clean thoroughly.

As for editing, you will learn that Google is extremely useful, learn how to use Word, and even discover that your ability to organize information has improved! Since the authors merely throw you a name and a table of contents, Google tells you everything about the content, and at most the author will provide a few photos of their handicrafts and then leave everything else to you. So you have to know how to control your temper and soothe the authors. It is not a matter of discussing things with them; you have to speak gently and kindly, like you are talking to children, telling them what photos you need and pleading with them to let you take the pictures: “Please don’t be angry, okay, good~” Then there are the messy documents created by the tight deadlines, which you also have to spend your own overtime organizing and consolidating.

As for the environment, the small photography studio really is very small. They will not let you use it or learn from it, and it is also somewhat messy. Since there are few people, each person is responsible for a large area to sweep, and you have to sweep every day. You may start out leaving at six but end up leaving at seven, while still having to finish your work. There is also no toilet paper in the restroom, and you have to bring your own paper and pens.

As for the colleagues, you are enveloped in a cold, stifling atmosphere all day. Authors occasionally visit, but they are very high-handed, while the managing editor and editor-in-chief are also so obsequious that there is no sense of anyone being on equal footing—you will feel even more inferior. If you do well, the editor-in-chief praises you; if you do poorly, the editor-in-chief gives you a dirty look. The managing editor will tell you not to talk to your colleagues, not to discuss salaries, and not to ask about one another’s family backgrounds.

As for a sense of achievement—or rather, my state of mind—this was also an important reason I resigned. The books we produced were essentially large reports compiled through Google, and we were not allowed to write in much depth. The books were not really your own creations; they were merely simple dictionaries published under the name of a useless author.

Because the company is small, you can learn a lot after joining. The selection of books is pretty good, and its visibility in the market is decent. New graduates start at around NT$23,000–24,000.

The company operates under an unlimited-liability system. Before the interview, they tell you that your finishing time depends on your individual ability, but in reality, new employees work continuously from 8:30 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. After work, they even make you sign an attendance sheet stating that you worked overtime because of your own lack of ability, not because the company asked you to. (But everyone in the entire company leaves at 10 p.m.~)

During overtime, the company locks the main entrance. If you haven’t prepared dinner in advance, you can look forward to going hungry until you get home after work, because the company doesn’t give you time to go buy dinner and fill your stomach. (Want to bring your own lunch box and heat it up at the office? Sorry, the company doesn’t have a rice cooker, and the microwave is broken too.)

The strangest thing is that the company doesn’t provide toilet paper in the restroom, and the office doesn’t provide stationery either~~ You have to bring everything yourself. The manager says this is what reflects the attitude of a professional employee.