Julia Domenicucci ’15 // Co-President
When I first joined Pub Club in Fall 2011, I was a first-semester freshman who only knew that the publishing industry somehow made books. The world of editorial and production calendars was entirely unknown to me, and it was a slight shock when I got my first internship and learned just how vital these things are.
What is an editorial calendar? Basically, it helps control when something is published, and helps ensure that all necessary steps are completed. This tool is traditionally used for book publishing, but is now applied to everything from blogs to newsletters to social media schedules.
In a publishing house, there are likely many books being produced at once, with varying schedules: one book’s pub date may be the start of another manuscript’s interior design. The position of managing editor oversees this schedule, and knows where each manuscript (ms.) is in the publishing process (for more about different positions and departments, check out this concise article.) Usually, the editorial calendar is set up by year, and a single book can take one, two, or more years to move from aquisitions to publication.
Pub Club, although it tries to emulate the publishing industry as closely as possible, has a schedule that is restricted by our semesters. From the author meeting to sending the book to the printer, we have five to six weeks to edit, copyedit, design, and market our two books (luckily for us, they’re on the exact same schedule).
Using our Spring 2015 schedule as an example, I will compare the key dates and deadlines on our schedule to what would happen in a publishing house (using Bloomsbury’s “A Guide to the Publishing Process” and WritersServices as reference).
February 2015
Submissions & Manuscript Selection: Because we receive between upward of ten novella-length manuscripts (mss.) each semester (our record is seventeen!), the executive board evaluates each of them before sending a final few on to the club (we aim for four). A publishing house uses many methods to acquire new mss.–everything from unsolicited submissions to asking people to expand a short story. To ensure a variety of opinion and maximum fairness, every Pub Club executive board member gives pros and cons of each manuscript; in a traditional house usually one editor will accept or reject a manuscript before defending it to the rest of the team.
Club Voting & Author Meeting: These are aspects of our club that do not really stem from the publishing world, but are used to encourage participation in the book publication process.
Editorial Meeting: Where we spend one night working with the author and sending them an editorial letter, this is usually a long back-and-forth process between one or more editors and the author. Our authors have between one and two weeks to make edits (thank you, Spring Break!); authors in traditional publishing often have one to two years to write and edit the mss.
March 2015
Copyediting, Interior Design, & Proofs: Pub Club has about a week to a week and a half for each of these categories, while in a traditional publishing house each step could use up to four weeks–almost three times what we have.
Design & Marketing: These teams are a little closer to what it’s like in a publishing house, since they have a month to develop, revise, and create the jacket design and marketing plan, respectively.
April 2015
Printing: We print our books through the Harvard Book Store, and we have since we began the book project five years ago. They require three weeks for printing, also often they are awesome and allow us two. Publishing houses in the industry usually have long-term deals with printers that result in a more streamlined process (side note: the HBS is great for self-publishing or print-on-demand!).
Summary
- Our editorial calender is based on those used in the publishing industry; luckily the nature of editorial calendars allows us to adapt it to our needs.
- Some things are not included on our calendar (but probably should be) and are things the publishers and heads tend to take on: signing the author contracts, getting ISBNs, coordinating endorsements and reviews, writing and editing back cover copy, etc.
- Flexibility is necessary, because things happen. This semester, we moved our author meeting to a different day than planned. In the past, we have had printing emergencies or copyediting might get done a day late. Some of these issues arise because of our truncated schedule, and we try to build in an extra week overall to accomodate.
- So much happens in Pub Club besides the book projects–our entire production calender, developed by the executive board, is full of meetings, the Generic editorial calendar, and other back-end housekeeping.
Hopefully this illustrates how important editorial calendars are to all sorts of publishing, from our club to massive houses like HarperCollins. What do you still have questions about? Ask in the comments and we will answer 🙂