A manifesto for skills | The Bookseller

'Our people do not have the skills'

Whatever the other Manifestos for the Future of the Book Business are - whatever exciting areas people propose for change in the industry, whether it's in digital, or business workflows or product development - our people do not have the skills to make it happen. I was amazed at the response to the FutureBook piece Menial publishing jobs are destroying our future, which questioned: Why, as an industry, we still get humans to do the work of computers, Why we keep entry-level positions secretarial, and Why we don't provide the right sort of training to equip our people for the future. I thought it'd be accused of hyperbole. Instead, the response was quite the opposite. People sent sackfuls of public and private messages of fervent agreement and thanks for writing about the problem. It seems that there's a groundswell of discontent throughout the junior ranks, horrified at what is evident to any impartial observer: we don't train our people and we don't expect them to be formally skilled.