Scenic view of Mt. Hood in Oregon.

Start to Finish: Thorn City

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.

a stack of vintage black and white photographs showing children of various ages

How I Helped Publish My Grandparents’ Memoirs

I grew up hearing my grandparents’ stories in bits and pieces. Often they’d mention their families or their lives growing up, and even if it was something I’d heard before, I still found it interesting. Occasionally they’d tell me something I hadn’t heard before, in which case I was even more intrigued. As a young adult, it began to occur to me that they wouldn’t always be around to tell me their stories or answer my questions. I wanted a tangible way to remember my grandparents and their stories so that future generations that wouldn’t have the pleasure of meeting them would still have the opportunity to get to know and love my grandparents as I did.

In January 2020, I began working with each of my dad’s parents to formally document their lives and stories via a subscription publishing service. Each week, I sent them a question or prompt through the service’s website. Examples include “What is one of your fondest childhood memories?” “Tell me about an adventure you’ve been on . . .” and “What advice would you give your grandchildren/great-grandchildren?” By the end of the year, I had fifty-two stories from each grandparent, neatly organized and formatted on the website.

Once my grandparents had written all their stories, I got to work editing them. I cross-referenced and fact-checked names, dates, locations, and other details to ensure accuracy, and I edited for grammar and clarity. Then my grandparents and I spent a day sifting through boxes in their attic to find photographs to accompany some of the stories. With my dad’s help, I scanned and formatted the photos, then attached them to the stories on the website. When the interiors of the books were finished, my grandparents and I designed their covers. This whole process took about four additional months to complete.

Included in the initial subscription price for each book was one finished, hardcover copy. Receiving those first copies in the mail after all the time and effort we put into creating them was unreal. Little did we know when we started the project that it would become a way for us to connect and bond when we weren’t otherwise able to due to COVID-19. The initial months of isolation were difficult, especially for my grandparents. Having such a meaningful project to work on kept us sane. It provided my grandparents with a chance to reflect on and take a dive deep into their lives and legacies, and it provided me with the chance to get to know each of them in a much more intimate way.

Later that year, in December 2021, we had one of our first family gatherings in almost two years. Every family member received copies of my grandparents’ books, complete with personalized, handwritten notes in the front covers. It was extremely special to share them with everyone and to see their reactions. I won’t soon forget how interesting and fulfilling the process of publishing the books was, and I’m so grateful to my grandparents for their willingness to share their time and stories with me in a forever way.

Firing on All Cylinders

Being on a short production schedule is challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun: at any given time, we have at least three projects ongoing concerning different aspects of the book. We’re putting the finishing touches on the structure of manuscript–tweaking the order of the chapters, placement of key lines, and chapter titles. We’re also going full-speed ahead on selling the book to our book representatives. These are the people who we will depend upon to convince Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and other bookstores to stock and handsell our book, so we really want to make a memorable impression on them. Sales kits, which are fun little bundles of promotional materials that get sent to book reps, are in process. There are lots of possibilities here–roadmaps? postcards? something alluding to Brautigan’s bizarre fascination with mayonnaise? We shall see. Sales kits are a great opportunity to show off our cleverness and creativity while piquing the interest of our book reps. Given the budget we have, it’s an opportunity to be resourceful as well. Being a publishing student means mastering the art of doing excellent work for cheap. I’m really excited to see how our sales kits turn out. We’ll be assembling them and sending them out next week. Naturally, we have other things going on as well–there are events to plan, awards to apply for, and a blog tour to plan. As always, we have our hands full.