Ooligan’s Archive: The Hidden Final Step of Publishing a Book

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Publication day has finally arrived. Our project teams, managers, and department leads have spent the last twelve to twenty-four months shepherding your book through all the critical processes necessary to turn a manuscript into the product readers pick up off the shelf. The book has been edited, proofread, designed, marketed, posted about on social media, and submitted for awards. Onto the next project, right?

Not quite.

Welcome to the hidden final step of publishing a book: the archive! If you’re an author, you can probably relate to the feeling of having forty slightly different drafts of the same manuscript on your computer, all with the promise of ‘final final FINAL’ version tacked onto the end of the file name. It’s no different here at Ooligan. In fact, we have an entire shared drive full of a book project’s various components in all their original, edited, proofread, edited again, and finally finished forms. In 2022, a few brave Ooligan students worked closely with our publisher to formalize the process of preserving files in a way that was organized and easy to browse. This led to the archive checklist, a way to ensure we had all the materials we needed to keep a book project accessible after publication.

Ideally, archiving takes place within a month of publication so that all the project team members are still around to furnish the necessary documents. This is more important nowadays than ever before because of policies Google enforces for file storage. If a student graduates and lets their account go inactive, Google will begin to delete content from accounts that have been inactive for two years. For Ooligan, the consequence can be losing years of institutional knowledge and project materials.

To get a sense of the enormity of Ooligan’s archival process, let’s take a peek at how we go about archiving the design files. These materials are the most difficult to replace and often the first files we try to collect. A book has much more than just the cover and text files. There’s the files we send to the printer, the files we upload for print on demand, and the files for the advance reader copies. The front cover alone is saved in several different formats: print-optimized, web-optimized, and two different high-resolution versions. The same can be said of the full jacket files. We also have to consider any images or assets that went into the creation of the cover or interior. For example, the font on the cover of Love, Dance & Egg Rolls was created by the designer, so we archived the font files with the cover files. When the design portion of the archive is populated, you end up with something like twenty different files in three different folders. And of course, you need the original packaged file in case you need to make any changes, from correcting typos in the text to adding a blurb or award information to the front cover.

The other reason it’s important to start with design files is to get them out of the design drive, which is often stuffed to capacity because design files are so large. Our design managers are constantly fighting to stretch that 1 percent of available megabytes left in their drive before Google’s threats win out and we aren’t able to create or save new files at all.

When I took over as the Operations Publisher’s Assistant, I had no idea how much time I would spend acting as a detective, tracking down missing files. It’s at times tedious and overwhelming, but a necessary part of our process. Archiving as a practice preserves and honors the hard work we put into publishing books at Ooligan. It allows us to stay connected with our history, our challenges, and our triumphs. But it also guides how we move forward, serving as a foundation for us to continually investigate and improve our processes.

Inside Social Media at Ooligan Press

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Most of us have some sort of feeling about social media. But whether we love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s an important way for authors to reach their audiences. At Ooligan Press, we have a set of best practices for supporting our authors and their books through social media channels. As part of the “Inside Ooligan” series, here’s a look at what the Ooligan Press Online Content Manager does for our books in production. As with many elements of book production, it starts earlier than you might expect—about six months before launch. Here are some of the key milestones and tools that we use.

Social Media Strategy Document (SMSD)

The SMSD is the customized go-to social media guide for each book. It is a combination of branding, marketing, communication, and author/illustrator information. The strategy document gives a timeline for different phases of social media engagement (announcements, awareness, pre-orders, launches, and sustainment). It also collects information such as the author’s social media handles, types of posts for each platform, who we think would love to read this book, and ideas for engaging with audiences about the title. We start on this document about six months before publication, and collaborate to keep it updated through the launch phase of the book.

