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Publishers under pressure on costs
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/71707-publishers-under-pressure-on-costs.html
Comments
If they want to reduce costs it will be an obvious way to go.
Personally, for their workload editors, marketing, publicity etc should be paid more!
RG: who do you think the publishers are? A group of publishing experts who work under one brand. I've never seen a job title of Publisher before.
Actually I had a manuscript with a publisher before which was approved by the editorial team, but ultimately turned down by someone higher up - a dark, mysterious figure known to me only as The Fiction Publisher.
So yes, there's a publisher within each publishing house. Possibly many. I bet they're not on 16k a year.
Of course executives have higher wages (starting at £30,000 a year), but yes the lowly editors only earn £16,000.
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Explore_job_sectors/Publishing/job_roles/p!egFjdp
Pay within publishing is terribly low overall: even the top executives earn less than they would in other businesses. I doubt any real economies can be made there.
If you expect to sell a reasonable number of books of each title, then offset is still way cheaper than POD (I think 400 is about the breakeven point), so POD doesn't provide a route to money saving for most commercial presses (although it does have some rather sinister implications where rights reversions are concerned and yes, I've blogged about that).
I can't imagine that publishers will every stop seeking new talent: the whole industry depends on it. But I can imagine that changes will be made to the current business model, such as we've seen with the Macmillan New Writer imprint; then there is the problem with returns, which Snowbooks has discussed on its blog, which threatens to drive a few small presses underwater each year.
There are plenty of areas where change can and will occur. But cutting out the writers isn't one of them, I'm happy to say!
Nope, it was definitely the Fiction Publisher. The editorial and marketing teams both said yes, but she had final say, and chose to say "nae chance".