[psi75]

At that level, definitely not in it for the money. At the C level though I got the sense that there was supreme respect for the cultural role of publishers - but it was a narrow second to business concerns, and they would make that tradeoff if necessary.

The "cultural role" is drummed up in order to get people to work on below-subsistence salaries.

It's probably more about ego than money for the high-level people. Since people are cheap (because "passion") they can have large teams under them without their organizations having to pay the typical costs of large teams.

The truth about it, though, is that the culture is too balkanized for any of this stuff to make sense. Very few people go out of their way to read or find the best books; for good or for bad, they've all self-segregated into warring genres and subgenres--and the so-called "literary" crowd who insist their genre is not a genre are often the worst in this regard. The balkanization is probably why no one knows how to market books anymore; people really understand a small slice of the total readership and, in any case, the lines are always changing.

[extr]

I don't think I agree with the framing that the situation is some kind of scheme by executives to underpay people. All jobs have compensation, status, quality of life, "passion" components, etc. If someone wants to take a job that is higher status and that they're passionate about in exchange for lower direct compensation, who's to say that's not that person's preference?

Now, is it unfair that the compensation component is so low that people who don't have other means of income effectively can't take the job? Personally, I don't think so. I would love to research butterflies 24/7 and if I was independently wealthy perhaps would, but I completely understand that demand for butterfly research doesn't generate enough funding to make it possible to do that and lead the life I live now.

FWIW, from my limited experience leadership were all perfectly lovely people, extremely passionate about publishing as well, who in some cases had worked all of these "drummed up" jobs themselves on their way up the ladder.

[TMWNN]

>The "cultural role" is drummed up in order to get people to work on below-subsistence salaries.

The stereotype in NYC of publishing is of it attracting young, well-educated daughters of families who can subsidize New York living beyond the low salaries.