Austin Macauley Publishers Reviews

Pros

Being collectively mad at upper management at all times

Cons

This is quite possibly one of the most horrible places to be a staffer and/or an author. As a staff member, it instantly becomes clear that no one in upper management cares about you, your career, or the quality of books produced. They only care about money and swindling the poor authors out of theirs. Management claims AMP is not a vanity publisher, and perhaps they didn’t used to be, but they are clearly headed down that path if they aren’t already there. Pay is below what the going rate is for the publishing industry in New York. And publishing is already on the lower end of the pay grade! However, once you see how much they charge authors, it’s evident they can definitely afford to pay you more, because they’re definitely not spending it on marketing. Oh, there’s also barely any benefits! The only thing that made this place is bearable are the hard working people on your team. These people diligently worked to improve the company and quality of work and treated other people with kindness. Of course, don’t expect this kind of work ethic or politeness from anyone in upper management. If you are an aspirational author, please, please, please do not work with this company. There are so many better ways to invest your time and effort and AMP is not the publisher for you.

Pros

The people you work with in-office are smart and hardworking. They're all great. The turnover rate should speak for itself, though.

Cons

Everything else. If you are looking up this post, I imagine you're thinking of applying or interviewing for a position here. Do not. This is the worst job I've ever had. Whatever they tell you in your interview or application is probably not true. Your job description will often not match what you do day-to-day. They will explain in detail that they are not a vanity publisher, that they are giving unknown authors their only chance at publication. This is a lie. They're going to reply to this post with some canned, pre-written explanation about how their "hybrid model" is different from vanity publishing but ignore it. They are lying. Delete your application. You are smarter and better than this job.

Pros

The people you work with are smart, talented, hardworking and fun individuals, but this is often overshadowed by being stressed and miserable due to being underpaid and undervalued. But nothing bonds people more than a horrible upper management!

Cons

I want to premise this with I truly believe in the validity of the hybrid publishing model. After many years in the publishing industry, it has become increasingly difficult for authors to have a chance at the quality production and marketing that comes with working with a publishing company, and the hybrid model, in theory, allows them access to the resources and the chance at moderate success. That being said, while I saw firsthand that AMP did believe in this mission initially, as the years passed, it drifted further and further away from the hybrid model and became a true vanity publisher. Publishing model aside, however, the work culture is incredibly toxic. Employees concerns or suggestions are essentially ignored for whatever upper management wants, despite the fact that the employees are the ones who are in the office dealing with authors every day, with upper management only popping in to criticize. You are told the offices “operate separately” but it is obvious that the international offices are favored and they try to put those offices’ protocols on the US office, despite those tactics not working in a US office/market. Management truly doesn’t care about having a healthy and productive work environment, and you have to either threaten to quit or beg for a promotion/raise, to which you will probably still see pay below the average publishing rates—if you don’t just get fired first. As someone who helped completely make the office functional, I never received so much as a thanks, nor were any of my concerns or suggestions about the publishing model, author interactions, etc. addressed—instead I was told I had no idea what I was talking about, despite being in the publishing industry for years prior to joining AMP. The overall attitude of upper management is a “mean girl” bullying high school culture, with limited chance for growth. While the work is easy enough because you are no longer actually reviewing manuscripts just blindly offering contracts and answering emails and calls, and the paycheck is steady, it’s truly not worth the decline in your mental health to work here. They used the pandemic to "lay off" employees that were open about their feelings of distaste or concern of the office culture, upper management, and questionable publishing methods, proof that any employee who does not agree with "upper management" is a replaceable. And while I’m sure this review will get the generic “I’m sorry to hear you feel this way, Austin Macauley is a hybrid publisher and we value all our employees” copy and paste spiel before it ultimately gets taken down, I just hope I saved someone from the headache of working here.

Pros

The people at the junior level are hands down what make this job worth it. I truly enjoyed interacting with staff on a daily basis and they enhanced the working environment for me. If it hadn't been for this great group of people, I know I wouldn't have stayed with the company for as long as I had.

