Wiley reviews

Sad to see what's happened to the trade business book group. Massive layoffs. Most books, believe it or not, receive zero marketing support. Wiley now puts the books on Amazon and gets a few copies into physical distribution outlets. That's it. Of course, they don't tell authors in the recruitment phase. I was told recently about a CEO of a huge company who published a book with Wiley. The book was a lead book in their catalog, so it merited actual marketing. However, the marketer was a new hire, just out of college with zero background in marketing. The CEO was astonished at the lack of professionalism. Of course, he was lucky. The vast majority of books don't even receive that minimum level of support. Senior managers are self-serving, disingenuous, bureaucrats with absolute no vision. They lie constantly and are a bit paranoid. They say they are "driving change and innovation," but in reality, they are simply protecting their own jobs.

--This is a company in the midst of large-scale changes, Wiley has been laying people off steadily for the last several years and will likely continue to do so --One's experience at Wiley can vary greatly depending on the department one works in and morale reflects this --Salaries are industry average at best, i.e.: low by any nominal standard --Wiley only seems to have discovered the Internet around 2006, particularly with regard to scholarly/academic publishing. Until very recently, corporate strategy in this regard amounted to a head-in-the-sand approach.