I guess we’re doing this again. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a few posts (I’m not linking to the posts in order to protect the innocent and underpaid) about how dismal publishing salaries are, and when salary discourse in a specific industry won’t go away, it’s usually for a very good reason. Let’s do some math.
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In the year 2001, I was offered $30,000 a year for a job as an editorial assistant at an imprint of Simon & Schuster. This was supposedly lucky because the majority of my other colleagues were making $27,500 (I remember a friend who came to me all excited when she got a raise and finally made 4-figures in her bimonthly paycheck). And everyone knew that once you paid your dues your salary would increase… right?
That year I paid $975 for a room in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which was a lot but at least I could save on transportation costs by walking to work. A big fat salad from Bagelfeller deli on 48th Street was less than $9 and came with free bagel chips, and there was a place across the street from Simon & Schuster where, if you paid $10 for a happy hour drink, you could also partake in the unlimited Italian buffet they served nightly. Sorry to be starry-eyed about it, but it’s not an understatement when I tell you this way of life no longer exists.
Don’t the people on the ground working to make their corporations money deserve some of the spoils, namely a livable wage?
Even at the time, those hallowed moments of the early aughts when Manhattan was semi-affordable, entry level salaries for book workers did not quite constitute a living wage. Most of my peers had help from their parents, and I was no exception (I’m still grateful to them for bringing me cheaper groceries from the suburbs to stock my fridge). Those of us without a safety net went elsewhere pretty quickly—there were still tons of other jobs to be had. Sob.
The current entry level salary at most of the Big Five publishers tops out at around $50,000, which was supposed to be a big step forward when the 2022 strike by the HarperCollins Union paved the way for higher starting fees across the board. That is a success and should be celebrated as such!
The problem is that, in 2025 dollars, my $30,000 salary would be around $53,462 today. According to the MIT Living Wage calculator the required annual income after taxes a single adult needs to make in order to comfortably live in New York County is $56,138.
In the early days of Covid-19 there was an opportunity to make working at a book publisher a job that could be done remotely, from more affordable cities via the magic of Zoom calls. I value my time in the S&S office too much to deny that there are benefits to being in that Midtown office, to be face-to-face with peers in meetings and to establish collegiality with coworkers. But requiring staff back at the office a few days a week on less than a livable wage when office life has grown less and less affordable is inexcusable and short-sighted.
Much has been made about how the publishing industry has grown more corporate over the past 20 years, more data-focused. Recently there’s been some debate about whether the Big Five have killed literary fiction (no, they haven’t) because they’ve turned into behemoths afraid to take on any risk. I wouldn’t go that far (there is still so much good fiction coming out of the Big Five, but also you absolutely should check out indie presses), but there’s no denying that corporate consolidation has made book publishing more of a numbers-based business and less of a sheerly creative pursuit.
When I was an editorial assistant in the early aughts, my peers and I would always threaten to leave the profession we were passionate about to go work in a regular business office, because at least the salaries were better there. Now book publishing has all of the stresses of a straight-up business job, but it’s still missing the salary.
I get it. I get that publishing is a business. I get that corporations and their shareholders like to make money first and foremost. But then don’t the people on the ground working to make their corporations money deserve some of the spoils, namely a livable wage? We book people are not nearly as bad at math as we self-deprecatingly like to say we are: it doesn’t take much special skill to realize that the numbers just don’t make any sense.
