Rebecca F. Kuang: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, a lot of your latest book, Yellowface, deals with the book trade, being a bestselling author. What concretely would you change about publishing in the book trade if we put you in charge of it? The change has to be broadly sustainable, so it can’t be utopian, like every author gets a million-dollar advance. What would you do? Nobody has asked me this question, in part because it seems so utopian. I think I would increase entry-level wages to make publishing jobs livable in cities like New York and London. I say this because, based on conversations with friends who are either part of the HarperCollins Union or folks who are trying to enter the publishing industry and become one of those gatekeepers — one of those people who can decide which manuscripts are valuable, worthy of getting a platform, worthy of being put in front of readers — everyone circles back to the same problem: that it’s nearly an impossible industry to enter unless you have previous connections, and more importantly, inherited family wealth — some situation that lets you live in London or New York without worrying too much about your income because entry-level wages are really so atrocious. And this trickles up, right? When we think about the editors — specifically the acquiring editors who are deciding which new talent is worthy of getting a book deal, worthy of being put on bookshelves — it’s unfortunate that the makeup of that room has largely seemed unchanged year after year. There are many reports on industry statistics that back this up. It’s a very homogenous group of people who are deciding which books to buy, and we want that to change. If we want different editors selecting stories, pruning them, and cultivating them for readers, then it has to be a livable industry to enter in the first place. There would be both higher wages and more people looking through the manuscripts.…

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