Congrats
@bingeonvogue ! I'm glad everything worked out for you!
For anyone else who stumbles on this thread, though, I really have to second
@sentier :
Publishing and journalism are not great industries to get into. They've been cutting staff and budgets just about every year since 2008, if not before that. They're competing with free online content as well as with other, new at-home leisure activities that have gotten huge over the past 10-15 years--like gaming, endless TV and movies on Netlifx, and social media.
They've always paid poorly, too. When I got my first job in the industry 2007, my salary was $28k; it took me 10 years to get up to $55k. I'm freelancing now because the 3-hour round-trip commute from the suburb I could afford to live in was killing me with stress--and I can afford to freelance now only because my husband got a really well-paying job. I toughed it out on my own at first, but most young people have support from their families and a lot of more senior people have spouses who are well-paid.
And it's
really not as glamorous as it looks in the movies. Most offices keep up an impressive reception area and a few really nice conference rooms for meeting with people from outside the company, but the office space for employees is pretty bad. In one of my old offices, for instance, mice and cockroaches showed up a few times a year, most of the computers were 5+ years old, broken chairs weren't repaired, the carpet was dingy and covered in coffee spills, conference rooms were tiny, the video conference equipment was more annoying than helpful, etc., etc. The big, semiannual meeting where new lists were introduced went from being an everyone-invited 3-day event in a hotel ballroom with a catered lunch and cocktail reception to a webinar all but the most senior people listened to at their desks while doing other work and trays of sandwiches plopped down in conference rooms.
And Conde Nast in particular is struggling.
The virus is making everything worse too: book sales are way down because so many book stores are closed and people are being more careful about spending. For instance, Netflix is $15/month, has thousand of hours of shows, and can be enjoyed with whoever you're quarantining with; while reading is mostly a solo activity and an issue of
The New Yorker costs $9 and is maybe an afternoon's reading and a new book is at least $15 and probably gives you 5-10 hours of entertainment. People who are casual readers are also discovering that their libraries have a lot of ebooks.
It's really hard to say what the industry will look like after the virus calms down and its economic effects set in. Even if things turn out reasonably well, the industry's pre-existing problems are still huge.
All that said, I completely love my work and my colleagues are wonderful. The authors can be delightful. I still get a little thrill when an author puts my name in their acknowledgments. And I love everything about actual, physical books--jacket and page design, the jacket and cover materials and the binding, the typography, the page quality... Well-made books are one of the joys of my life. At my stage of life, I can't imagine working in another industry.
But--if I were young again and just finishing school, I'm not sure I'd do it again. I lived in a small, crummy, drafty student apartment with loud pot dealers next door for eight years. By the time I left, snow was coming in through a hole in the roof over the back stairs. I couldn't pay for a home internet connection until 2010, I drove a fifteen-year-old car, I never went anywhere on vacations... It took my husband and me five years to save up for a place of our own, and even then all we could afford was a foreclosed condo... We talked about having children then, but could never have afforded daycare or saved for their college. We're
really, really fortunate that my husband was able to leave publishing for a better industry a few years ago.
I will never not love books, but the industry requires many, many sacrifices right now and probably many, many more in the future. And even then, you might get laid off in your 50s after spending twenty or thirty years at the same company (as I saw happen with several colleagues) and find it difficult to get a new job at the same salary.
If books or magazines are your life-long dream, then maybe all that's worth it to you. But it's helpful to keep in mind that dreams can easily change when you're young. Something you've never heard of right now could end up being a wonderful fit. And while you might love a career, careers aren't people. They can't love you back, they can't promise to always be with you, they don't care how much you sacrifice for them, and they don't feel bad about telling you to throw your shit in a box and get out.