Like most people, I get asked this question often, and my reply is often met with more questions followed by even more questions, because if you aren't in the publishing industry, you usually don't know how it really works. Since my husband referred to me as a "publisher" the other day, I figured it was time to set the record straight, for him, as well as for my friends that may just be pretending to know what exactly I "do" everyday.
Right now, I'm the Sales & Marketing Director for an academic university press that publishes titles related to Louisiana history and culture. By "publish," I mean we conceptualize them, design them, distribute them, sale them, promote them, make money from them. Usually when I say I work for a publisher, people think I mean a printer. Not the same thing! Publishers are not printing presses. We don't have big machines in the back that print and bind our books…that is done off-site at actual printers (and I'm not talking Kinko's here).
I have a degree in public relations and started out working for a Christian book publisher called Howard Books in West Monroe, LA (which was eventually bought out by Simon & Schuster not quite three years into my tenure there). I was publicist (and then senior publicist) there for almost six years. Any time I told a non-book industry person that I was a publicist, I would get the question, "what is a publicist," and I always felt like I should have some textbook definition memorized for those instances. But, really, the textbook definition is pretty lame and boring, and doesn't really tell you anything about the job, so I'll spare you and not give you the definition here. Basically, though, book publicists are in charge of getting publicity for a book and its author in the form of setting up book signings—or even media tours to cities across the U.S., getting reviews/interviews in print media (such as magazines or newspapers), setting up radio and TV interviews for the author, even—now days—getting bloggers to blog about or review the book. It sounds simple, but great results (such as getting an author on Oprah or the Today Show and ending up with a New York Times Bestseller) are hard to achieve and require having good relationships with media contacts.
Being a publicist is fun sometimes, like when you get to meet Oprah or Matt Lauer and sit in their green rooms or when the book you are working on lands on the NYT Bestseller List, but the stress level can be out of this world. The demand for awesome publicity hits from "the bosses" puts a lot of pressure on you, and try as you may, you can't make big TV interviews or magazine articles happen if the producer or the editor on the other end isn't interested! Sometimes when the stress just seemed like too much to bear and that the perks of the job just weren't worth it, I would daydream about working for a small, independent publisher that wasn't so concerned with their bottom line and with selling millions…who hadn't lost sight of why they went into publishing in the first place—for the love of books—and who would be happy, oh, so happy, just to have a publicist that got their authors and titles small, regional media. That was the kind of place I wanted to work…where pressure and CEOs and the clamor to publish the next "big book" didn't exist…where the "little guys" mattered (because I always preferred working with the first-time authors or those who knew they were never going to be comparable to Stephen King because they never had inflated egos that I had to deal with and they were happy with any media you got them!). Aww…if only such a place existed!
But, to my surprise, my daydream became a reality (mostly) and I landed where I am now. I wear a ton of hats here, though, but because the workload is smaller, it's manageable. (I went from working on 60 titles a year to working on 8-10 titles a year.) As the Sales & Marketing Director, I am in charge of: sales, which includes selling titles into our accounts, growing our list of accounts, distribution/shipping to our accounts, as well as direct sales to our customers, informing them of all our new titles and specials and managing our Web site and Facebook page; marketing, which includes special event planning and advertising; publicity, which includes sending out review copies to the media, booking interviews, etc.; and then I also handle all our business management, which includes invoicing, collections, and author royalties. And because I spent my first six months at Howard Books as a copyeditor and learned Chicago Manual of Style, I also read and copyedit every title we publish. (Although you will find mistakes on my blog posts since I don't copyedit it as intensely as I would a book!) And…because there are only two of us who are full-time staff, we pretty much join heads and decide on titles, cover concepts, prices, release dates, etc.
So, now you know what I "do"! And now that I've typed all that out and realized just how much I do, I think I'm going to demand a pay raise now!
