This post will be geared towards authors, but I think it will be interesting to anyone who has a to be read pile that could crush a man. Adding a new chore on a to do list is never meant with the same excitement that adding a book to your TBR list is. But like all lists, they inherently have problems.

A few years ago, the Harvard Business Review wrote a piece on why to-do list don’t work. To summarize, they simply aren’t effective. The article claims there are five problems with this organizational system.

1) The paradox of choice is a theory suggests that the more options you are given the more anxious and unsatisfied you become over those choices.
2) Heterogeneous complexity happens because your brain loves quick rewards, and will lead you to picking off easy targets first.
3) Heterogeneous priority is caused by differences in deadlines, perceived or not.
4) Lack of context comes into play when a whole series lands in your pile. Or maybe one of the books is three times as long.
5) Lack of commitment devices are factors that keep you engaged and make it so you can’t quit the task.

I believe all of them, at some level, apply to having your book stuck on a TBR list.

Paradox of choice: Why your book? And why should someone read it now? Most marketing methods work to solve this problem. Discounts, reminders of your books features, and so on.

Heterogeneous complexity: This is a harder one to combat. If you wrote a brick of a novel telling people it will take forever to read is not the right method. On the flip side, I’ve seen people add “weekend read” plenty of times. Similar tactics can also be cleverly used with an anthology. If it’s a long book, is it an easy read?

Heterogeneous priority: In the advertising world this is the power of “limited time only”. If your book can get picked up by a club it’s priority will shift. If you are coming out with a sequel people might try to finish the first. Does your book cover a certain holiday? Suggest reading it over that season.

Lack of Context: I think for an author, the context that is important is who you are to the reader. Do you share your favorite books? Do you tweet funny things? Do you fight for others? Who are you beyond an author when the TBR is filled with all authors. There are so many books that release all the time. But if someone I know has a book, I’ll likely read it before an unknown writer with a cool concept.

Lack of Commitment Devices: Sometimes there’s a free book I’ll download with intent to read, and never actually do. I don’t lose anything here. On the flip side, if I’m given a book and told someone I’d review it, I feel guilty if I don’t. If it’s part of a book club, readers feel compelled to finish since it’s a collective agreement.

Once someone buys or agrees to review, there’s no device in place to have them actually read it. Sure you could nicely follow-up, but I’d suggest going about in ways that offer something more. Stickers, bookplates, hell, I’ve seen cat gifs promised as a reward for simple tweetable actions. REUTS author, Drew Hayes, turns release day into a drinking game

I hope these twists on old problems help you market your work more organically, and help books you’re actually excited about escape that TBR purgatory as an author or a reader.

The post TBR Pile – Marketing Monday appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

If you are anything like me, you are going to be stuck thinking about this election until it’s over. Instead of stress watching the news, let’s aim that train of thought in a new way to see how it’s related to marketing.

A good part of marketing is understanding how people behave, and I think get out the vote methods are an extremely good way to showcase that, because it’s all behavioral science.

Let’s first talk about celebrity endorsement videos. I think this is the easiest to picture because it’s also the most viral. If you like a celebrity out of the say, dozen they show, you’re likely to pass it on. But as it turns out, this method is not very effective. They at best change the narrative around voting. To suggest it is your duty to vote, or that it’s a close race and you need to be the one to decide it.

Now while changing the narrative around things can cause real change in some areas. If you ever been the one person who hasn’t read Harry Potter, or Twilight, or watched Luke Cage, you likely know a slight narrative shift of an impersonal “do this thing” won’t help all that much. Because even if you say that you will, when it comes down to the actual voting, you might not. I see this happen a lot with books when I’m not in a buying mood. The conversion rate just doesn’t have a high yield.

These videos are useful, I’ve listened to the election version of Our Fight Song, several times even. I’ve also had my afternoon made by a Congress parody with Chris Pine, who we seriously should give more comedies too. But they both are indirect marketing methods. When applied to your book, they remind me of its existence, or hopefully endear me to your work, but they don’t directly cause me to vote, or buy a book.

According to behavioral research on the matter, having people create a plan to vote is up to three times more effective. If you have it all planned out then you are less likely to come up with an excuse when the time comes. In marketing, I think we see this clearly when it comes to midnight releases of movies. Even for things I’ve waited years for,if there isn’t a plan around it, who knows when I’ll actually do it. Imagine a time you really wanted to see something, then just didn’t, and now it’s out of theaters. That happens when you don’t have a plan. Pre-order options can help counteract this effect, but only because it allows you to act now instead of betting on your future actions.

