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Start to Finish: Thorn City

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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.

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How Do We Utilize Blurbs at Ooligan Press?

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So, you received an email from us asking you to read the manuscript for an upcoming Ooligan Press title and provide a “blurb,” what does that mean?

A blurb is a short message or quote–about one to three sentences long–about how much you enjoyed a particular book. A blurb will briefly summarize what the book is about and why someone should read it or why it stands out from other books on a shelf. For readers, a blurb gives a second opinion about the book and highlights some of the key selling points. Sometimes, a reader will choose to read or purchase a book because of a blurb that stands out to them or they trust the recommendation of a certain author or expert. If a person has read every book from a certain author and that author recommends our book, their blurb will indicate to a reader that they might enjoy our book as well. Similarly, if a person sees the name of a leader or activist that they trust and respect next to their blurb for our book, it will communicate that our book will also offer valuable information or a trustworthy perspective.

When seeking out individuals to provide blurbs, we will often ask authors who have written books in the same genre or with similar content or themes. For nonfiction books, we might ask experts in the particular field of study or prominent members of a related community. As a part of this process, we will ask our authors about their connections or to identify other authors, experts, and professionals in their field of study that they admire.

Some blurbs that we receive will end up on the front or back cover of our book. However, this will depend on many factors, including but not limited to the length of the blurb, the length of the other front or back cover copy, how much space the book cover design allocates for a blurb, how many blurbs we receive, and the print deadline.

We greatly appreciate every blurb we receive and recognize the time it took for someone to read through our book and write a thoughtful, engaging blurb. However, we are not able to fit every blurb we receive on the cover of the book. Sometimes, blurbs will be included in the first few pages of a book. Every blurb we receive is included on the various web pages where you can purchase one of our books. Additionally, blurbs are included in other promotional materials for a book such as the social media posts about the project or the press kit. The press kit is the information that we share with the media to let them know about our upcoming book release. Regardless of where a blurb ends up, we greatly appreciate the time and energy that it took for someone to read and blurb our book.

When we reach out to ask an author, writer, or other professional for a blurb, we typically give them over a month to read the book and respond with a few sentences to recommend the book. If you are interested in providing a blurb but are not able to meet the set deadline—let us know! As I mentioned above, we utilize blurbs in many ways and can still use blurbs in our promotional materials after the print deadline has passed.

If you have any further questions about how blurbs are utilized at Ooligan Press, please feel free to reach out to the marketing manager via email at marketing@ooliganpress.pdx.edu.

Inside Social Media at Ooligan Press

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Most of us have some sort of feeling about social media. But whether we love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s an important way for authors to reach their audiences. At Ooligan Press, we have a set of best practices for supporting our authors and their books through social media channels. As part of the “Inside Ooligan” series, here’s a look at what the Ooligan Press Online Content Manager does for our books in production. As with many elements of book production, it starts earlier than you might expect—about six months before launch. Here are some of the key milestones and tools that we use.

Social Media Strategy Document (SMSD)

The SMSD is the customized go-to social media guide for each book. It is a combination of branding, marketing, communication, and author/illustrator information. The strategy document gives a timeline for different phases of social media engagement (announcements, awareness, pre-orders, launches, and sustainment). It also collects information such as the author’s social media handles, types of posts for each platform, who we think would love to read this book, and ideas for engaging with audiences about the title. We start on this document about six months before publication, and collaborate to keep it updated through the launch phase of the book.

Campaign Schedule

Each book gets its own focused set of posts, which we call a “campaign”. The campaign is coordinated with objectives for each phase as mentioned above. For example, about 120 days before the book’s pub date, we share a well-designed announcement post. That is the prompt to start posting weekly content about the book, to generate interest, and grow its audience in the pre-order months prior to launch. As we get closer to the pub date, the pace of posts will increase and we start looking for posts from the author to share. Some of the tasks are dependent on book milestones—for example, we won’t have an author unboxing video until the printed copies arrive. The timeline for the social media campaign is integrated into the Ooligan Press Production Timeline template, so that the book’s project team and author know what to expect.

Third-Party Scheduler and Bulk Upload Sheets

Ooligan Press has several goals with social media. We want to connect audiences to our books, share information about Portland State University and our program, support and engage with other regional independent publishers, and be a voice for increased representation in publishing. That’s a lot of moving pieces and varied content! So we use a third-party social media scheduler to help us stay on track. We are currently using Buffer, which allows us to schedule content ahead of time, and also provides some key analytics for different campaigns and types of content.

