Redundancy is commonplace. For some it may be a blessed relief after months of uncertainty or being stuck on furlough, for others it may just add salt to their wounds.

Redundancy is a huge shock. It is described as one of the top ten stressful things you might encounter, compared with bereavement and divorce. Nowadays, there’s little stigma in being made redundant, but it does not reduce the personal and emotional stress that losing your job, your regular income, and your daily routine brings.

Some companies offer outplacement counselling, but many in the industry don’t know where or who to turn to. Losing your job in such a way can be soul-destroying and demoralising.

If you do find yourself in this position, here are some tips to help you pick yourself up.

Stay motivated, no matter how hard

Lockdown can make being at home all day feel even worse. If you are stuck indoors, it is easy to lapse into despondency, so it’s important to maintain a daily routine: get out of bed in the morning, get dressed, eat properly − and don’t sit and watch TV all day. It can also affect your relationship with your partner or housemates, especially if they still have a job to go to, whether they are working from home or a different location.

Get out and about

First, get rid of your aggression and emotion – but not with the people around you. Get out of the house every day − do some sport, or go for a run or walk, even if it’s a short one. It’s easy to feel downhearted, useless and unloved, but a simple activity like taking exercise as well as putting yourself first, changes all that. This is why, even during the tightest lockdown, the UK Government allowed everyone outside to exercise. Solitary exercise also gives you time to think, time to plan, and should invigorate you into action.

Remember, the less you use your body, the less your body will want to do.

Keep in touch with your network and friends

Stay connected with people who are working, but remember that they are in jobs and don’t have all day to chat on the phone. Use your contacts in the industry − tell them you are looking for work. Make sure that you sign up for all the trade press, free news bulletins and job alerts.

Try to motivate yourself by spreading out the calls and contacts, so that if you get a rejection letter from one vacancy, you already have an application in for another. Keep your mind focussed on active applications, not rejections.

Accept the highs and lows

Understand that you will feel a whole range of emotions, from total despair to euphoria. Some days will be better than others. Find things to get yourself through the bad days. Remember all those jobs at home that you put off because you were always working late or too tired? Well, now is your chance to do them.

Support and assistance – who to contact

If you feel you have been treated unfairly and need some legal advice about your situation, but you are not a member of the National Union of Journalists, then contact ACAS for immediate advice.

Your local Citizens Advice Bureau can help you reschedule debts if you have to register as unemployed, or StepChange and National Debtline will advise you in complete confidence. Please do not feel any embarrassment when talking to these organisations; they have heard it all and are skilled in getting you out of trouble.

If you have been working in publishing for a year or more, The Book Trade Charity can advise you if you are eligible for a retraining grant, career support or other financial assistance.

At bookcareers.com, we have several ways of helping anyone who is losing or has lost their job. We provide redundancy counselling and career support for companies and individuals. We are currently running two job clubs which are free to join: one for those who are unemployed after having lost their UK book industry role; and one for anyone else looking for entry level roles or trying to break into the book industry.

Looking to the future

As to the future and finding your new job, take time to reassess what it is that you want to do. Redundancy is often when people consider going freelance, but bear in mind that very few freelancers make a fortune; most just earn enough to keep their head above water.

Think about what you enjoyed in your last job, your likes and dislikes.

• Did you like working in a team? Or do you prefer working on your own?
• Do you like sitting at a desk?
• Do you like being in a corporate environment? Or do you prefer to be in an informal workplace?
• What do you want to do in a new job, the same or something different?
• Had you not been made redundant, what was your career plan?
• Where did you want to be in five years’ time? How were you going to get there?

Why should this temporary blip make your career plan any different? You might have to diversify for a while, but any experience is valuable. What better way to apply for a vacancy that advertises ‘must work well under pressure and adapt to change’ than by demonstrating that you have dealt with the personal pressures of change?

Suzanne Collier is a fully qualified Registered Career Development Professional (RCDP) and the founder of bookcareers.com.

Her book How to Job Search in Book Publishing will be published in 2021.

At The Literary Consultancy (TLC), we oversee the writing and sending of 500−600 manuscript assessment reports a year. Each manuscript is hand-matched by our team to the editor (or Reader) we feel is most suited to the job, to ensure a ‘best fit’ that will serve the writer. All reports are checked before being sent on by the office. It’s a delicate process, but a hugely enriching one, and one that can be transformative for the writer. To have an editor whose skills and affinities align with the writer and the work giving objective, professional feedback is a gift, and we’re very lucky to have been able to facilitate this process for the last 25 years.

Manuscript assessment – a huge amount of skill

Manuscript assessment isn’t governed by the same rules as copy-editing or proofreading, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t require a huge amount of skill. There’s a great deal we can learn from this process that can be usefully applied to all editorial service provision. Mostly, this comes down to understanding how best to serve both the writer, and the writing.

