What Does A Publisher Do?

A day in the day job

I started this newsletter to chronicle the everyday activities of a publisher, and explain the nuts and bolts of publishing often opaque to many, including readers, writers, and authors. I’ve focused less on this type of content lately ( I revised those newsletters into a book that serves as an introduction to publishing), so I thought I’d focus on it this week, with a peek into what I am doing right now in my job at Belt’s publisher.

My job is always about juggling various timelines. Right now I am working to get media and reviews of books about to publish and on idea that might become books in 2027 I am often unsure which year my physical body is in.

A breakdown:

Publishing Shortly
We have three books publishing before the end of the year: An Alternative History of Cleveland, Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue, and Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room. The authors are all now working on helping to publicize these titles, together with Belt’s publicists, and the sales teams are working to get bookstores and other vendors to order copies so they arrive on pub date. My job is more or less done here, but I am keeping in touch with the authors (I acquired all three of these titles, although each had another editor at Belt as well) and the publicist. Two of these have already arrived from the printer, ready to be shipped at the time comes, and I’m working on helping the third get correctly and safely printed.

Publishing Soon
We have three books publishing in March and April, and we have or about to have galleys for them (Pittsburgh in 50 Maps, Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, and Anti-Fashion Icon, and Major Arcana). This is what happens when galleys are ready:

• send PDFs (or print galleys if we are making them) to the pre-pub trades for potential advance reviews. These include Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal. These publications require galleys (or ARCs, advance review copies) at least four months before publication date, and they publish short overview reviews aimed at retailers, librarians, and critics. (For instance, my son, who is a librarian, is advised to order books that receive a starred review in Booklist). If we are making print galleys, we start shipping those to major media outlets that require a long lead time as well.

• upload the same PDFs to Edelweiss, where the same groups as above, and particularly booksellers, review upcoming releases for potential ordering.

• Schedule a meeting between the author and the publicist to discuss ideas for publicity and marketing in the months before pub date.

• Develop a publicity and marketing plan, along with the publicist. Each book is a puzzle—how best to market it? To get attention for it? To sell it?—and I enjoy coming up with potential solutions, and helping develop a publicity and marketing plan tailored to that particular title.

Being Edited
The books we are publishing next spring, summer and fall are currently being edited. I have the least to do with things during this stage than the others.

Manuscripts received
Usually, when a manuscript arrives, David Wilson and I, along with the book’s editor, start the cover design process. Usually this begins with me sending David an email with my notes for the cover, which might be very detailed already or it might be a bunch of extremely vague ideas. I include any thoughts or notes the author or editor might have, details such as trim size, and any blurbs we’ve already received. David usually sends over very preliminary sketches, which lead to more filled-in mocks after a discussion of those sketches, and then to a tentative final cover, which, once we at Belt sign off on, send to the author for approval. (This may be my favorite step of all). We currently have two titles, both to publish in early summer ‘25, in this stage.

At this point (but sometimes earlier), the editor will create all the metadata for a title. This includes the back cover copy (or the squib at the top of the Amazon page), three to five BISAC codes, including one primary one, three to five comp (competing or comparable) titles, about 50 or so keywords (what people might search for in the Amazon search bar, for instance), an author bio, the cover, and the price, trim size, page count. This information is entered into databases that are then fed out to ONIX and winds its way to any database that lists books. This is also when we list the title on our own website to let folks know what we will be publishing in the forthcoming year. We have four titles, publishing next summer and fall, in this stage; once they pass through it, we will move to cover notes.

Offering and Signing Contracts
After successful conversations with authors and agents, I will send an email with contract terms. After discussing those, I will send a draft contract, for further discussion. Once those terms are agreed upon, the contracts are signed, and (yay) Belt has a new title under its (ummm) belt, and I schedule it for the future (our estimate is a book will publish twelve months after the manuscript is received, but that timeline can be as short as six months and as long as two years, depending). For instance, I recently offered contracts for two new volumes in our 50 Maps series; both manuscripts are due in early 2025, and I have tentatively scheduled their publication for either late 2025 or early 2026. The pub dates of books in this stage often float up and down the tentative calendars I share with the Belt staff, as I try to juggle pub date based upon any seasonal hook, ideal times to publish (the fall for gift-friendly books, etc), the editor’s resources and other things on their plates, so as not to overload any one editor unduly, when an author might prefer it to publish based on their schedules, and, of course, if the authors meet their delivery deadlines or not.

Acquisition
This is the heart of what I do, obviously. People often ask me how I “get” the books Belt publish. Some of them come to us from agents. Some come from cold queries. And some come from me reaching out to writers I admire (this step has lead to many of our best known titles, including What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, The Last Children of Mill Creek, The Battle of Lincoln Park, Midwest Futures, the forthcoming Major Arcana and the above two newly signed 50 Maps contracts.)

Acquisition requires a different sort of energy, mindset, and space than the other steps. It’s hard to do when I’m on email all day, working the other steps described above. It’s good for me to be on social media, actually, as it helps me generate ideas and introduces me to interesting writers. It helps if I travel to conferences, hang out in places where other writers are, read new releases, and (for me at least) spend a lot of time reading what critics are saying about new releases, publishing trends, literary culture overall, and, given Belt’s somewhat unintentional political newsiness, the daily paper. Luckily, the job, as the above categories make clear, is cyclical; there is an up and down rhythm. Sometimes there are no titles newly in the galley stage, so I can focus more on acquisition. Other times leave me little head space for bigger picture thinking, but when those are complete I am energized to rethink how to fashion Belt’s future catalog anew.

Publishing, for me, is, and I mean this very seriously, creative: sure, it’s lots of little things—individual titles, and the myriad phases through which each passes, and the quotidian tasks they require, and a capitalist business that requires sales of those titles to survive and continue—but through choosing, structuring, and imagining Belt’s catalog, year after year, I also create one larger work: the imprint itself. I enjoy playing with different ways to fashion this particular work. It’s not something I think many, if any, others glimpse, nor should they, but it is crucial to me, and to my understanding of my work’s meaning.

I hope this overview is enlightening! I have left out many steps so as not to bore you all unnecessarily, but I hope it helps color in outlines of what at least a few people in publishing actually do every day (and yes part II of Willa Cather’s publishing history will arrive soon, as will my promised link-fest on copyright, Internet Archives and AI)