To ensure that our posts look good and are easy to understand, and to maintain some consistency with many different folks designing content, we have an established approval process for social media items. Like many organizations, we use Bulk Upload Sheets to organize draft posts. Our Design Manager and Copy Chief are then easily able to approve posts or suggest edits. Afterword, the Online Content Manager can find everything that needs to be scheduled in one place. The Design Manager also provides a color palette, fonts, and approved images to create social media content for each book (drawn from the cover). This helps everyone stay consistent with imagery and makes the book’s content easy to identify visually.

Engagement with Authors and Author’s Followers

One of the most important things that we do in social media as a publisher is to amplify and support an author’s own social media presence. We always ask authors to tag us, share photos, and be as present as they can in this process. It comes very easily to some authors and others aren’t so involved, but audiences are really eager to know who is behind these beautiful covers and they love to see “behind the scenes!” While actively working with authors, the Ooligan social media team holds giveaways of advance copies or other book-related swag, posts live from events, and answers questions and comments about the book. We have also collaborated with outside publicists that authors hire. This process doesn’t end after a book launches and we are always delighted to share and boost an author’s social media efforts.

All publishers want to generate interest and excitement about each of their books, and to help readers find the books that are right for them. Social media is a key piece of that effort at Ooligan Press. Take a look at our social media accounts to see these tools in action! What are the most challenging or important parts about this process? We’d love to hear from you.

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How Authors Can Help Market Their Book

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The process of getting your book published with Ooligan Press can feel both exciting and nerve wracking in equal measures. To demystify some of the process and help our authors understand what the process will look like, let’s talk about what happens after you’ve received the great news that Ooligan Press has acquired your project. So what’s next?

After your manuscript has been accepted by Ooligan, following our democratic pitch process, your first point of contact is with the two Acquisitions managers. In the following weeks after the contract negotiations have completed with the publisher, you work with the Acquisitions managers in the first stages of editing your book. At this stage, you’ll also be filling out Ooligan’s author questionnaire, which will be an incredibly useful tool when it comes to implementing the marketing strategy for your book. Depending on the scope of your project, you may do two rounds of developmental revisions before sending your completed work back to the Acquisitions managers to review.

Once the hand-off from Acquisitions is made following your revisions, your first point of contact will primarily be with your project manager (PM). Your PM has a team at their disposal to assist from the beginning stages of the production cycle, all the way to until its publication. For example, your PM will track down potential contacts that may be willing to write a blurb or a review of your book. At this stage, it’s very helpful to share any ideas that you may have with regards to said contacts, such as other writer friends or people with a social media presence. Additionally, you’re free to share with your PM your ideas about the marketing strategy for your book. If that sounds scary, fear not, and read on!

So, how do you become your own book’s best advocate? While your PM and book team are here to help you, it definitely doesn’t hurt to be present in your book’s marketing strategy. And while it helps to have a platform established for you to utilize, it’s perfectly alright if you don’t. What if you aren’t comfortable with social media? Like anything else, flexing your social media skills takes practice, and it’s a skill that can help you in the long run. To get some ideas, do some light research on some of your favorite books and see what their marketing copy looks like. What about their authors? What do their social media profiles look like? Start small and work your way up to feeling comfortable posting. Aim to have a balance between posts related to your book and everything else.

As Ooligan gears up to prepare your book for publication, so should you be gearing up on social media to get the word out about your book. Make sure to engage your audience in any way you can, whether it’s by striking up a conversation or posting about interesting topics that relate to your book.

Another great tip is to look to your immediate community. You don’t want to just be shouting in an oversaturated market. Your local community is a great place to find people to support you. One way is to look into local writer groups or other community groups specific to your area. If you’ve got a book about great hiking spots around Portland, for example, you’d search out relevant groups that could represent your target audience. It’s good to brainstorm at this point, and if you get stuck, your PM is a good resource for coming up with some ideas of who to reach out to.

You can also shout out other authors. For instance, you can promote other authors, who in turn will show appreciation for your buzz by promoting your book right back. That way, you’re also building a network of other authors who can help you get connected to other bookish people, or people who would be interested in your book that might not otherwise hear about it.

