Tick shock

At The Bookseller’s FutureBook Conference in 2015 Stephen Page, then chief executive of Faber, suggested an older generation of publishers should think about ceding power to younger employees. We should give the “new generation” room to adapt and develop the industry, he said. A sort of “Logan’s Run” for the book business, as we quipped at the time.

If I remember rightly, no one took great offence. Back then the trade seemed to be on the cusp of great digital change with an expectation that an emerging, digitally-savvy, diverse cohort of newbies would take the wheel.

But it didn’t happen and, to be blunt, I’m not quite sure anyone took it that seriously. For as long as I’ve been in this business (25 years, sorry), publishing has been run by the same types of people and in fact pretty much the same people. If the cut off was 70, Page might have stood a chance of executing a general shift. As it was, few took him up on the offer in the moment.

A decade on, and this modest proposal has become reality, with two US publishers Hachette and HarperCollins giving it a go for real. Both are offering their employees some kind of incentivised early cull either based on age (over 50 at Hachette US), or longevity (over 25 years with the business at HarperCollins), as a way of cutting costs more generally, the result of the suddenly tough market conditions that appear to have landed on the American book business. There is also perhaps a genuine desire to rebalance the workforce—these proposals come in at the same time as many US publishers are rightly raising starting salaries and seeking to widen the tunnel in.

Currently, more than 30% of workers in the UK are over 50 and that percentage is set to rise, thanks to changes around retirement age

Things are different in the UK, not least because the law provides for protections around age discrimination that would make such schemes as orchestrated in the US difficult (though not impossible) to reproduce over here. It is also true that the market has not closed in on us in quite the same way, as yet. Further distinctions are outlined in a column—written before the Hachette US move was reported (it is important to say)—from Lennie Goodings, chair of Virago, that provides the important context and counter arguments. Currently, more than 30% of workers in the UK are over 50 and that percentage is set to rise, thanks to changes around retirement age. Publishing also needs to mirror its audience, she argues, even as that audience changes. “We believe both an intersectional and intergenerational staff is the key to success.”

The news sparked a somewhat more heated conversation both online and in my in-box, with many correctly arguing that for an industry that both wants to appeal to older readers and build a reputation for fairness among all of their staff, pursuing policies that separate out one group of individuals is always going to feel wrong-headed.

Besides, what’s the message from “Logan’s Run”? It doesn’t actually work. Seasoned publishers don’t stop publishing because they are moved out of the corporate environment. They just do it elsewhere. Often better.