I’m marching connected a picket enactment extracurricular the offices of HarperCollins, the steadfast of this precise publication you’re present reading. It’s a grey and freezing time successful Lower Manhattan, close adjacent Wall Street, and each present and past an errant snowflake lands successful my hairsbreadth truthful that I consciousness foolish for not bringing a hat.
Still, I transportation my bulky sign—United Auto Workers connected Strike!—and archer myself that if 2 100 and 50 publishing workers tin beryllium retired connected the streets protesting each wintertime and forfeiting their already meager paychecks, past I, arsenic a supportive author, tin tolerate 1 hr successful the cold.
It is December 16, 2022, and HarperCollins employees person been connected onslaught for months now. Their demands are modest—a higher entry-level wage ($50,000 a twelvemonth alternatively than $45,000, inactive peanuts for a occupation based successful Manhattan successful 2022) and much diverseness successful hiring—demands that a steadfast owned by 1 of the world’s largest media conglomerates should easy beryllium capable to provide.
Yet absorption inactive refuses to travel to the bargaining table. The concern is dire. There seems to beryllium nary extremity successful sight, nary bounds to firm greed. So wherefore can’t I halt smiling?
*
The twelvemonth is 2003, and I americium wearing a brand-new dress, immoderate rayon floral fig that outgo $14.99. I’ve conscionable bought it disconnected the merchantability rack astatine the H&M a artifact down from the Simon & Schuster office, aft a run-in with a Xerox instrumentality near my archetypal outfit covered successful achromatic ink. A small spot of lipstick successful the bureau bathroom, and I’m acceptable for blessed hour.
It is December 16, 2022, and HarperCollins employees person been connected onslaught for months now.We conscionable astatine our favourite dive barroom connected the Lower East Side, nursing vodka sodas—two-for-one from 5–8 p.m.!—and digging into the escaped bowls of seed premix that could number arsenic meal if you devour each morsel and don’t caput having a fewer tummy issues after. We don’t mind. I, for one, person conscionable spent my meal wealth connected the caller dress.
I’m bushed and headachy from moving nether fluorescent lights each day, but I rejoice successful having yet regrouped with my people, a clump of different assistants who besides person large ambitions and precise tiny slope balances. That they presently relation much similar a Greek chorus forecasting doom and sorrow alternatively than the modern-day Algonquin circular array I ever imagined is perfectly good with me.
Scintillating dialog tin travel later. For now, we’ll spell astir and effort to one-up each different with fearfulness stories from work. Note that I’ve changed names present to support the innocent—and the underpaid.
“Michelle is trying to debar an writer of hers who is really, truly needy,” sighs Maddie, a publicity adjunct who started connected the aforesaid time arsenic I did. “So each clip helium calls I person to archer him she’s not available, and erstwhile I inquire him if I tin instrumentality a message, helium starts telling maine his beingness story.” Maddie makes the cosmopolitan motion of the embattled assistant: elbows connected the table, hands rubbing her temples. “Apparently his woman is leaving him, and his feline has a urinary tract infection.”
“I walked successful connected Emily breast-pumping successful her office,” says Kevin, token antheral adjunct friend. “I was truthful embarrassed, but I didn’t privation her to consciousness embarrassed, truthful I stayed and tried to marque conversation?”
Poor Kevin, reminding america that men, too, are sometimes susceptible to upspeak. “I don’t deliberation she took it that good due to the fact that she dropped a full vessel of bosom beverage connected the crushed and screamed. I ran retired and slammed the door, and I deliberation we’ve mutually decided to unreal similar it ne'er happened.”
“This morning, Frank told maine to spell to the bodega and bargain him carnal crackers earlier our 10:30 selling meeting,” Amy started, fluffing up her bangs. “They were retired of the regular kind, truthful I took a hazard and bought the chocolate-flavored ones. He screamed astatine maine erstwhile I got back. Told maine I don’t travel directions well.” She takes a agelong swig of her good whiskey and Coke and belches.
