The Ooligan office has been pretty quiet the past few weeks during our summer hiatus, but that doesn’t mean press work has stopped entirely. We’ve still managed to make great progress on The Ninth Day. Since our last update, Ruth’s book has been reviewed online by Kirkus Reviews (the print version will appear in their October 1 edition); Florrie Steinbacher has continued her takeover of Ruth’s blog, bringing her posts up to a total of 45; and just this week, we received our first print-run of the finalized publication.

All this means we’re nearly finished, right? Well, not quite. We still have collateral to print before Ruth’s upcoming October events and a huge marketing push ahead of us.

At the moment, we are gearing up for a whole slew of readings, author appearances, and book launches to take place over the next couple of months. First up, we have the Wordstock festival: on Saturday, October 5, Ruth will make an appearance here alongside fellow YA writer Francesca Lia Block. Then, on Tuesday, October 8, Ruth will be signing copies of her freshly printed book at the Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Association (PNBA) tradeshow. If you’re planning to attend, you can find Ruth on the exhibit floor from 10:45-11:15 that morning.

In addition to all of these October events, we are in the process of planning some exciting activities and giveaways for our events in November. On November 15, Ruth will hold a reading at the Cedar Hills Crossing location of Powell’s bookstore. We are incredibly excited to celebrate the launch of this book at such a wonderful location. But don’t worry—that’s not the only event in November we have up our sleeves. When classes begin next week and Ooligan Press officially starts back up, we will have a whole new team of students to brainstorm fun and innovative ideas for the launch.

Be sure to check back in next Friday for updates on our promotional plans. Until then, happy reading!

On Monday, Ooligan author Ruth Tenzer Feldman won an Oregon Book Award for her first novel, Blue Thread. Published last year, Blue Thread has been a bestseller for Ooligan Press and has earned an impressive reputation among reviewers and readers in the Pacific Northwest. We have always been proud of Ruth and of Blue Thread, but to win an Oregon Book Award is a really big deal—it’s something that very few authors can say they have done. Every publisher hopes that their book will be award-winning, and applying for awards is an important step in the publication of a book, but, naturally, not every book will win. Ooligan Press is fortunate to have won more than one Oregon Book Award, but this latest one for Blue Thread is particularly exciting since we are publishing its companion novel, The Ninth Day, this fall. If everything goes according to plan, then The Ninth Day will be as popular as Blue Thread, and maybe win its own Oregon Book Award someday. No one deserves it more than Ruth.

Next week, we will be researching authors and reviewers to start acquiring blurbs for The Ninth Day, as well as adding book award research to the marketing plan.

Over spring break, our intrepid Editing team pulled off a giant task for us: they copyedited The NinthDay in about half the time we usually take. The reason for the rush is our shortened production schedule—we need a finished manuscript to hand off to an interior designer so that we can print galleys and send them out to reviewers on time. The manuscript is now back with Ruth, who will go over the Editing group’s track changes and accept or reject the edits.

People often view copyediting as a very structured process, a straightforward application of strict rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. To some extent, that’s true; reviewing those details is a major staple of copyediting. But those rules are not always as strict as you may think—it depends on the style of the piece. For example, some grammarians would never begin a sentence with a conjunction. However, in a YA novel, with its much more relaxed tone, it would read very strangely if all conjunction-starting sentences were eliminated, especially in dialogue.

In reality, copyediting can involve everything from checking the smallest punctuation marks up to moving whole paragraphs around. Luckily for us, Ruth is a very clean writer, meaning the manuscript needed only a few minor grammar and punctuation changes rather than the reworking of entire sentences or paragraphs.

Once Ruth returns the manuscript to us, it is off to the interior designer!

N.B. —Blue Thread is nominated for an Oregon Book Award! The ceremony is on Monday and and tickets are still available . We have all our fingers and toes crossed for Ruth.