A couple new books are in the works that demonize the heads of publishing houses from the view of publicity assistants. According to Jerome Weeks:

And it continues, in part, because publicity has little glamor or clout in publishing; most people don’t want to do it, even though, if publishers had any brains, they’d realize that marketing these days is almost the whole game (how can you get anyone to tell the difference among hundreds of new thrillers/romances/movie tie-ins?). Yet they leave the front lines of marketing to the lowliest, most powerless staff members.

Media bistro linked to a 2004 salary survey that showed these publicity assistants make little more than secretarial pay in NYC, one of the most expensive cities in the world. It’s hard not to see how bad covers and blurbs come to grace the shelves when these overworked, way underpaid staffers are given charge of dozens of books a year. The question of why the publicity department is not given more cash is really a question for the ages. Via Media Bistro.