Author and publisher welfare has been a hot topic in the books industry of late. Publishing houses, trade unions and industry bodies have scrambled for solutions following a survey by the Bookseller in which debut authors reported overwhelmingly negative publication experiences: more than half of respondents said the process adversely affected their mental health. Now, a series of measures are being rolled out across the industry in response to these concerns.

This month, Anna Frame, communications director at the independent publisher Canongate, has confirmed the launch of two initiatives: an authors’ handbook in partnership with the Society of Authors (SoA) and a resource pack for publishers, in conjunction with English Pen. Canongate has also announced that it will publish fewer books so that it can dedicate more time to authors.

These measures follow news that the Orion publishing group will establish an academy for debut novelists with the aim of “demystifying the process and ensuring expectations are clear”. Meanwhile, the Publishers Publicity Circle (PPC) is launching free media training and crisis communications sessions for publishers.

A lot of authors I know feel quite powerless. We are the product, but we are not a member of the teamImogen Hermes Gowar

Ed Gillett – whose debut book Party Lines will come out in August – said that working with his publisher Picador was a “really positive” experience. However, he added that writing a book can be isolating. “I signed my deal during lockdown, which was obviously a period of particularly acute disconnection for everybody, but that sense of operating in a bit of a bubble has persisted.”

Imogen Hermes Gowar published her first novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, in 2018. She described her publisher and agent as “faultlessly supportive”, but said that she could have been better prepared.

“It impacted my mental health gigantically. For me it was the total change in status. I was 28 when I sold my book and […] I was used to being the intern, or the temp, or the volunteer juggling day jobs in cafes and care work to pay my bills. Suddenly I was treated like the most important person in the room, and it really did a number on me. I doubt it would have occurred to anyone that this might be the case.

“For publishing professionals, for whom this is all literally just another day at the office, it’s easy to overlook the fact that for a debut author it’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.”

She added that clearer communication throughout the process would have eased her concerns. “A lot of authors I know feel quite powerless and shut out from decision-making. We are the product, but we are not a member of the team […] it’s extra alienating to feel that decisions directly concerning our work and careers are often not shared with us.”

Lily Dunn, whose memoir Sins of my Father was published in 2022, echoed this: “So much anxiety comes from not knowing what to expect […] waiting for a response, and the agent or editor who is juggling any number of books and therefore can’t always give the author what they need there and then.”

Gillett and Gowar both suggested that formalised peer-to-peer support would enable debut authors to navigate the process more confidently, while Gowar said she would have liked to see a publication timeline at the beginning of the process. However, she also acknowledged the immense pressure that publishers are under already.

“It must be incredibly sapping as an editor to feel responsible for your authors’ mental health when your own is in freefall. The measures that are being proposed would be great if they really work and aren’t just lip service, but there’s an industry-wide mental health crisis that really needs to be addressed.”

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‘Publishing is a team game’ … Anna Frame, communications director at Canongate

Andrea Henry, an editorial director at Picador, said that publishing professionals are expected to work evenings and weekends as a matter of course. In a previous job, when she was a senior editor, Henry remembers being asked by a publishing director to read a manuscript. “I was expected to do it over the weekend and report back on Monday as to what kind of an edit would be required”, she said. “I was splitting up with my long-term boyfriend that weekend and we were moving out of our shared flat, going our separate ways. It was going to be gruelling. I said I couldn’t read it, and why, but she still seemed a little unconvinced.

“We’re not on the NHS frontline, are we? Still, it is – unexpectedly – a job that takes its toll, because it bleeds into our private lives. ‘It’s a lifestyle,’ is often how it’s explained. It is very hard to switch off.”

Sabah Khan, the head of publicity across adult fiction and non-fiction at Simon & Schuster UK, said that publishers today are facing a uniquely demanding cocktail of circumstances. “I think the pandemic really blurred the lines of what being available for work means – although the whole industry has been talking about burnout and mental wellbeing for a while.”

Through their cross-sector initiatives, Frame, the SoA and the PPC are hoping to tackle these issues. Frame said: “The moment when a book reaches publication is hugely exciting for writers, but it can feel exposing and stressful, too.”

“Often the weight of providing emotional support for authors during this vulnerable time falls to publicists, editors and agents, who aren’t mental health professionals,” she pointed out. “That pastoral care is vital, but as an industry we have to acknowledge the need for professional resources, too, and provide access to that support. Publishing is a team game, and having the difficult conversations at an earlier stage in the process will help us protect our own mental health, and that of the writers we’re working with.”

