Heather Drucker, Associate Director of Publicity for HarperCollins, shares tips for anyone interested in a career as a book publicist.
If somebody wants a career as a book publicist, do they need to move to Manhattan and work their way up at a publisher or PR firm, or are there other options?
A potential book publicist is a good reader and a great communicator. He or she should have excellent writing skills, but also be able to talk about a book or idea verbally, and show their enthusiasm. There is a certain energy that one needs to have to be able to sell the idea of a book and author to someone else.
And, it is a bit like sales – you are selling the concept of the author and the book as a package, which can be challenging but also very rewarding.
New York City is definitely the center of it all. There are some publishing houses and book PR firms in other cities like San Francisco and Boston, but most of them are in New York and a young person starting out will find the most opportunities here.
There are many kinds of jobs one can get in PR where you can specialize in books. You don’t have to work at a traditional publishing house. You can work at a book PR firm like Goldberg and McDuffie Communications, or you can schedule radio and TV satellite tours and more for authors at a firm such as Planned TV Arts (PTA).
You can also work at a general PR firm that handles media, authors, film, and TV. Personally, I really love working at a big book publishing company where I get to mingle with every person who works on a book, from the sales people who sell the titles to the accounts, to the warehouse staff who handle the books from the printer to the bookstores, to the designers, to the editors and everyone in between. It’s teamwork at its best.
Internships while you are still in college are great, and highly encouraged. A good interview doesn’t hurt as well.
But, I think it comes down to loving books. If you love to read, and are able to express that, you have a good chance of landing a great job in publishing.