It was just another day at the office: a Victorian textiles factory, repurposed as an unexceptional carpet-tiled admin hub, albeit with an exceptionally ornate glass lift. Joseph’s Well was the headquarters of Maney Publishing: at that time, the only Leeds-based scholarly publisher – and, really, the city’s only sizable employer of publishing staff.

On that ordinary day, mid-May 2015, I received an email about an all-staff announcement, in person, in the middle of the office, as one did in those days. I thought, how exciting! (I was in my early 20s.) Bonus for hitting our targets? Bettys vouchers for all! By mid-morning, our managing director and HR were standing in an oddly funereal formation near the entrance. The door opened. In walked a man in a suit. Before a word left his mouth, a grim cloud of resignation rolled across our faces, as a senior colleague stole his thunder: "Oh, shit."

Maney Publishing was acquired by Taylor & Francis. I relocated from Leeds to Oxford to keep my job. Others did the same or gained work elsewhere – several left publishing altogether. Of the remainers, as the saying went back then, "there’s always Emerald", based at that time in Bingley, just north of Bradford. So, when I saw an announcement earlier this month that US investment firm Cambridge Information Group has sold the business to publishing behemoth Wiley for £337m (with a UK headquarters in Oxford), this was, for me – as I’m sure it was for Emerald’s staff – another "oh, shit" moment. 

To be clear, industry consolidation in scholarly publishing is old news. In the years bookended by these two acquisitions, we’ve seen many small-to-medium-sized presses and independent Open Access imprints subsumed by major publishers: OUP and Karger; Bloomsbury and Rowman & Littlefield; Wiley and Hindawi; Taylor & Francis, F1000 and Dove Medical Press (based in Macclesfield). The Wiley-Emerald acquisition reflects a strategic drive for scale, amassing proprietary content to lay the foundation for large-scale AI licensing deals and data analytics services. But there’s another story, rarely told, about what happens to some of the more tangible assets that come with these high-profile acquisitions: people.

In the case of Emerald’s 350 employees, they’re facing a different set of circumstances than I did when I was ‘acquired’, over ten years ago. As in most white-collar industries, the global pandemic has accelerated a shift towards flexible, hybrid and, in exceptional cases, fully remote working. This trend is visible in the UK’s publishing workforce data, which has seen a 10-point decline (45% to 35%) in London-based staff between 2022 and 2024, suggesting a gradual exodus from the capital to the wider South East (expanding 21% to 27%).

I worry for the next generation of scholarly publishing hopefuls in Leeds, Bradford or beyond, scouring The Bookseller for their first job, with limited local routes into the industry

Over the same period, the percentage of publishing staff living in the North East, North West and Yorkshire combined has also increased from 6% to 11%, although the percentage that originated from these regions has declined from 12% to 9%. As anyone who’s spent any time on the job market will tell you, the largest publishing houses headquartered in the South East typically mandate minimum contact hours, especially for new hires, ranging from 1 to 3 days-a-week. By contrast, Emerald is a remote-first employer, allowing for a regionally dispersed workforce, alongside employees commuting more regularly to Leeds.

The fate of Emerald’s Leeds office is, at the time of writing, unclear – and local routes into the industry remain at regional university presses, like Manchester and Liverpool. But it’s worth noting that this acquisition comes at a time when trade publishers are actively promoting regional expansion, with Hachette opening offices in Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle to "provide a gateway into creative talent – authors, illustrators, translators, publishing professionals – around the UK". By limiting UK-wide routes into the industry, scholarly publishing (in revenue terms, the UK’s largest publishing sector), may be aligning itself with other ‘knowledge-intensive’ industries, such as tech and life sciences, by consolidating its workforce within a commutable distance of London and a notional "growth corridor" between Oxford and Cambridge.

Facing the prospect of relocating for work, back in 2015, I was an untethered young professional. I traded an affordable flat, close to family, for a stint in the South East to scramble up the career ladder. Now, back in Yorkshire, in the twilight years of my 30s – with two children, a mortgage, and an indispensable local childcare lifeline (my parents) – the same move simply would not work. I suspect I’m not alone. And I worry for the next generation of scholarly publishing hopefuls in Leeds, Bradford, or beyond, scouring The Bookseller for their first job, with limited local routes into the industry: that first step on the ladder looks more like a leap into the unknown.