When I took a job as an editorial assistant at a publishing house after graduating from college, I didn't know I was signing on to the publishing equivalent of the Love Boat. But I quickly became aware of several in-house couples. And soon I was one of them—I just didn't know it yet. My future partner and I bonded over the slush pile. Shared laughter over the worst submissions led to talk of what authors we liked and why. We'd exchange copies of our favorite books, insisting, “You've got to read this.” After a while, seeing each other in the office wasn't enough, and we'd go to coffee, lunches and book parties together. Eventually, I left the company, and it took me all of a week to realize how much I missed my fellow editorial assistant. We've now been married more than 17 years.

I used to think our story was unique. However, I discovered when I researched my recent book Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job, discovering romance in the workplace is quite common in publishing circles. Yet book publishing insiders don't like to talk about how frequent bonding over books truly is. When my coauthor, Stephanie Losee, and I went out to sell Office Mate, we were turned down by one publisher whose head of publicity informed us he didn't think workplace dating was that widespread, and then added he'd met his fiancée... on the same floor. Other editors regaled us with tales of office couples, including several where twosomes had stayed on after marriage and children.

In fact, finding love amid the manuscripts is just as common as finding it in any other workplace, which is to say quite common indeed. If there is a fluorescent light bulb, there is probably an office romance going on. Surveys show that about half of us will date someone we work with at least once during our careers, with one in five of those get-togethers leading to long-term relationships.

Book publishing and love have a particularly long and storied relationship. Charlotte Brontë carried on a long flirtation with her publisher, George Smith. More recently, the tortured and turbulent relationship between Simon & Schuster CEO Richard Snyder and editor Joni Evans was widely gossiped about in the 1980s, a long-running soap opera that could be followed on Page Six and in Spy magazine. Booksellers romance their fellow employees, too. When a blogger wrote about Barnes & Noble's initial decision to not stock Office Mate (they subsequently changed their mind), numerous folks contacted us to tell us about the many couples who met while employed by the mega chain. And we heard similar stories from employees and owners of independent bookstores when we signed galleys at BEA last year.

Moreover, when Stephanie and I were promoting the book, almost every media mention—from a front-page article in the New York Times's Style section to an appearance on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show—brought forth more happy media couples who'd first met at work. One such twosome from a major publishing house even came and introduced themselves to us when we read at KGB Bar.

So what's the secret? In Office Mate, we discuss how human resources acts as an accidental matchmaker by bringing together people with common interests. Almost everyone who works in book publishing can be said to share a love of the written word, a passionate response to books and a high regard for those who write them. After all, no one ever took a job in the book biz for the high salary.

In my home, we're a long way from the days of the slush pile. I became a journalist; my husband, a screenwriter. We both work at home. I often write about books and authors, and a fair number of galleys and finished copies are sent to me. Nothing brings us together faster than the daily arrival of the UPS man. We rip into the envelopes with abandon. Occasionally, we squabble about who gets a particular book first. But every so often one of us comes to the other a few days later waving a copy of the prize saying, “You've got to read this.”

Author Information
Helaine Olen is a freelance journalist and the coauthor of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding and Managing Romance on the Job.