For more on the behavioral research behind voting, I highly suggest the video “Facebook Could Reveal Your Voting Record”.

We’ve briefly talked about pre-orders but I’d like to talk about them again. There is a belief that if you are in a state that is always colored one way, that why even vote? That since you are one person, you will hardly make a dent either way. However, even if you are voting against, or with the current, you let the powers that be know you are paying attention.

Pre-orders allow publishers to gauge how eager people are for something, and allows them to take bigger marketing risks beforehand based on it. Twitter will also display the interests of people who interact with you. Wattpad will tell you age group, gender, and country of origin. Analytics allow publishers to act accordingly. A big showing for an LGBTQ/MOGAI book? Give it a sequel, or add more of them to the catalog.

This is true with voting as well. The clearest example is seen after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, communities that showed up to vote ended up getting more work done on their streets. You might think you are just voting for a person, but you are also voting to say, “Here I am”. Same is true when you buy a book. That sell tells someone you are a person on the other end. Both governments and publishers want to please those people. In marketing, it’s called customer re-acquisition, and generally, those groups are less expensive to reach than finding a new customer. An engaged citizen, or reader, is easier to please than a disenfranchised, or discouraged, one.

For more, check out this video on “5 Things You Believe About Voting That Are Statistically BS”.

The last thing I want to talk about is opportunity cost. In the U.S., election day is held on a Tuesday. Which means many people work or have to go to school. It’s easy to vote when you have free time or ability to take days off. Not so easy when the free act of voting actually costs you. Babysitters fees, or the cost of a taxi, are factors that you might not think of when it comes to a free activity. That’s why in general voting favors the rich, and why newer get out the vote methods include offering rides to polling locations.

I’d be willing to bet some of those hard to come buy dollars that marketing trends also follow classist patterns. With exceptions for underserved demographics that get labeled “niche”.

This is why I personally love giving out review copies, love that buyers have the option between paperback or ebook, love that some libraries share their collections with other libraries across the country. The lower the opportunity cost of trying a new series, the better chance you’ll have at getting strangers to give you a try.

If you still need the vote, make that plan today.

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“All publicity is good publicity.” I’m sure you’ve heard this. I feel like it’s a saying that’s completely saturated in American culture.

And in some ways, this is true. Reviews are so important in the indie world because it’s a form of word of mouth. In other posts, I pointed out my own buying habits which again narrow down to word of mouth. Getting people to talk about your book is priceless.

But blindly wanting to be talked about at all or having that at the heart of your marketing plan is playing with fire. I’ve personally seen authors, delete their Twitter, delete all known email addresses. Fall off the map because of bad publicity. Platform lost. And this doesn’t just happen to small authors who succumb to bad PR. Let’s look at celebrities.

Remember when Tiger Wood’s brought golf to everyone’s attention? Then all the negative press he got? He’s still playing golf, but no longer is golf’s darling.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think O.J. Simpson? Was it his profession or court trial?

How about BP? If all publicity is good publicity, why did they spend $500 million to restore their image?

If all publicity was good publicity then wouldn’t negative stereotypes help the groups they are about?

As writers, you know words matter. You know how to write a villain, how to convince your audience that someone is bad. J.K. Rowling didn’t have He Who Must Not Be Named because Harry mustn’t give his nemesis free press. (If anything the reverse was true in the Harry Potter world.)

A few years back an author sued Ubisoft over copyright. I love Assassin’s Creed. I’d love more books like it. Since that lawsuit was picked up by everyone for a couple months surely you know the book series. No? Me either.

You’ll be hard press to even find an article about the author that isn’t dated back from 2012. Outraged fans (who were jerks) littered Amazon with one-star reviews. But if you hop over to GoodReads there are 2 ratings. Collectively. For all the books written.

Sure, Amazon normally ends up with the most reviews. But the point stands that all publicity is not good publicity. At best, bad publicity will entrench those who already are your fans.

But as an author, you are in this for the long haul. You need to make sure whatever publicity you get is representative of you and your brand. Damage control is for those running for office and have fundraisers at $1000 a plate.

The post The Good, The Bad, And The Publicity appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

Your marketing plans need to cause a reaction. If you are an author the desired goal is likely for someone to read your book. This topic was inspired by a reader request for a resource guide, and before this riveting read becomes too repetitive with it’s r’s let’s tackle the topic.