Lastly, make sure you are genuine. Insincerity can be sniffed out from a mile away, and you know your book better than anyone. Don’t doubt your own expertise and get out there! Don’t forget to have fun along the way, too. Publishing a book is an exciting process, and you almost have your book in your hands!

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Inside Ooligan Press: Building a Contact List at Ooligan

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Most books that are published these days have some number of quotes of praise from various sources, usually other authors or major newspapers. If a reader is familiar with a genre, they’ll recognize many of the authors as being from the same genre. If not, it might leave a reader to wonder who these people are and why they are an authority qualified to review a book. It’s pretty well-known that “blurbs help attract readers to your books.” The question becomes, how do publishers choose who to contact for a blurb or review of a book? Here at Ooligan Press, The Keepers of Aris team recently got a glimpse into creating a contact list for a diverse YA fantasy novel.

The process actually begins a little earlier in the publication process, when we decide who is the ideal audience for our title. In this case, we are publishing a YA fantasy novel written by a Black woman, and our primary audience reflects that, as should the people we choose to reach out to. As we began to research and collect the names and contact information of authors we intended to reach out to for a blurb, we started with those we wanted to prioritize, Black and BIPOC fantasy authors. Bonus points if they wrote YA as well. We chose successful authors such as Tomi Adeyemi, Kalynn Bayron, and Rin Chupeco. Once we found as many as we could, we turned to other YA fantasy authors. We concluded this part of our research with a total of around seventy reputable authors as possible contacts.

The next step of building our contact list was to find major industry publications that Ooligan always reaches out to for a review. We got these contacts from Ooligan’s master contact list, so all that was needed was to ensure the information was up-to-date. Some of these sources include Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Shelf Awareness. We consistently reach out to them because they are major sources of book reviews that many are familiar with, and we are capable of successfully reaching them. Another internal source for contacts was the contact list of the previous fantasy novel we published, Court of Venom. Given the two titles are within the same genre, if for different age groups, the number of contacts that would be ideal for our newer title is significant enough to make the previous list an effective source. These contacts consist of digital magazines, blogs, and book reviewers that focus on fantasy titles. Currently, the team is expanding on these contacts by researching new ones.

Of course, it must be noted that Ooligan Press’s contact list practice is not like most publishing companies. The contact list for each title is created largely from scratch and personalized per the primary audience. We are also a small press, so authors or online personalities that have reached a certain level of fame are simply out of our reach. It’s important to keep our expectations realistic while working to reach as many people as possible. This is a glimpse into how publishers choose who is on a title’s contact list and ends up with their blurb on the cover.

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Creating a Book Branding Design Guide: Why and How

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A section of Amazon book pages has been catching my eye lately. Authors and publishers have recently been getting creative with the “From the Publisher” section—taking advantage of the space to post some beautifully designed blurbs and headlines.

When I first noticed it, I immediately thought about how similarly designed blurbs would look in a social media campaign, or how elements from the designs could cohere a book’s tipsheets, press release, and other materials. As it happens, other managers at Ooligan had been thinking similarly.

At Ooligan, everyone is a designer, editor, proofreader, marketer, and publicity specialist. So, our efforts, while always noble, are not always cohesive and streamlined. Some book project teams have had beautifully designed social media campaigns (Short, Vigorous Roots and Court of Venom
are recent examples), others have had lovely designed tipsheets, press releases, and other marketing and publicity materials. But it varies, depending on the design interest and experience of each team. How can the design department support all project teams and cohere their design efforts?

A book branding design guide! Each book project team could use a design guide to help make each title’s marketing and publicity efforts easily recognizable, to help define and convey each book’s voice, and to help designers learn to work with design principles and implement brand guidelines—useful skills to have beyond our time at Ooligan.

I have worked with brand guides before in other organizations, dutifully following the guidelines for typography, color, logos, and aspect ratios. But I had never built one and wasn’t sure where to begin. Book marketing is about making people aware of the books they want to read but don’t yet know exist. Who wants to know about this particular book, and what do they need to know about it? And, how do we best speak to them? What is the distilled essence of this book? What makes it special? How can we convey that visually?

I turned to Adobe for help getting started, modifying their advice to better fit with our specific mission. The following elements form the new basic book branding brief for each title.

