Simon & Schuster’s Osborn tells M&P staff to remember their importance amid challenges

In the opening keynote of The Bookseller Marketing and Publicity Conference Polly Osborn, marketing and publicity director at Simon & Schuster, encouraged attendees to “remember how important you are” within the industry.

Her talk on 27th June, entitled “Why do we do this job? Recovering the joy in our work in the face of publishing’s challenges”, encouraged attendees both online and in-person at London Waterloo’s County Hall to “value your time more than your budgets and find the joy in what you do”.

“We need to remind ourselves why we do this,” Osborn said. “We’re living in a unique time and place, there’s been Brexit and a pandemic. Through all of this, and facing the bin-fire that is Twitter, it can be very hard to find the joy. That’s why I want to remind you how important you are.

“Nobody has met more readers. Nobody is more immersed in the wider media landscape. Marketing and publicity are not service departments. You are integral to the process.”

She encouraged audience-members not to allow cynicism to get in the way of finding joy in their careers, which she called vocational, joking that “you didn’t get in it for the money". She added it has never been more important to prioritise the tasks that really matter and “value your time over your budgets”.

“Have a conversation with your boss about a thing on your to-do list that’s a waste of your time,” she said. “We all have them. I have them.”

Osborn’s emphasis on battling being overwhelmed and focusing on what really matters was mirrored by author Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Vintage), who told the audience it is freeing to realise you can’t ever get everything under control, and “when the load becomes too heavy, you can put it down".

In her speech, Osborn went on to quote an Irish saying that “we live in each other’s shelter”. She said this reflected how support from other M&P professionals actually works better than praise and prizes for the individual.

“Provide shelter for each other,” she concluded. “And look for the joy, not just the end results.”