Did you know Ooligan Press undertakes a backlist sales initiative every term? It’s true! Last spring the Siblings team dug into the Ooligan sales data and our past social media efforts to see what we could find out about our own efficiency as a sales force. Here’s one surprising result: an awful lot of our social media presence focused on the run up to publication—and dropped off sharply once the pub date had passed.

The realization that we needed to spend some more time talking about our books once, you know, people could actually buy them feels a bit like a well duh moment, but it’s not hard to see how it happens. So much work and worry goes into the process of making the book into a tangible thing that it’s easy to lose track of the fact that, to the rest of the world, things are only just getting started.

I bring all this up because we got the Siblings and Other Disappointments galleys in last week, and I was reminded again that—while our time with the book is coming to a close—the rest of the world is only just now becoming aware of its existence. Our goal over the coming months, as Siblings‘ pub date for October 11 surges towards us, is to stir up some excitement.

The galleys are heading back out the door already to potential reviewers and literary organizations. And they’re heading to our sales reps who have been working hard to push the book—who will surely be just as happy to see it in hard copy as we were. We’re nailing down the final details for our launch events and getting ready to roll out our marketing and social media plans. And in between we’re talking to booksellers and bloggers and the literary-inclined—in short, anyone who we think will connect with this beautifully complicated little collection.

So keep an eye on Ooligan Press this fall. You can be sure we’ll be talking about Siblings on October 18—and because we’re publishing students and we learn our lessons—in the months that follow as well.