Campaign Schedule

Each book gets its own focused set of posts, which we call a “campaign”. The campaign is coordinated with objectives for each phase as mentioned above. For example, about 120 days before the book’s pub date, we share a well-designed announcement post. That is the prompt to start posting weekly content about the book, to generate interest, and grow its audience in the pre-order months prior to launch. As we get closer to the pub date, the pace of posts will increase and we start looking for posts from the author to share. Some of the tasks are dependent on book milestones—for example, we won’t have an author unboxing video until the printed copies arrive. The timeline for the social media campaign is integrated into the Ooligan Press Production Timeline template, so that the book’s project team and author know what to expect.

Third-Party Scheduler and Bulk Upload Sheets

Ooligan Press has several goals with social media. We want to connect audiences to our books, share information about Portland State University and our program, support and engage with other regional independent publishers, and be a voice for increased representation in publishing. That’s a lot of moving pieces and varied content! So we use a third-party social media scheduler to help us stay on track. We are currently using Buffer, which allows us to schedule content ahead of time, and also provides some key analytics for different campaigns and types of content.

To ensure that our posts look good and are easy to understand, and to maintain some consistency with many different folks designing content, we have an established approval process for social media items. Like many organizations, we use Bulk Upload Sheets to organize draft posts. Our Design Manager and Copy Chief are then easily able to approve posts or suggest edits. Afterword, the Online Content Manager can find everything that needs to be scheduled in one place. The Design Manager also provides a color palette, fonts, and approved images to create social media content for each book (drawn from the cover). This helps everyone stay consistent with imagery and makes the book’s content easy to identify visually.

Engagement with Authors and Author’s Followers

One of the most important things that we do in social media as a publisher is to amplify and support an author’s own social media presence. We always ask authors to tag us, share photos, and be as present as they can in this process. It comes very easily to some authors and others aren’t so involved, but audiences are really eager to know who is behind these beautiful covers and they love to see “behind the scenes!” While actively working with authors, the Ooligan social media team holds giveaways of advance copies or other book-related swag, posts live from events, and answers questions and comments about the book. We have also collaborated with outside publicists that authors hire. This process doesn’t end after a book launches and we are always delighted to share and boost an author’s social media efforts.

All publishers want to generate interest and excitement about each of their books, and to help readers find the books that are right for them. Social media is a key piece of that effort at Ooligan Press. Take a look at our social media accounts to see these tools in action! What are the most challenging or important parts about this process? We’d love to hear from you.

The Ins and Outs of the Publicity Department at Ooligan

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Like many Oolies before me, when I first started the graduate program in Book Publishing at Portland State University, I thought I would be most interested in editorial. In fact, besides being an editor, I didn’t really know anything about the other jobs that existed in the publishing industry. I had a lot to learn!

After learning more about the industry from different classes and through my work as a team member on Ooligan’s YA title, Love, Dance & Egg Rolls by Jason Tanamor, I discover that I had a penchant for marketing and publicity. I applied to a few different managerial positions, but I was thrilled to be assigned my top choice: Publicity Manager!

So, what is book publicity? And how does it work at Ooligan Press?

Here’s the basics:

What is Book Publicity?

A book publicist’s job is to serve as the liaison between the author and the media with the goal of acquiring press coverage for the book and/or author. Publicity is often defined as “earned media,” being something that generates attention without necessarily paying for it.

How Does it Work at Ooligan?

The Publicity Department is relatively new to Ooligan—I’m only the third person to hold the title of Publicity Manager! The Publicity Department is responsible for:

Press Kits

Press kits provide information to the media on our books and authors, which saves media editors time in research and preparation. Press kits should be easily accessible, have consistent messaging, be author-centric, and be kept updated like a resume. For more about press kits, check out this blog on The Anatomy of a Press Kit or this blog on How to Write an Effective Press Release.

Review Requests

Review requests are just that—requests for reviews! We send out review requests to different media outlets, bloggers, bookstagrammers, authors, and book reviewers. For more about review requests, check out this blog on writing review requests, or this blog on what to do about reviews!

