The Great Resignation Hits the Publishing Industry

Traditional publishing ("tradpub") is cannibalizing itself. As more and more writers are bypassing tradpub and publishing their own books, the book audience is finally fractioning into niches much like the TV, movie, and music industries did.

Bigger publishing companies are losing income. The reasons for this are among the following:

1) Not only are the mass market writers leaving tradpub, the bigger writers are starting to leave, wooed away from their old publisher by another one of the Big Five (or Four depending on how the DOJ antitrust lawsuit goes with the Randy Penguin-Simon & Schuster merger). So the tradpubs are having to cough up more money to keep their cash cows happy.

2) New writers are doing a better job investigating opportunities. If they do take a tradpub offer, they are seeing lower advances from the tradpubs who want more rights. Furthermore, the tradpubs are doing a smaller print runs for unproven authors. So, it's a catch-22. The tradpub are putting out enough books to break even, but aren't putting the money into promoting a new writer with a small print run so then they get bitchy when the new writer doesn't catch fire instantly.

3) Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in new independent bookstores crashed. We're back to bookstores going under because couldn't browse in-person for the last two years.

4) The big chain bookstore like Barnes & Noble are suffering from the same lack of foot traffic as the independent stores. However, they have the added problem of the decline of shoppers in their home malls.

Like nearly every other company in the U.S., tradpubs are increasing the workload of their staff without any commiserate increase in salary or  benefits. The corresponding burn-out leads to employees abruptly quitting.

One of the issues is the lack of stability across all industries. Why would any employee fear losing their job when they know they could lose it on a random whim anyway? At a certain point, it's a matter of survival for any employee, including those in tradpub, to quit the abusive environment and take their chances somewhere else.

I say this because I've been there. Burnout and it's corresponding effects on my health is part of the reason I stopped practicing law and started writing and running my own publishing company.

All I have to do is look at my Fitbit and see the decrease in my blood pressure and heart rate while I write to know I made the best decision for me. I hope those people leaving the tradpubs find something equally relaxing and gratifying.