Daily Cosmonaut #2

While the last two weeks of December and the first week of January is normally our slowest time of year, our distributor moved some deadlines and we had to spend the past four weeks furiously assembling all of our advanced reader copies for the books that we are publishing next Fall. While this probably sounds completely unreasonable (in terms of workload and schedule; books that aren’t coming out until eleven months from now), given the volume of modern publishing it is necessary. The sales team at our distributor has to spend time understanding who the audience is for each one and figuring out which stores to approach and how to talk about each book. Similarly, traditional book reviewers need a four to six month window before the publication date to review books in trade publications and national magazines.

This is also a relatively heavy season for us with ten books. I set my personal record of designing three entire books in one day. I designed a total of six books during one week while Meggyn furiously illustrated beards and vulvas for two (different) coloring books. While weeks like these are incredibly stressful, they are also highly rewarding. I mean, you get into publishing to make books. So to make tons of them in quick succession and working out the bugs in the coming months is super fun. It’s also neat to watch all of this hard work and planning pay off.

It’s informing our process as well. We’ve spent the last two years slowly easing our workload further and further ahead of schedule so we don’t end up in these binds where we have to rush and double up everyone’s workloads. And there’s an undeniable reward in getting to read for fun on the weekends too.