Scenic view of Mt. Hood in Oregon.

Start to Finish: Thorn City

Leave a comment

Thorn City is Ooligan Press’ forthcoming suspense/thriller title. Now that the developmental edit and title generation have been completed, the book is moving on to the next steps. During the Winter 2023 term, the heavy copyedit was sent to the author for review and the Thorn City team has been working on the persona exercise, marketing plan, and cover design brief.

The audience is who the book is for, who a publisher hopes will pick it up off the shelf. The Thorn City team started the term off working on the persona exercise where we created two to three profiles of individuals who might be interested in reading this book. These profiles include surface-level details like age, gender, and race in addition to specific information like their favorite food, social media, and their biggest dream. This helps everyone on the team get a clearer picture of the audience and it turns abstract ideas into a concrete plan.

Marketing plans help us reach that audience by taking those personas and figuring out what would lead them to buy the book. Once that’s decided, work can begin on the hook and back cover copy. The hook is a short sentence or two that catches the reader’s eye and the back cover copy is a summary that reflects the content of the book while leaving enough mystery for the reader to want to know more. In the case of Thorn City, a story with twists and turns and reveals, it’s important to avoid giving away too much. Then, keywords are thoughtfully selected to make sure the book appears in the correct searches. The marketing plan also provides a place to brainstorm blogs, podcasts, social media influencers, and other outlets that specialize in categories and interests relevant to the book. These suggestions will help the curation of the contact list for blurbs and reviews later on in the process. Marketing and publicity highlights focus on pinpointing the main message we hope the reader will walk away with, potential selling points that could appeal to future readers, and actionable things we hope to do to promote the book.

During this term, the team also worked on the design brief. Often designers don’t have a chance to read every book they design a cover for. The cover design brief outlines a book’s themes so the designer can understand the message and tone they should be conveying with the cover. It also addresses important and minor imagery so that significant elements can be incorporated. The team also needs to determine what kinds of color combinations and other design considerations, that will create the right atmosphere for the cover and other designed materials. In this research, it helps to look at comparable covers to get a sense of what’s common in the genre. Another aspect of cover design that the team must consider are things to avoid. This might include imagery that could give readers the wrong idea about the book or be offensive and/or stereotypical to a group of people.

photo of a full bookshelf with white arched box reading "Inside Ooligan Press:". Centered white box with Ooligan fishhook logo. White text bar across bottom says "Marketing- Part Two"

A Guide to Marketing at Ooligan for Prospective Authors (Part Two) 

Leave a comment

Welcome back current or prospective Ooligan authors! In my last blog post, I talked about the marketing plan and its components in order to give you a better understanding of the first steps in our marketing process. In this post, I am going to define a few terms that you might hear when we talk about the next steps in the marketing process. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of what we are doing to promote your book and get it in the hands of readers. [Note: Book marketing is a complex process and one that is too extensive to cover in one blog post. If you have more questions specific to marketing at Ooligan, please email marketing@ooliganpress.pdx.edu.]

Branding Brief—The branding brief defines what we want the “brand” to be for your book. At Ooligan Press, each book we publish has a unique brand—meaning each book has a unique aesthetic which communicates its message and makes it different from other books. The branding brief document is where we summarize how we want to brand a certain book. This document informs the actions of the marketing, design, and social media departments moving forward to make sure our branding is consistent.

Tipsheet—A tipsheet is a two-page informational guide to your book that we will share with our sales representatives and on various book sites as a way to give a quick overview of the book and why someone would want to read it. The content on the tipsheet is taken entirely from the marketing plan—so you will have read and approved everything. This is an industry-facing document that will not be seen by the general public and readers.

Contact List—The contact list is a list of media contacts that we may reach out to for marketing and publicity purposes. The publicity department will add people that we may reach out to and ask to promote our book either with a review, a press release, or some other kind of promotion. This might include newspapers, magazines, blogs, Instagram influencers, BookTokers, local news channels, and many more. The marketing department oversees the section dedicated to finding authors to write blurbs for the book. While you don’t need to know the details of the contact list, rest assured that we are putting in the work to make sure that people know about and are talking about your book.

