The Myths: Publishing vs. The Recession

I’m here to tell you that despite popular belief, publishing and printing are still very successful industries today. Yes, publishing was also one of the industries to be hit hard by our country's serious recession. I was actually a lonely Assistant Editor who worked for a vendor (development house) in little ‘ol Worcester, Massachusetts. At the beginning of 2008 when I started working there as an Editorial Assistant, there was approximately 75 in-house employees. During the next year and a half, more than half of the employees were laid off. In May 2009, I was included. On the day that I was laid off, there were only 20 employees remaining, and another handful were let go later that year. I’m pretty sure the company is still open. How, I don’t know. But I climbed the ladder to the top and now I work for the biggest publisher in the world. Life is pretty good up here (literally “up here” on the seventh floor The Newbury building in downtown Boston).

But enough about me. It IS true that with the release of the Kindle and the Nook, that publishing sales have decreased, but on the education side, media components and print are still in very high demand. Also from what I’ve seen, there is also a huge demand for blog and article writing. It’s all about SEO and SEM today, isn’t it? Blog and article writing is a huge thing. Everyone, including companies today have a Facebook page or Twitter account and a blog that they contribute to on a regular basis. Gee, I should jump on the bandwagon, huh? And since many companies today depend on websites for marketing, networking, and business, the blog is a must-have and it must be maintained. So, they hire writers for cheap to write 300-500 word blogs to keep their information fresh, their readers reading, and their Google results successful. Not a bad idea.

From my knowledge and personal experiences with language and publishing, the translation of documents, books and ebooks, etc. are still in high demand. It’s not even that the U.S. is packed to the high heavens with minorities and non-English speakers, but it’s the cross distribution of documents or information and data between countries as well. There’s the translation of government documents, letters, medical device instruction manuals, school textbooks and things of the like that require translation and localization before they can be marketed or distributed.

The world and the economy are constantly changing. There's no doubt about that. Especially with technology readily available and easily accessible. It’s difficult as merchants and consumers to keep up with the demand, but we tend to do it somehow. As far as the recession goes, it’s still very much among us. Less people may be collecting unemployment overall, but there are still not enough jobs to replace those that were lost. I know people that have been out of work for two and even three plus years! Unfortunately, we’ve still got a long road ahead of us, but we’re making do. It can’t be like this forever. And despite popular belief, publishing is still a very successful business. It’s not a dying industry, but rather a changing industry.