I had lunch the other day with Chad Allen. Chad is the editorial director for Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. I know Chad from our dealings at work as well as his participation in the first Jot Conference. And I figured that if anyone could give me some advice on becoming the type of person that a publishing house needs, it would be Chad.

After arriving late, I explained to Chad that I was considering an MFA program in order to be qualified for a job in publishing. He echoed some of the comments from my post on the topic that very few of the folks at Baker Publishing have MFAs, so it really isn’t a prerequisite.

He asked what my goals were. I gave him some vague notions of working on the creation end of the book process rather than the distribution end. I…