The young brain drain

This past year, The Bookseller saw a spate of articles puzzling over why the assistant turnover in publishing is so high. I’m a publishing assistant and, at time of writing, I will be handing in my notice in precisely seven days. Weeks ago I set myself a deadline—come hell or high water, whether I have a job lined up or not—at which I had to simply quit. Because no job should make anyone feel as bad as mine makes me. I’m out.

To those puzzled execs: you’re losing talent because you don’t pay your assistants. Because you don’t value them. You most certainly don’t promote them. And if you think you’re exempt from that, let me ask a few questions:

1. Do you know what percentage of their salary your assistant spends on rent? Have you checked the rental market lately?

2. How long did it take you to promote your last assistant? Somewhere between two and four years? Was that timeframe calibrated to suit them, or you?

3. Do you promote when employees are ready to take next steps, or into jobs they’ve already been doing for several months to a year, unpaid, around their actual full-time duties?

4. Would you go to bat for your assistant at the risk of creating strain with the person who supervises you?

Your answers might look something like this: 

1. No and no.

2. Yes, between two and four years.

3. Into jobs they’re already doing—if they don’t meet the absurdly high targets expected in that first year of promotion then they’ll be in big trouble. Easier for them, really, if they’ve already been doing the job.

4. This could go either way, depending on who’s reading. Too often, I suspect not.

The thing is, those answers aren’t good enough: nothing about them is calibrated to support those coming up.

It’s no secret this industry uses its employees’ love for their work against them. There are so many fresh graduates vying for jobs, most companies just take their pick. It takes some hopefuls years to get their foot in the door. With Facebook groups, group chats, panels, Instagram accounts, even publications all dedicated to landing that first job, do we wonder that assistants come in ready to take on work far above their job description (often without instruction, expected to figure it out as they go), and go home to do admin they didn’t get around to during working hours, and maybe do that for the next three years, all on a barely-liveable salary? Has it never occurred to you that the absurdly high targets we set for our newly promoted employees are actually the problem, and not the employees themselves? That maybe we should be investing in younger staff instead of expecting immediate miracles? Well, nobody goes into publishing for the money. Funny how that phrase is bandied about so often, and yet day after day we are told to think of the bottom line. Are profits up this year? Have you reached your target? How much wealth have you funnelled into somebody else’s pocket? 

As with everything in this business, it all comes down to value: who we value, how we value them, and why

See, therein lies the problem. As with everything in this business, it all comes down to value: who we value, how we value them, and why. Assistants cry in bathrooms and rant to our friends, but ultimately we suck it up and do the administrative workload of four people without complaint or risk admitting, to ourselves and to others, that this job we wanted so much—and worked so hard and so long to get—might not be what we thought it was. That we’ve failed. Except, I now realise, it isn’t us who are failing. Publishing is failing us. Strange that it took me so long to cotton on because, time and again, every corner of this industry makes it clear that assistants are not valuable (and that’s before you account for any intersections of class, race, gender or disability). Not in words, because we love to praise our assistants, but in actions. We may have wellness talks and team drinks and free cappuccinos, managers who tell us we’re doing brilliantly, but that doesn’t make the constant microagressions hurt less. It doesn’t stop the overwhelm of knowing that admitting your workload is far too high might shut down any hope of advancement. It doesn’t take the sting out of being told that, while you’re doing absolutely stellar work, there’s simply no room for you to progress and in any case we need you doing the grunt-work you’re currently doing. It certainly doesn’t mean your manager has been given the proper training to be able to manage you effectively. And of course, it doesn’t help you get a raise. 

Even authors, with a few notable exceptions, aren’t valuable. Publishers might pay for a big debut, but if it doesn’t sell immediately the marketing push is diverted elsewhere, and bad luck if that writer wants a second deal. There’ll always be another 23-year-old with a pretty face and a good manuscript. So what’s valuable? Profit. Somehow, in this industry all about books, the only thing we all know to be true is that money matters most. We absolutely loved it in editorial, but the sales team weren’t sure how well this title would do so it didn’t pass acqs. This title was completely brilliant, but we have something similar already/can’t think of any comps/aren’t sure of the market, so I just don’t know how to sell it. Now, that’s a wider problem. Somebody reading this has at some point likely published a book about the effect of capitalism on the arts. It’s not easily solved. The point is, there’s complete misalignment between the things this industry purports to value (craft, creativity, solidly researched and sometimes world-altering information) and what it actually values: the bottom line.

So, publishing: why are we happy to give editorial assistants hundreds of thousands of pounds to bid on books, but not give them a raise? Why do we celebrate huge debuts written by 21-year-olds, and then tell our assistants that they’re too young and too green to have any proper responsibility or advancement? Why is the response to genuine complaint so often well that’s how it was for me, and not I remember how terrible that was, let’s see what I can do to make things better? Why do we not, like many other industries, hire professional administrators and pay them accordingly, thus freeing up room for our young, hungry, and brilliant assistants to fly?

If we can answer those questions, maybe we’ll stop the exodus.