Launch Events

Launch events can be held in a variety of ways, and there have been many different types of launches with Ooligan and our authors—from events at pubs and bookstores to virtual events! At Ooligan, our launch events are about giving the students and the authors a chance to celebrate together. To get an idea of how to plan a successful launch party, check out this blog, or for a look at what we’ve learned from a year of hosting virtual book launch events and some helpful advice from past Project Managers, check out this blog!

Awards

It’s Publicity’s responsibility to organize and apply for awards for all of our books! There are a few awards we generally apply to, like the Oregon Book Award and the Foreword INDIES, but project teams will also gather other viable options, sometimes based on things like genre or author identity. To learn more about the importance of awards, check out this blog!

Author Events

It’s also the Publicity Department’s responsibility to submit our authors for events such as The Portland Book Festival and The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) Fall Tradeshow. The publicity manager fills out submission forms and writes cover letters pitching our books and authors to be featured at these events.

IPS Updates

If our books or our authors receive any publicity—reviews, events, interviews, awards, etc.—the Publicity Department updates our distributor, Ingram.

Some Final Thoughts.

  • Publicity is about cultivating authentic attention for our authors and our books.
  • Something I love about publicity is that we’re receiving recognition and validation for our authors, our books, and Ooligan Press!
  • In a way, finding the right media outlets to reach the right audience can be a bit like matchmaking.
  • At Ooligan, we’re passionate about our books, so it makes marketing and publicizing them easy!

Preparing to Record an Audiobook at Ooligan Press: Scripting

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The Audiobooks Department at Ooligan Press is beginning the process of recording the audiobook for one of our upcoming titles.

When we identify a candidate for an audiobook, we start the pre-recording process once the copyedit of the manuscript has been finalized. Once we know that we have the final edited copy of the manuscript, we can begin the process of turning the manuscript into a script for a narrator to read.

Our goal with creating an audiobook script is to create simple visual clues for our narrator while they are sight reading the manuscript. We never expect our narrators to memorize the manuscript before coming into the recording studio to read. Rather, the audiobook narrator will sight-read the manuscript as they go. While this may seem to require little preparation for the narrator, they will actually need to practice different character voices ahead of time so that they can easily switch between narration and dialogue while sight-reading.

The scripting process we prefer to use at Ooligan Press uses a highlighting method with different colors for each main character to provide the narrator with visual context clues when sight-reading the script.

We assign each main character a highlighter color using the selection available in Google docs. We use highlighert colors rather than other methods so we can avoid introducing errors into the manuscript during the scripting process.

Below is an example of how we might script a manuscript with a third-person point of view:

Character A: “He ate the apple.”

Character B: “He did, did he?”

Narration: The characters stared at each other for a long while.

Character B: “Well,” Character B started, “I was planning on eating that apple for lunch.”

The third-person point of view is most common in the manuscripts that we publish at Ooligan Press, but books are also written in the second-person and first-person point of view.

Below is an example of how we might script a manuscript with a first-person point of view:

Character A/Narrator: “He ate the apple.”

Character B: “He did, did he?”

Character A/Narrator: Character B and I stared at each other for a long while.

Character B: “Well,” Character B started, “I was planning on eating that apple for lunch.”

When working with a script written in the least common second-person point of view, the format is the same as the first-person format.

And finally, once we have finished scripting a manuscript for audio recording, we can begin selecting passages of the manuscript to use for narrator auditions!

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The Production Schedule at Ooligan Press

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One of the most common questions we get about publishing is this: why does it take so long to publish a book? A typical production cycle for a traditional publisher is between nine months and two years. (The length of time can vary depending on the size of the publishing house and its staff, how far out the acquisitions calendar is planned, what type of book is being published, and many other factors.) Let’s take a look at what goes into that time, using our own production schedule at Ooligan Press as an example.

