Summing Up Salaries

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2000 by Debra Judge Silber

A PRIMER ON HOW PUBLISHING PAYS

So what's it pay? Magazine salaries, from the first precious paycheck of an editorial assistant to the healthy bonus of an experienced sales executive, vary greatly. Experience, job title, publication size and the overall economy all factor in. But a few trends and truisms exist:

Compensation is climbing

"It's partially the economy, partially that publishing companies have to compete more for entry level people, partially that college kids are a lot smarter about their own worth," says New York magazine consultant Martin Walker, who has seen publishing salaries increase by as much as 20 percent over the last two years.

The trend is borne out by FoLIO:'s annual salary surveys, which show a gradual climb over the last five years, with some of the greatest boosts occurring in the last 12 months.

Three of four editorial jobs surveyed by the magazine, for example, gained handsome increases from 1999 to 2000, with managing editors leading the pack: Their average pay increased 18.8 percent, to $57,000. In sales, total compensation increased over the same period for all but the top positions: While compensation for ad sales directors fell 3.9 percent, to $112,000, pay for regional managers rose 9.1 percent to $107,000; and account executives' compensation rose 8.9 percent to an average of $91,000.

Production salaries have also climbed in the past five years, with compound annual growth rates of 5.8 percent for production directors (to $70,600 in 2000), 7 percent for production managers (to $48,200), and 5 percent for art directors, to $50,300.

In 1999--the latest year for which figures are available--the pace also picked up for circulation professionals, with circulation directors' salaries jumping 12 percent to $75,300.

There is some evidence those top-level salary gains are trickling down, driven by the tight labor market. "You might be able to attract someone at a lower entry level salary, but you sure can't hold them -- it's too good a market out there," says Nina Link, president of the Magazine Publishers of America. "You have to start thinking of that early on." Consultant Walker concurs: "We're seeing entry-level salaries and first-year salaries are at least $10,000 more than they were five years ago," he says.

While the tight labor market has driven salaries up in a number of areas, the longtime appeal of entry-level editorial jobs continues to work against candidates holding out for more. "Generally, they respond slowest on the editorial side, because those are the more sought-after positions," says Sara Nolfo of Lynne Palmer Executive Recruitment in New York. Still, Nolfo notes that entry-level editors today can earn as much as $30,000. "Two years ago I would have said mid-20s; I wouldn't have gone into the low 30s," she says. And Miles Merwin, manager of staffing and employee relations at Gruner Jahr, pointed out that Random House books, also owned by parent Bertelsmann, recently announced it was pushing its starting salary to $30,000, a move likely to drive entry-level compensation up elsewhere.

The war for talent has also caused magazines, like other industries, to keep a closer watch on pay scales. At Times Mirror, for example, an annual analysis of each job tide ensures pay is keeping up with the competition, says Vice President of Human Resources Kathy Casey. Annual adjustments in the last three years ranged from 4 to 9 percent, she said, with IT staffers getting the biggest bumps recently. Casey says companies have little choice but to keep pace. "We have to," she says. "This is New York." Consumer magazines pay more--for now Traditionally, salaries at consumer magazines have tended to be higher across the board, but the market's recent romance with b-to-b models, both in print and online, may be evening out the equation.

"For the last 18 months b-to-b has been so hot," says Gordon Hughes, president of American Business Media. "You can't pick up a lot of magazines or newspapers without reading about b-t-b."

It shows. In 2000, b-to-b salaries, in editorial especially, were growing at a faster rate than consumer magazines. In 2000, managing editors at b-to-bs saw their salaries jump 23.2 percent compared to 15.7 percent on the consumer side, and b-to-b senior editors' compensation rose 17.9 percent as opposed to 10 percent on the consumer side. The same was largely true in production, where a jump in pay for production managers at trade publications brought the average salaries of trade and consumer titles within $164 of each other.

"There's not an enormous disparity," says Walker, adding that much of the difference can be attributed to the number of smaller b-to-b publishers located outside the major metro areas. "The b-to-bs in New York and consumer magazines in New York are both paying top dollar."

Bonuses can figure in

Bonuses are typically part of the landscape for upper-level positions in editorial, circulation, and sales. Among ad sales executives, the average overall bonus for 2000 was $46,185. Bonuses among editors and circulators are much smaller, and less likely. At the senior editor level, only 41 percent of those surveyed expected to get a bonus averaging $4,657. Bonuses for circulation directors ran an average of $13,063 in 1999; but only $3,545 for circulation managers, and just over half said they expected to get a bonus in 1999.