A big report came out from The Business Insider on the 27 Jobs that are Most Damaging to your Health. I read the piece with interest, curious to see where being a Book Publicist was featured in this piece and to my chagrin, it wasn’t! Such an oversight. 

I mean look, I get that this job can’t compete with someone facing streams of radiation each day or you know, the guy battling sharks on live TV but at the same time – I’d often prefer radiation AND sharks to my job.

Don’t get me wrong, 80% of the time I love my work, but it’s the 20% that turns a good, faithful book publicist into a rambling lunatic.

So, dear Business Insider, while I can somewhat forgive your oversight I feel I need to add my own addition to this list :

28) Book Publicist

Overall Unhealthiness Score: 55.0

What they do: help authors get publicity, sometimes they talk an author off a roof. Some publicists have been known to medicate their authors. Note: those who force-feed authors medication do not face the same health risks as publicists who let their authors run amuck. Or maybe “cage-free” or “free-range” is more PC…

Top Three Health Risks:

  1. Exposure to arrogance, cynicism, and other mentally taxing personality traits. 100
  2. Risk of complete loss of empathy. 96.5
  3. Risk of alcoholism or narcotic addiction. 90

Check out the original article to see how the figures above were determined!