All the Smartest People I Know Work in a Dying Industry
Musings from a Career in Publishing
By Courtney Jordan
I am the product of a liberal arts college education. I studied both calligraphy and European history in college, and decided on my career path based on personal interest, not earning potential or a strategic evaluation of the current job market. I graduated with a bachelor of arts in journalism and applied linguistics with a minor in having not one clue how much money is required to survive in this world. My understanding of salary ranges went barely beyond what can be learned from the board game Life — landing around $50k was a decent draw. If you had told me that I would work for less than $35,000 a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world, I would have rolled my eyes, sure that my private school education costing twice that annually would surely save me. I pity you, college version of me.
And yet, that’s exactly what I did. After graduation, I took a mental scan of my passions and factored in what skills I had that I most enjoyed using and I decided to jump feet first into publishing. I love books, I love marking things with red pens, and I love the romanticism of the industry. While I’d like to say I’ve never looked back, it isn’t true — I look back all the time, and when I do I can’t help thinking to myself: this isn’t what I signed up for.
The publishing industry is a world all its own. For me, there’s a din of anxiety that is somehow both the bane of my everyday existence and strangely magnetic. If I never hear another person attach the phrase “in flux” to the business of making of books, it will be too soon. Publishing is a business historically run by tweed-clad gentleman with long, vodka-infused social lunches and the promise of shaping tomorrow’s cultural landscape. Today, it can seem like a lot of reorganizations, uncertainty of the future, and eating at my desk. But for every time I’ve looked back and thought twice about my first editorial assistant job, there’s three times that I’ve felt blessed to work in an industry secretly filled with the most intelligent people in today’s business world. Here’s why:
They read. And I mean a lot. Statistics show that the average American is reading less and less year over year and typically only read a handful of books annually, at best. People in publishing read more than a handful of books each month, and many read handfuls each week. They read all day. They are the most well-read, fictionally-traveled people on the planet and it goes a long way in my heart not to be made fun of for loving Hamlet and Captain Underpants. This skill is key in language development, social empathy, and lifelong learning. As proof, “What are you reading?” has been the first interview question at every publishing job interview I’ve ever had.
Fun Fact: CEOs read an average of 3–4 books per month. That’s just easy math.
They studied English. And philosophy, and anthropology, and fine arts. You name it. Choosing majors that don’t make obvious direct correlations to lucrative careers means that many of today’s publishing professionals found themselves in this industry seeking fulfillment from something besides money. Almost anyone in publishing will tell you that they originally wanted to be something else, before finding a fit in publishing. (Me? A ballerina/speech therapist/political journalist.) This means that besides their skills specific to their job, they always have additional interests and passions that make their job worth doing. Publishing is not an industry people join to get rich. Having a connection to your job that goes beyond paychecks makes you more personally dedicated to what happens to your company, breeding an industry of fighters.
They’re technologically curious. Educational publishing has made huge adjustments to meet the changing needs of their customers in the past few years. The industry is full of people who are turning classic printed materials into more engaging, multimedia solutions that meet the needs of students and professors of all disciplines. This isn’t easy, and being able to predict and shift with the ever-evolving technological demands of students today is a huge challenge. Publishing professionals are open to change and embrace platforms and tools they never thought they’d be working with. For a bunch of people who like to curl up and read books, they are also highly tech-savvy, making the industry a unique combination of Luddites and technophiles.
They are dynamic, intuitive thinkers. Creating fun, interesting products is one thing. Creating products that inform and measure knowledge is another. Today’s educational publishing industry must do both in order to succeed. The needs of companies are changing all the time, and roles are adjusting frequently, making my peers utility players, gifted in sales strategy, project management, and content development. It is atypical for an industry to simultaneously be fighting for customers and content. Publishing has to do both, making it a uniquely challenging industry, with the minority of products making the majority of revenue.
They are female. I don’t mean to say that there aren’t valuable, creative male professionals in publishing, but the majority of this industry is filled with women, making it a particularly special place in business. Entering into a field that we were warned against for years takes courage, sincere passion, and dedication, and these women far surpass the expectations of what this industry could have anticipated only one generation earlier.
Regardless of my frequent feelings germane to regret, I decided to further invest in my career with a master’s degree in publishing — an experience that solidified my belief that the future of this industry is bright. Although we may not fully understand what the publishing industry will look like in a few years, I am prepared to champion it.
I’m not interested in picking up the broken pieces of the publishing industry and putting them back together to validate the work of generations before me. I am interested in creating a space for superior content that meets readers and learners where they are going — making the process better, easier, and more in line with the rapidly changing, extraordinarily smart people that are today’s readers and learners. The successful faces of today’s publishing world shirk the typical adages of valuable professionals: focused, committed, regimented. I don’t want to focus — I want try everything and stay relevant. I don’t want to commit — I want to easily adapt and pivot. I don’t want to honor tradition — I want to create something new. I’m OK with letting go of the past and having no idea where I’m going — that’s what makes me qualified.