Color

I began by creating a color palette based on the book cover’s background color, plus a lighter and darker version, adding secondary colors that matched the tone of the book, hoping to keep our cohesiveness from becoming stale and to offer designers a little flexibility. I found through trial and error that an exact match to the cover materials is not as important as conveying the right mood, and made slight modifications to the color swatches used in the covers, including each color’s HEX values for consistency.

Typography

Selecting type was more complicated. At Ooligan, we use Adobe Creative Suite programs to design our books, along with the fonts Adobe provides us license for. But most designers in the press don’t have their own full-time access to the software, and many prefer to use Canva. Fortunately, Canva has loads of fonts available for free, and so we were able to choose some similar to what the book designers had used, selecting fonts for headlines and body text that complemented each other and matched the aesthetic of the book cover and content.

Images

We often go to Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels for images. Sometimes our books will have some of their own graphic elements to incorporate into our marketing and publicity campaigns. Canva also has quite a few little graphic elements available for free use. We put together a document with some photographs, png files, and Canva graphics for designers to use when creating their posts and documents.

Templates

The project managers can use the above elements to make templates in Canva for their team to use for the various social media dimension requirements, as well as blurbs and quotes for them to feature or incorporate into their designs. These design elements can also be used later in creating other marketing and publicly collateral.

Ooligan is a teaching press, and we are all learning every day. I see this new design process as an iterative one; we are already constantly adjusting what works and what doesn’t, and will do so with each new title. The team for The Keepers of Aris by Autumn Green, our next title to be published, has been busy designing away in preparation for their upcoming social media campaign and book launch. I look forward to seeing their designs!

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Why Influencer Marketing is More Important Than You Think

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Would you feel comfortable hiring an influencer for marketing purposes? A lot of startups, but also many traditional companies, swear by it. Others strictly stick to the classic marketing measures. What is it about influencer marketing that drives opinions so far apart? I have taken some of the most popular counter-arguments and contrasted them with my own view.

Argument 1: Authenticity
Influencers only promote products for the money and don’t care about their followers. To a certain extent, I agree. However, every form of paid advertising does the same thing. The difference is that influencers stand behind their advertising message with their own face and name, which should make them more careful in choosing what products they advocate for.

As studies show, the media channel we trust most in is Word-of-Mouth. No medium can compete with a personal recommendation, especially if you are familiar with this person—and yes, this includes influencers, even though most of their followers don’t know them personally. Good influencers are in close and friendly contact with their community, and through that, they achieve the feeling of belonging to a group for people in that community. While you could imply influencers fake closeness to their communities to make money, I think that many underestimate the group dynamic of a community that follows the same interest and, of course, the feeling of being the center of such a community. Because even if no one likes to admit it, no one becomes an influencer without liking being the center of attention.

Argument 2: Giving up control
When I hire an influencer, I have no control over the content spread about my product. First of all, it is absolutely possible to remain in control by creating a detailed brief for the influencer beforehand. However, I would highly recommend giving up some of the control.

When you book an influencer, you are not only booking an advertising channel, but also a whole personality that comes with it. They produce authentic content by often using the same way of speaking, imagery, et cetera. They are probably closer to the target group than you are. Furthermore, they have expertise or engage themselves in a certain topic, through which they achieve an opinion leadership in that area. That expertise can be in factual topics as well as in creative topics like dancing, makeup, and so on. Therefore, it is recommended to take advantage of their experience and involve the influencer in the creative process from day one.

Argument 3: Social media equals bad
As soon as I hire an influencer, I make myself dependent on the social media platform. As mentioned before, booking an influencer is more than just buying an ad space on a social media channel. Influencers are the rock stars of the digital age. Depending on their success and their target audience, they appear in TV, radio, newspapers, you name it. Some might even have a format of their own or have established a brand. Use this for content marketing in any media channel. By offering content instead of pushing ads in the audience’s face you will bypass ad fatigue, which occurs after people see a particular ad too often. Instead, you can place your product directly in the channel they choose to see.

However, what should not be forgotten is that social media is the most sought-after medium among the younger target group. It also facilitates a direct dialogue with them. Dialogue marketing has long been used as a very effective method, as you can get direct feedback from the target group or even use crowdsourcing for creating new content.

