Over his career, King has worked in a variety of disciplines within the entertainment industry. Having studied screenwriting and directing in courses at the American Film Institute, King optioned two television scripts to TriStar Television and was hired by various independent studios and producers to write screenplays. His spec feature scripts have been finalist in the Kairos Prize screenplay competition and the Big Star Screenplay Competition, two years in a row.

Douglas King has also worked in the publishing industry for 29 years, beginning as a columnist for a small-town paper and working up to the founder and publisher of the internationally distributed architecture and design magazine Hawaiian Style. His writing has appeared in over a dozen magazines world-wide. He helped launch and was editor-in-chief of Dallas Style & Design until 2019 when he decided to pursue publishing coffee table books about art and design.