This really is a big thank you

for adding your details to our Salary Survey and circulating the questionnaire to others.  So if you contributed, emailed, tweeted, facebooked, or cajoled publishing colleagues and friends, then please give yourself a huge round of applause.

What happens next?

Your work has ended and ours really begins.  First of all we have to tidy up all the literal responses, the questions which said ‘other, please state’ and aim to batch them together for analysis.  By doing this we very often see which responses are actually from people who didn’t qualify for the survey (e.g. freelancers, those not employed by UK publishers or literary agents) which we remove. During a survey we may remove up to 50 spoiled or erroneous responses.

Then we start analysing the data, which often throws up more anomalies, and aim to do a first data run by the end of January 2014.  Then we verify the data, looking for other inconsistencies.  If you supplied your email address this is where we might contact you for clarification of answers, before running the data for the second time, hopefully by the end of February 2014.

Usually by the time we’ve got to the third data run, Suzanne is pulling her hair out, has aged 50 years over night, and is swearing that we will never, ever, do another salary survey again. (This is Suzanne’s 9th Salary Survey, so have no fear, this doesn’t last and there will be another).  Particularly if we are now well into March 2014.  We hope to publish the results and final report some time during March or April, but as this depends very much on the process of analysis we are not yet able to name a final date at this point.  In the meantime we will aim to keep you updated with our progress via our twitter account @bookcareers.

Thank you again for all your help.  This survey would not be possible without your contribution.