August 25, 2021 | Dawn Durante
Guest post by Becca Bostock, associate editor and subventions coordinator, Ohio State University Press and Dominique J. Moore, acquisitions editor, University of Illinois Press
A little background: when we met, we were an assistant editor and a Mellon Diversity Fellow at the same university press (UP). We had similar academic experience (master’s degrees) and we both supplemented our income with additional work outside of our 9 to 5 jobs. We had an inkling then that we might not be the only two people in scholarly publishing who needed to keep a side hustle—or two—or three—to pay the bills. Based on this hunch, we launched a survey on early career pay equity and inclusivity to use as a jumping-off point in our session at the 2021 annual meeting of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). We ultimately received nearly 200 responses from people in different departments and all career levels at university presses, from editorial assistants to directors.