An all too familiar story of being retrenched.......but this diary - as published in the London Review of Books - ought to give pause for concern to all those who read and value books. Sad fact is that publishing is doing it tough and publishing houses are going through staff like there isn't going to be a tomorrow.
"I’d hardly settled behind my desk when one of my bosses asked if I would join her in the corner office. ‘Please close the door,’ she said as I entered the room. Seldom a good sign. ‘Why don’t you take the comfortable chair?’ Oh dear.
Three hours later I was back at home, jobless. I’d seen it coming, in a let’s-not-dwell-on-that-for-too-long sort of way: I was the most recently hired editor at the imprint, one of its more highly paid staff members, and my list, though filled with erudite, well-written books, was not the most profitable. If anyone was for the chop, it was likely to be me. And the possibility of staff cuts seemed far from remote. The share price of the corporation I worked for had fallen more than 80 per cent in the previous 18 months. The CEO of Barnes and Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the US, had just announced that ‘never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in, nothing even close.’
My boss ended our meeting with a reflection on the state of book publishing today. She said that two words sprung to mind: General Motors. She then accompanied me past the newly installed poinsettia display to Human Resources on the 11th floor. When I asked whether he was having a busy morning, the HR director told me that, yes, a number of other people were being ‘impacted’. It subsequently emerged that there were 35 of us. Elsewhere, as the online news daily Publishers Lunch reported, there were extensive layoffs at Houghton Mifflin and Thomas Nelson, as well as a pay freeze at Penguin for anyone earning more than $60,000 a year and deferred pay increases at HarperCollins. Random House announced a major reorganisation following the resignation of the heads of two of its largest groups. All of this happened on 3 December, which soon became known as New York publishing’s Black Wednesday."
"I’d hardly settled behind my desk when one of my bosses asked if I would join her in the corner office. ‘Please close the door,’ she said as I entered the room. Seldom a good sign. ‘Why don’t you take the comfortable chair?’ Oh dear.
Three hours later I was back at home, jobless. I’d seen it coming, in a let’s-not-dwell-on-that-for-too-long sort of way: I was the most recently hired editor at the imprint, one of its more highly paid staff members, and my list, though filled with erudite, well-written books, was not the most profitable. If anyone was for the chop, it was likely to be me. And the possibility of staff cuts seemed far from remote. The share price of the corporation I worked for had fallen more than 80 per cent in the previous 18 months. The CEO of Barnes and Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the US, had just announced that ‘never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in, nothing even close.’
My boss ended our meeting with a reflection on the state of book publishing today. She said that two words sprung to mind: General Motors. She then accompanied me past the newly installed poinsettia display to Human Resources on the 11th floor. When I asked whether he was having a busy morning, the HR director told me that, yes, a number of other people were being ‘impacted’. It subsequently emerged that there were 35 of us. Elsewhere, as the online news daily Publishers Lunch reported, there were extensive layoffs at Houghton Mifflin and Thomas Nelson, as well as a pay freeze at Penguin for anyone earning more than $60,000 a year and deferred pay increases at HarperCollins. Random House announced a major reorganisation following the resignation of the heads of two of its largest groups. All of this happened on 3 December, which soon became known as New York publishing’s Black Wednesday."
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