First, we need to find and acquire a manuscript. (You can read some insights about that process here and here. Acquisitions is an ongoing process at Ooligan Press; we publish four books a year, based around the academic calendar of Portland State University. Usually, our fall title is non-fiction, we publish one literary fiction in the winter, and then we have two titles in the spring—one YA and one in partnership with the Multnomah Library Writers’ Project. Of course, that schedule sometimes shifts, and like many businesses, we are still working to catch up and get back on track from the effects of the pandemic shutdown in 2020 and 2021.

Once we have our manuscript chosen, it goes into production according to a very detailed schedule. There are lots of different project management tools out there; at Ooligan, we use a template to create a shared spreadsheet for each title. The spreadsheet is coded with date dependencies and a “work-back” schedule. That means that every single task associated with the title (no matter how small) is listed and assigned a date for completion. It also means that we have a good overall view on how the tasks interface with each other, when each milestone must be met, and what happens if any of the puzzle pieces are delayed. At our press, we have identified about 230 discrete actions that need to be completed for each title across different departments, including Acquisitions, Editorial, DEI, Operations, Digital, Design, Marketing, Publicity, and Online Content.

Many publishing tasks begin as soon as a title is chosen for the book, nearly a year ahead of the publication date. Long-range tasks include marketing and publicity, which start in earnest about nine months ahead of publication; cover and interior design, which must be done about ten months before the publication date after all editorial tasks are done; and metadata entry, which occurs at least nine months before publication. All these different jobs are needed to support the actual production and distribution of each book. It’s possible to compress some of these timelines, particularly if a publisher is working on a book that is particularly topical or time-sensitive. But many of these necessary items are external to the publisher, and can’t be expedited.

By the time we are four to six months out from the “book birthday,” most of the production tasks are done and the files are being prepped for printing and e-book production. Lead times for printing and shipping books have been steadily increasing in the past few years and it’s crucial that we build in a cushion of time, in case of misprints or shipping errors. In the remaining time, we continue to work on publicity, planning the book launch, and conducting a social media campaign. This is also typically when a book project team transitions into working on a new title . . . and the cycle continues.

Book production is complex, with many small but critical tasks, and many dependencies that add up to many months of work. As a student-run press with a different “staff” each term, using a standardized shared production calendar helps keep us on track over the long process of bringing a book to life.

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Quick Guide to Formatting In-Text Titles in Chicago Style

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As Copy Chief at Ooligan Press, I am often faced with titles in the documents I edit. This can include book titles for blurbs, comp titles in marketing plans, media outlets in tipsheets, and a variety of references in blog posts like this one. Some of these are easy to remember. For example, book titles are set in italics according to The Chicago Manual of Style; however, if we are posting to social media, the book title should be entirely capitalized as italics is more difficult in a caption on those platforms. In addition, if I am editing something like a press kit, I need to make sure that the book titles are formatted according to the AP Stylebook and are in double quotes instead. Balancing these style guides and mediums can make it difficult to remember how titles are formatted. In addition, we read content all the time that doesn’t align to any style guide at all and title formatting is based on what the author may vaguely remember from high school. This guide will help clear up some of that confusion and create a document that you can refer back to whenever you come across this problem in your own writing or editing.

As a general rule, Chicago suggests “italics to set off the titles of major or freestanding works such as books, journals, movies, and paintings. . . . the names of ships and other craft, species names, and legal cases.” In addition, they recommend “Quotation marks are usually reserved for the titles of subsections of larger works—including chapter titles and article titles and the titles of poems in a collection.” Further, some titles do not need to be formatted in italics or quotation marks at all, such as “a book series or a website, under which any number of works or documents may be collected.” Chapter 8.2 of The Chicago Manual of Style establishes this general rule and presents us with a backdrop against which we can make future editorial decisions.