The first question is always “how?” How do you do the thing? How do you learn the topic? How do you even start? There are many answers to this. You can get a degree in advertising, you can spend your life mentoring under an advertising executive, or maybe just binge watch Mad Men for research. But, those last three will involve time. Something writers often don’t want to give up because it means less actual writing time. Worse, is they can get expensive. The last season of Mad Men is $35.99 alone! And a “formal education”? Yikes, that can be a painful bill. So, my advice on how and where to learn is with the library, with TedTalks, with the internet in general. Anywhere you’ll be treated more of a patron (or viewer), than a customer. Thanks to libraries and an endless Internet you don’t have to spend money on your quest for knowledge.

But, I want to do more for you then just say, “to google and beyond!” So here are some suggested reads, videos, and really whatever I could collect that offered a new perspective on the matter. I’ve included several different styles since everyone learns a different way. This is just a starting point that I will continuously update when I find more great resources. So fatten up your bookmark bar with this post, or any of the ones below!

Ted Talks:
Seth Godin: How to get your ideas to spread
Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
Alexis Ohanian: How to make a splash in social media
TEDxPennQuarter – Rohit Bhargava – Reinventing Marketing
We’re All in Marketing: What Evolution Tells Us About Advertising
The Tribes We Lead

Articles:
What TV Networks Still Don’t Understand About Fandom
Be The Meme
Know Thyself, Market Thyself
3 Rules for Talking To Book Bloggers
“Oh, that sounds just like (book)!”
This Is Your Brain on Advertising: Why Sex Doesn’t Sell

Books (Suggestions from Carrie Ann!):
UNmarketing
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us
Anything from Digital Book World

Netflix Documentaries:
Art & Copy

TV Shows:
Better Off Ted
(Because I know someone writers love to procrastinate and call it research. But in all seriousness, this comedy shows quirkiness of R&D and marketing.)

Other Topics or Places:
Sensitivity Readers
An introduction to public domain
Writing for Online Engagement
Terrible Minds
How to write back cover copy

I believe if you start with a solid marketing lens based on sociology, all the terminology and methodology you came across in this marketing game will have a more meaningful context. If anything has changed your perspective about marketing, please let us know in the comments!

TLDR: You need to talk about your work in a way that will cause others do the same.

The post Marketing Monday: Are You Re(market)able? appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

Last week, we talked about targeted marketing, this week let’s discuss if you are just making noise or actually hitting your mark. I said before that Tumblr is very anti-ad, and that resistance allows us to study why some ads aren’t cutting it.

“The youth” is really aware of when you are trying to pander. If you don’t understand a meme, don’t use it to tell to sell things. I don’t want to get into the culture of memes because PBS’s Idea Channel really covers everything you need to know. Please check out “Are Memes & Internet Culture Creating a Singularity?” and “When Do Memes Stop Being Funny?” And maybe even Are LOLCats and Internet Memes Art? if you’d like a throwback to make your art and marketing authentic.

Now I’m not here to shame you if you are a memer. Multimillion dollar industries are working on them and even Fortune 500 companies are doing it. Let’s be honest, we all have much moment, so true, wow.

The fact that businesses are trying to do this means they actually are listening. The errors made are akin to messing up your tenses when writing. The words are real, but the overall sentence is off.

This is what happens when you listen to a subculture you are not a part of. Sometimes we need to admit we can’t be a part of that culture either. That 50-year ad executive can have his ear to the door all he wants, he will never be a teenage girl.

A recent swing and a miss was this funyuns ad that was spit into everyone’s Tumblr feed. And the results were…. mostly confusion. You can tell me what you think of it in the comments.

(My thanks to salora-rainriver for grabbing that screen cap and inspiring today’s topic)

The key to success here isn’t mirror the meme, but be the meme. Let me show you what tricked tumblr into spamming everyone with Madden posts for a solid week.

Their Madden giferator created a platform for people to have fun with. Instead of saying “Look at me, I’m clever and meme” it was an invitation to have fun. And when your product is a video game, that’s spot on. You can see similar successful campaigns from Doritos and Mountain Dew when they had people naming their next new food. The only similar style that I saw fail was from Pepsi. They copied what Madden did, gave a new box of crayons to people, said play!  Then forgot that tumblr has a gif size limit so no one could share them on the website. Whoops?

If you want to meme, but don’t have the enough colors in your toolkit to share (aka you don’t have the budget to launch this huge thing) you might want to try Denny’s approach to “being the meme’. They create more than they copy, and by doing so they are able to serve a meme up while it’s hot, and drop it (like it’s hot).

