Q&A: Alex Orr, Marketing Assistant at John Murray Press

For Work in Publishing Week 2025, we're sharing stories from people who are in the early years of their publishing careers. Here we catch up with Alex Orr, Marketing Assistant at John Murray Press, a division of Hachette.

What’s the story of how you found your way into publishing?

I was working in hospitality after finishing my English Lit undergrad when I decided to take a leap of faith and apply for a Master’s in Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University. It’s so cheesy, but very soon into it I knew I’d found my dream career!

As part of my Master’s I was able to gain some work experience – I did some admin work with the International Magazine Centre and I gained marketing experience with the Edinburgh Literary Salon and Glasgow-based independent press thi wurd. This gave me an understanding of the Scottish indie press publishing scene and helped me develop skills that would be vital in applying for publishing jobs.

Near the end of my year, I applied for the Hachette traineeship hosted with Creative Access, and I was accepted – I was to spend a year in Marketing with Hodder & Stoughton based in Hachette’s Edinburgh office.

During the year of my traineeship, we met people from across Hachette’s divisions and we received introductions from all publishing departments to give us a well-rounded knowledge of the publishing lifecycle which, paired with our two placements, resulted in a thorough understanding of the market as a whole and Hachette’s place in it.

As part of the traineeship I spent a month working as a literary agent’s assistant in Conville and Walsh, the Curtis Brown Group, in London which was an incredible opportunity and I learned many valuable things – what agents look for in authors and manuscripts, how much work agents do with authors’ manuscripts before they go out on submission, and I had fascinating conversations with different agents about the changes they’ve seen over their careers in both the market and industry.

I also spent a month working as a bookseller. I was placed in Blackwells, Edinburgh in August. This meant that I gained experience of bookselling, learning about Blackwells and Waterstones’ inner workings. The Edinburgh International Book Festival takes place in August, so I spent a few days working in the on-site Waterstones tent – I can only compare this to the Christmas retail madness in The Grinch!

During the year of my traineeship, we met people from across Hachette’s divisions and we received introductions from all publishing departments to give us a well-rounded knowledge of the publishing lifecycle which, paired with our two placements, resulted in a thorough understanding of the market as a whole and Hachette’s place in it.

My year was spent in the Marketing team with Hodder & Stoughton and, alongside smaller ad hoc marketing tasks to support the team, I was tasked with the long-term project of reviving Hodder’s reader communities across women’s fiction and crime and thriller. I did an audit of previous strategy and devised a new one from these learnings and, shortly before my time with Hodder came to an end, I launched twice-monthly newsletters across both lists which droves sales with seasonal content, solo blasts for key titles, digital deals, and more.

Coming from having done work with micro-presses in Scotland to being in meetings where people are discussing numbers that reach the hundreds of thousands was mind-boggling.

As my traineeship came to an end, I began another year’s contract within Hachette, moving to John Murray Press Specialist to become their Marketing Assistant. The Specialist team is made up of Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Singing Dragon, Handspring, Sheldon Press, John Murray Languages (including Chambers, Teach Yourself, and Michel Thomas), John Murray Business, Laurence King’s student and professional publishing, and Hodder Faith. I supported the marketers across these lists, providing administrative assistance and supporting on marketing activity including designing assets, running socials posts and newsletters, doing research and outreach to everywhere from magazines to influencers.

Five months in, my role altered slightly. Still officially an assistant, I’ve stepped up to run Hodder Faith’s day-to-day marketing activities with my manager maintaining strategic oversight of the list while she takes over another. I’ll be responsible for planning and executing campaigns for all our frontlist and corelist titles, which will mean I’ll be running a mix of digital advertising, social media campaigns, influencer campaigns, partnerships with various organisations, and more.

What skill did you find most valuable during your first few months in publishing?

I don’t know if this counts as a skill, but always having an open, curious mind and not being afraid to ask questions. I learned so much in my first few months by swallowing fear and putting myself forward to ask people things. People in publishing are busy, but I’ve found that everyone is very happy to give a little of their time to answer questions – and, often, they actually enjoy doing it!

It was only when I saw publicity campaigns for titles we were publishing that I put into context the articles I’d read or programmes I’d watched that featured authors, musicians, artists, and other celebrities plugging something of theirs that it clicked that this was all part of their own campaigns.

Meeting with people online to ask them about their role, their skills, and their career paths helped me to develop a fuller picture of what working in publishing is like. It was always especially interesting to hear how varied many people’s journey into publishing was.

What’s a part of the publishing process you didn’t even realise existed before you started?

Call me naïve, but I hadn’t realised just how much of what is in the media is all publicity. It was only when I saw publicity campaigns for titles we were publishing that I put into context the articles I’d read or programmes I’d watched that featured authors, musicians, artists, and other celebrities plugging something of theirs that it clicked that this was all part of their own campaigns.

What one experience really stands out from your first year in publishing?

Seeing the scale of large publishers. Coming from having done work with micro-presses in Scotland to being in meetings where people are discussing numbers that reach the hundreds of thousands was mind-boggling.

What’s the best piece of unofficial advice you picked up – something no one tells you before you start?

It’s no secret that the UK publishing industry has far to go regarding diversity and representation – see Professor Anamik Saha’s writing on the topic. Publishing is a largely liberal but very white and upper-middle-class industry. In recent years there have been significant moves by minor and major players in the industry towards changing this, but we aren’t there yet – especially when we look at our industry’s senior leadership.

For anyone entering the industry who is from an under-represented background, it’s important to find allies in the industry. If you’re applying for a larger publisher, explore their employee networks to find people you have a lot of things in common with.

For anyone entering the industry who is from an under-represented background, it’s important to find allies in the industry. If you’re applying for a larger publisher, explore their employee networks to find people you have a lot of things in common with. If you’re applying for a smaller publisher, try to find out their ongoing commitment to DEI in the workplace and see if there are cross-publisher networks or groups you can join.

The industry will never be perfect, but will evolve into a fairer one as its workforce better represents the population, and it is all our duty to uphold the mission to further diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging, which looks like holding our senior leadership to account and uplifting our marginalised colleagues.

If your career in publishing were a book title, what would it be – and why?

Perhaps it’s cringe (though I don’t subscribe to the idea!) but I’m still completely starry-eyed that I am in my ideal career after a few years of hard work, so I’d have to say my career in publishing is a generic and buzzy contemporary fiction by a bright-eyed MFA debut, called Living the Dream.