top of page

Director of Marketing - Publishing

"I don’t market books; I market inspiration. To do this well, I need to know the fundamentals of my business—publishing—to navigate this world to sell my authors and their ideas. More importantly, I need to understand the broader competitive landscape of entertainment, media and publishing and invest in opportunities to build my company’s reputation and the reputation of my authors to my distributors and the end consumer. To be a successful marketing manager in publishing today is recognizing your greatest competition is made up of Netflix, apps and human attention spans, and being knowledgeable and skilled enough to face this competition head on."

Salary Range:

$100,200 - $127,500

The Tip

Marketing needs more great storytellers. Become a greater storyteller and then build on this by developing core business skills.

Priority Knowledge & Skills
Advanced Research & Analysis Skills

  • Formulating research questions

  • Ability to critically analyze literature

  • Ability to develop and execute qualitative research

  • Ability to synthesize key themes from multiple sources

 

Contextual Knowledge

  • Knowledge of human behaviour

  • Understanding of context and values of audiences

  • Essential understanding of a past or present topic and the key audiences it relates

 

Advanced Communication Skills

  • Formulate and defend positions

  • Sensitivity to how communications is shaped by circumstances, authorship and intended audience

  • Formulate and defend positions

  • Apply written vocabulary to audience

Evidence-based Storytelling Skills

  • Ability to use research to develop an evidence-based story

  • Ability to generate story ideas

  • Ability to identify target audiences

  • Ability to create compelling narratives across media

 
Additional Skills

  • Excel in defined core transferable skills with a focus on transdisciplinary systems thinking, adaptive thinking, effective listening, organizational and interpersonal skills

  • Expertise in all core areas of marketing including strategic marketing, research marketing communications and promotions, and content

  • Contextual knowledge of publishing, entertainment and media industries

Building Block Experiences
Education & Learning:

  • Bachelor of Arts (English) with a minor in marketing

  • Diploma in finance from local college

  • Certificates in web and social media analytics

  • Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

 

"My formal education in English provided me core skills associated with research and written communication. Doing a minor in marketing was important because this offered me an understanding of core marketing concepts, product, pricing and promotional expertise. Marketing is changing so fast; to be current you need to stay on top of emerging trends. To be a great marketer, you need to invest in continual formal (e.g. social media certificate) or informal (e.g. podcasts and reading) professional development."

​

​

Employment Experiences:

  • Retail sales experience while in school

  • Account coordinator at a marketing agency for a summer. Was offered a full-time position at graduation.

  • Became marketing manager for local film production company. My role was to market our films to broadcasters worldwide.

  • Transitioned to a director of marketing at large national publisher

 

"Working at an agency allowed me to better manage third parties. Having junior roles (including retail sales) early on gave me the ability to understand the full marketing cycle. My project management experience allowed me to appreciate how it all worked together."

​

​

Community Experiences:

  • An executive for marketing club in university

  • I volunteer for and am on the board of P.A.L.S. – Project Adult Literacy Society

 

"Keeping engaged in the community was an amazing way to meet interesting and inspiring people. It made me a better professional."

​

​

Contextual Experiences:

 

"Education doesn’t have to end in university. The industry is changing so quickly, I need to focus on where things are going, not where they’ve been."

​

​

Relationships:

  • I developed a diverse mentor network including authors and tech entrepreneurs.

 

"Publishing is changing fast and I use my relationships to challenge my perspective of where the market is going."

bottom of page