A book or magazine publisher runs on editors, designers, proofreaders and printers working to fixed press dates. Freelancers, deadlines and creative judgement make clear briefs and fair terms the people priority.
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Share your requirementsA book or magazine publisher finds writers, shapes manuscripts and articles, designs pages and covers, prints and distributes. A small house may have a publisher, a few editors, a designer, a production manager and a sales person, with many freelance proofreaders, translators, illustrators and typesetters. Magazines run on monthly or weekly cycles, with an editor, sub-editors, writers, photographers and an ad sales team. Every title has a schedule that reaches back from the press date: manuscript, edit, design, proof, correction, final. A late article or a slow proof affects the rest, and the printer will not wait. Rights, permissions, author agreements and image credits must be accurate. Staff are often passionate and underpaid, and the best may leave for larger houses or digital media. Related reading: HR for professional services. Because so much of the output is by freelancers, how they are briefed and paid decides quality as much as the permanent team.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in book and magazine publishers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A late chapter or approval squeezes design and proofing, and the last few days are a scramble.
Proofreaders, translators and illustrators work from their own homes on loose briefs, and quality varies.
Invoices are paid after the book is sold, and good freelancers choose other publishers.
An editor's eye is valued but not measured, and appraisals reward the loudest, not the best.
Author contracts, image permissions and translation rights sit in emails, and expiry dates are missed.
Editors and designers move to digital media, advertising or larger houses once they have experience.
A title is edited without a view of the market, and sales is handed a book it was never consulted on.
Staff work late before a release or a magazine close, then have slack weeks without recognition for either.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a book and magazine publishers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A backward plan from press date with owners and dates for each step, reviewed weekly.
A backward plan from press date with owners and dates for each step, reviewed weekly. Keep it in the documentation process.
A brief template, a style sheet, a payment schedule and a short agreement reviewed by a qualified professional.
A brief template, a style sheet, a payment schedule and a short agreement reviewed by a qualified professional.
A payment day each month and a short statement, so freelancers can plan.
A payment day each month and a short statement, so freelancers can plan. The payroll process helps with records.
Error rates, schedule adherence, author feedback and growth, instead of vague impressions.
Error rates, schedule adherence, author feedback and growth, instead of vague impressions. See the performance process.
Author agreements, image credits, translation rights and expiry dates in one sheet with a named owner.
Author agreements, image credits, translation rights and expiry dates in one sheet with a named owner.
Titles and skills that grow, so a good copy editor sees a route to senior roles without leaving.
Titles and skills that grow, so a good copy editor sees a route to senior roles without leaving.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Craft-based measures for editors and designers instead of vague impressions.
A clear payment routine for staff and freelance contributors.
Production calendars, briefs, rights registers and role descriptions.
A fair pay view for editors and designers tempted by other media.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Plan backward from the press date, assign an owner to each step, review weekly and flag risks early. Fix one common cause at a time, such as late approvals.
Give them a clear brief, a fair rate, a payment date and credit. Take advice from a qualified professional on whether they are properly engaged as freelancers.
Use a mix of error rates, schedule, feedback from authors and peers, and growth in skill. Discuss examples, not adjectives.
Title, author, agreement date, territories, formats, term, image permissions and renewal dates. Have a qualified professional review any agreements.
Pay fairly, give them bigger titles over time and let them shape the list. Staff who see no growth will move to digital media.
We would look at the production calendar, how freelancers are briefed and paid and how craft is appraised. A freelancer brief and payment routine with a calendar format is a likely opener. Scope, timing and fee are set out in writing afterwards.
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