In what I always thought of as the old days of publishing, you used to think of summer as a “slow” season. All the spring books were shipping and the fall had been sold in and all the publishers thought of summer as the time to take time off.
Now, it seems anything but that. There is no slow season in publishing anymore that is for sure. There’s also no “dead” time to publish a book. Summer can be a great time—not only because so many people are on vacation and want “beach reads” but also because you don’t have the competition of the major holidays to contend with.
We are just ending a very busy summer here at GuidepostsBooks—I just joined the company at the end of June and it’s been an exciting beginning.
I’ve been working hard on creating the Spring 2010 catalog and preparing materials for our sales force to sell in the spring books. In addition, I’ve been working closely with the PR agencies handling our Fall 2009 books to make sure all media leads are followed.
The truth of the matter is, as a marketing director, I’m usually working on three seasons at the same time—the current season where books are shipping, the upcoming season which is selling in and I have a long view to the season following that. I’m starting to talk with editors now about books that we will publish a full year from now in Fall 2010.
I love the pace of what I do, every day is different but you really have to be able to juggle 10 things at the same time.
Okay, back to work—I’ll tell you more next month.
Carl Raymond
Director of Marketing
