Flap and Jacket Copywriting

August 30, 2012 10:19 AM

Many of you have worked with book jacket writing, according to answers to this question in 2007. I have the perfect background to do this: years of editorial experience in book publishing and a fledgling copywriting career. What can you tell me about it now? And who should I approach for freelance work?

Note: I've already looked at the Literary Marketplace (LMP), and they're no help.

1. What's the most likely (generic) title of the contact person at a publishing house who'd be hiring jacket copy writers? (Director of Marketing? Marketing Manager? Something else?)
2. Should I assume that only the really large houses would freelance jacket copy out?
3. Any idea what the current hourly rate is?
4. I've read that sometimes this work is sent out to agencies that hire freelance copywriters. Would these be PR agencies doing press kits and such? Or if not, who—and how would I contact them?
5. Finally, since I don't (yet) have any jacket copy among my samples, do you think if I did a sample or two of my own on a random book that would suffice?

Thanks!

posted by Violet Blue to work & money (10 answers total)

I think publishers have cut way back on hiring any freelancers since that last Ask in 2007. Marketing departments write jacket copy and author bios, in my experience. You could look to find publicists who specialize in authors and books and see if they can use your talents.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:50 AM on August 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

Marketing departments write jacket copy and author bios, in my experience.

In my experience, my co-author and I wrote our own bios. We assume that the jacket copy was written by someone in Marketing, but a lot of it looks suspiciously similar to the pitch we submitted last year. I really can't see our publisher spending any money on hiring someone to do this.
posted by valkyryn at 10:57 AM on August 30, 2012

Even in the question you link to back in 07, the vast majority of respondents said it was some combination of author, editor and marketing people, which chimes with my experiences too.
posted by oliverburkeman at 11:02 AM on August 30, 2012

Right, I've pretty much written the flap copy, jacket copy and bio for my books too, with major publishers.
posted by fivesavagepalms at 12:59 PM on August 30, 2012

In my experience, my co-author and I wrote our own bios. We assume that the jacket copy was written by someone in Marketing, but a lot of it looks suspiciously similar to the pitch we submitted last year. I really can't see our publisher spending any money on hiring someone to do this.

Agreed. My jacket copy and bio were written by my editor (big six publishing house), and then edited by me.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:48 PM on August 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dittoing all the above answers. I have published trade books for twenty years and in each case the back cover copy was written by me and/or the marketing department of the publisher and I edited the final version.
posted by Jenna Brown at 4:21 PM on August 30, 2012

Thanks for all your answers, with a special gold star to Ideefixe.

Googling around over the past few days I did find some references to doing this freelance, though most of these references were a year or two old. I also saw a few listings in the LMP, 2012 edition, of folks who do this freelance.

So my thought was that some percentage of Marketing sends this out because it somehow works out cheaper for them--or they think it does. That said, it's possible nowadays (or even mostly in the past, too) they just add the writing to a pre-existing workload of someone already in-house. (Or crib the author's copy. Ha!) That certainly seems to be what lots of you are saying. But I'm happy to hear from others, too.
posted by Violet Blue at 5:39 PM on August 30, 2012

It's not a job. It's a task that devolves to the marketing department (generally to one of the lower level employees, hi, that was me 20 years ago) or the author does it because they don't want to have a random 25-year-old write it.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:57 PM on August 30, 2012

It's not a job. It's a task that devolves to the marketing department

Yeah, this. The jacket copy seems to have taken all of about thirty minutes.
posted by valkyryn at 9:08 AM on August 31, 2012

Echoing others that I've rarely seen it freelanced out. At my current place the editor(ail assistant)s do it. That said, you might poke around MediaBistro. They seem to have freelance copywriting stuff come up from time to time.
posted by libraryhead at 10:27 AM on August 31, 2012