Seasonal Lists

In our last post (linked at the bottom of this page), we talked about how we manage submissions and what happens after an author hits that submit button and sends their pitch into cyberspace. In that post, we mentioned that we have a limited number of spots on our seasonal publishing lists. Today, we’re going to explain what that means and why we do it.

The minute a book is contracted, we begin our author education plan, setting that author up with a password for our Author Portal, a secure page with everything that author needs for success, with topics such as how to organize a website, their author headshot, how to write bios at every stage of their career, our editing process, and author promotion ideas to name a few.

Once the author is busily working on their platforms, we set in creating their production schedule, which includes tasks such as having discussions with editors to determine the best course and style of editing for that particular author’s needs, coordinating and confirming schedules with all four editors, setting typesetting dates, choosing the appropriate narrator and scheduling audiobook narration, production and upload, reviews, ISBN purchases for every format, bar code purchase for paperbacks, informing our foreign rights agents and film pitching, cover reveal, and publication.

During all of that, we compile the behind-the-scenes data regarding the book with information such as the subtitle, pricing, tropes and themes, retail description, and any previous reviews and praise for the author. We also start the metadata process, researching and reviewing comp titles and authors, SEO, and author branding. We begin building the book’s media kit and compiling other information needed to optimize our ads to get the book in front of the greatest number of readers.

We also delve into branding discussions with our designer, considering how to brand the novel and the author’s upcoming novels (if that author has more than one novel with us), to position the novel with its comp titles while offering branding that is both unique to the author and the author’s writing style and competitive within the digital market.

So what does all that have to do with our seasonal lists? We have four seasonal lists when we publish novels: spring, summer, winter, and fall. We only allow a certain number of titles to be released within each season. In order to give the author and their novel the very best chance for success, we have to cap our seasonal lists. Given the above tasks ahead of us, we want to have enough time to give every author our full attention. We want a proportional number of books to both our staff and the time required to get the books to market properly.

We hope this sheds some light on our process. Join us next week when we talk about what happens after contract.