I stumbled across this explanation of what an in-house book publicist - in this case at Random Children’s - does. No wonder they don’t tend to stay in the position long. This young woman says her typical day starts at 8:45 and ends at 7:30 in the evening. Early in my career, one of my publicists told me that while the job was technically paid by the hour and eligible for overtime, there was tremendous pressure on them to only put 40 hours on their time sheet. (This was at a big publishing house, but not Random.)