For our Readers, who are all experienced freelancers with other work either as professional writers, teachers of creative writing in academic institutions, book reviewers or publishing professionals, the feedback process can sometimes feel like it’s happening in a silo. They don’t read each other’s work – we are after all dealing with sensitive information and intellectual property – and so it can be hard to know what’s working well, and to learn from each other.

The same happens in the wider world of freelance editing. Even specific skilled work like copy-editing and proofreading that carry the option of qualifications with organisations like the PTC could have more peer-to-peer learning, to ensure we’re delivering top-notch services that are attentive to the nuances of the landscape and the shifting needs of writers. At TLC we actively partner on research projects with organisations like Kingston University and the Royal Society of Literature (A Room of My Own), to stay up to date with the key issues facing writers today. And we keep a close eye on any trends emerging from our own daily conversations with writers.

Nurturing a strong author-editor relationship

The most important thing is to remember that there is a lot of anxiety when it comes to the writing process. Writers are often dealing with self-doubt, sometimes imposter syndrome, and thinking they have to achieve a certain outcome to have ‘made it’. When they come for feedback, often writers are also looking for validation of their effort. It can be easy to forget this when we are (necessarily) safeguarding ourselves as freelancers, processing incoming jobs and sending out reports and marked-up work as quickly as we can.

The balance is hard to strike, and it’s a lot to ask of a freelancer, especially if you’re a sole trader. That’s why we set up the Being A Writer platform, which focuses on helping writers to cultivate creativity and build resilience, empowering them to develop a toolkit to better navigate an industry that is trying to change, but which still isn’t completely transparent to the average person jotting down ideas in a notebook.

Three key factors for excellent editorial service

It can be good to have some touch points to keep things on track and delivering at the highest possible level. For us, there are three constants to providing an excellent editorial service, and they are based on a solid understanding of:

* What writers say they want;
* What writers actually need; and
* How to navigate the gaps in between.

The advantage of working at consultancy level is this mix of bird’s-eye view (the landscape, the market) with on-the-ground, face-to-face contact with writers (the personal, the holistic). We regularly bring our freelance pool together, previously at our offices but more recently online, in order to share learning and establish best practice that then gets embedded into TLC’s editorial guidelines, which get updated every three years or so. These include our key reading principles, which touch on both editorial points, and how to handle and manage expectations and anxieties. That’s where we come in as a consultancy, too; as a second layer to help make sure this process is as supported as possible, for the writer and for the Reader.

A little TLC goes a long way

There are some things that are consistently true about best editorial practice, and some things that feel newer, around identifying barriers that we might not as an industry have always been attuned to. It’s critical in this environment of hope and rejection, fear and ego, that we understand that what we are doing as editors is so much more than mechanical. We are supporting creative writers’ dreams, bringing them in line with the visions the writers have for them, within the parameters and expectations of an at times brutal market. We could all do with a little more TLC in our lives, I think, and I truly believe that editorial practice is enriched when we remind ourselves of this.

Aki Schilz is director of TLC, the UK's first and leading manuscript assessment service.

Follow TLC on Twitter @TLCUK.

Challenges in an extraordinary year

There is no escaping the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic has badly damaged many publishing businesses. In a survey of nearly 130 Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) members in October−November 2020, nearly three-quarters (71%) said that they have seen their print sales fall in the last six months. The closure of bricks-and-mortar bookshops, the collapse of Bertrams and the cancellation of festivals, launches, conferences and other events cut off important sales channels. There were severe problems throughout the supply chain, and more than two-thirds of independents say they have experienced distribution challenges of some kind in the last six months.

These challenges have been echoed around the world. With so many retailers closed, widespread delays to printing and freight and the abandonments of the London and Frankfurt book fairs, both exports and rights sales have been compromised.

This has led to around one-third (32%) of publishers reporting problems with credit control. Aside from the consequences of failures of businesses like Bertrams, some IPG members reported that some customers are taking much longer to pay, which puts cashflow − a concern for small businesses in particular at the best of times − under more pressure.

All these difficulties have prompted over one-third (37%) of publishers to take advantage of the government’s furlough scheme, and some IPG members have taken government-backed loans, secured grants or found other types of financial support to sustain them through the pandemic.

Reasons to be cheerful

But while 2020 has brought unprecedented threats, it has also highlighted the resilience of publishers. The independent sector has always been resourceful and agile in responding to challenges and finding the upsides − and this year they have grasped opportunities in two areas in particular.

The first is on the digital side of publishing. While print sales have been reduced, half of IPG members (51%) said that their digital sales have increased in the last six months. With the physical supply chain so slow, publishers have been selling more ebooks and investing in ecommerce platforms that help them trade direct with consumers. Independents have been very creative in their online marketing too, using websites, social media and video-based events to fill promotional gaps. Publishing’s migration to digital sales and promotion was already well underway, but the pandemic has compressed change that might have taken years into a matter of months.