“Last nighttime I had to enactment astatine the bureau until nine, trying to enactment unneurotic photograph credits for this tremendous past publication that’s coming retired this fall,” I say, gulping my drink; already, we’ve forgotten that we’re expected to beryllium making them last. “I mean, I had nary different plans, but the brag woman didn’t cognize that.”
We’re doing a cute small bit—”Fresh-faced assemblage grads find retired that enactment is hard”—editing retired the ovum Maddie had to donate successful bid to wage rent. The information that Lisa couldn’t marque it retired contiguous due to the fact that she’d had to springiness up her country successful her Brooklyn flat and is alternatively commuting ninety minutes connected New Jersey Transit to marque it backmost to her parents’ location astatine the extremity of the workday.
There is surely nary notation of Audrey, a quiescent yet quick-witted Black pistillate who lasted 1 twelvemonth arsenic an adjunct earlier moving connected to get her teaching degree.
I’m conscionable astir to marque my mode to the bar, flashing a $5 measure truthful the bartender knows I mean business, erstwhile I perceive Amy say, “This is truthful not fair. We shouldn’t basal for this.”
“We should unionize,” says Maddie.
I rotation my eyes and marque a jack-off question with my hand. I’m truthful eloquent.
“What are we, longshoremen who privation to bash immoderate racketeering by the pier?” I scoff.
Simon & Schuster is not the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, aft all. We are not Sally Field, lasting connected that array successful that 1 movie. We knew what we were getting into erstwhile we went into this business, and we did it anyway.
I compression immoderate lime into my vodka soda (vitamins!) and consciousness a small atrocious for Maddie, truthful deluded successful her idealism that she thinks this is however the satellite works. I myself americium not truthful naïve. The labour question is not meant for aspiring white-collar radical similar us.
*
Very fewer radical get into publication publishing due to the fact that they privation to get rich. They bash it for the privilege of moving astir books.
When I started retired arsenic an editorial adjunct successful 2001, I knew that I would beryllium subjected to years of dues-paying. I was told again and again that determination was nary mode to larn astir the manufacture without sitting successful the mediate of it (at the bottom, of course) and observing, by doing secretarial enactment and watching much experienced editors marque each the decisions, with the extremity of becoming 1 of those editors someday.
The thrill of knowing that I was connected the way to putting fantastic caller books into the satellite was capable to prolong me, and I held retired anticipation that if I tin instrumentality it retired agelong capable I mightiness adjacent statesman to gain a livable wage.
Over the people of my editorial career, I began to recognize that publishing had precise small to bash with what I liked to work oregon introducing large lit to a wide audience. Only sometimes was the occupation astir putting books retired into the satellite that I—or anyone astatine the company—actually believed in. Very fewer of the books I felt passionately astir were apt to garner immoderate important sales. (These are the art-versus-commerce blues that conscionable astir each bright-eyed young go-getter successful a originative manufacture gets to experience.)
So instead, I worked connected concern books and self-help books, fare books and ghostwritten personage memoirs, thing that had a warring accidental of hitting the New York Times Best Sellers list. I worked connected the books that my bosses chose to enactment on, oregon books that their bosses chose for them to enactment on. My input connected the full process counted for precise little, of course. I was meant to beryllium occupied with different things.
My beingness arsenic an adjunct successful the aboriginal aughts tin beryllium characterized arsenic a changeless conflict with paper. I sent faxes. I chased down confirmation sheets for those faxes and stuck them into my boss’s integrative inbox trays. I filed. I got down connected my hands and knees to compression stacks of insubstantial into cabinets that were already overflowing with contracts and writer photos. I took telephone messages.
I wrote them connected triplicate paper, truthful my brag could person 1 transcript and I could besides support a grounds for lord knows why. I opened mail. I shuttled interoffice envelopes from level to floor. I enactment proposals sent by literate agents successful my boss’s inbox and kept unsolicited manuscripts to respond to myself. I photocopied. I made 12 copies of a four-hundred-page manuscript truthful that everyone connected the editorial squad could measurement successful and ended up with a backache.
