Publishers Weekly Salary Survey

Publishers Weekly is a magazine for booksellers and publishing professionals that is the place to look for news and trends in the book publishing industry. It also has lots of cool reviews of new books that are coming out. I highly recommend that you check it out.

PW publishes its annual salary survey in July. I have a copy of the 2006 edition and was hoping to use it to quote some entry-level salary statistics to you. But lo and behold, there is not much specific salary info to be had, other than the salaries of the top execs (did you know that the top dude at Barnes & Noble made $1.4 million in 2005?). I know they broke out average salaries by job title in past surveys. I don't know what (or who) coerced them to stop doing that.

But there are some interesting things to pass along, anyway. Employees at smaller publishers reported being more happy than those at mid-size and large companies. But people at bigger companies made more money overall.

In 2005, 44% of publishers were located in the mid-Atlantic states (including New York); 18% were in the Midwest; 16% were in the West; 12% were in the South, and 10% were in New England.

Average work week for managers was 51 hours; for sales/marketing it was 47 hours; for editorial it was 46; for rights it was 46 (and in a future post I'll explain what "rights" are--this is what my husband specializes in); and in operations it was 46 hours.

In terms of job security, 55% said theirs was the same as the preceding year; 25% said it had decreased; 20% actually felt their jobs were more secure (who are these people?).

But here's the piece that's most relevant to you: 85% of operations people said they'd recommend publishing as a career to a recent college graduate; 82% of editorial people said they would; 81% of management said they would; and 78% of salespeople said they would (probably because you can make more money in sales in a different industry).

I will keep digging for stats on entry-level salaries.