Sleeping in My Jeans is officially one year out. While our official pub date is yet to be set, we’re planning on putting the book out sometime in November of 2018. To many, that would seem like a ton of time. What could you possibly do with an entire year until your book publishes?

A lot. And I mean a lot, a lot. In this term alone, the Sleeping in My Jeans team will have worked on cover design, marketing copy, back cover copy, requests for people to blurb the book, and of course, editing. It’s easy for those unfamiliar with the industry to cling onto the idea that publishing follows a very linear, step-by-step process, going from acquisitions to editing to design to marketing to pub, but the Sleeping in My Jeans team is learning quickly just how untrue that is. Here’s a little breakdown of where we’re at, and where we’re headed:

Marketing

What a lot of people don’t expect is that we’ve been marketing since the acquisition of this project. At first we were looking to determine where the book fits on bookshelves, and now we’re trying to figure out who we need to reach to get it on those bookshelves. What’s more, that marketing process will continue through to the end, and past the publication of the book.

Even after the book is available at your local Powell’s or Barnes & Noble, we’ll continue to send out applications for awards, letters to librarians in the hopes that they’ll pick up the book, and partnership requests with organizations who might be interested in what Connie King Leonard, the author, has to say. But, like the title of this post suggests, we certainly aren’t stopping with just marketing.

Editing

Another big focus for the Sleeping in My Jeans team this term is copyediting. We’ve gotten back some wonderful revisions from the author, and now it’s time to make those revisions look as good as they sound. That means that at least half the Sleeping in My Jeans team, and a number of other wonderful editing volunteers are looking closely at the manuscript to find typos, inconsistencies in language, and any grammar errors that might trip a reader up. We’ll do two rounds of copyediting, one this term, and one the next term, before we move onto typecoding and proofreading.

Design

Perhaps most exciting of all our tasks this term has been the cover design. The team worked hard to put together a design brief that would help designers understand just what we we’re looking for in this cover. That’s something that’s easier said than done. What does a cover for a suspenseful young adult novel that’s firmly rooted in place, filled with raw emotion, and offering a new perspective on the realities of homelessness that still hangs on to hope, look like?

We don’t know yet, but we’ve got a ton of great ideas.

The design team has submitted countless options which are being altered according to press feedback every week. We’ll have four total rounds of submissions, and then the covers will go to vote. The project managers and department leads will work to narrow the choices down to the three top designs, then the author will be able to weigh in, and finally, we’ll have an official vote in the Ooligan Press Executive Meeting. Then, we’ll release that cover to the public.

We’re hoping to do a cover design reveal that promises a free galley or copy of the book to one lucky participant, so stay tuned for more info!

The Sleeping in My Jeans project is trucking along nicely, and our team has hands in every aspect of the publishing industry, from design to marketing to editing, which makes for a lot of exciting new work every day. Though we’re a year out, we’ve still got a lot to do, and the team is doing an exceptional job of keeping on our deadlines, something that’s not always easy when the finished product seems so far away.