Italics

  • Names of single volume books: “I enjoyed reading The Book Thief.”
  • Names of multivolume work and individual volumes within a multivolume work
  • Names of the titles of the works in the collection, in a collection of works that features works that were published as separate books: “The introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason in Kant’s Collected Works . . .”
  • Names of pamphlets, reports, and similar freestanding publications
  • Names of periodicals such as newspapers
  • Names of magazines, journals, reviews (unless the words “magazine,” “journal,” or “review” are in the name of the publication these words are not italicized; for example, Time magazine)
  • Names of a very long poetic work, especially one constituting a book: Dante’s Inferno
  • Names of plays
  • Names of blogs and video blogs
  • Names of books that have online or website equivalent: The Chicago Manual of Style Online; the online edition of The Chicago Manual of Style
  • Names of video games
  • Names of operas, oratorios, tone poems, and other long musical compositions
  • Names of movies (or films) and movie series and of television, radio, and podcast programs and series

Quotation Marks

  • Names of articles and features in periodicals and newspapers, chapter and part titles, titles of short stories or essays, and individual selections in books
  • Names of (most) poems: Robert Frost’s poem “The Housekeeper” in his collection North of Boston.
  • Names of individual blog posts
  • Names of folktales, fables, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes
  • Names of songs and other shorter musical compositions
  • Names of a single episode in a television, radio, or podcast series
  • Names of titled sections, pages, or special features on a website

No Italics Or Quotation Marks

  • Names of book series
  • Names of regular columns or departments in periodicals
  • Names of websites: Wikipedia; Wikipedia’s “Let It Be” entry; Wikipedia’s entry on the Beatles’ album Let It Be
  • Names of networks, channels, and streaming services

In general, longer form content or content that has other works within it should be set in italics, while the short form content or works within works should be set in Roman type with quotation marks. When in doubt, check The Chicago Manual of Style. Happy writing and editing!

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Inside Ooligan Press: Metadata Mayhem

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Ever wonder how a publisher ensures their book will find its way into a reader’s hands, especially as more and more book shopping takes place online? Welcome to the world of metadata! Metadata is the data about our books. For most publishers, the process of gathering and perfecting a book’s metadata starts almost immediately after acquiring a new title. At Ooligan Press, this process is overseen by one or two of the publisher’s assistants, known as the Operations PAs or Ops PAs for short. Although we spend a lot of our time sorting, inventorying, organizing, and shipping our physical books, the biggest part of our job is wrangling metadata. Some points that most people are familiar with are the title, author’s name, genre, and main description. Others are a little more obscure. For example, specifics about the physical book, like dimensions and page count are also part of the metadata. So are pricing details, keywords (to improve searchability), and target audience details (age ranges for young adult (YA) and middle grade, for example).

All these metadata points are collected in a document Ooligan calls the CoreSource tipsheet, which is named after the tool we currently use to widely distribute information about our books. The Ops PAs enter the metadata into CoreSource, which feeds the metadata to retailers and libraries. Each data point represents an avenue for booksellers, librarians, and readers to search for our books. The CoreSource tipsheet isn’t something that’s written and then forgotten about; it’s a living document. It follows the book for the rest of its shelf life, so that it can continue building avenues for new readers. Information that might get added to a CoreSource tipsheet long after the book has come out includes front cover updates, awards, reviews, and new books the author publishes. We recently added Satisfaction Guaranteed to the metadata for Karelia Stetz-Waters’ Forgive Me if I’ve Told You This Before so that readers can easily find her older titles when they search her newest release.

The more data points you add, the more avenues you’re building for your audience. Unfortunately, it also means more opportunities for metadata to show up incorrectly or not at all. This is what I call metadata mayhem, especially when multiple data points are incorrect on the same title. Sometimes it’s an easy fix as was the case when a retail site was still displaying an old cover for our Library Writer’s Project title, Court of Venom . A quick email to CoreSource support got the issue resolved in less than a week.

