Preparing for Tomorrow's Trade Launch

Twice a year, we gather the marketing, sales, and editorial groups to present our new books for the next selling season--in this case, spring 2008. We'll bring in lunch and spend a few hours going over the details of the 13 new books on our frontlist. My boss and I will take turns presenting our respective titles--mine are pure trade and hers are reference books that sell into trade--to the group. And our assessments editor will have his own entry to the list for the first time.

We've been working for the last few months to acquire the books for the list and get preliminary versions of the covers designed. We also have prepared a "New Product Information Sheet" for each title, which outlines the vital stats, the table of contents, information about the authors, comparable titles and their sales, and ideas for sales and marketing strategies.

I'm pretty excited about our new list. We've got a good mix of new editions of big sellers, line extensions of successful series, and a few wild cards that could go BIG. We're hoping the publisher and CEO, who are jetting in from L.A. and St. Paul, respectively, will be as excited as we are.

I drove the establishment of the first JIST trade launch about five years ago. I wanted a forum where we could have an open discussion about sales and marketing strategies, get everyone excited, and give the books a big send-off. Our former owner dubbed it a "roll-out," and decreed that we should serve roll-up sandwiches from Roly-Poly. He was wacky that way, but fun.

So tomorrow, forgive me if I'm "out of pocket" and can't post anything. It's one of the two biggest days of the year for my books.