If you think that a book editor experiences less terror over the prospect of losing a job than an automobile plant machinist, you’ll want to read Leon Neyfakh’s New York Observer article, FSG Feels Icy Bite in Publishing Freeze. “Those individuals who are being spit out in the process,” Neyfakh writes, “particularly those veteran editors and executives who have been booted from high-level positions, are having a harder time than ever finding jobs in the industry that are appropriate to their level of experience and offer the authority they have grown accustomed to wielding in the course of their careers.”

Scores of musical chairs have been yanked out of the publishing ballroom and when the music resumes – if it ever does – there just won’t be that many seats. Editors and other publishing executives, as well as untold numbers of junior workers, find themselves considering freelance editorial jobs, starting literary agencies or taking on menial tasks, but may find even those pickings slim, too. Some shockingly big names are standing outside looking in and it’s getting cold and discouraging.

It’s easy to say that the publishing industry brought this on itself, but in this season of compassion we do well to remember that the “industry” is made up of people with names and faces, people with bills to pay and mouths to feed. And it’s easy to talk about the Digital Revolution, but revolutions produce victims. A great many of those who have lost jobs are our friends, and our hearts go out to them.

RC