By the time this post undergoes editing, makes the posting calendar, and arrives on the Ooligan Press blog, Memories Flow in Our Veins will have reached a particularly tangible benchmark in the publishing lifecycle: our galleys will have arrived!

For many of the folks on the team this term, the arrival of these galleys will be the first time they experience the thrill of holding a book-shaped physical manifestation of the work they’ve put into an Ooligan title. There’s a special satisfaction that comes from being able to flip through the fresh-cut pages of a galley for a manuscript that you’re so intimately acquainted with, one that you’ve read dozens of times before as a PDF proof, as a first draft document, and (in the case of Memories) as a collection of scans of the various CALYX Press titles and copies of CALYX Journal from which this remarkable anthology draws material.

Moreover, galleys are the harbinger of a book launch to come. Their arrival marks the beginning of a book marketing campaign that the Memories team has been avidly preparing for—one that has continued to evolve as the book has taken shape. At each step, we have paused to marvel at the unique opportunity we have to promote such an unflinchingly authentic, deeply feminist collection of writing by some of our own personal author-heroes. The challenge ahead of us now is to employ our cleverest marketing schemes to do justice to Memories Flow in Our Veins by spreading it as far as we can and finding all of the virtual and real-life bookshelves it belongs on. At a time when readers and publishers alike have begun to take take up the call for more diverse stories and a wider breadth of representation in our culture of books, we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Next up for Memories: mailing galleys, selecting a printer, beginning our ebook design, and reaching out to our favorite feminist bookworms.