That HarperCollins US staff have gone on another strike this week — in response to the announcement the company was making redundancies “to help with cost pressures” — is significant in a few ways, a senior publishing figure tells Crikey.
Firstly it’s obviously an irritant for News Corp, which owns the company. And, of course, the publisher notes: “If News Ltd and Fox merge it will send those unionists into a frenzy. Publishing staff are traditionally the most liberal of liberals.”
But it also points to wider points of stress all over the industry, as the economy recoils worldwide.
“[It’s] a bit of a shock to the industry that thought it had found the future with a surge in front- and back-list sales through lockdown,” they said. “Now it seems the only thing anyone wants is Colleen Hoover [whoever she is] — her extraordinary sales and her publishers are the only things holding the market from steep declines.”
“Booktopia shares hit new lows as it announced a $15 million loss and even Amazon is suffering. It doesn’t release its book sales but publishers are reporting declines in Amazon sales by 25% and more as it has to compete with bricks and mortar again. Penguin Random House, who is still awaiting approval for their acquisition of Simon & Shuster from the US competition authorities, must be regretting the massive price it promised in the good times.”
A good book is cheaper than a night out on the piss or a fancy restaurant meal, and it lasts a lot longer.
Yes, but you have to store it.
Not if it’s an ebook. At least, not physically store it.
It would be interesting to see Charlie go back to his publishing insider and get him/her to put this srike in the context of the Great Resignation in the US. In addition to being liberal, book publishing people also tend to be really highly educated — people with multiple post-grad degrees who are often making way less than even modestly successful tradies. It also tends to be a pink-collar ghetto: highly educated *women* getting paid not very much for their highly skilled work.
(Part of the reason that they don’t get paid what they’re worth is that an increasingly smaller segment of the reading public can tell the difference between a book that’s benefitted from good structural editing early on and one that hasn’t. In fact, too much of the general public doesn’t know or doesn’t care whether a book has even had the benefit of a good *copy* edit.)