UNSOLICITED, STEEPED IN OPINION, PUBLISHING JOB ADVICE THREAD--INCOMING!
If you want to be a literary agent, especially one that works on commission, please do the financial math first. This math includes...
The Harper Union is made up of ~250 junior and mid-level employees across editorial, design, marketing, publicity, sales, legal, and managing ed. We make books, and we make books happen. But we've been reporting to work without a contract for almost 3 months now. 🧵
So... I stopped writing about two years ago because it became too difficult. The rise of transphobic discourse and then the pandemic... I just couldn't anymore. I didn't know how to write without feeling that huge burden of what I "should" be doing.
It's absolutely bewildering that Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos can say "we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm" when last year they released the Netflix Original @Disclosure_Doc, which included salient scenes like this.
So the only person who was actually "cancelled" in all of this was the individual who simply spoke up to reaffirm their humanity and the humanity of others. Interesting.
And I only got a full-time job in 2021 in publishing, as defined earlier in this thread.
I am binary, white, come from enough financial literacy to juggle myself through work up until this point. If it took me, with boatloads of privilege this long, wonder why there aren't more
Now I'm steamed up. I like this account being semi-anon, so I am happy to talk with folks privately about this, but I have worked publishing adjacent for 5 years after having my first internship in 2015. I had over 300 applications & 60 interviews for publishing jobs.