Trade facing industry-wide burnout, Bookseller survey finds

Publishing is facing “industry-wide burnout” according to a survey conducted by The Bookseller, which revealed 89% of staffers responding to the survey had experienced stress during the course of their work over the last year, while 69% reported burnout.  

The survey also found a significant number of employees are working more than their contracted hours each week, with many unhappy at the state of their work-life balance.  

With more than 230 responses, heavily dominated by publishing staffers (87%), the survey found 64% of people working in the industry felt their work had impacted their mental health in the last year. Many attributed this to unsustainable workloads and an “always on” culture, worsened by the pandemic. 

One editor, who has worked in the industry for seven years, said they are required to do “entire strands” of their job outside of contracted hours, to the extent they feel unable to start a family and are “seriously considering” leaving the industry. 

In total 63% of respondents said they worked more than their contracted hours each week, with some saying they worked up to 20 or 30 hours extra. Nearly three quarters (73%) agreed that their workload had increased in the last year, while 37% said they were not satisfied with their work-life balance. 

One senior desk editor who has been in the industry for nine years said working from home during the pandemic had “definitely” promoted a culture of working extra hours. “Work-life balance is a joke! I’ve heard editorial assistants not taking their lunch break and even cancelling training sessions as they felt they had to continue with their work,” they said. “Morale has severely decreased since the pandemic, lots of colleagues have left (either to other publishers or out of the industry) as they did not enjoy their jobs and were not valued as staff or compensated well enough.” 

The survey showed 38% of respondents wanted to leave their job. An assistant editor, who has worked in the industry for four years, said they “love” their job but were working more than two extra hours a day “not to even catch up, but to fall behind less”. They said: “I have had to work weekends. I am constantly stressed about the deadlines I am missing, as they impact my colleagues. This should not be the workload of a junior staff member. And, quite frankly, the workload and the pay do not add up. This is not worth it, and I am making plans to get out of the industry.” 

The majority of respondents (67%) said they felt supported by their manager, but that little could be done to change their heavy workloads which were causing the stress in the first place. An assistant editor who has worked in the industry for three years said: “I work in a very supportive work environment but burnout has been a gigantic issue across the board. It affects people in every department and at every level, and the company and the industry will continue to have issues with retaining staff until this is addressed meaningfully.”  

They added: “Junior members of staff are often doing enough work for two people but are only in rare instances offered external help such as being able to freelance certain tasks out. There is an expectation from senior leadership that the company will continue to buy more and more books, but no corresponding communication re hiring more staff to help with this. People have been stretched beyond their limits over the last two years particularly and that’s why we’re seeing a mass exodus from the industry.” 

A marketing executive, who has worked in publishing for seven years, agreed. “There’s been a huge change in focus over the past two years, driven by the pandemic, to look at backlist titles and perennial sellers as well as more focus on e-books and audio, but the expectation that teams can do that on top of their pre-existing workload is going to lead to workforce-wide burnout.” They added: “My line manager recognises the issue and is understanding but there seems to be limited appetite higher up in the company to take steps to address the issues.” 

Another assistant editor, working in the industry for five years, said they had "not known burnout like it was in November" due to supply chain issues. They said: "We’re all exhausted and we know everyone else is exhausted, as an editor you don’t want to give marketing and publicity more because you know they are overworked too so it’s just this cycle of piling more on your own plate and drowning in it."

They said their manager also felt the same. "It’s industry-wide burnout and change needs to come from the top, I can’t expect my mid-level manager to be able to solve this."

A former publishing staffer, who recently switched to agenting, said they experienced “horrific” working conditions as an editor. “My last year as an editor I took only five days of holiday because I didn’t have an assistant and there was no one to cover even the basics of my day-to-day when I was away, so going on holiday meant a month of working through the weekends to make up for it." 

They said they “love” being an agent now, because it has made them enjoy books again. "I see my friends who still work as editors continuing to struggle while their line managers refuse to give them anything approaching help or support. The bright, hardworking young people who work in publishing because they love books leave to go to better industries—as I nearly did—and nothing changes. M.d.s and c.e.o.s need to have a hard look at the workloads they place on their junior staff and start making real and consequential changes.” 

However burnout is not limited to publishing staffers. A number of booksellers also reported issues with stress due to working conditions. An archives assistant, who has worked in the industry for 10 years, said: “Rotas would be provided with only a week or two notice at times, trying to secure holidays was always a protracted affair, trying to speak to management about any HR/pay issues was always impossible, trying to view payslips was a convoluted affair, working hours would regularly be unsociable—you were supposed to be on a pattern of lates and earlies but management would just put you in for what suited them, so you would regularly be working weeks of mostly late shifts, you’d be lucky if you got weekends off, and you’d be expected to just accept very last minute changes to your rota.” 

However one store manager, who has worked as a bookseller for more than nine years, said despite the issues they are “constantly impressed by how supportive other people in the industry are to each other”.  

“Social media is a godsend in this, and I’m not sure you would get a similar thing in other industries," they said. Another bookseller, who has worked in the trade for two years, noted "conditions are okay but pay isn’t substantial and doesn’t encourage building a career".

A number of respondents argued that lockdown and working from home requirements had made conditions worse, and that this could be seen in lots of industries, not just in publishing. Meanwhile many stated that they "loved" their jobs, and thought their working conditions were acceptable, but were concerned about pay. 

An editor, who has been in the industry for five years, said: "I really do love this industry—the people are second to none, and the experience of working on books that people all over the world love is incredible. But publishing doesn’t love its people back—if we truly are ’the best of the best’, as everyone keeps telling us, do we not deserve to be compensated appropriately for that? It’s certainly a ruthlessly competitive and profitable industry, and I really would like to see some of those profits reinvested in the people working so hard to create the books."

The Bookseller will report the survey findings on pay and the cost of living crisis later this week.