PW’s 2025 Salary Report and Why Representation at the Top Matters to Me as a Minority Publisher

Publishers Weekly’s 2025 Salary and Jobs Report came out last week. It’s a snapshot of an industry I love and also a reminder of the gaps that have trailed us for decades. The report shows some encouraging signs. Overall median pay rose to about $80,000, which is $5,000 more than the year before. People with six years of experience or less reported a median salary of $56,000, up from $52,000 in 2023.

But the number that stopped me was not the salary figure. It was this one: 76% of respondents identified as white, down from eighty percent last year. Among people who have been in publishing for six years or less, only 61% identified as white. I believe this is the most diverse early career cohort the industry has ever recorded. Asian respondents made up the second largest group though only at 11%. Hispanic and Black respondents showed small but meaningful increases. These shifts matter, especially to someone like me, who did not grow up seeing publishers who looked like me at the table.

And then there is the other number. 67% of respondents believe that the current pushback against DEI efforts will harm publishing’s diversity in the long term. If the industry is finally attracting more diverse early career talent, what happens if the ladder above them narrows instead of widens? What happens if the leadership tier remains a place where only certain people ever seem to land?

Working in a Field Where the Workforce Is Mostly Women but Leadership Is Something Else

Women make up almost 80% of publishing’s workforce, and yet men continue to hold a disproportionate number of the highest paying roles. This is not just a statistic for me. It is something I felt from the first time I entered this industry. You look around at your peers and think the path ahead will reflect the room you are standing in. Then you look up the ladder and find a different landscape entirely.

For a long time I tried to understand whether this mattered for the books themselves. The common belief is that leadership shapes which stories get acquired, which authors get championed, and which ideas are allowed to grow. Publishing absolutely carries cultural power, especially when it comes to children’s books. The stories we choose to put into the world influence how children understand themselves and one another. When the people making the highest level decisions do not reflect the people who create the books or the people who read them, it is fair to wonder what perspectives get lost along the way.

As a minority publisher, this is not abstract for me. It is personal.

A Leadership Gap Does Not Automatically Predict Content, but It Still Shapes the Ecosystem

It is important to be honest about what the PW report can and cannot tell us. The highest paying jobs in publishing often sit in operations, finance, and long term strategy. These roles influence budgets and priorities, but they are not usually shaping the emotional core of a picture book or deciding whether a protagonist is allowed to be loud, quiet, queer, Asian, neurodivergent, angry, soft, or complicated.

Most creative shaping still happens in editorial and design departments, and those departments are overwhelmingly female. In some cases they are also more diverse than leadership. So it is not accurate to claim that a male heavy leadership tier dictates every cultural choice the industry makes.

Even so, I have learned that leadership affects the environment in which creative decisions are made. Leadership decides what counts as a commercial risk. Leadership decides which markets matter. Leadership decides which stories receive long term investment and which ones are framed as niche or experimental. Leadership sets the tone for who is encouraged to grow and who quietly plateaus. Leadership affects which voices feel welcome and which voices start editing themselves before they even pitch an idea.

That is why representation at the top matters, even if the connection to content is not direct.

What Children’s Books Reveal About Defaults and Whose Stories Get Centered

A recent analysis titled Bears Will Be Boys, looked at pronoun usage in picture books and found that animals are far more likely to be referred to as male.

Findings like this show how easy it is for gender norms and cultural defaults to slip into children’s literature without anyone intending it. As a minority publisher, I cannot help but ask a parallel question. If the default in picture books is still male, what other defaults are quietly shaping these stories? Whose family structures appear without question? Whose grief or anger is considered relatable? Whose humor is considered universal? Whose faces appear on the page?

These observations make me think about who holds the power to expand or disrupt those defaults. If the leadership tier remains mostly white and male, how often are new perspectives seen as essential rather than optional. How often does a minority editor feel supported in acquiring a book that challenges norms rather than reinforcing them? How often does diverse early career talent see a future that includes them at the highest levels?

Why the Leadership Gap Matters to Me as a Minority Publisher

I entered this industry already knowing that leadership did not look like me, and I eventually started my own publishing house because I wanted more freedom to tell the stories I wished I had seen as a child. I want the next generation of Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, disabled, queer, and mixed race publishing professionals to have options other than creating their own companies in order to bring their full perspective to the table. I want to create a publishing structure that does not simply invite diverse voices in, but equips them to lead, influence, and reshape the industry from within.

The leadership gap matters because it influences who feels welcome to challenge assumptions. It affects who has the authority to take risks, who feels pressure to conform, and who can say yes to a story that has not been proven yet. It matters because children’s books are not neutral. They teach children who belongs in the world and who is allowed to carry the narrative.

I do not believe leadership diversity is a magic fix. But I do believe diversity at the top changes the questions a company asks, the stories it values, and the imagination it brings to the industry.

Where the Conversation Goes from Here

The 2025 PW report shows progress at the entry level and stagnation at the top. It shows more diversity entering the field and a growing fear that these gains may not survive the current backlash against DEI. It shows a leadership tier that does not reflect the workforce or the readership. What it does not show is what happens if the next generation of diverse publishing workers look upward and see no room for themselves.

We can only understand the full impact of these numbers by asking harder questions. How does leadership influence the pathways available to minority employees? How does representation at the top affect what feels possible in the stories we publish? What would an industry look like if the people shaping its future came from the full breadth of the communities it serves?

For me, the PW report is not a problem to be solved in a single year. It is a reminder of why I publish at all. It is a reminder that representation does not only matter on the page. It matters in the rooms where decisions are made about which stories get to exist.

Rebel Goose exists because I love this industry enough to refuse its limitations. I believe in the power of stories and the people who make them, but I also see the parts of publishing that flatten or delay the voices that could shape our future. I want to build a publishing house that does things differently, not for the sake of rebellion but for the sake of possibility. I want Rebel Goose to be a place where new ideas are treated as opportunities, not risks, and where the people guiding our stories look like the world our children are growing up in. If the entry level of publishing is becoming more diverse every year, then we owe it to the next generation to make sure the path upward does not narrow. I want to help create the version of publishing I always wished existed, and to leave behind a structure that makes the path wider for everyone who follows.

If you believe publishing can be better, then join the conversation. Ask harder questions. Support diverse creators. Challenge the old assumptions about who belongs in this industry. Rebel Goose was built on the belief that change is possible, not someday, but now. The next chapter of publishing cannot be written by a narrow few. It will take all of us.