Some errors, however, require a little more back-and-forth. Our flash fiction anthology, Short, Vigorous Roots has thirty-two contributing authors. In CoreSource, we put the two editors as the main contributors and made sure to name each of the short story authors in the main description. This distributed beautifully to most retailers, but one retailer ended up listing all thirty-two authors as main contributors instead of as the editors. I contacted CoreSource support to address it and they promptly replaced ‘author’ with ‘editor’ after each of the contributors, which was not correct. I reached out to address the issue again. This time, the editors, Mark Budman and Susan O’Neil, were added, but listed alongside the thirty-two contributors. Everyone was credited as an editor. One last email chain finally resolved the issue and it is now displayed correctly, but the experience definitely taught me to be clearer in wording my support ticket.

Sometimes, even going back and forth with CoreSource isn’t enough. Early on in the metadata checks for Love, Dance & Egg Rolls , Ooligan’s YA title that was released in the spring of 2022, we noticed that the title was spelled wrong on Powells’ website, using the word ‘and’ instead of an ampersand. A quick email exchange with someone at Powell’s revealed that the ampersand wasn’t something they could accommodate with their style guide. Fortunately, the internal keywords included the ampersand so that readers could still find the book whether they used ‘and’ or the ampersand. Even when errors don’t get resolved the way you want them to, you still learn something from the process! And now we know who to contact at Powell’s to ask these kinds of questions.

Metadata-wrangling can be a handful, but it’s well worth the effort. Equipped with the right tools and a little bit of patience, anyone can become an expert at navigating the mayhem and magic of metadata.

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What Have I Done: Acquiring Ooligan’s First Comic Book

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I was asked recently how I felt having acquired Ooligan Press’ first comic book. I meant to say excited or hopeful, or perhaps confident. What came out of my mouth surprised me and elicited laughter from the roomful of editors I was addressing. “I’m terrified,” I answered. And it was the honest to goodness truth.

In theory, bringing Ooligan into the world of comics makes perfect sense. Portland has a thriving comics community with several well-known, successful publishers based here. Many of our alums have gone on to work for these houses. Portland State University has a Comics Studies program. And above all, we are a learning press. Producing a comic presents tremendous learning opportunities to supplement the skills we’ve gained producing books for trade publication, particularly in the editing, digital, and design departments. So then why am I terrified? I’m glad you asked.

When people learn about what we’re doing, entering the world of comics with no experience, with only logical reasoning and a sincere desire to learn spurring us on, I generally get two reactions: enthusiastic delight or doubtful dissuasion. Either way, you’re facing something unsettling. Those who love comics and think it’s great for us to infiltrate this industry could wind up disappointed. And those who think we should stick to what we know because we’re going to fall flat on our faces going down this hostile road could wind up being right! For transparency’s sake, and to reassure our supporters and, maybe not silence, but soften our critics, let me share with you how seriously we are taking this.

Before the pitch, I consulted with our publisher and the director of the publishing program, and together, we consulted with the director of the Comics Studies program, Dr. Susan Kirtley. She provided guidance and resources and agreed that this project would be a great educational opportunity for our departments to work collaboratively. I also consulted with an editor at Dark Horse, who graduated from the publishing program a few years ago, for my first lesson on comics editing. It became apparent after speaking with them and a few other experts that I was in over my head! All of these experts, while incredibly supportive, warned of the dire consequences of not doing this right. Comics makers and readers are passionate about the craft and will take you to task when you get it wrong. But that simply meant I had a lot to learn and little time to learn it, so I got right to work despite the fear creeping in.

During and after acquisition, we have been working with the author, Henry L. Miller, to raise funds to pay for the intensive illustration work (it costs a lot of money). Artist Jeff Parker will be illustrating this project, and he is an incredibly skilled, experienced professional, who is lovely to work with. He didn’t shame me or make me feel bad for being new to comics, or not knowing the difference between a word balloon (it’s balloon, not bubble) and a caption box. His willingness and ability to work with a first time author and an amateur comics editor is the only reason we were able to take on this new medium as a press.

