Iâm looking to hire a Publicist
ACTUAL JOB DESCRIPTION (not the one you will find posted on PRH):
The Executive Vice President, Director of Publicity and Media Relations for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (@paulbogaards) is seeking a Publicist to dazzle the industry and world with their work and brio and warm good humor providing day-to-day support and counseling for authors (a lot of counseling) in a blistering-paced, internal and external facing (internal = editors = suspicious, external = agents = sometimes mean though they will describe their behavior as outcome directed), detail-oriented (seat 2A not 12A), data-driven (blah blah blah) environment working with dying legacy media professionals, social media pioneers, brand ambassadors (FML), booksellers (â¤ď¸), and other half-crazed publishing desperados.
The ideal candidate for this position will have had previous experience working as a magician. There is no finer point to make. As a publicist, you need to make magic happen. Magic. Every fucking day. Come equipped with a rabbit and a top hat and a goddamn wand and get ready to wave it every Wednesday afternoon at approximately 4:00 PM. You will be given books to work on that have no possibility whatsoever of becoming bestsellers, and yet, the operating expectation is that all of them will list. Authors expect that outcome. Agents expect that outcome. Editors expect that outcome. Publishers expect that outcome. Itâs as if theyâre all smoking the same green-blonde hallucinogenic.
The job is a grind. No one is capable of doing it for very long. The hours, the demands, the pressure, the weight of expectation, the dissonance between acquisitions and the marketplace, all of these things cause enormous stress on publicists. Think about this: the executive director has been doing it for thirty plus years. He has become a hollow shell of the man he once was as a result.
âEvery day is a beat down.â
âEditors. Agents. Authors. Journalists. All of them are a fucking menace.â
âThey look at us like we are, I donât know what.â
âThey look at us like we are fucking waterboys. Thatâs how they look at us.â
âThatâs exactly right. Weâre the fucking waterboys.â
You could be that person â one of the waterboys (or gals). You are young and full of magic and convinced that book publishing is not decline but instead enjoying a renaissance. You look at Amazon with wide-eyed awe and innocence. You will step into the job thinking of the difference you are able to exact on behalf of writers everywhere. You, my friend, are a naif.
This is what will actually happen: You will be staring at your mobile in a crosswalk, answering a complaint from an author about their seat assignment on a United flight, and then be hit by an Uber. That is the most succinct description of book publishing in the 21st century that the director can think of.
All candidates for the position will undergo Annaâs box test. This is a test where you are invited in for an interview with the director, and there is a box on the seat you are supposed to sit in. If you just stare at the box, waiting for the director to move it, you are summarily dismissed and immediately disqualified as a candidate. If you pick up the box and place it somewhere else, you have passed the first test.
You will hear whispers about publishing projects where the company is rumored to have paid considerable sums of money for a book and then a call will come in from a reporter asking questions about said project and you will immediately route it to the director. The director has experience answering questions about the amount of money the company overpaid (5 million, 10 million, 20 million) and why the book is worth that much (itâs not) and how many copies will it take to earn out (it wonât) in what will become an infinite loop of inquiry and denial and the reporter, determined, will end up substantiating the figure through a disgruntled publisher who was knocked out on the last best bid (Karp) and then come back to you and ask you to confirm the figure and you will again deny it and they will wind up reporting the number anyway (though reporters these days donât press in the same rough way that, say, Streitfeld and Kirkpatrick used to, and that is OK with the director, he is accepting of the new school press corps, though he generally prefers old school guys, and will always answer the phone when Keith Kelly calls, because he is the embodiment of OLD FUCKING SCHOOL, a guy who will tease out any story he can about Jann Wenner).
As a publicist, editors will complain to you about the New York Times (what the fuck are they doing over there?) and then become agitated and disgruntled and dismayed and threatening when one of their books is overlooked by that outlet (they reviewed a fucking book from New Directions instead of my book?) suggesting to you that action is essential (we need to do something) and you will reassure them, say of course, of course, Iâll get right on it, but really, what are you going to do? You will come to understand, very quickly, that happiness is elusive in our industry and joy is fleeting. Mostly, everyone suspects each other of book espionage.
Generally, the Publicist can expect career advancement provided they do their job without committing actionable offenses on social media or installing a joy button under the desk in their office or threatening to kill someone because they wrote a bad review (editors do this all the time. First, they threaten you. Then they threaten the BRE. Then they write a drunken email to the reviewer). Do not be led by their bad example.
