If you work under the wrong person, your life will be hell
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."