Aside from reading a bunch of comics and books about comics, I’m also taking the Comics Editing course at PSU, taught this term by comics editor extraordinaire, Shelly Bond, who literally wrote the book on the subject. Not only have I learned about the rules, about word balloons and caption boxes, panels, tiers, and gutters, shots and angles, roughs, pencillers, letterers, inkers, and all the rest; I’ve also learned about creating harmony, among your creative team as well as on the page.

What does this all mean for Ooligan’s first foray into comics? Well, I’ll be passing along what I’ve learned to the person taking over the editorial role after I graduate in June. And continued collaboration with the Comics Studies program, particularly the editing course, will be highly encouraged if the press doesn’t want this first comic to be our last. After all, there’s a changing of the guard every year. Thankfully many students are participating in both programs just to be part of this project, which is a promising sign!

So what have I done acquiring Ooligan’s first comic? I can honestly say I have done my best.

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Expanding My Understanding of Publishing at the PubWest Conference

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Although I’ve been learning a lot about the different facets of publishing at Ooligan Press and in the Book Publishing Program, I wanted to learn more. So, when I heard the 2023 PubWest Conference was happening in Seattle, I jumped at the chance to attend.

The Publishers Association of the West (PubWest) is dedicated to offering professional education, providing publishing-related benefits, creating opportunities for members and associate members to do business, speaking as an advocate for members, recognizing outstanding achievement in publishing, and providing a forum for networking to their publishing and associate members from across the United States and Canada. Founded in 1977 as the Rocky Mountain Book Publishers Association, the association initially focused on supporting publishers in the West; it now consists of members across the US and Canada and even overseas.

This year’s PubWest Conference was unique in that it overlapped with The Book Manufacturers’ Institute’s (BMI) Book Manufacturing Mastered Conference. BMI supports book manufacturing leaders in their work to drive the promotion, efficiency, and growth of book markets for readers and educators in North America. Established in 1933, BMI’s early roots are connected to the “Employing Bookbinders of America” which started out in the early 1900s as a group of bookbinders in the city of New York.

Being a collaboration between BMI and PubWest, the theme of this year’s conference was, fittingly, collaboration.

Kicking off the conference was a panel on Book Manufacturing in 2023 and Beyond. The panel consisted of Angela Engel (The Collective Book Studio), Bill Rojack (Midland Paper), Joe Upton (Gasch Printing), Tim Hewitt (Friesens), and Moderator Matt Baehr (BMI). My knowledge of the production side of making books was severely lacking, so this panel was incredibly illuminating. I knew peripherally about supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, but I hadn’t realized how drastically the process of manufacturing books has changed. Book manufacturing capacity peaked in 2000, and it’s now 75 percent less than pre-2000. Seventy-five percent less! Capacity, scarcity of supply, decreased options, and labor issues were all discussed. The key takeaway from the panel was that publishers and printers are partners and they need to communicate, collaborate, and make compromises for everyone to get what they need.

Being interested in marketing and publicity, I attended a workshop on How to Read Your Market. The panel consisted of Joe Biel (Microcosm Publishing), Richard T. Williams (Independent Publishers Group), Robert Sindelar (Third Place Books), Bob Durgy (BR Printers) and moderator, Sidney Thompson (Independent Publishers Group). Topics that were discussed included Amazon, brand, fandom, niche markets, the impact of the pandemic, and the impact of the changes in book manufacturing. Again, it was awesome to hear from not only publishers but also printers and booksellers on the trials and tribulations of the book industry.

I was particularly interested to see the results of the PubWest Book Design Awards. As the current publicity manager, I’m responsible for submitting our books for awards, and I had submitted one of Ooligan’s titles for the adult trade non-illustrated category. I was disappointed that our title didn’t win, but the competition was fierce. So many excellent, innovative, and beautiful books were featured at the awards and passed around the audience.