People don’t follow Denny’s because they wanted to be reminded that you have can pancakes there, they follow because Denny’s makes them smile. And then when someone want pancakes they cash in on that brand loyalty. (Step up your game, IHOP)

It’s the interaction that makes Denny’s posts viral, while other ads only get attention to ask “please god, why?” Interaction is even more important in the book world. Even if a reader doesn’t want to interact with the author directly, they do in some weird way want to interact with the book. They want to feel something while reading, and that creates a brand loyalty to that series or author. That also is the foundation of fandom.

Yelling “buy this” even in meme-language form is not interaction. It’s a far more overt advertisement than you might think. Don’t just listen and repeat what your audience is doing, talk to your audience.  

An app that always advertises (and pays for it) on Tumblr is Episode. Let’s compare their average post, to them talking to their audience.  

Example 1:

Example 2:

TLDR: Don’t react to a meme, interact.

The post Marketing Monday | Be The Meme appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

I’m back with a freshly brewed cup of Marketing Monday! Today, I want to talk about something that will help writers at all stages. When I started seriously writing I wondered why it seemed like no one was taking me as seriously as I was. Then I stopped and looked at my own buying and reading habits and realized I haven’t read several of my friend’s works. This wasn’t a reflection on them, their work, or how serious of a writer I thought they were. I simply don’t read that fast. I read on impulse, I buy on sales.

Now you can find metrics all day long, and we will go over some of those, but first, I want you to start thinking about how you buy books. If this book wasn’t yours, where would it have to show up for you to buy it? Would a trusted blogger have to review it first, maybe just a friend tweeting about it? Do you impulsively buy things on store end caps? By learning your own buying and reading habits you can start to find your market. This also might help calm writer nerves that suggest if your books aren’t selling that no one loves you. (Hey, I’m not saying that. Writer!nerves are bullies.)

In marketing terms, this is called audience segmentation. It is the process of targeted marketing based on homogeneous subgroups like demographics, interests, or behavior. Instead of coming at it from ‘Who is my audience’ approach use a ‘Who am I’ approach. It’s common advice to write what you want to read. You were your first audience. You sold yourself on this book’s idea, so find readers like you. This will play into your voice as an author and make branding easier because you already know what works for you.

In 2014, Facebook throttled their organic reach, and views on posts dropped by 50%, which added a pay to play mentality on the site. Facebook then started pushing targeting advertising versus a scattergun method. As cool as having a beautiful towering sign in Time’s Square would be that’s not targeted and therefore increases your needed budget exponentially.

Facebook and Twitter didn’t add analytic data so you could see how many people found you witty. It’s so you buy ad space. Before you do, ask yourself what your goal is and what numbers provided reflect that goal.  

Let’s pick on Twitter for a bit. If your end goal is to get your name out there, you want to focus on impressions aka as many eyeballs on you as possible. If your goal is to build a community you need to focus on RTs, favorites, and replies. If your end goal is to sell books, the focus needs to be on the click through rate. Be careful not to get lost in the white noise of other stats.

It takes four things to make a good ad:

1. Visuals
2. Talking to the right people
3. A show of value
4. Knowing your ad space

We will talk about the marketing side of design later since it’s such a huge topic, and we’ve been talking about figuring out audience. So let’s briefly move on to showing value. If you are marketing to a stranger this often means having a sale. If people follow you for you on social media you’ve already shown your value. You could also group call to actions in with showing value, because I think some marketing guru might have a heart attack if I don’t mention it. (No need to reach for the bayer aspirin Marketing Mike, I got you.) Even a stated date range on your promotion can say, ‘act now!’

That brings us to knowing your ad space. Social media is not created equal. You need to know your platform (and ad space on it) almost as well as yourself. Twitter might streamline their ads, but Facebook gives you several options on where to place your ad, each with a different usage. Tumblr, on the other hand, is aggressively anti-advertising. Methods on how to block Tumblr ads are passed around like party favors, and users only accept them if they are meme-worthy or are forced to deal when using mobile.

Let’s bring this all together. Don’t try to talk like “the youth.”

Your voice got you a book deal, let it get you sales as well.

Here’s the story of my most recent book buy. My friend was tweeting lines of a book and just said, “this is so bi.” The first tweet caught my attention, the second gave me more context, the third let me know that these weren’t throwaway lines.

What is this nameless bi featuring book?

