[Janice D. Soderling]

I've just been reading the latest Poets & Writers. It has a regular feature titled Page One: Where new and noteworthy books begin. I noticed today for the first time that (with rare exceptions) each writer/poet listed has a publisher, an agent, an editor and a publicist.

An example is this notice about Les Murray.

"On the last day of 1985, I went home to live in Bunyah, the farming valley I had left some twenty-nine years earlier." Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2011) by Les Murray. thirteenth book, first memoir. Agent: Margaret Connolly. Editor: Paul Elie. Publicist: Meredith Kessler.

Now I know what a publisher does, and have an inkling of what an editor and an agent might do, and even a hint at what a publicist normally would do, but since when was this job added to the retinue of a writer/poet? And what do they do to earn their share of the money?

I have enough problems just thinking about finding a publisher, and worrying should I try to find an agent who might be willing to peddle my fiction (I am confident no agent waste times on an unknown trying to get a book of poetry out).

I notice also name droppers who tell the world with whom they have studied (like the gold dust rubs off, we wish!) and where they earned their MFA in creative writing (and preferably also their two PhDs in rocket science and microbiology).

Tell me, folks. What is a publicist?