In the end, it is important to note that influencer marketing is nothing new in principle. Our buying decisions have always been influenced by friends, celebrities, fictional characters, and so on. Booking influencers on social media, on the other hand, is really new and combines a whole lot of very effective marketing methods among saving you a lot of work steps in the operative execution. However, it is important to remember that every influencer is also a human being who makes mistakes and can get into crises. Therefore, you should not see them only as a marketing tool, but you should always be in close contact with them and solve problems together. This way you not only ensure that your product doesn’t go down the drain together with the influencer, but also preserve your own authenticity.

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Queer Book Labels: Are They Helping or Hurting Sales?

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While cultural movements abound trying to increase queer inclusion and understanding, it’s no wonder that there has been a rise in queer books being published and, according to NPD Bookscan, a rise in queer book sales as well. It seems that being an LGBTQ+ book is a good thing right now, at least for sales. But what if, in some ways, those same labels are losing sales as well?

Consider, for instance, the pros and cons of these queer books ending up on various published “banned books” lists. When a queer book ends up on a banned books list, there is a possibility of the book gaining an audience, rather than being repressed, especially an audience that wants to fight back against this oppression and will go out to buy the books in support. This leads to increased sales of certain books.

Unfortunately, of course, not all books benefit from “banned books” lists in this way. This article argues that many books will just fall by the wayside and be forgotten. This is a tragedy, especially for all those potential readers from wherever they have been banned.

For now, however, many publishers still feel that queer books need queer labels to be discoverable. There are other aspects of the books that can be marketed as well, but according to sources in this article, a large percentage of the audience still finds queer books because they are looking for queer books. And that audience isn’t just queer people, either. This article is from 2020, so it’s a bit outdated, you could say, considering how quickly some things change, but the current trends in LGBTQ+ books being sold suggests this may still be the case.

But, even with this seeming success for the books that are making it, we publishers need to ask ourselves, is this actually what we want? Are these people just buying books because they are labeled “queer” or are they actually going to go home and read the book, process the book, and hopefully even love the book and want more like it? Is this trend actually a sign of cultural change or just a phase that will blow over like so many others have?

There are other things to think about as well, in a less philosophical vein. Are such explicit queer labels on our books actually helping reach our intended audience? For instance, this librarian warns that making queer labels too blatant can scare off some of the very people we are trying to reach because they aren’t ready or feel safe enough to walk around with an obviously queer book.

And what about people who would love these books, but aren’t actively looking for “queer” books? Some people are willing to read books with queer characters, but aren’t looking specifically for queer books. Not to mention, there is more to a book than just being queer. For some books, yes, the main point is being queer, with queer characters, and addressing various aspects of queer life, but for other books, it is the genre, the adventure, the plot, etc. that are more central, with the queer characters/stories being a bonus on the side. Are we doing these books an injustice by labeling them as queer, rather than letting them shine for their more central themes?

For now, yes, it still seems like queer book labels are not only helping sales, but one of the leading causes of their sales, despite whatever backlash might come from that designation.

But, hopefully, someday LGBTQ+ characters will be such a normal, accepted part of culture it will be an expected possibility in the books we read. Someday, we’ll be able to go out, look in any category, and find plenty of queer books right alongside their counterparts because it will be accepted that any book, anywhere, may reflect real life with real characters.

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3 Insights Into Social Media for Authors

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Many debut authors feel overwhelmed and confused by social media. Everyone, including your publisher, tells you that you should be doing it, but social media feels like an unnecessary distraction from the real work of writing. However, social media can be creatively adapted to suit the unique work you do as an author. Used thoughtfully, social media can be a powerful tool to strengthen your writing, readership, and career.

With modern digital marketing tools like social media, it is possible for authors with even a modest marketing budget to expand their reach and connect with enthusiastic readers effectively and in a more targeted manner than ever before. Social media can help authors connect authentically with readers and fans, organically expanding an author’s reach and increasing the visibility of their books.

How does an author use social media to market their books organically? These three ways are based on an approach to social media that book marketing expert Jane Friedman recommends:

1) Use social media as a natural extension of the work that you’re already doing

Social media doesn’t have to be an awkward thing that you do because you have to. It can be a natural outpouring of the creative writing work that you’re already doing day in and day out. For instance, you can actually use social media to share some of your writing work. Enthusiastic fans can help promote your work among their network through organic sharing, expanding your reach as an author.

Author Cassandra Clare recently ran a Twitter poll asking her followers which character “snippet,” or brief excerpt, they wanted to see from her upcoming book, Chain of Thorns. Clare regularly shares snippets of her upcoming books on social media, generating interest and enthusiasm among her fanbase so that they are more likely to purchase her upcoming releases.

