At the moment, The Ninth Day project manager team is waiting for work to come back from the departments. Bits of the project are being worked on in almost every group: Editing finished typecoding the manuscript and will be receiving back cover copy to edit any day now; Design is working on the back cover and spine while Robyn is plugging away on the interior; Marketing is hearing back from potential blurbers who want to read the manuscript and they are writing up a review request cover letter to be sent out next month; and we will be talking to Digital soon about metadata.

In terms of us managers, we are going to start constructing the marketing budget, taking into account the number of ARCs and collateral we’ll need. We are also brainstorming marketing ideas to be expanded upon in the summer.

Speaking of cool marketing ideas, Ruth has started a serialized story, which will continue during the summer, connecting Blue Thread and The Ninth Day. Check it out!

This past week, The Ninth Day started projects in three departments at once—Editing, Design, and Marketing. Our two editors, Tara and Kathryn, finished their preliminary edits of the manuscript, which we then passed on to Ruth. McKenzie and I are looking forward to meeting Ruth for the first time next week to discuss the edits!

The Design department has started on the cover design process. The designers have a tricky job: they need to find a balance between keeping the cover true to the story while also appealing to the YA audience and reflecting the book’s connection to Blue Thread. They have started by collecting images and brainstorming various approaches to figure out the most impactful design options.

Marketing is now involved with The Ninth Day as well, and their first order of business is to create the tip sheet. All week we have been discussing the best sentence for the “hook,” how to phrase the description of the book, comparative titles, our target audience, key selling points, marketing highlights, and so on. The Marketing department has also started brainstorming possible ways to market The Ninth Day in preparation for writing the marketing plan. This is everyone’s chance to come up with their wildest ideas so that later we can decide on the most effective, but also plausible, marketing plan.

For McKenzie and me, it is very exciting to be working with so many departments at once! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone’s ideas in the next few weeks.