If you are a publisher, you need to offer competitive publishing salaries and good benefits to recruit qualified workers and keep your best team members. Many publishing employees are eager to garner more attractive wages, and if you are not offering a good publisher salary, you may find yourself constantly recruiting, due to high turnover.

Of course you want to pay your employees a fair publishing salary, but determining what qualifies as a good salary can prove challenging. Many factors can affect publisher salaries, and as a result, publishing salaries vary widely by location and employee. To come up with some guidelines for setting salaries, consider:

1. Using online salary tools to find the going publishing salary rate.

2. Buying a salary tool to determine what you should pay your publishing employees.

3. Utilizing salary tools for publishing employment to remain competitive in the industry.

You need to determine a fair publisher salary for each member of your team, since different professionals at your publishing house may merit different compensation. The money and time you invest in finding good compensation can help prevent a costly high turnover rate.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use online tools to determine salaries of publishers

Online salary comparison tools are handy, fast and usually provide up-to-date information about median and average publisher salaries in your area and across the country. Many online tools are designed to work across industries, but the best websites have separate pages or sections for publishing salaries. These online comparison tools are a great first step in determining a range for salaries.

I recommend: BusinessWeek online has a page of publishing salaries that allows you to easily compare wages across regions or by specific publishing house jobs. PayScale features an at-a-glance publishing salary comparison tool and also provides free customized salary reports for various industry positions.

Use software to determine fair publisher salary

Software programs exist to help publishers set fair publisher salaries. These programs allow you to input a number of variables -- including job specifications, cost-of-living details for your area and more -- to determine competitive salary ranges mathematically. If your publishing house has unique job descriptions that don't match typical publishing job openings, software may be the best way to determine a fair wage.

I recommend: ERI's (Economic Research Institute) Salary Assessment software provides publishing industry employers with sophisticated, customizable statistical data regarding salary trends, broken down by geographic region, size of organization and other demographic factors. Halogen eCompensation's software can help you retain employees and improve your bottom line through determining competitive publishing industry salaries.

Use comparative publishing salary guides to learn what the competition pays

Online salary guides are a good source of publisher salary information, because they allow you to look at median and average publisher salaries, which can help you set your own wages. These guides often include charts and graphs that let you differentiate high and low wage ranges in the publishing industry. Use these guides to determine publisher wages for specific job positions in specific regions.

I recommend: Vault provides salary survey information for over 150 companies in the publishing industry. The Publishers Weekly salary survey is another rich resource for publisher salary info.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  You need to work with your accounting department to determine what you can afford to pay. If you can, pay employees the going publishing salary market rate + 10% to increase retention.