Blurb—A blurb is a short, typically about one to three sentences, message in praise of your book. The majority of books on your bookshelf will have blurbs on their front or back covers and they are often included on various web pages where you can purchase the book. Blurbs are often included in other promotional materials such as press releases or social media posts. We will seek out authors who have written books similar in content or style to your own or experts in fields of study related to the content of your book. When it comes to blurbs and the contact list, it is extremely helpful for us to know about your connections. Do you have friends or acquaintances who are authors that could contribute? Do you belong to any professional organizations that might be interested in promoting your book in some capacity? Do you volunteer with any organization that we could partner with? At Ooligan Press, we also want to get to know you and work closely with you in this process so that we are building a strategy that leverages your connections.

If the above information has been overwhelming to you, that’s okay! You don’t need to have a full understanding of any of the above terms or processes, but hopefully you can look back upon this article if you ever run across one of these terms and have questions. Either way, at Ooligan Press we are here for you and here to make sure every aspect of the marketing process runs smoothly.

photo of a full bookshelf with white arched box reading "Inside Ooligan Press:". Centered white box with Ooligan fishhook logo. White text bar across bottom says "Marketing- Part One"

A Guide to Marketing at Ooligan for Prospective Authors (Part One)

1 Comment

Welcome current or prospective Ooligan authors! Thank you for entrusting our press with your manuscript. I know that you have poured your heart into your book and now the marketing department at Ooligan is here to help get that book into the hands of readers. The following blog post is meant to outline some of the steps in the marketing process so you feel informed and in the loop. [Note: Book marketing is complex and too extensive to cover in one blog post. If you have more marketing-specific questions, please email marketing@ooliganpress.pdx.edu.]

In this post, I am going to talk about one important document that helps us shape the marketing process for your book: the marketing plan.

At Ooligan, the marketing plan for a book is a lengthy document that outlines the following, which I will define below.

  • Target Audience
  • Sales Hook
  • Book Description
  • Author Biography
  • Key Selling Points
  • Marketing and Publicity Highlights
  • SEO Keywords
  • Comparison Titles

    • The target audience for a book is who we think will buy, read, and enjoy our book. At Ooligan we do something we call a “persona exercise” in which we come up with a primary audience and secondary audience for the book based upon our ideas of who would enjoy the book. We often start by asking our team members to think of two friends to whom they would recommend the book. What are some of their friends’ other hobbies? Where do they spend their time? Are they single, married, etc.? We brainstorm and then consolidate this information in the persona exercise section as a way to help us get a better idea of who our readers are so that we can more effectively work to find and appeal to them.

    The sales hook, book description, and author biography can all typically be found on the back cover of a book. The sales hook is one to two sentences that will captivate the buyer and give them a taste of the book. The book description is the longer paragraph that tells the buyer what the book is about and the author biography is a short paragraph about the author in order to introduce them to readers. All three pieces are valuable tools used to entice readers and we often take several weeks to write, edit, and refine them. As the author, you will also have a chance to review and edit these sections.

    As it sounds, the key selling points for a book is a bulleted list of what we consider to be the main reasons why someone would be interested in the book and why it will stick out from other books on the market. We will eventually share this list with our sales representatives to help them pick out the highlights of your book. Speaking of highlights, the marketing and publicity highlights section is where we list ideas for how else to promote your book. This could include acquiring blurbs from other renowned authors or experts, attending book fairs, running a specifically themed social media campaign, and much more. We also ask you about ideas you have for ways in which you can promote the book and leverage your individual talents or connections.

    In the marketing plan, we list out about one hundred SEO keywords—or search engine optimization keywords—which are words that relate to the topic or content of your book so that anyone searching online will find it. For instance, for a book about local native plants I would include the words “botany” or “horticulture” or I might include a full list of the plants the book details. All of this will help make sure the book pops up for people searching the internet for a book on the subject.

    Finally, comparison titles are three to five books that are similar in content (genre, topic, etc.) and nature (year published, size of publisher, length, etc.) to your book. These titles help our sales representatives get a better idea of how to position your book in the market.