Cons

Employees are understaffed and underpaid. There are too many authors to properly provide them the care and attention that they need, especially at the marketing level, which leads to disgruntled authors taking it out on the marketing employees, as the authors are over promised what type of promotion they are going to receive during the editorial stages. However, this is not the editorial department's fault, as they are trained to set the bar high for authors' expectations during these stages. When this concern is vocalized to management, leadership minimizes the concern and expresses that the way the marketing department is currently structured operates in a seamless way even though it does not. Leadership at the company is not at the office on a daily basis as they work across the Company’s global offices, therefore, they do not understand that the operations vary from office to office and are unable to see firsthand that processes, systems, and communication across offices are broken. Leadership is not open to implementations of new systems and becomes defensive when new ideas are suggested. All staff members across departments have too many authors to work with and the staff members that truly care and put an ample amount of effort into their jobs are undervalued. When they speak to management about their concerns or suggest new ideas, they are shut down by management, making them not want to speak up anymore. There are little to no benefits at this job. The company has minimal PTO days, does not account for sick days, does not give considerable time off for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and did not have health care benefits at the U.S. office in its early stages. Ultimately, you’re putting a lot of time and effort in to your job to feel underappreciated or to receive a stream of compliments from management about how “great” you are at your job but with no compensation to match it or any type of nice gesture to accompany it, so you start to wonder why you’re putting so much effort into a Company that does not care about you as an employee. My advice is that there are better jobs and companies than this. If you’re looking to get resume experience post-grad and can make it a year with these factors in mind, then go for it, but there are other places where your time, energy and efforts will be truly appreciated and you will experience transformation and growth rather than a lack of formal training, low compensation and being berated by authors for factors that are outside of your control.

Pros

NONE that I can think of.

Cons

This is a vanity publisher. If you have any self-respect, you won't want to be part of it.

Pros

Started working as a apprentice in the Warehouse team before slowly working more in the accounts department where i completed my course earning a certificate in Business Administration, since then i was offered full time employment in the Accounts department working with multiple great colleagues over the past 5 years. Specifically i enjoy working with our team leader over the past year as we make a great team, getting a lot of work done. There is also a nice environment in our department as we get along well which helps us accomplish our tasks better and faster.

Cons

We do have a issue with our I.T in the company as one of our members in our department is consistently pulled away from his workload as our other member of I.T was told to stop doing I.T which has hindered our progress. A small personal issue i do have is that originally even in accounts we were allowed to listen to music whether through 1 earphone however this suddenly changed through lower management even though i stressed that i personally feel i worked better with it.

Pros

Austin Macauley have been very good to me over the last five and a half years I have been with them. I started as an apprentice with the production department and then moved across to the accounts department as an opportunity became available to do so. Since then, I have been promoted to the team leader of the accounts department and have been in this position for around two and a half – three years. The staff are all very nice and the atmosphere in the office is very good. Everyone has time for each other, and this enables us to work successfully as a team. Benefits of monthly takeaways are a nice reward to all staff and the opportunity to attend business awards are welcomed so that everyone can see their hard work paying off.

Cons

Occasionally procedures can change and the communication in doing so isn’t 100% clear. It would be nice if all departmental managers did meet frequently to discuss the relationships between teams and establish new and updated procedures between everyone.

Pros

I initially interviewed for a Customer Service role but after my interview I was offered a role in the Accounts department with more responsibility and higher pay. I had limited administration experience but my training for this role was thorough and well-managed. The Office Manager & Accounts Team Leader have been nothing but supportive since I started working for AMP and after a year with the company, they even accommodated my requirements to work remotely after a big relocation due to family reasons. The company spends a lot of time & resources when training new employees and everyone is made to feel welcome. For this reason amongst others, AMP were awarded the silver award for employer of the year at the 2022 SME business awards and I am very proud to be a part of the company's success.

Cons

My experience has been nothing but positive and I feel I will continue to do well & excel at Austin Macauley Publishers.

Pros

There are none, very much worst experience

Cons

No Support No Backing No Training No Review They will hire you, confuse you and fire you that’s it It happened to me and it happened to my 4 juniors as well. Then you will suddenly be in a position where you feel, you belong no where

Pros

NOTHING. The only good thing was my two normal colleagues. It's good to share the misery with someone.

Cons

Mmm so what do I start with? This is the worst place you can work in. I was relieved when I saw another negative review from a different office. It actually means that the management is the big issue here. Well, UAE office is much worse. This is just a toxic working environment where you are micromanaged for 8 hours. You are being watched even when you go to the washroom. We had the most toxic Karin coworker who would literally calculate how much time we spent in the washroom. At some point, she was kind of obsessed. I believe our lovely boss added watching us to her contract. Management doesn’t care about you or your health so taking a day off is such a big deal. You are directed to send as many contracts as you can so you end up skimming over books and accepting anything just to meet the target. Employees were blamed for everything. Literally everything. Typos in emails were printed, highlighted and showed to employees. I spent two years and never heard the publishing director saying any positive words to her employees (except her tattletales ofc). The office feels like an adults nursery with some mean bullies who have a main goal of destroying your mental health. One of the funniest comments that we used to receive was to stop copying and pasting and to be creative. I can not wait to get my copy pasted reply. Talking and discussing things with your coworkers was labelled as loud and unnecessary. If you try to discuss then you are disrespecting your supervisors. One thing they absolutely LOVE is sending warnings. Hey are you breathing? Warning for breathing. Last few words to sum up: Bullies, biased, unprofessional, causing mental health issues, unethical, toxic, toxic and toxic. Save yourself love. It's not worth it. There are other good offices with normal people. Working for AMP was very exhausting.