When I worked as a book publicist, my boss told me that the blessing and curse of our industry is that “everyone thinks they can do what we do, even though no one has a clue what we do.” This comment was prompted by a marketing meeting during which we were lauded for glowing review coverage that no reasonable person could attribute to our efforts, while simultaneously being asked whether we had “tried the ‘Today’ show.” Because pitching the “Today” show is just the kind of thing that would never occur to a book publicist.

I often revisit my boss’s assessment of our world — not as an author myself but as a person who watches an obscene number of shows and movies. Hollywood’s love affair with book publishing has been long and varied, touching every cinematic genre. And yet it is a love that dare not spell its name correctly. Despite decades of sending emissaries back and forth from coast to coast, swapping mediums, one side looking for money, the other for legitimacy, we remain strangers to our cousins in storytelling.

To be fair, any story set in an industry other than filmmaking is bound to incur infelicities when being handled by people who think filmmaking is the noblest cause. However, because book publishing is a comparatively niche business, the inaccuracies prick the ears. Films about publishing put too fine a point on our role as narrative mulch. In the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” Sandra Bullock plays a big-shot book editor. Early in the film, they (one imagines a producer consensus being reached) have her refer to Don DeLillo as Don “De-lee-lo.” The actor playing the head of the publishing house echoes the pronunciation back to her. De-lee-lo. Light of my airborne toxic event, fire of my nuclear war. “The Proposal” was released in 2009 but was apparently filmed in a bunker with no internet access. If this sounds nitpicky, I might remind you that I was not the one who decided Don DeLillo was famous enough to plop into a major studio script.