I also appreciated attending Indigenous Voices, a panel on indigenous publishing featuring Terri Mack (Strong Nations Publishing) and Tess Olympia (Sealaska Heritage Institute) and moderated by Doug Symington (Friesens). It was inspiring to see the work that Terri Mack had done with Strong Nations Publishing. The advice she had for publishers was to take great care and have attentiveness with indigenous books—from pairing cover artists from the same communities as authors to making sure permissions are granted for the stories being published. Tess Olympia was equally inspiring with her work at the Sealaska Heritage Institute. Among other contributions, they have substantially increased literacy in Alaskan communities through the Baby Raven Reads program.

The conference ended with Speedy Spiels, in which eight speakers had six minutes each to speak to the topic of collaboration. It was a riot! Some gave quick presentations, some sang, and one speaker even did a magic trick. It was a great way to end the conference.

Getting in-person insight into the behind the scenes of publishing and mixing and mingling with book professionals was a fantastic experience. It’s a truly special industry and kind of magical when you think about it: all the hard work, creativity, ingenuity, artistry, craftsmanship, editorial insight, marketing, publicity, the blood, sweat, tears, and love—everything—that goes into making books.

photo of a full bookshelf with white arched box reading "Inside Ooligan Press:". Centered white box with Ooligan fishhook logo. White text bar across bottom says "Marketing- Part Two"

A Guide to Marketing at Ooligan for Prospective Authors (Part Two) 

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Welcome back current or prospective Ooligan authors! In my last blog post, I talked about the marketing plan and its components in order to give you a better understanding of the first steps in our marketing process. In this post, I am going to define a few terms that you might hear when we talk about the next steps in the marketing process. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of what we are doing to promote your book and get it in the hands of readers. [Note: Book marketing is a complex process and one that is too extensive to cover in one blog post. If you have more questions specific to marketing at Ooligan, please email marketing@ooliganpress.pdx.edu.]

Branding Brief—The branding brief defines what we want the “brand” to be for your book. At Ooligan Press, each book we publish has a unique brand—meaning each book has a unique aesthetic which communicates its message and makes it different from other books. The branding brief document is where we summarize how we want to brand a certain book. This document informs the actions of the marketing, design, and social media departments moving forward to make sure our branding is consistent.

Tipsheet—A tipsheet is a two-page informational guide to your book that we will share with our sales representatives and on various book sites as a way to give a quick overview of the book and why someone would want to read it. The content on the tipsheet is taken entirely from the marketing plan—so you will have read and approved everything. This is an industry-facing document that will not be seen by the general public and readers.

Contact List—The contact list is a list of media contacts that we may reach out to for marketing and publicity purposes. The publicity department will add people that we may reach out to and ask to promote our book either with a review, a press release, or some other kind of promotion. This might include newspapers, magazines, blogs, Instagram influencers, BookTokers, local news channels, and many more. The marketing department oversees the section dedicated to finding authors to write blurbs for the book. While you don’t need to know the details of the contact list, rest assured that we are putting in the work to make sure that people know about and are talking about your book.

Blurb—A blurb is a short, typically about one to three sentences, message in praise of your book. The majority of books on your bookshelf will have blurbs on their front or back covers and they are often included on various web pages where you can purchase the book. Blurbs are often included in other promotional materials such as press releases or social media posts. We will seek out authors who have written books similar in content or style to your own or experts in fields of study related to the content of your book. When it comes to blurbs and the contact list, it is extremely helpful for us to know about your connections. Do you have friends or acquaintances who are authors that could contribute? Do you belong to any professional organizations that might be interested in promoting your book in some capacity? Do you volunteer with any organization that we could partner with? At Ooligan Press, we also want to get to know you and work closely with you in this process so that we are building a strategy that leverages your connections.

If the above information has been overwhelming to you, that’s okay! You don’t need to have a full understanding of any of the above terms or processes, but hopefully you can look back upon this article if you ever run across one of these terms and have questions. Either way, at Ooligan Press we are here for you and here to make sure every aspect of the marketing process runs smoothly.