Are employers impressed by books?

Recently, I heard of a major metro hire who helped himself out in the hiring process by having a book to his credit, and a pretty good one.

I've also remember reading an interview with a big-time travel writer (name escapes me) who said his free-lance career skyrocketed after he had a book to his credit.

The question - is writing a book a way to stand out among applicants? Obviously it's never a 100 percent thing - hell, some editors out there might see authorship as pretentious or girly and not something he wants in his rough-and-tumble department. There are exceptions to everything.

But for those of you who have written books or those of you who hire, any relevance to it on a resume? It should at least be mentioned, right?

 

Any editor who thinks of authorship as pretentious or girly has a drawer full of rejection letters and a big file of ideas no one will look at.

Why would you not include it? If you did a radio or TV show, or wrote magazine articles, you'd include that, right? You wouldn't want to announce in an interview that you plan to take off six months every year to work on your novel, but not everyone can write a book. You probably wouldn't want to work for someone who didn't recognize that.

 

Pringle,

Sure. Include that book about the history of fabric swatches. The sports editor will swoon.

 

i'm more interested in submissions to magazines. this one guy turned one in once and he was hired on the spot. it went something like ... dear penthouse forum, i never thought i'd be writing you but last year during my sophmore year of college i was hitchhiking home for the summer. low and behold, a convertable '55 t-bird pulled over filled with four topless female co-eds from the across town. there was only one seat left so i ...

good stuff man, and he actually knows where to put the score of a gamer.

 

i'd be stunned if any editor thought writing a book was a strike against a candidate.

that said, at the major metros it's not uncommon to find that dozens of reporters in a newsroom have written books so it may just be another line on the resume -- neither good nor bad but just a fact.

 

My apartment has many leather-bound books, and smells of rich mahogany.

 

The only strike I can think of is if one's bookwriting would potentially take away from his beat coverage. Otherwise, pluses.

 

Can't hurt to have that on the resume.

 

What if it's a homer-ish book? I've known some writers who have done some questionable stuff.

 

i don't know what impact it has on an employer. however, i don't know why a newspaper editor would give a darn about whether a candidate has written a book or not. book writing and newspaper reporting are two very different animals.

at least to me. what those who actually hire folks think may be another matter. who knows what they're thinking? but you show me a book you've written, and i'd just ask: "yeah, but can you write a clean 500 words on deadline?"

there have been magazine writers and book authors who couldn't. clips would mean more to me than books.