The second positive development in the year of Covid-19 has been the evolution of working habits. Nine in ten IPG members (88%) say their switch to home working has been successful, and video conferencing and cloud-based technology have helped to maintain productivity while improving work-family balance for a lot of publishing professionals. A new flexibility in working styles is very likely to endure long after offices properly reopen.

Home working doesn’t suit everyone of course, and it brings with it the challenge of keeping people engaged. The pandemic has reminded us that publishing is very much a people industry, and that all staff − especially those who have been furloughed for any length of time − need to feel connected to their work, motivated by a purpose and empowered to do their jobs.

This has made online events like the IPG’s Virtual Spring and Autumn Conferences, where people can connect with others and feel part of a community, very important. It makes the work of the Publishing Training Centre even more important too, and the very successful switch to virtual delivery of courses has been crucial in helping publishers to maintain their skills and learn from one another.

Looking to the future

If we can maintain our connections in these and other ways, there is good reason to be confident about the future. Over half of IPG members reported that they feel either very optimistic (9%) or quite optimistic (47%) about the next six months, and only 15% are pessimistic. There is still a long way to go before publishing returns to anything like normal, and some things in the industry will have changed forever. But with the support of the IPG, PTC and others, we feel sure that independent publishers will not simply survive the pandemic but thrive again afterwards.

Bridget Shine is chief executive of the IPG.

For more about the IPG, click here. 

Around the world

In the UK, the publishing and book industry is recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. Coronavirus caused bookshops to close, publication dates to be pushed forward, and had a huge impact on teaching and learning. With Bertram’s collapsing into administration, the impact was most felt on independent publishers, already suffering from the loss of bookshops sales. But shops are now open, Amazon is selling books again, the bigger publishers are posting better-than-expected results, and there is a bonanza of new autumn titles.

In the US, the AAP reports a decline of 4.2% in revenues comparing the period January−June 2019−20. Whilst sales of consumer books have increased year on year, and ebook and audio download revenues are up, education sectors have suffered the most. Overall, the UK and US industries are faring much better than in other places around the world.

African countries have perhaps been hardest hit by the pandemic. Their book markets are 90% educational, with a heavy reliance on print. With schools closing, the market has shrunk considerably. This has advanced the need for digitisation of Africa’s educational sector, which has begun in some countries, but is recognised to be a huge priority for publishers and governments alike.

India saw a complete halt in the market for six weeks, including online sales via Amazon and Flipkart. A cyclone in Kolkata wiped out bookstores and publisher warehouses. A new education policy may mean a new curriculum, and could also affect the already devastated educational books market.

In the Far East, where many bookshops are now open again and online book retail is growing, distributors are still reporting a big decline in book sales to bookstores. It’s a market where customers like to feel books before they buy, but people are still afraid to enter shopping malls and stores.

The Middle Eastern publishing industry has another problem: its reliance on book fairs to sell to the consumer. Every country in the Arab World has a book fair which caters to the general public and local professionals, such as teachers and librarians who use the fair to buy their year’s supply of books. No book fair has taken pace since the Casablanca International Book Fair in February 2020, leading to a complete wipe out of sales for Arab publishers.

The new normal

Book fairs around the world have come to a standstill, and most are experimenting with an online presence, both for content and rights trading. Two recent examples are the Moscow International Book Fair and the Nigeria Book Fair. The Tbilisi Book Fair in Georgia had a physical presence in September. For the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, there will be an ambitious online offering, including matchmaking tools.

The other major impact for international trade has been the cost of freight. Some distributors are reporting air-freight prices increasing threefold, making it unsustainable and affecting new titles reaching the market and stock control. In markets such as New Zealand, this is having a positive impact for domestic publishers, whose books are often overshadowed by big names imported from the UK and USA. Ultimately, this will impact the consumer, who will be faced with shifting to digital editions where possible, or increased pricing.

On a more positive note, we have had a summer of online literature festivals beamed into our living rooms. For those who would love to travel to the Jaipur Literature Festival, or experience the Hay or Edinburgh Literature Festivals, the world has opened up. Authors are gaining global audiences in ways they could not imagine in the physical world. Whilst digital may not replace the actual festival experience, for authors, it has its advantages.

Publishers have also sought solace in their communities. Local groups such as language publishers in India now meet regularly to discuss shared opportunities. A global network has emerged through a Facebook group I helped co-found called “Publishers Without Borders”. Publishing has always been a collaborative and social business, and the pandemic has only strengthened that sentiment.

What will emerge from this experience? Will we see a fast-track shift to digital consumption of books? Will local print-on-demand replace the shipping of physical books around the world? Do we need so many book fairs to carry out our business trading? Will literature festivals now be a digital-only phenomenon? We can be sure that we are all in this together, and there will always be a need for high-quality content. Publishing and bookselling around the world will continue to innovate and serve the reader and will be stronger as a result.

Emma House is Managing Consultant of Oreham Group and a Trustee of the PTC. Follow Publishers Without Borders on Facebook.