This is a good position to learn about the business, as good as any, the director basically runs a farm team for the industry, his first hire now runs comms for one of the Big Five and he will smile when he sees a story in the paper with her Chairman touting the benefits of open floor plans (âthere was just this energy and buzz and sense of excitement of collaborative human endeavor that really was kind of exhilaratingâ) and he is proud for a moment recognizing that his first hire has mastered the PR skill of ventriloquism (she has also mastered adapting the infinite loop of denial into the infinite loop of positivity.) Others have gone on to assume posts of similar stature at The New Yorker (where Remnick still wonât give anyone a credit line including Tommy Orange whose book THERE THERE was just excerpted in the magazine and everyone is supposed to be thrilled about that and the mention of said work on the contributor page but Iâm like FUCK THAT who looks at the contributor page give me a book shot in the well of the magazine but of course there is no justice in much of this work, people want what they want when they want it and for selfish ends, the labors of the writer remain forgotten, the working men and women who are the backbone of our industry are frequently an afterthought, and THAT SEEMS TO ME A GREAT PUBLISHING INJUSTICE), and the Brooklyn Cyclones (that was Dave, he was a very handsome, I went to his wedding in New Jersey, there was a Venetian dessert table with fountains, it was like something out of the Sopranos), and Jennifer, who married someone rich and Jewish (that is kind of like going to work for The New Yorker) and gave birth to four children and will sometimes send me emails asking what the fuck happened to her life:
âWhat the fuck happened to my life?â
âHusband. Money. Kids.â
âFUCK.â Jennifer had (has) a foul mouth. I loved (love) that about her.
âIs there still work for me in publishing?â
âNo. Business is dying. Stick with your plan. Keep the husband.â
Occasionally, you will find the director weeping at his desk and you will wonder if he is suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown and then you will observe an open email on his computer and see that it is simply a note of gratitude from a colleague - warmly written and sincere - and you will come to understand that they appear so infrequently that when they do the only way he knows how to respond is by weeping and you will feel a little sad for him. As a publicist, you will live a life of sadness and defeat. And you will learn to cry.
The director is looking for someone to step into his role because he is tired of weeping. The job has exacted a toll. He has become impatient.  His responses to queries are no longer soft and nuanced. This week, for example, an editor from T Magazine sent him an email asking if Cormac McCarthy would cooperate for a cover profile and he responded âNot possibleâ and the editor wrote back asking âAs in not possible for October because the book is so far out, orâŚunlikely to be possible at any time?â and the director wrote back âEVERâ in all caps and then he sat back is his chair and thought âwho are these fucking dragoons and when will they ever learn?â
Another reporter suggested to the director that he was giving him incorrect guidance, when, in fact, the director answered the reporterâs question with the information at hand. The director is fifty-seven and has made a living being honest with reporters and went back and forth with the reporter about his track.
âHe kept asking me the same fucking question.â
âThatâs how they work.â
âI said to him, âWeâre in the weeds here. Youâre suggesting the football moved. Iâm telling you it was a completion. End of story.ââ
You will attend meetings where nothing happens. That is another succinct description of book publishing in the 21st century.
You will be working with seasoned publishing veterans who spend most of their day worrying about Amazon and Barnes & Noble and the death of media.
You will read books before they become books and often find yourself thinking about transitioning out of the industry.
One page proposals will arrive with breathy notes from editors. An auction will follow. The director will be asked to create a marketing and publicity summary in advance of the auction.
âThe proposal is one page.â
âJust make something up.â
So the director will make something up. You will help him. This will happen simultaneously across the industry. The people who make up the best things often acquire the book. So if you are good at making things up, possibly this is a job for you.
You will send emails, respond to emails, and stuff books in jiffy bags. If you are good at stuffing things in jiffy bags, possibly this is a job for you.
People will ask you questions. People from inside and outside the company. The desk you occupy is a kind of information station and you will need to learn the answers to so many questions (the director knows the answers to these questions but doesnât have the patience to respond anymore and indeed it has become dangerous to let any questions through to him because he will often say something wrong on purpose, or say something inappropriate, there was even an instance when a reader called inquiring about Carl Hiaasenâs book tour and he asked her out on a date and Who the fuck does that?)
Candidates for this position need to be confident and made of steel and in possession of magic. Possibly you are that person. Write me a letter. Send me an email. Say something. Anything. Convince me you are the one.
PS: âIâll need a spacious south facing hotel room in a 4 star property, and OMG it cannot be The Muse, I mean how could you book anyone in that hotel?, itâs full of escorts and German tourists, the rooms are tiny, mine felt like a cell, and given my crippling anxiety about touring Iâm lucky to be alive after that stay, you need to respect the work Iâm doing on the road, and that was not a respectful hotel booking, and being in United boarding group two on my flight to New York, well, that was not respectful either, but I donât want to get too far afield here, I just need you to listen to me and hew to my requests, do that and we will have a successful tour, my comfort and safety remain a priority, take it seriously, double pane windows on a high floor are essential, but not too high, away from the elevators and adjacent to a fire stairway, and quiet, the room has to be quiet, with fine linens and towels and four down pillows (one for between my legs, two for my head, and one to snuggle with), a king bed, a duvet, fresh flowers, white peonies if they are in season, a tub and a shower and 24-hour room service, these are the basics, the last tour almost killed me and that simply cannot happen this time outâŚâ
#publishing #books #publicrelations
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