Diversity Efforts Lead to Salary Hikes

Big Five publishers Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, as well as several independent presses, recently committed to raising entry-level salaries to between $40,000 and $45,000 at the end of 2020 or in 2021. Intended to make opportunities in publishing more financially accessible to BIPOC and other historically excluded professionals, this latest attempt to reckon with publishing’s whiteness was spurred by the country’s outrage at the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many other Black Americans at the hands of the police and the ensuing push to interrogate racism and anti-Blackness at a systemic level, including within the publishing industry, this past summer.

Entry-level workers, often assistants in editorial, marketing, design, sales, production, and other departments, do the essential work of reviewing book proposals, creating sales and marketing materials,