Yeah, that Rick Riordan. The Disney-backed spin-off to a wildly popular series I have ignored my whole life for no real reason despite several close friends saying they were good, and despite all the marketing dollars tossed behind this book and all the other ones leading up to it.  

I was told about this book at 1 am and by 3 pm the next day (the US release day actually) I bought it. To learn why, let’s recap.  

I read on impulse. A teenage version of Apollo with strong bi coding is a very targeted arrow and scores a bullseye for me.

I buy on sale. Since this book is brand new it was 35% off.

That sort of targeted advertising is something that people with Disney-deep pockets don’t generally do, but it’s the one thing that resulted in selling me.

I once jokingly describe my novel, Bone Diggers, as sex, drugs, and video games. It’s the only tweet that after a year of promotion that someone directly asked to hear more. Again because that wording was (accidently) incredibly targeted.

To make the most out of your marketing you need to find your target and sharpen your marketing dollar to a fine point. Don’t learn your market, learn yourself, learn your book.

The post Marketing Monday – Know thyself, Market thyself appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

Hello, if you don’t know me, my name is Tiffany Rose. I’ve been with REUTS for a long while now, and mostly have been in the background, (because that’s where the best coffee is) but I’m excited to take over Marketing Monday. So, get that coffee brewing because we are going to talk blogs!

The first task I had with REUTS was contacting bloggers, and I realize that some authors do not know how to do that. So, I’d like to go over three things you should do when messaging any blogger.

Number 1: Show respect

If you do not know this person, pretty please with extra cream and sugar be respectful. This means following the blogger’s contact information and rules, addressing them by their name, and remembering you are the one asking for something.

Blogging about books is an act of love. Even if bloggers can get money or score free books, it doesn’t mean they do. And if you broke it down into hours it takes and that the majority of bloggers get nothing it’s even more important to treat these people with respect. I’m so thankful as an industry professional every time someone decides to share a REUTS book with me, because at the end of the day they don’t have to. It’s no different as an author who is asking. You are making a humble request to share your own act of love with someone.

Number 2: Send individual emails

I can empathize with how many people you need to contact, and how long that can take, but unless you have an author subscription list do not send out a mass email to bloggers. In one way it goes back to respect, and it may be illegal.

I’m not a lawyer, but I can tell you in some cases it is breaking the law to send out a mass email. If you want more details about this you can check out the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM Act. Point being, do yourself and strangers you’d like to befriend a favor and take the time to send individual emails  

Number 3: Be flexible

Remember that you are the one asking for something so don’t demand the moon. Asking to be featured on the third Friday after they bought your book under the full moon is as fictitious as it is inconsiderate. Offer them a copy of your book, offer to write a guest post if that’s what their blog features. Think of what you can do for the blogger without letting ego come into the mix. An easy way to do this is having a flexible schedule and asking what they’d want. Offering ebook copies is a cost-effective way to give your book to anyone wants to review it.

TLDR-time: Bloggers are an author’s friends, not people you chum the marketing waters with.

The post Marketing Monday: 3 Rules for talking to book bloggers appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.

In the publishing world, there’s a lot going on behind-the-scenes even when it may not look like it. In fact, the bulk of a publisher’s (or agent’s or writer’s) efforts aren’t publicly broadcasted. When an announcement is made or a book is released, it comes on the heels of weeks, or even months, of behind-the-scenes teamwork. Because we like full transparency and providing an inside look into how we do what we do, I wanted to touch on delays; why they happen, and why they aren’t always a bad thing. So in a fashion similar to Editorial Dir. Kisa Whipkey’s What Not to Do When Querying article, here’s:

“Hey, what’s taking so long?”
The Delays in Publishing.

For organizational means, I’m going to break down “publishing” into the main phases an author and publisher go through. Please note this is specific to REUTS and how we move through these individual phases. Though other pubs may have similar processes, there isn’t a “one size fits all” method to publishing.

Submitting

Number one delay: Slush.

Now, don’t assume that’s bad. Slush is just a term to describe all the submissions we receive. Some are good, and some are not so good. Kind of like snow—you’ve got the pristine, fresh snow, and then the mucky, brown snow. Mix them together, and you have slush. Not bad, just how it goes. Every publisher or agency has slush, and everyone has their own method of trudging through it.

