Your Life Sucks, But You Get Free Books

Publishing Trends has put the results of its first industry survey online, and, let’s face it, there aren’t any big surprises: “Publishers lack vision, editors lack taste, managers don’t understand the business, authors have bad behavior, and a pot-smoking West Coast sales rep gets frustrated by the ‘idiots’ he has to deal with at the companies he represents.” (Frustrated? That must be some pretty crappy weed.) Among the other highlights:

• 39.2 percent of the respondents said the worst part of the industry was the pay, which makes sense given that 73.6 percent of the 21-35 demographic are making less money in publishing than everybody else they know in just about any other line of work.

• Nearly half of the respondents had no further career ambitions whatsoever. (Well, the exact line was “just happy being me.”)
• Nearly half of the people on the editorial side of the building are nursing their own literary ambitions; also, 36.4 percent of the marketing team.
• Publishing Trends is read by old people in New York. Just kidding! But two-thirds of the survey respondents were NYC-based, and 28.3 percent had been in the industry for at least 25 years.
• 31.7 percent of the respondents read “industry site blogs” for their publishing news.

Blogs? As in more than one? You mean there are other people crazy enough to do this? (UPDATE: I’m in an even better mood now that I’ve seen the full results of that particular question, where another 35.3 percent cite “Media Bistro” [sic] as their source for publishing industry news…)

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