bookcareers.com blog

bookcareers.com have been told that with effect from Monday 18th January 2010 KP Publishing will be known as Redwood Publishing Recruitment.

KP Publishing has been a long-established publishing recruitment company for over 25 years and it became part of the Redwood Professionals group of companies in March 2009. Under this new umbrella, Redwood Publishing Recruitment feel they will be better positioned to meet the demands of clients and candidates for the future. The team, headed up by our dear friend Theresa Duncan, who has been with KP Publishing for over 20 years is still the same, as is their commitment to clients and candidates. Their website is at www.redwood-professionals.com and we wish them continued success. Redwood handle vacancies across all levels of job and all areas of publishing.

You might have seen this article over the Christmas holidays – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8433024.stm that the CIPD predict more redundancies, with unemployment reaching a peak in the summer.

I feel like the ‘purveyor of doom’ when I state I have been saying this for ages.  I believe that between now and May we will see more redundancies across publishing. Part of it will be the changes in job functions and rationalisation as the publishing process continues to modernise and change. Whilst some of this will have been dependent on contract sign ups post-Frankfurt (deals being confirmed or falling through), the Borders factor and Christmas sales.  For a number of publishers, it isn’t until a customer requests to return unsold stock, that they can truly evaluate whether their books worked.  I recall a frightening year when one major customer returned 3000 books in the same cartons they were shipped in; they never even made it on to the shop floor.

However new jobs will be created, mainly within digital content, text (editorial), media and marketing departments. To ensure that you survive your career in publishing you need to be as up to date as possible with your training, technical knowledge and most importantly, you need to open your eyes to the world outside of publishing, especially at the influence of social media. Currently those outside of the industry who have digital or social marketing experience may stand a better chance at getting a job than you, because their industry or company works in the cut and thrust of developments. Don’t let yourself lose out. Make sure that you are in tune with what is happening – your reading matter needs to be far greater than your employer’s press releases or The Bookseller.

I saw this article and prediction - that the top six publishers would become the top three. I don’t think so.

I agree with their prediction about self publishing but in addition to this there will be a continual number of new start ups. The reduction in the cost of technology, plus ease at which anyone on the street can now call themselves a ‘book publisher’, makes it easier for the novice to start up. The big companies will have to find smarter ways in which to utilise their assets, one or two may go on an acquisition hunt, but the majority will continue to consolidate and monopolise on the content they already own. Those who are looking to expand may look outside their core business or on the peripheries of the industry to build a media empire.

What I predict will also happen, is that as unfashionable lists are cut from major companies, entrepreneurial Publishers will emerge from the staff who have benn made redundant. At the last recession in the 1990s, we saw people like Ian Chapman and Christopher Sinclair Stevenson (among others) set up on their own. A few years down the line they were acquired by other publishers, but they started up during some of the worst times for the book trade.

I maintain what I have said for those entering the industry during this period:  Book Publishing is in its most exciting phase yet.