For many people, working in the publishing industry is all they’ve ever wanted to do. But once they get there they face low wages, high workload and union busting—all while being told how lucky they are.
‘I was very burnt out.’
‘It was time to pivot, I’d hit a ceiling.’
‘It was really grossly underpaid; everyone was grossly overworked.’
Low wages, high workload, union busting—the issues facing workers in the Australian books and publishing industry are widely reported. As a bookseller with the long-term aspiration of being an in-house editor at an Australian publishing house, I’ve become concerned that this isn’t a sustainable career path, despite this being the only thing I truly want to do.
As I saw talented workers abandon their jobs in publishing, I had a burning question: Why leave? I asked people from all across the industry, from large and small publishers, trade and educational, and in editorial, publicity and marketing. Several people only spoke to me on the condition of anonymity.
The responses I got were almost all the same. For these workers, their careers in publishing were ultimately unsustainable. Burnout runs deep in the industry. Workload is incredibly high, with many people reporting that they were expected to work overtime without pay or time off in lieu. Kate Cuthbert, self-described as an ‘escapee from trade publishing’, said she felt the pressure to read out of hours:
Generally speaking, editors don’t get paid for reading time, so all reading is done outside of work hours. So I was reading new works from writers already under contract, new works brought in via agents or pitches, and the slush pile… I lost the joy of reading for fun and struggled to stay on top of what was happening in the market.
It’s also no secret that pay is low. Most people I spoke to indicated they were earning significantly more after leaving the industry, in jobs requiring the same skills or degrees. ‘Non-publishing editing roles in government and academia pay well and the workload is far less pressured’, one worker confided. Matilda Dixon-Smith, a freelance writer and editor with in-house experience, felt ‘it was impossible to find stable, full-time work with decent pay’.
Most people I spoke to indicated they were earning significantly more after leaving the industry, in jobs requiring the same skills or degrees.
A survey conducted by Books+Publishing in 2018 determined the average salary for editorial workers was $62,347, and that wages for marketing and publicity had stagnated. The current minimum wage set by the Book Industry Award for full time in-house editors is $48,882. Several editors I spoke to were still earning around this amount, despite having several years’ experience. When you consider that many workers are now expected to have postgraduate qualifications to be considered for entry-level positions, with HECS debt often totalling around $70,000, a starting salary of $48,882 is incredibly low. I spoke to a single parent who had been working from 8am to 6pm to support three children on that dismal wage.
Sarah Hollingsworth, who had worked in marketing and publicity in trade and academic publishing, was inspired by the efforts in the UK and US industries to create a pay spreadsheet—an anonymous collection of data about salary, also accounting for disparities in gender, sexuality and race. ‘I’ve heard from people I know that they’ve used the information in the spreadsheet to be able to advocate for better pay for themselves, or to know what to expect when applying for a new role, or see the difference between working for an independent trade publisher and an academic publisher.’ In the UK, demands for transparency have led publishers to lift entry-level salaries and boost pay transparency.
In Australia, the Book Industry Award lays out the standards for employment level and hourly rates for workers in the industry, unless they are covered by an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. I asked James Kellow, recently appointed president of the Australian Publishers Association whether the Book Industry Award was sufficient. His view is optimistic. ‘We support compliance with the Book Industry Award. Competition between publishing companies is vigorous, and staff are a critical part of every publisher’s operation. So, of course, publishers compete for employees, as well as for authors and readers, and pay and conditions are part of that competition.’ However, the responses I received from workers across many small and large publishers suggest that wages are not as competitive as they should be.
In the UK, demands for transparency have led to publishers to lift entry-level salaries and boost pay transparency.
Mardi O’Connor, a former editor and union official, believes that the wage issues would be best addressed ‘at an industry-wide level’. She emphasised that recent union effort is ideally not just for change ‘workplace by workplace, which is extremely labour intensive and puts enormous pressure on staff and delegates’ but to lead to greater numbers of publishing workers potentially bargaining for industry-wide conditions and a revision of the Book Industry Award. However, Sarah Hollingsworth noted that establishing solidarity on these issues across the industry is challenging:
The one issue with unionising in the publishing industry is the complete lack of experience and education on the topic. There’s a very steep learning curve on both sides, and, unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to try to have discussions and negotiate when the basics aren’t understood.
Workers are often unaware that international counterparts in large publishing houses are already unionised. ‘There is almost a complete erasure of union success stories in publishing’, said Bethany Patch, who was involved in union organisation at a large publisher. Kellow and the APA did not have an opinion on the ongoing unionisation of the industry, saying that ‘ultimately this is a matter for them as individual companies’.
Anyone who has worked with books—or in the arts more broadly—will have felt the pressure of doing it for the ‘love of it’ and that they should be grateful for getting such a sought-after job. One worker suggested to me that she felt the competitiveness of publishing jobs was a myth, that the idea there were so many people desperate for your job was not as true as management would often suggest. Patch expanded on this idea, stating that competitiveness is ‘a massive psychological barrier to unionising because people feel understandably insecure asking for change, while also being a great trick that publishers have up their sleeve whenever they want to reject requests for improvement, even something as simple as a yearly pay rise.’
A lack of inclusivity also creates barriers to career longevity. One worker felt that some people were ‘earmarked for leadership’ early on, and that there was little hope for progression for anyone else, even if they were dedicated workers. Those who had been involved with the union felt that they ‘could not easily go back’ to the industry after leaving, and that there was no space for them to progress in their workplace, especially if they had been involved in EBA negotiations.
Anyone who has worked with books will have felt the pressure of doing it for the ‘love of it’.
Most of the workers I spoke to were white—as is expected in an industry so lacking in diversity. Despite the increasing interest in publishing ‘diverse’ titles, there are few workers of colour in the industry at all. Hella Ibrahim, founder of Djed Press, spoke about her own experiences of racism in trade publishing, such as the time she was explicitly told that a cover with a Black pre-teen girl would not sell and had to be redesigned. However, she noted the problem can be more insidious:
Racism is rampant in the publishing industry, despite many in the industry trying very hard to pretend it isn’t or that they’re working on improving it. Some publishers make a half-hearted attempt every now and then, but it doesn’t often translate into ongoing systemic change.
You can see the industry’s racism in the kinds of books that get selected or commissioned for publication. You can see it in hiring practices, in job ads that ask for a certain level of qualifications and experience despite being an entry-level role, in offices that are a sea of white faces and white ideology. I’ve seen it happen over and over, in a myriad of macro and micro forms.
Ibrahim started Djed as a form of publishing that was not beholden to white readers or workers, escaping the industry’s incessant racism.
The workers who came forward to speak with me are now in a variety of roles and industries, though quite commonly in communication. Several are in arts organisations—which often face similar issues to publishing—and others in government or non-profit roles. While they said they are satisfied with salary and opportunity for progression now, many expressed sorrows that they were unable to maintain their publishing careers. One editor said they were currently making plans to return to the industry. But most were resigned to working outside of the industry, like Kate Cuthbert, who said, ‘I do miss many aspects of publishing, especially the ongoing partnerships between editors and writers, and the accomplishment of creating something tangible, but this was the right move for me at the right time.’
The workers I spoke to are incredibly talented and passionate people, and while they have found career satisfaction elsewhere, it is a real shame to lose such workers in an industry spiral of competitive pressure. After talking to them, a new question challenged me: Why stay and keep trying? Despite the challenges, I still have hope. I am in awe of the work that has come before to me create a more equitable industry with the possibility of a long and fulfilling career. With EBA negotiations underway, paid internships for people of colour and more pay transparency, there are signs that the Australian publishing industry is beginning to head in a better direction for workers.