Delay’s happen here from an overwhelming number of submissions. If you have 100 submissions looming in the slush pile, and each includes a query/synopsis and the first ten pages of the manuscript, there’s quite a lot of reading involved at the very start of the process. And, in order to make the most informed decision on whether or not to request the full manuscript, we read them all. This causes a delay at REUTS because of the unique method we’ve adopted to handle submissions. Instead of submitting to one Acquisitions Editor who then decides yay or nay (and if yay, has to convince the rest of the team to feel the same way), we have a panel consisting of the four REUTS directors. Each of our directors reads through each submission, provides their thoughts, and submits a decision. It then comes down to a majority vote. Only after a majority vote has been decided can we respond to an author regarding their submission. And at REUTS we provide a unique response email to all of our submitting authors, regardless if it’s good news or bad news.

Only then can we move a manuscript out of the “submitting” phase, and into the “reviewing” phase.

Remember, requesting an update only delays us further, since the time it takes to look up your manuscript, track down the email with any discussion, and respond back takes precious time away from actually reading your submission. Here are REUTS we always respond to a submission made. No exceptions. So if you haven’t heard from us, that’s actually better than if you had and received a rejection.

Reviewing

Number one delay: Reading.

If a submission makes it to the “reviewing” phase that means we’ve requested a full manuscript for further . . . review. Makes sense! This is, without a doubt, the longest part on your journey toward receiving that beloved contract offer. In requesting manuscripts with a minimum word count of 50,000 (and many times a story is well over that), it means an acquisitions team has to read a full-length book before making a decision. Just like in the “submitting” phase, our panel of four REUTS directors are involved in reviewing the full manuscript. Each director reads the manuscript, and then there’s the discussion. Since people read at different speeds, with their own set of different delays (remember: our directors have responsibilities to already signed authors outside of their acquisitions duties) there’s no way to accurately gauge how long it will take all four team members to read a manuscript. Then there’s the discussion, which is absolutely necessary, as each of our directors brings a different perspective to the table. Editorial Director Kisa Whipkey weighs in on the amount of work involved in bringing a manuscript up to publication standards. Marketing Director Summer Wier weighs in on how marketable the title would be in the current—and future—marketplace trends. This method, along with many other factors, allows us to determine whether a title will work within our collection or whether it isn’t a good fit.

We take our job very seriously, as I’m sure all Acquisitions Editors do, and that means taking our time to make sure our accrual of a new title will benefit both REUTS and—most importantly—the author.

Production
(editing, cover design, marketing, etc…)

Number one delay: Life.

Your editor won’t be your cover artist. Your cover artist won’t be your marketer. That right there means there are at least four people working together to produce your novel. And, guess what, those four people all have lives independent of each other, independent of REUTS. Yes, you’re included in that four, too. We don’t expect an author to focus on their manuscript 24/7, just as we don’t expect our production team to focus solely on your manuscript 24/7. It’s a fact many tend to ignore: life gets in the way. Sometimes you can’t control it. Sickness, death, children, leisure . . . delays sometimes happen because of the things you can’t plan for. It doesn’t mean your editor/cover artist/etc . . . isn’t fully vested in your project. It doesn’t mean you’re not a priority in the eyes of the publisher. It just . . . happens. As much as we try to account for life-based delays, let’s face it, they’re unavoidable.

In addition, on top of those life delays each team member involved in the production of your title has at least a handful of other books they’re also working on, simultaneously, and trying to make sure all authors receive the same amount of attention, especially if one of the authors has a book release looming sooner than another.

Sometimes this means we miss the original publication date, and it has to be pushed back (trust me, this happens a lot in publishing, and not just to independent presses). Many times that means scrambling until the very last second before a release day, making sure everything is set and ready to go. But always this means we’re working our very hardest for you and your manuscript. A delay doesn’t mean otherwise.

So you see, there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that come together, from start to finish, to produce a book. Delays aren’t necessarily a bad thing. We’d much rather delay any phase of the process in order to give your story the time of day it deserves. In the “Submitting” phase, that means actually reading through your submission, and determining if we’re the best fit as a publisher or not. In the “Reviewing” phase, that means reading every word of that 50,000+ word story, becoming emotionally invested in your characters/world/etc… and trying to find a place for it in our collection. And then finally, in “Production”, where if everything wasn’t done digitally, our blood, sweat, and tears would stain your pages because we want to put out the very best product possible.

Publishing is largely a waiting game. That should come as no surprise. But just remember what they say:

Patience is a virtue.

The post “Hey, what’s taking so long?” The Delays in Publishing appeared first on REUTS | Boutique Book Publisher |.