If you work under the wrong person, your life will be hell - Senior Marketer Sourcebooks Employee Review

3.0
May 22, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits and time off are great. I have personally experienced a great deal of freedom and trust in my role. There's a whole lot of fun to be had working on books. Work from home is a godsend. Tons of free books.

Cons

My department is okay, but I've witnessed other colleagues be verbally abused, harassed, micromanaged, demeaned, and insulted. If you work under the right person, you'll be perfectly happy; the wrong person will literally give you PTSD (note the reviews here of people who had to get therapy after leaving this place; I've watched it happen myself). CAREER ADVANCEMENT HERE IS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD; people who've worked here 5+ years languish with no progression even if they were personally involved in multiple NYT bestsellers, while the people THEY TRAINED get paid more than them. Pay discrepancy is absolutely insane; there are senior managers making 80k+ while other senior managers haven't even broken 50k. Our books are lower quality than the rest of the market. Though Sourcebooks is the fastest-growing publisher in the U.S., that growth is largely through purchasing other companies OR scalping pre-existing self-pubbed authors, which is cool and all, but ultimately, we rarely succeed at nurturing an author from obscurity into a career. This is unsurprising, as overwork is absolutely crazy, and there is nowhere near enough staff to support the number of books we publish; everyone who works here is constantly baffled at why Sourcebooks seems to acquire manuscripts just to toss them into the fire and let them totally fail. I believe that everyone means well when it comes to diversity, but tone-deafness abounds, which could be pretty much cured if they put worker-led teams in charge of diversity efforts -- something that employees have CONSTANTLY volunteered to do -- but the company is so adverse to any sort of change that they don't take us up on it. If you initiate any sort of attempt to making working conditions better, your head will get cut off. I'm going to be honest: many of these problems are just 1) corporate America problems, and 2) publishing industry problems. It's despicable, but I don't believe Sourcebooks is uniquely terrible in the industry. I would not tell someone they shouldn't apply here; just be cautious, enjoy the enjoyable parts, remember that it's only a job, and protect yourself and your own career more than you value the company -- or, as most of us secretly call it, "the cult."

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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