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.
When book prices are being discussed in the media, it is often with concern over falling prices and with the view that discounts are bad and only a high price means the author is getting fair compensation for their work. The lower the price the less their work is being valued, we’re led to believe.
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!
A few recent developments in publishing have made me think that publishers are not very good at responding to competition, and additionally there seems to be an attitude of martyrdom whenever a perceived threat to their livelihood emerges on the scene. New technological developments, for example, nearly always get a cynical treatment in publishing news, even if they will make publishing easier or cheaper, or have advantages to the book-buyer. The status quo is not only sacred, but seen to be a kind of birthright.
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.
In August, job site Adzuna.co.uk published the results of their analysis of salaries on 500,000 job ads, and it turns out that only half of all employers disclose salaries on job adverts. The rest say things like ‘competitive’, ‘very attractive’, ‘dependent on experience’ or ‘available on application’ – alluring phrases which really just mean that there is a salary, but it’s a secret.
I recently heard a talk by Eric Huang, Development Director for Made in Me, who is, in short, brand-minded and believes that publishers could be doing a whole lot more with brands, including branding themselves. This inspired some thoughts.