Good news for Labor Day

Celebrating book workers' recent successes

Regular readers will know that one of the central preoccupations of this newsletter is the work that goes into making books. That includes the most visible stuff like editing and design, but also the labor involved with meeting and signing authors, curating publishers’ lists, communicating about and building communities around books, moving the physical things around the world, calculating and paying author royalties, and all the rest. It adds up to a lot, which is why one study of the cost of publishing a university-press book arrived at a figure of about $35K per title before printing is factored in. Those are people-costs—what’s necessary so that publishing’s workers can achieve a level of dignity. Professional support and fair compensation, in turn, make possible books that are published at the highest level, and that provide the value that readers and authors expect.

Over the past few months I’ve shared perspectives on various developments that threaten to undermine the work of publishing, but I wanted to devote Labor Day weekend to following up with a couple of success stories.

Historian Shannan Clark wrote a guest post on the labor history of US publishing that included recent struggles at the New York office of Oxford University Press. He wrote: “Oxford management has taken a hard line on a number of critical economic issues, including minimum salaries, cost-of-living adjustments, protection of the bargaining unit’s jurisdiction over work, and severance. After nearly two years of largely fruitless negotiations, in May 2024 the OUP Guild filed multiple unfair labor practice charges against management.”

I’m pleased to report that shortly after Shannan’s piece appeared, the OUP USA Guild signed a contract with Oxford University Press that includes a raise in minimum salary from $40K to $49K (in New York City, recall), among other victories. As one union leader put it: “Millions of students and scholars rely on the first-rate research edited by the US staff of Oxford University Press. In an industry known for low pay across the board, our colleagues united. OUP USA has become a pioneer in collective action in academia and can now boast fair employment terms that will attract and retain outstanding professionals.”

Another guest post from earlier this year, by Bruce Baker, warned that an Open Access requirement for books in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) might have disastrous consequences for authors, publishers, and readers. Since cost recovery through sales forms the basis of publishing workers’ salaries (not to mention, of course, authors’ royalties), any requirement that books be given away free strikes me as having a strong potential to undermine the financial position of publishing workers. Their pay, after all, has to come from someplace, and traditionally that’s been the sale of books. These concerns aren’t hypothetical: One particularly assertive Open Access publisher talked openly about going without salaries for a number of years.

But here too there’s good news. In August it was reported that there will be no Open Access mandate for longform submissions like books in the next REF. That’s one troublesome disruption averted, at least for now.

On a personal note, our child started college in August, and the total cost of their first semester’s books came to just $200. That’s essentially a rounding error in a place where even the public universities charge $20K in tuition alone, and where a single month’s water bill can get well into three figures. The overall decline in the cost of course materials is, as I noted earlier this year, an underreported success story in publishing and higher education. Putting to rest the caricature of rapacious course-book publishers may help with the overall project of rehabilitating publishing—of seeing it (and its workers) as something to invest in, rather than a problem to solve or a villain to overcome. I find that a hopeful message for Labor Day, and for the new school year.