The SoA is currently seeking sponsorship for its author handbook, which Gillett, Gowar and Dunn all agree is a step in the right direction. Khan and Henry are optimistic about Canongate’s plans to publish fewer books. However, Henry said that resource packs may prove inadequate. “The industry is a bit of a wild west. I’m not sure you can wrangle it into a manual.” Ultimately, she said, the solution is obvious: “Fewer hours, more money!”

In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

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Sponsored by Karbon Homes

Inside Housing and Karbon Homes brought together housing professionals to discuss how to improve the lives of people in disadvantaged communities. Photography by Belinda Lawley

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.@insidehousing and @KarbonHomes brought together housing professionals to discuss how to improve the lives of people in disadvantaged communities (sponsored) #UKhousing .@KarbonHomes is calling for a new approach to supporting left-behind areas and helping its residents prosper, says @CharlotteKarbon, its executive director of business development and growth, @insidehousing roundtable (sponsored) #UKhousingOn improving the lives of people in disadvantaged communities, Connie Jennings @walsallwhg says: “We have to invest not just in buildings – we have to invest in people, because people make our places” @KarbonHomes (sponsored) #UKhousing

In association with:

Left-behind areas have been – as the name suggests – left behind. They are rarely talked about in policy, and there is a lack of concerted action to approach regeneration in a way that really increases the spending power of people who are living in poverty in disadvantaged communities.

Earlier this year, Karbon Homes published a rallying cry to change that, in a report called Fair Foundations: a new movement for left behind places. Now, Inside Housing and Karbon Homes have brought together experts from across the social housing sector to discuss these ideas further, and the role that social landlords can play in this new movement.

Dr Charlotte Carpenter is executive director of business development and growth at Karbon Homes. She notes that the spiralling cost of living crisis is having a disproportionate impact on the lowest-income households, and a knock-on impact on the strength of the foundational economy – the essential goods and services that people rely on every day.

In left-behind areas, concentrations of stressed households are paying a high price for essentials – such as rent, food and energy – and therefore have little residual income left to spend locally, which creates depressed districts.

It is one of the reasons Karbon Homes is calling for a new approach to supporting left-behind areas and helping its residents prosper. This would include changes to the tax and benefits system, which currently traps people in poverty by imposing high marginal rates of loss on additional pay for the low-income households that need it most.

“At the very lowest income levels, very little of any increase in pay trickles down to people’s residual household income because of the way that the tapering of Universal Credit works and the way the taxation system works,” says Dr Carpenter.

Emma Osmundsen, chief executive at Sixty Bricks, and Craig Sparrow, executive director of development at ClwydAlyn

“As a sector, we need to work with communities to create sustainable change, ensuring that as well as having access to an affordable, good-quality home, our residents have more spending power in their pockets, 
so they can lead a good quality of life and contribute to the growth of the area they live in.”

Matthew Morgan, director at the Quality of Life Foundation, points to a number of other factors that have an impact on people’s lives, health and well-being. For instance, do they have access to green space? Do they feel safe? Can they walk or cycle to the shops easily? Mr Morgan admits that these problems cannot be solved with the push of a button, but he also says that relatively simple changes to the built environment can make a big difference.

“It could be better walking routes, places for people to congregate, or play spaces for children. It can be benches for older people who struggle to move from one point to another without some place to pause to rest.”

It is crucial that local people are involved in any change initiative so that they feel in control of their own destinies, Mr Morgan says.

“That could be through community champions, or through a committee that will hopefully bring in different voices that aren’t necessarily the ones that are always heard. And just talk to people, not only to get their input, which is useful in itself, but also to get their trust in the process.”

Blossom Young, head of operations at Poplar HARCA, and Cedric Boston, chief executive at Unity Homes & Enterprise

Hope is often missing in deprived areas, says Susie Thompson, executive director of housing at Gentoo Group. It is one reason Gentoo has decided to invest some of its social value funding programme, which helps to raise aspirations and develops the skills of young people, in left-behind communities.

“It’s about talking places up, not talking them down,” she says. “For me, in terms of helping those communities to flourish, it’s about changing the rhetoric on them… It’s about people realising that they can actually help themselves with a bit of assistance [rather than solutions being imposed on them].”

