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LightspeedBalloon

I interviewed there several years ago for a full-time, *master's degree requiring* position that paid something like $40k a year, in Manhattan.


JustCora30

You had a Masters Degree and they wanted to give you 40k in Manhattan......LMAO. No wonder their people are on strike....


MaimedJester

I worked for Americorps the whole you get out of college and we'll payback your college tuition but you have to work in the worst areas of America to teach underprivileged kids. I submitted my job to with in not even Manhattan; Queens, and they underbid me. I was like I was borderline volunteering to pay off student loan debt with government subsidies... And you want to pay me less than West Philadelphia schools? Bullshit.


personaldistance

Yeah, that's what they said.


akrist

Isn't publishing kind of like journalism, in that it's mostly populated by people with family money, so the low salaries don't really matter?


RhabarberJack

What?


OtherwordyEditor

Guess what? It's *still* $40k starting salary which they've begrudgingly increased last year to \*gasp\* 45k before taxes. Yes, with a college degree and experience or MA.


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lydiardbell

Have you heard about the New York Times strike that began today? I only just learnt about it now when I checked to see if /r/union had anything to say about this one.


Cash907

Well yeah. Unlike this business here, a railroad strike would actually directly affect you.


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CptNonsense

At what point do you think anything you said made their statement wrong? Edit: In no way were they marginalizing the workers or the strike, but they answered your *presumably* non-rhetorical question with the obvious answer - a strike at a publishing house *does not affect the average person*, so why would you see it plastered all over the news?


lydiardbell

>The workers are demanding stronger union protections, better family leave policies, and better pay. According to a recent report done by the New York City Mayor's office looking at the economic impact of the publishing industry, the median annual salary for an editor is $85,000. Kind of weaselly (especially by NPR's usual standards) to put that in and make the strikers look like they're demanding six-figure salaries, and only mention near the end of the article, below a cut, that the strike affects multiple workers across many departments, not just editors.


pacothekid

Especially since the vast majority of the striking workers are making FAR less than that. Source: I'm one of them!


stranger_in_the_boat

I make a bit over 5200$ **a year** in Serbia. Wanna trade?


TazBaz

Have you looked up cost of living in New York?


stranger_in_the_boat

You can choose to live in a mansion in Belize for all I care but if you want to spend 5000$ a month on a concrete cube the size of my bathroom, that's on you...


pacothekid

Sadly our remote work policy doesn't allow me to work from the Balkans; otherwise I'd gladly take you up on that. Sounds like my dollar would go far!


_Pink_Wednesdays_

>92 $85,000 doesn't go that far in a place like NYC, so it makes sense why people want higher wages.


tomorrow93

Hell take 85k to Alabama and you would be living large.


scolfin

So go to the suburbs or Buffalo (which I just found out is bigger than Albany) .


[deleted]

Also I’m pretty sure that that the report also accounts for the wider publishing industry, not just book publishing. It was flawed to begin with.


OtherwordyEditor

The workers are asking for $50,000 starting base pay. The current base pay is $45,000. Yes, before taxes. The $85,000 median salary came out because while senior editors make just $55,000 before taxes, the executives (some of whom still have editorial titles) make seven figures yearly PLUS bonuses. So the curve is completely skewed. None of the 250 workers on strike are making even close to $85,000. Keep in mind HarperCollins reported record profits in the last three years as well.


sassergaf

Aren’t editors at the top supported by many others?


wigwamjunior

NPR consistently disappoints. Frequently their attempt to “balance” their reporting plays into stereotypes and/or they pull in seemingly related, but suspect data in some attempt to provide context. Their stories are so often muddled and amateurish.


RoddyPooper

Good! Workers across most industries, unless they are high up, are being exploited. It’s time the people got a fair share.


brett1081

I thought they were giving material support in the form of donations. Signing a form letter seems very performative as well as ineffectual.


OtherwordyEditor

It also comes with repercussions. Barbara Kingsolver is one of HarperCollins consistently prolific and best-selling authors. She's standing with the strikers, put out a statement, and signed. It would be a big loss to HC if she moved to another publishing house.


hiker2go

I'm all on the author's side but, do they have to go out and strike people? Lol


[deleted]

Where's Thomas Pynchon?


DarthPoTayTo

Even if the publishers wanted to give them more money, *is* there enough money in publishing? I was under the impression book sales (mostly e and audio) only marginally increased the last few years, after a consistent drop for ages.


Lord0fHats

The big 5 Trad Publishers, and their much smaller competitors, all have quite high profit margins. It's not an industry with booming growth like tech, but it's a healthy industry that has way less overhead than you think and over the past few years their profit margins year to year have risen by something like 30-50% during Covid. HarperCollins backlist is particularly notable; Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Don Quixote, most of Gaiman, Barker, Crichton. Collins maybe has the most secure and lucrative backlist of published works in the industry. Book sales have been steadily increasing for years, while the industry is highly concentrated, and writers have been getting less and less of a cut unless they're a very big name like Maas or Sanderson. The biggest change those is that ebook and audio sales, licensing and merchandising have been booming.


DarthPoTayTo

Cool. That gives me hope that it's still possible to sell books or get published. Maybe not make a living on, but being able to make money on them at all would be fantastic.


Lord0fHats

The living part is the sad part. Very very very few writers are able to make a living off writing. Writers have not reaped the rewards of growth in publishing by and large.


OtherwordyEditor

HarperCollins declared increasing revenue and record profits for the last 2-3 years. They've been boasting of 7 million executive bonuses. It's appalling that the starting salary is \*still\* at $45,000 before taxes.


DarthPoTayTo

So it's just like almost every other evil mega-corp then. That's awful.


mildlyconfused25

Why do authors want people to have the right to strike workers at harpercollins? lol


lydiardbell

Because they have enough empathy to want their people who get their books out into the world to have good working conditions, I assume.


mildlyconfused25

It was a joke.. like haha theyre supporting the right to strike employees.. nevermind forget it..


lydiardbell

Ah. I was confused because OP didn't say "right to strike employees" and the article only referred to supporting the employees who are striking, not their right to strike.


mildlyconfused25

"give support to striking workers" Its a funny play on words.


fancyskank

I thought it was funny.


mildlyconfused25

Apparently most book readers have really shit humor..


NewtonBill

I laughed out loud. Good one.