Does anyone here work in PR?
- Thread starter RightHoJeeves
- Start date
If you're looking for help promoting/marketing a book, there's a subforum devoted to that very topic.
Book Promotion Ideas and Advice
Why?
Because I do and I know a few people in PR who write fiction... I'm not looking for promotion ideas or anything, I'm just curious to see why day jobs people have.
AW is big enough there are probably people here working in just about any job you can think of. And some of us are out of work, and some of us wish we were out of work, and some of us even make a living writing, even writing what we most love to write.
Do you think working in PR is especially compatible with writing fiction? (Just curious.) I have worked in advertising, though not for a long time, and when I did I was a graphic artist, not a word person. So, a different angle on promotion entirely.
Do you think working in PR is especially compatible with writing fiction? (Just curious.) I have worked in advertising, though not for a long time, and when I did I was a graphic artist, not a word person. So, a different angle on promotion entirely.
In some cases I think PR is compatible. A large part of the job is copywriting and making words as efficient as possible, so that crosses over. I work for a museum, so most of what I do isn't promotion for consumer products, but promotion of things newsy things like research, stories behind artefacts, etc etc. In some ways it's quite like being a journalist.
Right place, right time. I was working as a science communicator in my home town for about 5 years (school groups or the general public would come in, I'd do experiments for them. Blowing stuff up, etc), and then I moved across the country and got a job doing that in the museum. The PR job opened up, and it was only advertised internally, which cut out basically all competition (oooooh yeah!).
I've heard a lot of horror stories about advertising agencies, like its expected you stay really late etc etc. Was that your experience?
Ah, yeah, most of the good situations I've had I've just run across.
And my experience with advertising was as a freelance graphics production artist, before computers were used for graphics; that all was just beginning to be developed. I got out of the business right when that shift was happening, and now my old skills are not really that useful any longer.
And yes, it came to seem that there was a life-or-death energy to the production of what in many cases was basically garbage. I used to do production for American Express direct mail pieces - back when we had junk mail instead of junk emails.
It was hard, grueling, precision work, extremely nit-picky, on a tight deadline, and the end result was something most people would toss right in the trash.
That was pretty heartbreaking, really. I didn't start out to work in advertising, but when I went freelance I learned that that was where the money was and where the jobs were, so, I did those jobs.
'Til I could no longer stand to, and then I became a gardener for a while.
And my experience with advertising was as a freelance graphics production artist, before computers were used for graphics; that all was just beginning to be developed. I got out of the business right when that shift was happening, and now my old skills are not really that useful any longer.
And yes, it came to seem that there was a life-or-death energy to the production of what in many cases was basically garbage. I used to do production for American Express direct mail pieces - back when we had junk mail instead of junk emails.
It was hard, grueling, precision work, extremely nit-picky, on a tight deadline, and the end result was something most people would toss right in the trash.That was pretty heartbreaking, really. I didn't start out to work in advertising, but when I went freelance I learned that that was where the money was and where the jobs were, so, I did those jobs.
'Til I could no longer stand to, and then I became a gardener for a while.
It depends.
I didn't work in PR, exactly, but in a job where I dealt with press releases all day. Everything from corporate earnings, to any government agency you could think of, to the sort of thing you would have done, to dodgy 'studies' by right-wing or left-wing think-tanks.
I don't think the average person has any idea how much 'news' actually originates from a press release, especially in North America.
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Yeah, it's the same in Australia.
Also when an organisation enters into an advertising deal with a newspaper, the paper will also give them preference for editorial. If that's not dodgy then I don't know what is.
Ah, yeah, most of the good situations I've had I've just run across.
And my experience with advertising was as a freelance graphics production artist, before computers were used for graphics; that all was just beginning to be developed. I got out of the business right when that shift was happening, and now my old skills are not really that useful any longer.
And yes, it came to seem that there was a life-or-death energy to the production of what in many cases was basically garbage. I used to do production for American Express direct mail pieces - back when we had junk mail instead of junk emails.
That was pretty heartbreaking, really. I didn't start out to work in advertising, but when I went freelance I learned that that was where the money was and where the jobs were, so, I did those jobs.
'Til I could no longer stand to, and then I became a gardener for a while.
Have you read Then We Came To The End? It's a comedy about exactly what you're describing.