For the final project of my degree, we all had the option of writing a dissertation as an individual, or working in groups on a major project. I chose group work. Part of the reason why I chose to attend this particular university was the fact that the school has a publishing house. So even beyond my major project, each assignment we completed was directly tied to an actual book that would be published. For the major project, our task was to take a submitted manuscript and work on it during all stages, right up until the book is ready to be printed.

Summarized in one sentence, the project sounds pretty simple. But I can assure you that it was not. First of all, it took 7 months to complete it. But there were many tasks to work on throughout as well. We had three group members, so we divided the workload into three parts: editorial, marketing and design. We all had a hand in each part, but each group member took the lead on the different sections.

Before getting into each internal aspect of the project, we had to compose the team’s timeline and handle communication between the author, publisher, and industry professionals who would provide guidance and feedback for the duration of the project. I volunteered myself for this role, which meant I had to be very organized and send a lot of emails to many people. I do this for my full-time job as well, so I am well-versed in that role.

I was also in charge of the editorial phase of the project, which meant that I led each phase: structural, copy, line, and proofreading. Yes, that means that I read the book about 5 times. I also I wrote the blurb that was used for our AI sheet (which is general information about the book for the sales and marketing teams) and the back cover. Another editorial task was completing the profit and loss spreadsheet, determining how much it would cost to print the book, how many copies we would print, and how much we would spend on marketing, calculating the estimated profit. This was probably the hardest task for me to complete, as we had to confer with multiple sources to find out the correct information for each variable in the total cost. This also took a lot of cooperation with the design team because we had to make cost decisions for the cover, such as what finish we wanted, what kind of foil, how much foil, if it would be embossed or debossed, and so on.

For design itself, we created a mock-up cover first before working with an illustrator. Working with an illustrator required providing the story narrative and our initial ideas for the cover, as they wouldn’t have read the manuscript. Then we took their final design and used InDesign and Photoshop to finalize the cover with proper color, placement, text and sizing. Even choosing the color of the background required market research to make sure the cover would fit within the current trends. This also took many versions and consulting with our design professional, the publisher and the author before settling with the final cover everyone was happy with.

The final step was marketing. Using information gathered from editorial and design, (book tropes, audience, creating graphics based on the cover, etc.) we created a timeline of promotions leading up to and even after the publish date. Since social media is a free marketing tool, that is usually where most of our focus lies. But it also helps to look at trends that happen at certain times of the year. For example, using hashtags that match national holidays, like world book day and so on, can help promote to a larger audience and get more views than normal.

Once that was all finished, we submitted final PDF and InDesign files with the intention that those could be sent to the printer to create the final product. Obviously since this was a class, the publishing house would make their own changes before actually sending out to print. Our particular novel will be published in November, so I am looking forward to seeing what it actually looks like. Within a publishing house, I would not be required to fulfill all of the roles I had to for this project, but it was a great learning experience for me that I will be able to use in the future.

Thanks again for reading! Stay safe and stay happy.