This week was pretty quiet for The Ninth Day, but Kelsey and I finally met our author, Ruth. Ruth has been a fixture at Ooligan since we first enrolled back in 2011, but we had never actually met her before signing on to manage her second book. Before this week, we had exchanged many emails and ideas for editing the novel, but we lacked the face-to-face time.

It still shocks me that books are published today without that face-to-face meeting. In larger publishing houses, authors rarely (if ever) meet their editors or the marketing department or their book’s cover designer. In many cases, the author only knows their agent. How stressful it must feel to nurture a book and then pass it off into the hands of total strangers!

In almost two years at Ooligan, I have worked on numerous publishing projects that were nothing more than assignments for a class. For me, meeting with Ruth has finally made The Ninth Day feel real, like something more important than a class project. I won’t be graded on my work with The Ninth Day, but my work will influence the eventual success of this novel. This responsibility will extend to the work I’ll do after Ooligan.

Next week, Kelsey and I will meet with the Design department to see their cover concepts and finalize the tipsheet with the Marketing department.