Books are my business: Literary publicist Mark Walsh

Walsh works with a range of publishers, self-published authors, and literary festivals

Mark Walsh is a publicist with Plunkett PR: he has been working on the Hachette account since 2014, and various other publicity campaigns.

Mark Walsh is a publicist with Plunkett PR, a PR and marketing agency based in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

He works with a range of publishers, self-published authors, and literary festivals.

How did you get into your career?

I studied journalism, and then I moved on and studied PR; I did the PRII diploma in Rathmines and a degree in media. I got an internship with Plunkett PR in 2013 and then I got a full-time position in 2014.

I’ve been working on the Hachette account since 2014, and various other publicity campaigns.

 I’ve always been a big reader — I’m an only child so I had to amuse myself and I found books were the best way to do that. 

I’ve always been passionate about books so working in that area has been a bonus. It has worked out well.

What does your role involve?

My job is to get publicity for authors and books in the media, whether it’s broadcast, print, podcasts, or online. 

We would start with sending books out to reviewers, influencers, and so on to drive a bit of interest. 

Then we would go about setting up interviews, going along with authors to interviews, looking for any way to get publicity and help them to get reviews.

For events, we draft media releases and send them out. With self-published authors, it’s the same, sending books out and raising awareness of them.

In an ever-expanding media landscape, is it difficult to get attention for authors and books?

I think so. Especially with BookTok, a book can be picked at random and it can generate significant sales, out of the blue. 

But we focus mostly on traditional media. It can be tricky, especially around September and October when a lot of high-profile books tend to come out. 

There’s only so much space in a newspaper and only so many hours on radio or television.

There’s so much competition, it is about being the first to pitch or selling someone on why they should have a book featured. 

We do also send books to influencers as well, which wasn’t really a thing, even 10 years ago. 

It is a whole new kind of market and a lot of people discover books online now. We have adapted to that.

What do you like most about what you do?

There’s so much. I like working with authors and people in the industry, whether they are on the publishing side or the events side. I like going to book launches. 

I like seeing ahead in terms of what books are coming out down the line. It’s always interesting to see what the trend is and the type of books that are being published.

What do you like least about it?

The admin side of things. That could be putting together plans in advance of a campaign or reports afterwards, going through all the different types of media coverage. It can be quite time-consuming.

Three desert island books

Recently I’ve been going back over the work of Dermot Healy, who is one of my favourite authors, so I would definitely bring one of his books. I decided on A Goat’s Song, which is probably my favourite one of his; I just like the style of writing. 

It’s one of those books I can go back to time and time again and discover something new that I didn’t pick up the previous time.

The second one would be Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney, which is one of my favourites that I’ve read so far this year. For a debut author, it really got my attention.

I have been getting into the work of the artist Leonora Carrington a lot in the last year or so, I’ve been reading a book of her short stories and her novel The Hearing Trumpet. 

I read The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead recently, which would be my third pick. 

It details her life growing up, how she went on to become an artist, and her entire career in the surrealist movement. The book is really good, I kept going back on it and taking different notes because there was so much in it. 

There is a great story behind it as well; Joanna Moorhead discovered she was Carrington’s cousin, and she got to meet her just before she died and interview her in person. I was really taken by it.