Confessions of a holiday gift guide writer

By Kayleigh Barber

Publishers’ fourth quarter commerce plans usually kick off as early as August, but that doesn’t make holiday weeks any less stressful. Hours get longer, the number of stories published increases and inboxes get even more full of product pitches from eager publicists.

In this edition of Digiday’s Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, a commerce writer talks about their experience writing gift guides and holiday shopping stories.

While the source initially wanted to move into the commerce space for a better salary — they were able to move up from $40,000 as an editorial assistant to $60,000 as a commerce writer — that shift came with an increase in responsibility.

“I do think the commerce job descriptions are a lot harder than edit’s. With money comes time. You have to work holidays, you have to meet goals, but you’re compensated more on commerce than you are on edit,” she said. For this piece, Digiday spoke to her amid the Black Friday shopping season.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Are you expected to work big shopping holidays, like Thanksgiving?

Not so much on Thanksgiving, and that’s truthfully just because I have a great manager. I can imagine other teams do, but I don’t have to. I log on Thursday night after I’m done eating [though] because I want to make sure that everything is good to go for six o’clock in the morning on Black Friday. Friday I work all day [as well as] on Saturday and Sunday.

Those days are compensated and can roll into next year, so I’ll be taking a nice trip in January. And [my company] also gives us meal reimbursements for those days.

What does your work day look like during mega shopping days like Black Friday?

We each are assigned categories or topics [to cover] unless something [unexpected comes up] from a brand. We’re constantly updating those stories, changing things that are out of stock, replacing things, changing headlines, republishing [stories] and putting everything on social media to make sure people see it.

That seems like a lot of stress.

This time of year is 100% the most stressful time of year for everybody in the world because of the holidays, but as a commerce writer, it just doubles everything. It becomes very stagnant and everything starts to sound exactly [the same]. How many ways can a person say, “These are the best deals for Black Friday?”

When you’re working on so much content and such similar content at once, it gets confusing. A great example is I wrote the gift guide for Nordstrom, but I also am writing Nordstrom holiday deals for Black Friday. So it gets confusing. I mean, I’m human.

But the most stressful part about it is that you are working during the holidays and I think people forget that. I want to be able to sit down on Thanksgiving and not think about Glossier’s best deals, but it’s become truly impossible.