Clare also shares art of the characters in her storyverse created by devoted fans. Sharing fan art is a smart way to engage your fan base as fans adore seeing beautiful art pieces of the characters they love while the sharing of fan-created art requires minimal effort on your part.

2) Use social media as a testing ground for your future books

Friedman explains that social media is a form of content and can be thought of as a micro-publishing platform. Often, these tiny pieces of work that you share publicly on social media can be the seeds for a larger work in the future. For instance, illustrators may post quick sketches on Instagram that later become a full-length print comic book.

Yung Pueblo posted brief reflections on love and relationships on Instagram as an unknown writer. Gradually, he gained a following and eventually published two books, one of which hit the NYT Best Sellers list.

You can also use social media to gauge how readers respond to your work. Paying attention to which posts garner more likes and comments will provide valuable insight into what content resonates most with your fans. This incredible intel can inform your work positively, helping to shape it into something people will be interested and excited to read.

3) Use social media as a way to connect with readers directly and authentically

One of the main premises of social media is that it is a tool to communicate with others. For authors, social media is a way to directly communicate with readers in a two-way conversation. Some ways authors can engage with followers include asking questions, expressing gratitude, sharing experiences, and even expressing frustration.

When authors respond to Twitter questions from followers or thank readers for praise of their books, they come across as more authentic to anyone who happens upon the exchange online. They appear less like a distant figure and more like a human being which leaves a more positive impression on followers.

For the author, it can be gratifying to see evidence of readers benefiting from and enjoying your book that you worked so hard on for years. Social media is a way for authors to discover small moments of joyful connection with enthusiastic readers, which can help fuel your excitement for the work that you’re doing today.

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Inside Ooligan Press: The Beginning Stages of a Manuscript with Ooligan

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The dust has settled. The Where We Call Home launch party went off without a hitch (unless you consider a random man offering Ramon, the illustrator, some homemade chocolate drink in the middle of the book talk a “hitch”). Josephine and Ramon continue to participate in book events and sell the book. I am a proud project manager.

Now we get to do the whole book production process all over again!

My project team is sticking to the nonfiction category, but we’re moving away from the natural sciences; our next manuscript, A Family, Maybe, is a memoir by Lane Igoudin about his and his husband’s struggle to form a family in the mid-2000s. It’s got drama. It’s got humor. It’s got love. My team and I are having a great time working on it.

Much has been happening this term for A Family, Maybe. The acquisitions team wrapped up the developmental edit, we’re working on the copyedit now, and we are about to start on the cover design. For my team specifically, the main focus this term has been on generating the inward-facing documents that will help us market the book. The two main documents that we’ve had our hands on so far are the persona exercise and the marketing plan. The persona exercise is an activity that my team and I did together to make up characters who we think would be interested in the book. We make up a primary audience member and secondary audience member from the ground up, identifying everything from their demographics to their family lives to their favorite foods. Being familiar with these characters’ lives helps us figure out how they would find A Family, Maybe. Would they see posts about it on social media? Would people in their lives recommend it? Would they purposely, directly seek it out?

The marketing plan is similar in the sense that we are creating the backbone of the manuscript. We include the “demographics” of the book (title, ISBN, BISAC codes, etc.) along with comparative titles, hook, back cover copy, and much more. This document serves as the foundation from which all subsequent documents stem. Soon it will be finalized, and then we’ll be moving onto generating a contact sheet. Once we reach that stage, I’ll have come full circle as a member of Ooligan; when I joined the press back in January 2022, the team I was on was in the contact stage.

It’s bittersweet, the thought that I’ve almost arrived at the same place that I started. Professionally, I’ve come so far in the past year. I have so many invaluable skills and experiences that I will take with me into my career. Yet my time at Ooligan is approaching its end. I’ll be training up a new manager in spring who will take over my role when I graduate in June. Although I am looking forward to imparting my knowledge to my successor, I’m finally starting to feel like I’ve really got the hang of this whole Ooligan thing.

But so it goes. I’m going to give my last few months, and the A Family, Maybe manuscript, my all, and I can’t wait to help it be the best it can be. There are some strong contenders for project manager after me, and I know that the next cohort is going to do a fantastic job!