Salary Survey 2016 – Call for Questions

Jul 9, 2016

salary surveyWe are now commencing work on constructing the questionnaire for the bookcareers.com Salary Survey 2017.
This will be the 20th anniversary of our very first Salary Survey, which has grown from looking at salaries and job security into becoming a survey of around 56 questions, looking at education, employment trends, digital skills and training data.  We survey all areas of UK & Ireland book and journal publishing, including eBook/digital publishers and Literary Agents.  The hashtag is #bookcareers.

In the last Salary Survey we added in a number of new questions, including questions about digital skills, private incomes and whether people honestly thought they were underpaid.  Some of these questions were generated by a call for questions such as this.

Questions we are currently looking at including are:
*Do you still have an outstanding student loan from your time at University?  If so, approximately how much is it?
*Did you complete a period of work experience or an internship before starting your publishing career?
*If so, how long did you work paid (minimum wage and above)?  How long did you work unpaid (expenses only and below)?

We also make decisions on which questions to retire or modify, to ensure that the survey reflects current social trends..

Question we are currently considering retiring 
*What is your marital status?
We have been analysing this question since our very first survey in 1996, yet we have found no correlation between marital status and any of the data produced.  This includes hours of work, salary, holiday, flexibility, stress, yet we can find no data which can justify us asking this question any further.  If you have a different opinion, please let us know.

Questions we plan to modify include
*What is your gender?
For the first time respondents will be given the option ‘prefer not to say’.

A summary of Salary Survey questions is below.  If you’d like to make any suggestions or comments additions please contact us by 16th August 2016.  You are also welcome to register your email address to be notified when the survey goes live.

  1. Gender
  2. Ethnicity
  3. Age
  4. Disability
  5. Length of time in publishing
  6. Length of time in current job
  7. Employment Status
  8. Location
  9. Formal education
  10. Masters in Publishing
  11. Career before Publishing
  12. Union Membership
  13. Within which sector/category do you personally work
  14. Which formats do you work with
  15. During a working week what percentage of your time is spent on digital products?
  16. Job Title
  17. Job Skills
  18. Grade of job
  19. How did you find your current job
  20. Current salary
  21. Bonus or commission
  22. Is this salary your sole source of income?
  23. Honestly, do you think you are underpaid for the work that you do?
  24. Date of last salary review /percentage increase
  25. Company benefits
  26. Hours of work
  27. Overtime
  28. Size of company
  29. Redundancies
  30. Rate company as a place to work
  31. Rate publishing as an industry to work
  32. Careers advice
  33. Morale of staff
  34. Training
  35. Do you intend to stay in your current job?
  36. Promotion prospects
  37. Stress/Bullying
  38. Additional comments