Connie Jennings, director of stronger communities at WHG, agrees. “The best option for people is to get a job – but, unfortunately, a lot of our customers are unwell,” she says, noting that if someone is disabled or has a chronic illness, it can be difficult for them to find work. “So we’ve got to intervene much earlier… And most people, if you give them support, encouragement and validation, will self-actualise and get to where they need to get to. But we have to invest not just in buildings – we have to invest in people, because people make our places.”

For example, WHG has a Community Champions initiative that employs local people to engage with – and be the voice of – their communities.

Emma Osmundsen talks to Dr Charlotte Carpenter, executive director of business development and growth at Karbon Homes

Giving people skills and empowerment means they will be able to renew themselves indefinitely, argues Emma Osmundsen, chief executive of Sixty Bricks, Waltham Forest Council’s housing development company.

“[We need to look at what we] should do to put in the infrastructure to allow people to flourish, to grow, to stay within their neighbourhoods and ensure that we are truly creating… those 15-minute neighbourhoods so that people don’t have to go elsewhere,” she says. “What they can get is within their communities, being provided by people that live there and work there.”

Scarcity of land can be an issue, Ms Osmundsen says. “So it’s about how do we utilise the small amount of public sector land we’ve got and prioritise that to meet the greatest housing need? But at the same time ensuring that we create mixed communities where people have aspiration, hope and real sustainability in the long term.”

Andy Gamble, executive director of growth and assets at Yorkshire Housing, believes that organisations like his should be involved in developing – and then using – the skills of local people in deprived areas.

“I think local social enterprise would be the way forward, particularly around the retrofit agenda,” he says. “We think we can train and establish groups of customers and businesses to install external wall insulation, PV, air source heat pumps, etc… putting some wealth and money back into the community.”

Craig Sparrow, executive director of development at ClwydAlyn, Connie Jennings, director of stronger communities at WHG, and Andy Gamble, executive director of growth and assets at Yorkshire Housing

Blossom Young, head of operations at London housing association Poplar HARCA, agrees that it is imperative to support local enterprise.

“A lot of the work we’re engaged in at the moment is about how do we support small business… [and] the people in the community who want to engage in enterprise?” she says. “How can we use the resources we have to facilitate that? We’ve developed Poplar Works, where we’ve converted a set of disused garages into 45 small business studios focused around the fashion industry, growing industry in the area and creating a breadth of jobs and opportunities.”

Unity Homes & Enterprise, based in Chapeltown, Leeds, provides affordable workspaces for local businesses, social enterprises and third sector organisations.

“We have about 140 business units spread around Chapeltown,” says Cedric Boston, Unity’s chief executive. “We use these units to encourage local people to set up their own businesses. We believe ingenuity is everywhere, and we provide them with the support and the help to do that. Those 140 units create employment for about 742 people, many of whom come from the local area… So it is a sort of self-help model. But what it does is create a local economy where there wasn’t one before.”

He admits that if Unity did not provide the units, the businesses would probably still exist, but they would not be located – and therefore provide development opportunities – in that particular area.

Mr Boston also believes that housing associations need to focus on people so that they can build up their resilience and recognise their full potential, although he says that getting residents’ engagement in the first place can be difficult. Once established, however, it is vital “to work with them long term, as they submit job applications or start their businesses and have setbacks and need engagement and support”.

Matthew Morgan, director at Quality of Life Foundation, talks during the roundtable

Supporting and nurturing talent is one way to help. Cutting people’s bills is another. Craig Sparrow, executive director of development at ClwydAlyn, stresses that building low-carbon homes is an important way to help people on low incomes. “It’s brilliant that we’re now building homes that cost £10 a week for heat and hot water,” he says, noting that the idea of ‘zero bills’ homes is potentially not that far away.

“Where we operate, we have to look at local incomes – which are low. We work on a 28% model [where a household spends a maximum of 28% of its gross monthly income on housing expenses]. We have relatively low rents in Wales because we have more grant funding. We’re able to build these homes – and it’s about that investment.”

Ultimately, when building low-carbon homes, housing associations have to be prepared to put money in that they won’t get back, says Mr Sparrow, “because it’s just the laws of economics. It costs more to do”.

Karbon Homes welcomes the change in grant funding rules towards greater devolution and area-based criteria, rather than national financial metrics. Yet one funding issue that interests Rob Loughenbury, director of strategy at Onward Homes, is the amount of flexibility there is in Homes England’s grant funding, “and particularly when it comes to the net additionality rule and the ability to get grant funding for replacing homes”.

Mr Loughenbury points to an Onward scheme in Preston that involves demolishing around 160 homes across three tower blocks and replacing “more than 160 homes depending on how plans stack up. But we could only get potentially grant funding for the additional homes over 160 – whereas if we could get grant funding for the full scheme… it will be a much better place as a result”.