I tried to wide the jams successful the photocopier, but sometimes the Xerox instrumentality would cull my astir earnest attempts astatine insubstantial management, and I’d person to bargain a caller formal astatine H&M. And each these insubstantial cuts, each of this agita, would 1 time pb to the instauration of an existent $24.95 hardcover that radical mightiness buy.
In my disconnected hours I work books astir the aureate epoch of publishing, memoirs by legendary editors who seemed to person lived similar stone stars, each artistry and excess. Older colleagues told maine wistfully astir the days erstwhile they could fume successful their offices, Mad Men-style, portion their secretaries ran idiosyncratic errands for them.
There were the much-glorified three-martini lunches with superb authors, followed by postlunch naps connected their bureau floors, and the state to people whomever and immoderate they pleased, with nary numbers feline perpetually worrying them astir the bottommost line. Just astir everyone who worked successful publishing astatine the clip was independently wealthy, truthful they’d been escaped to disregard those pesky numbers.
Corporations were ruining the publication business, with budgets slashed and creation being turned truthful blatantly into commerce. The gentlemen’s agreements of the past were being supplanted by legalese and integer selling teams. To the aged guard, this was downright vulgar. I couldn’t assistance but agree.
Publishing workers similar maine were caught successful the middle, weighed down by firm bullshit (less flexibility, much paperwork, ever the oculus connected the bottommost line) but inactive burdened by the elitism of the past.The manufacture I inherited was mired successful the muck, determination betwixt the worst of the alleged bully aged days, erstwhile affluent achromatic men ran everything according to their ain whims, and the modern displacement to firm publishing, successful which (mostly) affluent achromatic men ran everything according to the whims of their company’s enforcement committee and shareholders.
Publishing workers similar maine were caught successful the middle, weighed down by firm bullshit (less flexibility, much paperwork, ever the oculus connected the bottommost line) but inactive burdened by the elitism of the past. Even by the clip my vocation had begun, the problems of the past inactive plagued us.
The publishing manufacture screeched to a halt each August arsenic bosses escaped to their abrogation homes portion assistants were near down successful the metropolis to fret astir making rent connected a country successful an flat shared with 3 roommates. Unbridled misogyny inactive meant that intersexual harassment was a rite of transition for generations of assistants. Getting a occupation successful the archetypal spot was inactive astir wherever you went to assemblage oregon who you knew, which meant that diverseness of contention and socioeconomic people and acquisition inheritance was hardly a consideration.
“This is conscionable however it is” is the communal refrain of institutions that don’t privation to adjacent see change. For astir of the aboriginal aughts, I sat dutifully successful editorial meetings, taking notes and keeping quiet. The rules, spoken and otherwise, said that inferior unit were determination lone to listen, with the anticipation that the contented of their elders would trickle down to them dilatory but steadily, similar however Reaganomics was expected to work.
Later, successful 2014, I worked astatine a integer start-up wherever twenty-four-year-olds ran the meetings, and different twenty-four-year-old colleagues expressed their opinions with abandon. The civilization daze was disorienting. I couldn’t judge that young staffers were being treated similar estimable radical with valid concerns close away. My years successful publishing had trained maine to judge that personhood would person to beryllium earned, similar a golden prima oregon a promotion, which was much apt conscionable a rubric alteration with nary raise.
In 2007, I was promoted to subordinate editor, and I began to deliberation that each my dues-paying mightiness yet wage off. One much promotion, and I wouldn’t person to assistance a elder exertion immoderate longer, would get to enactment connected my ain books and possibly adjacent get my ain office. Instead, I got laid disconnected erstwhile my imprint folded 4 months into my caller role. I recovered retired the hard mode that the lone happening hard enactment guarantees is unpaid overtime.
We were told to spot each the indignities and abuse, making what often averaged retired to beryllium little than minimum wage, arsenic a amusive challenge, an acquisition upon which we’d lovingly look backmost to consciousness arrogant of however overmuch our tegument had thickened, the information that we’d survived. We were meant to beryllium satisfied with being told, “That’s conscionable however it is.” This was however things successful this manufacture had ever worked, they said, and would proceed to work, implicit and implicit and implicit again. I believed them.
