Big Changes at JIST

The publisher I work for, JIST Publishing, was acquired this spring. I hadn't mentioned it here before because things have been so up-in-the-air. But as we start to pack up our offices and move to a new place next week, it seemed like a good time to talk about it.

We've gone from being a 50-person office owned by one eccentric millionaire to a 25-person office owned by a 100-person textbook publisher, EMC/Paradigm. And higher up, EMC is owned by a private equity fund. There are, of course, good and bad things about that change, the best being that we don't have to watch someone squander the money we make for him on second-hand RVs, armageddon-staving generators, classic cars, and railroad storage crates. But I digress.

In book publishing, mergers and acquisitions are routine. Sometimes they're good, and you get to work on a different product line, get a better office building, and maybe get a better benefits package (or in my case, I'm inheriting better office furniture). But often people lose their jobs, and those left just have to take on their responsibilities for the same pay. Really, it's no different than what's happening in the rest of corporate America these days. The key is to make yourself indispensible to your company, and to always be able to demonstrate how you contribute to the "bottom line."

So as of July 23, the new JIST offices are at 7321 Shadeland Station, Suite 200, Indianapolis, IN 46256. We are jazzed about the new selection of restaurants, the more convenient location, and the fact that all our departments will be closer to one another, so that hopefully, we can communicate better.