Tara Tomczyk 

The View from 30 (Years in Publishing, That Is)

July 15, 2026

Today, July 15, marks the 30th anniversary of my very first day in publishing. (All these years, I thought it was July 14, Bastille Day, but I checked, and July 14 was a Sunday that year, so I guess my usually spot-on long-term memory fell short for a change. Oh well!)

I can still picture it, as clearly as if it happened yesterday: I headed to my new place of business, located in a squat brick building on an industrial road in Springfield, New Jersey, wearing one of the new suits I’d just bought for my fancy new job as an editorial assistant. The suit was red and black: a red button-all-the-way-up jacket with shiny black and gold buttons, black bows on the low-set front pockets, and a black pencil skirt. It was SO 1996.  I didn’t have any pictures, but ChatGPT did a pretty decent job re-creating the basic look (see the pic at the top of the post). And please note: I liked this suit so much I bought its twin, in navy and white with green trim.

But since I don’t have actual photographs to help you make fun of me, I thought instead I’d share a list of a few things that are the same age—30 years—as my publishing career, which may be almost as embarrassing. Almost.

So here are just a few things AI tells me are the same age as my career:

1. The Spice Girls' "Wannabe" (which, apparently, is a song, but I’m too old to know it; my knowledge of popular music ends circa 1987, when they stopped making the kinds of upbeat 1980s-style songs I like)

2. Hotmail accounts (yeah, I had one—I wonder whatever happened to it . . .)

3. Mission: Impossible (the film franchise began in 1996 . . . and I have yet to see a single one of the movies even all these years later)

4. Twister (another huge 1996 blockbuster film that I missed entirely)

5. The movie Independence Day (the original, which premiered just weeks before my own publishing premiere; believe it or not, I did see this one, and in the movie theater, too)

6. Super Mario 64 (which, I believe, is a video game; I have to admit that my knowledge of video games pretty much ends with Pac-Man, so I can’t comment much further)

7. DVDs (I still have a few of these hiding in my garage, though I have no way to actually watch them . . .)

8. Everybody Loves Raymond (it premiered in September 1996, but I vividly recall hearing radio promos for the show on my drive to the office that first day in publishing)

9. The birth of Dolly, the first successfully cloned sheep, happened just 10 days before my career began

10.  The rise of Amazon (the now-giant was just a fledgling online bookstore at the time, but it reincorporated in Delaware in 1996, which brings us back full circle to the wild world of publishing)

Unlike DVDs, dial-up internet, and (I hope!) my old Hotmail address, I'm still here . . . and still publishing. Here’s to another 30-plus years of making great books! I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.