THE lack of class diversity in publishing has increasingly gained attention in recent years, with a spate of projects, festivals and awards recognising the need for better representation of the working class in the industry as writers, workers and as readers.

Yet despite schemes from publishers such as Penguin, which, in 2016, took away the requirement of a university degree for job applicants, and the emergence of a number of small, northern-based publishers, it still remains uncomfortably true that publishing on the whole is populated by people who are predominantly white, London-centric and middle or upper class.

Entry-level roles in publishing are often low paid and located in the capital, where sky-high rents and the cost of living effectively block out people without other means of supporting themselves.

Many roles now advertise as remote working, yet still require the employee to live in London.

The evident class problem in publishing is evidenced in the labour force survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics last year, which showed that more than four out of 10 workers in the publishing industry — authors, writers, translators, editors, journalists — came from middle-class backgrounds. Only 12 per cent were from working-class backgrounds.

This is in contrast to the rest of the population, where around 14 per cent of the population are from higher professional and managerial origins, and around 35 per cent from working-class backgrounds.

A 2019 survey by The Bookseller of people who worked in or were connected to the publishing industry found that nearly four out of 10 respondents from a working-class background felt discriminated against due to their social class — particularly based on accent — and because of nepotism in the industry.

Focusing on the experiences of working-class writers, Common People, a report by Northumbria University and several regional writing agencies this year, provided a detailed breakdown of challenges and prejudices faced by a selection of writers in England and Wales.

The report made several recommendations, including moving publishing outside of London, making routes into the industry more transparent and fairly paid, investing in regional writing agencies and learning from the good practice of the third sector of NGOs and non-profit-making organisations.

These are crucial conversations. Yet what is needed is not so much a set of solutions to the “problem” of working-class inclusion in the publishing industry, so much as a fundamental shift in understanding as to what, and who, reading is for.

We need to address the issue by going back to the very basics of how the industry is run, applying socialist principles to the publishing industry as we might apply them to any other cultural resource that everyone should have fair and equal access to.

The narratives that an era produces speak volumes about the time in which they were conceived. Books, plays, films and song have the power to summarise complex societal conversations around race, gender and class struggles.

They have the power, also, to speak to people about their everyday lives and to reflect and legitimise their experiences, lending them the permanence of art. Cultural narratives are not superfluous — they are what societies are built on.  

Yet the accessibility and content of these narratives are not equal. The cultural gap between the well-off and those in our society who are struggling the most grows ever wider.

Two years ago, a National Literacy Trust (NLT) report on literacy and life expectancy found that 44 per cent of children from disadvantaged backgrounds were not at a good level of general development by the time they started primary school.

At age five, their vocabulary was on average 19 months behind children from higher-income backgrounds.  

The NLT now has 14 hubs across the country, running local literacy campaigns. While its work is invaluable —  including sending out one million books to children who lack access to them at home — it has stepped into a space out of necessity, where there should be no space at all.

It can be no coincidence that the NLT set up its first hub in 2013, three years after the formation of the coalition government and the punishing raft of austerity measures which began thereafter.

The state should be supporting literacy. That more than four out of 10 adults of working age can be allowed to be without the literacy skills required to make use of health literature is a scandal.

Since 2010, 800 public libraries have closed. Many children, especially from less well-off backgrounds, are now growing up without ready access to free books.

What can the labour movement do about the systematic bias in the publishing industry in terms of the systematic recruitment bias of the workforce and the lack of affordable and meaningful material for working-class readers?

One bold solution would be for trade unions to form a not-for-profit publishing house of their own, focusing on using digital technology to maximise accessibility and keep costs low.

Free or very cheap e-books could be produced, not only for trade union members but for working people and their children generally.

At the time of writing, David Walliams’s latest children’s bestseller is priced at £12.99, well above the national minimum wage of £8.72 an hour.

So it is unsurprising that publishing — both for writers, workers and readers —  remains a closed industry.

If generations of children grow up without access to affordable books, how can they be expected to get the full benefits of reading, let alone work in a class-divided publishing industry whose motives and purpose remain opaque and remote from working people?

Lyndsey Ayre won New Writing North’s inaugural Sid Chaplin award for working-class writers and has an interest in challenging stereotypical perceptions of working-class communities and culture.