Hello from the LAUREL EVERYWHERE team. As you might have noticed, the world looks a little different right now. Like countless other companies and families, the students running Ooligan Press are trying to balance living in quarantine with the laundry list of life’s demands. For me, this means homeschooling a fourth- and sixth-grader while finishing up my graduation requirements, sending out blurb requests, creating a social media plan, and training the next project manager for the team.
Manager Monday
Into the Invisible World of the Publisher’s Assistants
By Siri Vegulla and Bayley McComb
The role of Publisher’s Assistants seems vague in the world of Ooligan because a lot of our work consists of managing metadata, cataloging keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), and inputting BISAC codes for all of our titles, just to name a few of the fun things. We also help other department heads, project managers, and (most importantly) the publisher with a lot of back-end tasks and fulfill certain requirements for getting books, well, published! This blog aims to uncover the mystery behind how the PAs help the rest of Ooligan.
How To Create a Persona and Identify Your Target Audience
By Sydnee Chesley
The purpose of creating a persona is to take the abstract concept of an audience and create something concrete and relatable from it. Your audience is reachable, you just have to figure out who they are. The following three questions are designed to help you do that.
Writing Alt Text for Ebooks
By Megan Crayne @megancrayne
Alternative text, or alt text, is different from including a caption for an image in your book; it is a clear description of what is taking place in the image so that readers who use voice-to-text software can understand its context. Used commonly on websites, alt text can be easily built into your InDesign document for all of your images before you convert your book into an EPUB—and here is how to write it.
Knowing Your Audience: A Quick Guide to Improving Your Query
By Kimberly Scofield @kmscofie
Oftentimes, developing target audiences can reveal interesting information about how to get the book into the hands of the reader. For example, if members of a target audience are likely to listen to podcasts, then the marketing plan for the book should include some reviews by podcasts they probably listen to.
Can I Do Graphic Design?
By Denise Morales Soto @dmoralessoto
Graphic design is so much fun. There is so much you can do in this space, just within the context of book publishing alone. From print to digital, there’s no end to what you can create. Because it is such a vast and interesting area, a lot of people want to try it out, but they hesitate because they don’t have any formal art training. I get it—I’ve been there. There is a lot of overlap between art and graphic design, as they require a lot of the same skills and an understanding of concepts like space, color, lighting, etc. But, while having a working knowledge of these when you start is helpful, it’s not required.