    All of these things—Target Audience, Sales Hook, Book Description, Author Biography, Key Selling Points, Marketing and Publicity Highlights, SEO Keywords, and Comparison Titles—make up the components of the marketing plan for your book. Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully it will help you better understand the marketing process!

    photo of full bookshelf with Ooligan fishhook logo centered. Arched white text box reads "Inside Ooligan Press" and straight white text box reads "Contracts and More"

    Inside Ooligan Press: Your Manuscript is Accepted! Now What?

    Leave a comment

    Note: This is part of the blog series “Inside Ooligan Press”, about how we take a manuscript from an idea to a professionally published book.

    So, you wrote a killer query letter and submitted a proper proposal. You won over Acquisitions and we pitched your project to the press successfully, then we offered to publish your book: now what? For the sake of transparency and in an effort to demystify this crazy little thing called publishing, I humbly offer you an inside look at what you can expect when working with Ooligan Press.

    Once you get notified that our pitch was successful, we enter into the contract negotiation phase of the process. We are a small, not-for-profit press that generally cannot offer author advances. However, authors are compensated for their work, receiving industry standard royalty rates for trade paperbacks based on cover price and units sold, paid out biannually after publication. The Publisher and author negotiate terms of the contract including dates and deadlines for revisions, the final manuscript and any additional materials, and publication, among other things. This process generally takes about two weeks, give or take, during which time it is encouraged that the author has a trustworthy individual review the contract with them.

    Once the contract is signed, we will typically go straight to work with a light or heavy developmental edit, determined by the Acquisitions Editors when we evaluate your manuscript. As a teaching press, we accept manuscripts that are strong and show immense promise, but that offer learning opportunities for the members of the press. This includes the need for editorial work. Expect to do revisions! The Acquisitions Editors lead a team of editors in reading and analyzing your manuscript to determine what is working and what needs work based on our knowledge and experience. We craft an editorial letter full of our critiques, compliments, and suggestions for revision and deliver it to the author for review. We follow up with a phone call or video chat to discuss the letter if the author feels it would be beneficial to do so. The DE process takes about a month, sometimes more. Then the author gets to work on revisions, for which they also get about a month to complete, though timelines may vary based on the project.

    During development, your title may change. Sometimes it is necessary to tweak the title, or change it altogether, but not always. Acquisitions Editors must consider best practices for title generation and consider whether yours is appropriate for the genre and market, the literal and connotative meaning of the words or phrases used, and whether it encapsulates or represents the content found within the book. If we feel a change is necessary, we provide the author some alternative titles to consider and deliver them with the editorial letter. While the author’s input is taken into account, the final title is decided upon by the editors.

    While we are hard at work developmentally editing your manuscript, you will be completing Ooligan’s Author Questionnaire: a document that will be used by all departments to produce and promote your book. While this questionnaire is lengthy and can feel slightly invasive, the author can of course choose which questions they will and will not answer depending on their comfort level.

    Upon delivery of the revised manuscript and questionnaire, the author is then introduced to their Project Manager: the person who will see the project through the rest of the way. They are responsible for keeping the production of your book on track and are your primary point of contact for questions and concerns after acquisition and development.

    Your manuscript will undergo copyediting by a team of editors, led by Ooligan’s Managing Editor. Depending on the needs of your manuscript, this may be a light, medium, or heavy copyedit. We use The Chicago Manual of Style as our primary style guide. This process may take one to two months depending on the time of year and the current stages our other titles are in. The author then receives the edited manuscript and reviews and implements the editorial suggestions, for which they typically get a month to complete.

    While these editorial processes take place, your book’s dedicated project team, led by your Project Manager, has already begun their work crafting the sales hook, back cover copy, and so much more. They work with the managers of each department, Acquisitions, Editing, DEI, Digital, Design, Marketing, Publicity, and Social Media, to create a master plan to produce a quality book and launch it into the world. But wait, there’s more.

    Be sure to check out future installments of this blog for a look at more stages of the production and promotion process at Ooligan Press!