Well, an imaginary road trip. For our sales kits–the promotional packets we mailed to all our book reps to get them acquainted with our new project–we invited our reps to take a look inside the glove compartment of the car Allison took on her trip to Idaho. Inside, there were brochures with information about the book, our marketing plan, and Ooligan Press, a User’s Manual (containing an excerpt from the manuscript), maps, postcards, and more. The team worked incredibly hard planning, designing, printing, and assembling everything, and it turned out absolutely beautiful. I have no doubt that our sales reps will have fun looking through all this ephemera, and that it will pique their interest in our title.

For our next stage, half of the team is getting started on copyediting the manuscript while the other half is focusing on expanding and beefing up our marketing plan so that we’re ready to hit the ground running as we get closer to our publication date. The copyediting team is reading through the manuscript slowly and carefully, making sure that every comma is in place. Allison is an excellent writer and used to work in publishing herself, so the manuscript is quite clean already–but we still want to take the time to make sure it’s perfect! The marketing team is figuring out who to contact at print, internet, and radio media in Portland, Seattle, and beyond so we can get as many reviews and author interviews as possible. So, if anyone reading this has a cousin whose neighbor’s brother’s wife’s childhood best friend is a reviewer at a large national newspaper…let me know.