In future, housing associations have to think outside the box for funding answers, Ms Osmundsen believes. “Part of looking to the future is about how do we create creative partnerships? How do we work more collaboratively? And how do we have more equal relationships, not just with [local/regional authorities] but also with private partners? And how do we ensure that we are comfortable with collectively working together? Because none of us can do it in isolation.”

It is clear that a Herculean effort is required from a range of stakeholders, including the social housing sector, if ‘levelling up’ is going to be anything other than a slogan.

Participants

Peter Apps (chair)
Deputy editor, Inside Housing

Cedric Boston
Chief executive, Unity Homes & Enterprise

Dr Charlotte Carpenter
Executive director of business development and growth, Karbon Homes

Andy Gamble
Executive director of growth and assets, Yorkshire Housing

Connie Jennings
Director of stronger communities, WHG

Rob Loughenbury
Director of strategy, Onward Homes

Matthew Morgan
Director, Quality of Life Foundation

Emma Osmundsen
Chief executive, Sixty Bricks

Craig Sparrow
Executive director of development, ClwydAlyn

Susie Thompson
Executive director of housing, Gentoo Group

Blossom Young
Head of operations, Poplar HARCA

Sponsored by Karbon Homes

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DUBLIN, April 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The “Mindfulness Meditation Application Market By Service Type, By Deployment Model, By Operating System: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031” report has been added to  ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.

According to this report the mindfulness meditation application market was valued at $97.60 million in 2021, and is estimated to reach $307.1 million by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 12.4% from 2022 to 2031.

Key Market Players

• Inner Explorer, Inc.
• Headspace, Inc.
• Calm. com, Inc.
• Ten Percent Happier
• Smiling Mind
• The Mindfulness App
• Simple Habit, Inc.
• Stop, Breathe, & Think PBC
• Meditation Moments B. V.
• Mindfulness Everywhere Ltd.

The usage of mindfulness meditation apps prevents people from reacting inappropriately or becoming overstimulated in tough circumstances. This program enables the investigation of the inner workings of the mind. This application also includes experimenting with various feelings brought on by actions like breathing or inhaling aromas.

Key factors driving the growth of the mindfulness meditation application market include growing awareness related to stable mental health, government initiatives in promoting yoga and meditation, and increasing adoption of smartwatch technologies.

The rising utilization of smart devices such as smart bands, smartwatches, and fitness tracking devices and growing reliance on the digital platform, together with the changing consumer preferences brought about by the integration of sensor technologies, are factors supporting the positive outlook for this market. China, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and European consumers are expected to be increasingly inclined to fuel the demand for the mindfulness meditation applications market.

The market also offers growth opportunities to the key players in the market. Demand for self-help applications is rising as people shift their attention to living mindfully and recognize the value of managing stress and anxiety as well as the negative impacts of sleeplessness and panic attacks.

The market for mindfulness meditation applications has further opportunity to develop as a result of increased smartphone, Internet, and broadband usage, as well as rising client demands for everywhere and anytime content and services, surging income, and rising self-help app acceptance.

Key Benefits

• This report provides a quantitative analysis of the market segments, current trends, estimations, and dynamics of the mindfulness meditation application market analysis from 2021 to 2031 to identify the prevailing mindfulness meditation application market opportunities.
• The market research is offered along with information related to key drivers, restraints, and opportunities.
• Porter’s five forces analysis highlights the potency of buyers and suppliers to enable stakeholders make profit-oriented business decisions and strengthen their supplier-buyer network.
• In-depth analysis of the mindfulness meditation application market segmentation assists to determine the prevailing market opportunities.
• Major countries in each region are mapped according to their revenue contribution to the global market.
• Market player positioning facilitates benchmarking and provides a clear understanding of the present position of the market players.
• The report includes the analysis of the regional as well as global mindfulness meditation application market trends, key players, market segments, application areas, and market growth strategies.

Key Market Segments

By Deployment Model

By Operating System

By Service Type

• Paid (In-App Purchase)
• Free

By Region

• North America
• U. S.
• Canada
• Europe
• Germany
• Italy
• France
• Spain
• UK
• Rest of Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• China
• Japan
• India
• South Korea
• Rest of Asia-Pacific
• LAMEA
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Africa

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/k8e5cy

About ResearchAndMarkets.com
ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world’s leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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SOURCE Research and Markets

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