Nice people, high-stress environment - Anonymous employee Sourcebooks Employee Review

1.0
Aug 22, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you're coming to this site because you're considering applying/joining Sourcebooks, I would encourage you to read through all of the reviews here (minus the planted 5-star reviews). Taken together, they'll give you a pretty good picture of the culture and environment. The upside is that there are a lot of creative and passionate people at Sourcebooks. I found that most people truly cared about their colleagues and wanted to help each other. The company takes time to celebrate company successes often which helps with team morale. No matter where you are in the company, you will be constantly challenged to learn new skills which can become useful resume fodder. But that's where the positives ended for me.

Cons

Individual experiences will vary depending on who your manager is. There are some great managers and there are some not-so-great ones too. Trust your gut if you interview for a position and have any misgivings about the people who would be managing the role. In general, there's a culture of chronic overwork at Sourcebooks. It's not just that the workload is ridiculously high (it is), but those who stay with the company long enough come to consider it a point of pride that they are constantly plugged into work. It's not healthy. Combine that with the fact that the company offers only the minimum in terms of paid holidays and PTO, and burn out is common. Turnover is high. HR managers never seem to last very long. Every single day is stressful. Many are severely underpaid, especially considering how hard they work; some of the younger staff have to work second jobs to make ends meet. For many roles, Sourcebooks likes to hire people fresh out of college, especially ones with big dreams of working in publishing. These young staff members don't have a lot of work experience yet, so they don't recognize how dysfunctional the culture of Sourcebooks is. Some stay, but many figure it out (or are pushed out) and move on. The company is constantly evolving, so the "ladder" you start on could change at any time. Getting promotions can be hard in certain parts of the company, just depending on the department structure. At a certain point though, growth and advancement opportunities will be dependent upon your willingness to put in a lot of extra time at work and to really buy-in to the culture. Even though everyone has laptops, the company strongly discourages any work from home, so expect to be commuting into work even when the weather is bad in winter (or else being forced to use your very limited vacation time if you simply can't make it in). There's not much flexibility in terms of your schedule, either. Overall, it's a very rigid, regimented environment.

Explore other reviews about Sourcebooks

5.0
Jun 20, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible managers, great team, genuine openness to growth and learning, meaningful work

Cons

None to speak of at this moment

1.0
Apr 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

In hindsight, I'm not sure if there were any apart from some friendly coworkers.

Cons

I infuriatingly see promotions handed out left and right via LinkedIn, but just know that actually being someone to get to that level means literally grovelling and being lucky enough to be in the good graces of the egotistical CEO. Upper management brown-noses her as their main job, and they will prevent you from any upward mobility if you're not one of her favorites (which seems to be picked based on how much you kiss up to her, and if you keep your own opinions to yourself, and other factors entirely unrelated to your actual performance). Absolutely criminally high monthly healthcare premiums, paired with insanely high deductibles, bare-minimum PTO, and mat leave. HR is a joke and not one HR employee seems to last very long. Salaries are abysmal, even by publishing standards. Most books acquired are bottom-of-the-barrel since they don't pay most of their authors much, and they have to be edited within an inch of their lives to be readable and marketable. I left the industry after this company and have never been happier.

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