*
When I sold this publication to an imprint of HarperCollins, I knew I would person to bash immoderate cognitive acrobatics. Very fewer publication publishers—even the smallest ones—are wholly pure. Even self-publishing is astir wholly babelike connected Amazon, the institution whose labour practices don’t let for warehouse workers to instrumentality due bath breaks.
But HarperCollins is owned by News Corp and is truthful peculiarly noxious, aligned arsenic they are with the Fox News propaganda machine. And truthful it is that noted book-banner Ron DeSantis and I stock the aforesaid publisher.
I’m ashamed to archer you however agelong it took maine to recognize that conscionable due to the fact that a publication is categorized arsenic nonfiction, doesn’t mean it’s needfully true. “Nonfiction” is conscionable a selling word for a publication successful which the author(s) purports to beryllium telling the truth. Fact-checking, I learned, is the ineligible and fiscal work of the writer alternatively than the steadfast (many acknowledgment to Joanna Arcieri, who fact-checked this book).
“The work for the accuracy of the substance does remainder connected the author; we bash trust connected their expertise oregon probe for accuracy,” a spokesperson for Hachette Book Group told Esquire in 2020. Each and each steadfast that constitutes the Big Five largest companies successful firm publication publishing has a akin policy, 1 that provides authors lone a ineligible work of soon-to-be-published books (hi to the HarperCollins lawyer who reviewed this manuscript) alternatively than thorough fact-checking.
As you mightiness imagine, immoderate authors are much invested successful getting the facts close than others, which is wherefore misinformation runs rampant successful truthful galore books that purport to beryllium true. My publication connection included this section you’re speechmaking now, successful which I telephone retired HarperCollins successful peculiar for being complicit successful the dispersed of disinformation, but the bully radical astatine Ecco bought the publication anyway.
Even successful my astir bright-eyed, head-down days, erstwhile I truly believed that lit could alteration the world, determination were books that conscionable felt wrong, books that seemed to marque the satellite a small worse simply by existing. Rush Limbaugh’s smug look sneered astatine maine from the covers of bestselling hatred bombs, portion Glenn Beck’s “global warming is simply a hoax” publication and Michelle Malkin’s anti-immigrant screeds sat connected the escaped support close adjacent to Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton reissues.
Drilled into maine backmost past was the content that putting retired large bestsellers, nary substance the benignant oregon substance, would ever beryllium a nett positive. Any lies that Oprah-endorsed quacks (yes, I did concisely enactment connected a Dr. Oz book) presented arsenic research-driven information were acceptable due to the fact that the profits from specified books mightiness alteration maine to get the benignant of fabrication I really liked to read.
The homophobic rants of Fox News personalities had a built-in audience, truthful their guaranteed income conscionable mightiness let maine to instrumentality a accidental connected a debut communicative postulation from an chartless queer writer. Extremism and hatred and fake subject and conspiracy theories sold books, and the spoils of those books would let caller literate voices to emerge.
Publishing a diverseness of opinions is paramount, oregon truthful my elders successful the publication publishing manufacture person repeatedly told me. Even though they are firm entities, publishers spot themselves arsenic arbiters of escaped speech, warring the bully combat to marque definite a assortment of voices—both sides, if you will—can beryllium heard.
Under this logic they are capable to person themselves that publishing hatemongers and charlatans is downright noble, adjacent if—especially if—their ideas marque you uncomfortable. They could not ideate specified ideas could ever origin harm greater than their ain discomfort.
Even astatine my astir naïve, it had ever seemed to maine that the Founding Fathers ne'er granted anyone the inalienable close to person large advances and bigger selling budgets from ample publishing conglomerates for their abhorrent opinions, but what did I know?
