A lot of folks use their blogs to promote themselves and what they do, their businesses, and I admit I am trying to do the same for my books, but I don't want to be parasitic, so I am going to blog about others in writing /publishing from time-to-time. That said, it's only fitting I begin with my publisher Nancy Schumacher. Writing as Nancy Pirri and Natasha Perry, Nancy is a multi-published, award-winning author. Mentoring new authors and publishing good fiction led her to become the owner of Melange Books, LLC., she handles publisher, customer service, & marketing-promotions.
Now I'm planning a full interview with Nancy, but she emailed me an interesting piece, "A Day In the Life of..."
A Day in the Life of a Publisher Nancy Schumacher, Publisher, Melange Books, LLC
Thanks, Joanne, for asking me to tell you about my work and life as a publisher. I'll begin by saying that diversity is the name of the game in the small press publishing world. The work of a publisher is multi-faceted, and can change from day to day. Because Melange is a small press, with 3 acquiring editors, 16 editors, 6 artists, 2 proof readers and 2 formatters, many times I will assist in every area with the exception of artwork. I am the most unartistic person but I know what I like when I see a cover. Here is what happens in my day: · I generally start out the day early in the morning by reading my email at 6 email addresses. Melange has separate addresses for author-publisher communication, for submissions, acquiring, editing, etc. and yahoo chat lists for authors and fans. This can take sometimes up to 2 hours a day. · The next hour or so I sift through submissions to our house and see if anything needs immediate looking at or a response from me. If I see something I initially think looks interesting I send it off to an acquiring editor to look over. Our usual response time to accept or reject a manuscript can be up to 16 weeks. It takes time to look at each manuscript.
· · The next several hours I work at finalizing, formatting our next several books for publication release in the next 4-6 weeks. I load books at our print vendor, order the print proof for the author to check over again before release also. · I then respond again to authors emailing me about various stages of their book's release. · I start to receive responses on books to accept or reject from the acquiring editor, look them over and send out the appropriate letters. I type up the contracts and send them to the authors for books we're accepting, and make sure I have them listed on our release calendars. · I will then work on listing our latest releases at vendor sites we do on our own such as All Romance Ebooks and eBookstrand, Smashwords, etc... · Then, if I have time, I go out and search the net for reviews on our books and forward them to the authors to be sure they receive them. · I check out various ways to promote our books, including sending information to authors and inquiring costs, etc. with these promo places. · In between all of this I work on royalties as vendor reports and monies come in for each individual author. I also work on tax stuff that needs to be done. As you can see, a publisher wears many hats and I love every minute of my work day!
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