Don’t believe the sudden hype - Anonymous employee Sourcebooks Employee Review

1.0
Jul 1, 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will gain very valuable experience in the publishing industry and learn how to grow extremely thick skin.

Cons

The five star reviews after June of 2021 are all fake. Open your eyes for there is no way a company can suddenly become so highly rated in such a short amount of time. The CEO is a vindictive, shallow person without empathy for anyone and this toxic behavior trickles down to management. How anyone who works at this company is pleased and okay with this type of behavior is beyond me. Their diversity and inclusion initiative was and will always be lip service. Especially since they never bothered to take care of the BIPOC employees who were working there before the BLM movement was brought to national attention. I’m surprised they‘ve not been sued or investigated for their discriminatory practices. Do yourself a favor and ask if working here is worth your time, energy and emotional well-being. It is such a cut throat environment and causes a great deal of stress.

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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