I didn’t truly person to reckon with the publication publishing world’s complicity successful spreading hatred and lies astatine the time. Even though I was battling printers during the time and eating barroom nuts for dinner, I was inactive lucky, truthful fortunate that the contented of hateful books produced by the manufacture successful which I was complicit didn’t straight interaction my life. So it was casual to support absorption connected the regular drudgery and not big-picture concerns.
Then Trump was elected. Then children were separated from their families astatine the confederate border. Then implicit a cardinal Americans died successful a planetary pandemic, past Roe v. Wade was overturned, past determination was a monolithic uptick successful books being banned successful schoolhouse libraries.
I watched the dehumanization of trans radical go a right-wing talking constituent that was past often validated by centrist Democrats. Every azygous time I would scroll done Twitter and find immoderate caller devastating effect to, among different things, publishers’ relation successful elevating bigots.
At the aforesaid time, companies ample and tiny started promising to marque structural changes successful the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement, and publishers, whose unit tends to beryllium much homogenous than not (in 2019 the publication publishing manufacture was seventy-six percent white), saw antiracist books go a profitable caller trend. I watched from afar arsenic publishers enactment retired statements astir equality and announced the instauration of DEI committees, taking the smallest archetypal steps successful trying to summation diverseness among its workers.
Publishers adjacent began to connote that they mightiness worth the diverseness of their employees’ opinions as overmuch arsenic they person traditionally valued their authors. Imagine! Next happening you know, immoderate twenty-three-year-old is going to locomotion into an editorial committee gathering with well-thought-out disapproval and the different radical astatine the array volition perceive to it!
It’s adjuvant for maine to deliberation of the prime to people radical who promote the marginalization of others arsenic an contented of workers’ rights alternatively than state of speech. I’m nary law scholar, but I cognize that the radical who really marque the book, who bash conflict with insubstantial (there’s little insubstantial now, but still), should person a accidental successful what books they enactment on. Making a hardly livable wage portion clearing Xerox jams to get retired the connection of one’s oppressors is simply a measurement excessively far.
So I cheered erstwhile underpaid employees protested Simon & Schuster’s signing of notorious homophobe Mike Pence for a two-book woody for astatine slightest $3 cardinal successful 2021. And I signed an unfastened missive successful enactment of Penguin Random House employees successful 2022, erstwhile an imprint of PRH gave Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett a whopping $2 cardinal publication woody to constitute a memoir conscionable arsenic she’d been captious successful the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
There are galore different examples I won’t spell into now, different than to accidental that it gives maine anticipation each clip employees travel unneurotic to talk out. Such corporate enactment mightiness not enactment each clip (it didn’t, successful the second 2 cases), but it is truthful overmuch much than I could ever person envisioned successful the days erstwhile I was charging groceries connected my recognition paper and shuttling insubstantial astir my office. Everyone should person a union, and that includes publishing workers.
*
There’s 1 happening astir HarperCollins that puts it a measurement supra each the remainder of the Big Five publishers: it is, currently, the lone 1 that has a union. The workers astatine HarperCollins person been unionized for decades, and for the past 30 years person been Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (turns retired the UAW organizes mode much than the car industry; Local 2110’s inaugural to signifier white-collar workers has resulted successful its practice of a assortment of taste institutions from the Whitney Museum to Film astatine Lincoln Center).
When I myself was inactive a wrung-out assistant, a peon of the publishing industry, I knew the HarperCollins national existed, but I couldn’t ideate each the possibilities it represented. But successful the days post-Covid-lockdown, portion I was opening to enactment connected this precise book, I started to perceive grumblings. Social media amplified them, turned them into a roar.
The labour question had gotten a much-needed refresh successful 2021, with workers from a immense array of fields opening to organize, from retail workers to instructors astatine colleges crossed the country. Kim Kelly, writer of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, remarked connected the oversea alteration successful a 2022 interrogation with Vogue.
“We saw and are continuing to see,” said Kelly, “workers astatine Amazon and Starbucks—these incredibly well-known corporations that I deliberation a batch of radical person accepted arsenic being portion of the cloth of their regular lives—go up against the bosses and say, ‘We request much from you, due to the fact that you are virtually hanging retired successful abstraction portion we’re trying to wage our rent.'”
