Publishing industry an open book in 2022
Business made headlines as Gen Z comes of age in the workforce and bestseller lists
In 2022, the story of book publishing was often the industry itself.
Penguin Random
House’s attempt to purchase Simon & Schuster ended up in a Washington, D.C. courtroom, as the Department of Justice prevailed after an antitrust trial in summer that also served as an extensive, often unflattering probe into how the business operates. In November, some 250 HarperCollins union employees went on strike, their calls for improved wages and benefits and greater workplace diversity amplifying an industrywide discussion over the historically low pay for entry- and mid-level workers.
And throughout the year, social media was the meeting ground for observations and revelations on the trial, the strike and other issues the publishing world once confined to private gatherings. Authors posted their book advances, agents criticized publishers, and editors shared their salaries. Some staffers, such as former Macmillan editor Molly McGhee, announced on Twitter in March that they had had enough and were quitting.
In her resignation letter, McGhee cited “the invisibility of junior employees’ workload” and alleged that “many executives in the publishing industry are technology illiterate” and dependent on their assistants.
“I have a theory that publishing is at a very important decision point where it has to decide whether it wants to continue moving forward with 20th-century ideas or if it wants to join other businesses and go into the 21st-century,” McGhee, 28, said recently. “And I think it’s very hard for them to make that transition.”
“There are very important conversations going on that would not have come out publicly when I was starting out,” said Kate Testerman, founder of the KT Literary Agency. “The only people that you could talk about what was going on with were co-workers or your friends.”
Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp offered a briefer assessment: “We are living in expressive times.”
Despite the phenomenal success of novelist Colleen Hoover, the number of books sold dropped around 6% from the historic highs of 2021, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85% of hardcover and paperback sales. Publishers cite the lessening of pandemic regulations and more people leaving their homes as a factor. But the numbers are still above the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, and the power of literature remains high, not just in the minds of the book community but among government officials and political activists.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, responding in fall to the
U.S. District Court’s decision to block the Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger, said that the proposed deal would have “diminished the breadth, depth and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy.”
Conservatives, meanwhile, continued their efforts to pull books from school and libraries, with Missouri alone targeting nearly 300, from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian
“The Handmaid’s Tale” to a Manga edition of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The American Library
Association reported surging levels of attempted bannings, especially books with racial and LGBTQ themes, and widespread harassment of librarians.
In some ways, book publishing is still an outlier from other arts and entertainment industries. Video and music stores are mostly gone, but physical bookstores have endured despite the growing size and power of Amazon.com; the American Bookselling Association, the trade group for independent stores, is reporting its highest membership in decades. Publishing also remains high-minded, the kind
of industry where executives such as Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch stated during the Penguin Random House trial that agents don’t lie to them.
“It would be devastating (if they did),” Pietsch said recently. “We have an industry that operates pretty much on trust.”
But otherwise, says Penguin Random House U.S. CEO Madeline McIntosh, the industry no longer stands apart from larger trends — whether inflation and supply chain delays, or questions about diversity and working conditions. She and others cite the pandemic, the Black Lives
Matter movement and social media, along with the emerging influence of younger employees.
Karp sees the current moment as a coming of age for Gen Z not just within publishing houses, but also on bestseller lists, with Hoover’s “It Starts With Us,” Jennette McCurdy’s memoir “I’m Glad My Mother Died” and rom-com fiction such as Tessa Bailey’s “Hook, Line and Sinker” among many works benefiting from the enthusiasm of younger readers.
After Simon & Schuster announced it was publishing former Vice President Mike Pence’s memoir “So Help Me God,” younger staff members confronted Karp, 58, during a virtual town hall meeting, objecting to Pence’s service in the Trump administration and his conservative stances on issues. Some were openly unhappy with Karp’s response that Simon & Schuster was committed to publishing a range of political views.
“They wanted to hear answers, and they deserved answers,” Karp said recently. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with questioning your work culture.”
Over the past few years, employees have challenged and upended traditions that endured for decades — that a politically liberal culture, committed to the broadening of the public mind, was itself predominantly white; that the vitality of publishing’s mission compensated for low pay (usually under $50,000 for new hires) and long hours.
“There was an understanding that you’ve got to prove your commitment. That if you stick it out, then you’ll see the money. Just get through the first five years,” says Rachel Kambury, 31, a HarperCollins associate editor. “I feel now like the lid is off on so many issues that had been prevalent in publishing.”
“I’ve gotten to see a lot of young people in recent years, and they have such a different sensibility and vocabulary,” says young adult author Maureen Johnson, 49, whose books include “13 Little Blue Envelopes.” “I feel like they’re not kidding around. They have a sense of worth of themselves as people and a sense that it doesn’t have to be this way.”