Publishing is a business which makes money by selling books. It has traditionally adopted or been assigned a veneer of class and ’poshness’ as it deals with literature. The industry wants to promote the idea that reading is a classy pastime reserved for high culture, not something accessible to the working class in a classic example of gatekeeping. When I started my first job in publishing 1980s London, it was populated by Sloane Rangers and Posh Boys. As a state educated grammar school girl (from the north!), I was the 1980s version of a diversity hire.

I was passionate about books, writing and wider culture so I dived into publishing with a delight and energy which has never left me.

What is it like to work in the publishing industry today?

Poshness (and, unfortunately, whiteness) remain at the heart of most UK companies despite recent valiant attempts to diversify the staff and author list. A key reason publishing is populated by the same gene pool is the boutique nature of the industry, which makes it a closed shop — To gain access, you need to know someone on the inside. Additionally, the vast bulk of salaries are comparatively low for the qualifications required for access. You would get much more bang for your buck elsewhere as many staff are now finding. The very popular Publishers Brunch Instagram account has a GTFO ( Get The F*** Out) category: stories of the young and the bright who have fled for better jobs with better hours outside the industry. Young people have stopped drinking the Kool Aid.

Publishing is at an inflexion point. From within, as it grapples with a workforce that demands a living wage and better conditions, and from without as it is finally exposed to the power of digital transformation.

The publishing ecosystem is crumbling — here’s how to mind your head

It is a miracle that publishing has never truly been disrupted like other industries: music by Spotify, taxis by Uber, hotels by Airbnb etc. We have faced off Amazon and their cheap ebooks – both heralded at the time as the end of the book trade – but the book business kept going.

Amazon did not change the fundamentals of the cultural ecosystem – publishers, the media and booksellers all continued to ‘make’ new authors and bestsellers within the established market. Amazon has never created demand; it just (very successfully) syphons off demand as a freeloader on the host body.

And that is what has changed now. The publishing ‘host body’ is under pressure because the entire ecosystem over which they held sway is crumbling. Demand is now being created and fulfilled digitally. Mainstream newspaper reviews, once a guarantee of sales, are left unread as an entire generation gets their information from Instagram and YouTube (as in Nat’s What I Reckon ). TikTok’s #BookTok has created a tsunami of demand for Colleen Hoover’s gritty romance novels. Hoover was the best-selling author in 2022 selling 1.4M copies in Australia. And she has never even been to this country or appeared in our mainstream media.

Which is why I am passionate about self-publishing and the print on demand (POD) system.

The self-publishing model leans into this new digital ecosystem and frees authors to publish themselves outside the major publishers. Which means more diverse voices can be published, more emerging writers, a more equitable sharing of the literary space.

I am delighted that I have the 30 years of knowledge to help authors through JCA. I was an outsider once, and I hope through sharing what I know new and emerging writers will find a welcoming community and a new way of publishing.