How to instantly make people in publishing uncomfortable? It’s easy: talk about money! Want to turn it up a notch? Talk about money as if it’s important, or if you really want to be disapproved of, talk about it as a positive thing.
A week ago I went to the annual Society of Young Publishers (SYP) Conference in Oxford. SYP organise a lot of interesting events aimed at people who are starting out in publishing, and the conference programme was quite heavy on employment-related seminars as well.
I happened to be part of some interesting discussions about graduates and what they can expect in the employment front. The word ‘moral’ came up twice and made me prick my ears up as it was used in a rather matter-of-course manner, whereas I rarely think of employment in terms of morality. I will try to now!
The other night, my friend was telling me about a get-together for young IT professionals he went to. He met several interesting people with various orientations and specialties. Someone had a business idea about doing A, and another one was really good at B; a third was pitching his side project to venture capitalists.
I listened and compared this to how events for young publishing professionals sometimes turn out. There’s usually more women, for one thing, and they’re more light-hearted occasions somehow – you often end up part of a comradely chat with a group of people quite like you, talking about your quite uniform experiences of working as an assistant.
Would that be fair? Those evenings are fun and lots of names and numbers get exchanged, but they’re not usually very productive in terms of new partnerships or businesses getting the first spark.