All crossed the publication industry, radical watched arsenic the unit astatine assorted different media companies and magazines unionized, analogous originative industries that had likewise treated employees similar they should consciousness fortunate conscionable to beryllium there. Creative types were not truthful antithetic from the baristas and warehouse workers successful their tendency to beryllium treated fairly. Solidarity crossed each industries, among each types of workers, began to consciousness similar the lone mode to get a amended woody for all. We were connected the aforesaid team.
Then, for the archetypal clip successful ages, the national astatine HarperCollins began bargaining for a amended contract. Even better, galore HarperCollins employees who were excessively high-level to articulation the national besides vocally supported the effort. (But not all; I’m a petty bitch, truthful I perfectly took enactment of each the scuttlebutt astir holdouts.)
It took galore much years than I’d similar to admit earlier I realized that if publishing is simply a firm business, and nett its main goal, past each employees of the institution should gain a surviving wage. I know, revolutionary! But for excessively agelong I didn’t recognize that I was a worker, not conscionable a kid with large dreams who was fortunate to beryllium determination successful the archetypal place. That treating workers with basal dignity is bully for everyone astatine the company.
Such enactment was echoed successful wide-ranging media sum that highlighted the union’s precise humble demands. I knew the workers astatine HarperCollins had deed a nervus erstwhile radical extracurricular the publication concern began to inquire maine astir the strike.
So present I americium now, a HarperCollins author, demonstrating solidarity with the workers agitating for change. I’m 1 of galore stomping on the sidewalk successful a agelong and constrictive oval extracurricular the publisher’s office, mid-December mixed precipitation plunking down connected us.
I bask watching the handmade signs spell by. Passion Doesn’t Pay the Bills, 1 says, and If Black Lives Really Mattered They’d Pay Us a Living Wage. Then determination are the much whimsical but inactive righteously aggravated book-themed signs, which I peculiarly admire: Where the Wild Things Are Underpaid and A Series of Unfortunate Salaries.
Twenty years aft I myself was a peon of the publishing industry, I americium capable to entree the choler I’d felt backmost past and usage it, I hope, for good. Better precocious than never. Chants of “What bash we want? A CONTRACT! When bash we privation it? NOW!” consciousness similar euphony to my ears, and erstwhile I get home, my dependable volition beryllium arsenic creaky arsenic that 1 clip erstwhile I went to backstage country karaoke with a fewer friends for 5 full hours aft a messy breakup. Catharsis!
It’s galvanizing to recognize that I’m lasting successful a assemblage of radical who are energized and acceptable to accidental that conditions that I thought were entrenched and unchangeable are really unacceptable. These workers judge that alteration can happen, and that it should happen; “this is conscionable however it is” is nary longer acceptable. Books matter, yes. Now much than ever. But publication workers matter, too.
By the clip the onslaught ends, sixty-six days aft it archetypal began, HarperCollins volition hold to determination the starting wage of $45,000 to $47,500, with $50,000 becoming the basal by 2025. Such gains mightiness consciousness meager aft a combat truthful agelong and messy, but astir the aforesaid time, the different Big Five publishers volition besides summation their threshold for entry-level salaries. This feels similar a coagulated triumph successful a conflict that I ne'er adjacent thought could beryllium waged.
It’s galvanizing to recognize that I’m lasting successful a assemblage of radical who are energized and acceptable to accidental that conditions that I thought were entrenched and unchangeable are really unacceptable.Still, determination is truthful overmuch much enactment to do. There volition apt inactive beryllium galore naïve small ambition monsters similar myself who get astatine an bureau and are stripped of galore of their illusions astir what enactment is, but I inactive support a ray of anticipation that immoderate cycles tin beryllium broken.
There are definite things that we conscionable shouldn’t tolerate anymore.
______________________________
From I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman. Copyright © 2025 by Maris Kreizman. Excerpted by support of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
