2008 Writing Contest Winner

The 2008 Writing Contest was over for the authors at the end of April. It took us another month to get through the backlog of submitted manuscripts. Finally, we reached a decision as to the three finalists, and we now have selected a winner who will be announced on June 21st on our website.

Last year, many of the submitted manuscripts were not well written, had numerous grammatical and punctuation errors in the first few pages, and were generally not ready for prime time. (Hint: don't send us a note asking that we ignore spelling errors because you are a poor speller!) As a result, we could weed out many manuscripts by reading only a few pages.

This year, the number of submitted manuscripts doubled and the quality was markedly higher. We estimate that only 25% were rejected in the first few pages. Ten or so manuscripts were read completely by more than one reader. In the end, the final decision wasn't clear, either. We had some really good submission and we certainly thank all of you for submitting.

We also apprciate your patience if your submitted a non-contest manuscript during this time. We sure got bogged down, but we are now back on track and trying to catch up. We are only about five weeks behind at this point!

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar comments on Anatomy Lesson

One of our debut authors, Raymond Obstfeld, continues to work with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the basketball legend. They co-wrote the NYT Best Seller On The Shoulders of Giants and have additional on-going projects including books and films. Mr. Abdul-Jabbar recently posted some comments on his blog about Raymond's book, Anatomy Lesson. Please check it out. He also referenced the review by Shirley Johnson of the Midwest Book Review. Thanks to both for such kind words.

What is the Pub Date?

Note to self: if a bookseller can get a book in hand, they will sell it. Publication date is an artificial date that is completely controlled by the publisher. If you let books get into the sales distribution channels, then they will quickly find their way to booksellers.

As soon as we ship our books to our distributor, the backorders from booksellers were immediately filled and shipped. The booksellers had them in a few days and, guess what--they were available for sale! J.K. Rowling had her hands full!

Debut Books and First Printing Questions

Some folks, particularly book collectors, have inquired about the 'printing' numbers on the copyright pages of our debut books. These numbers in our books are: "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2." What happened to the '1'? The way the copyright page is printed indicates that these books are the second printing. In fact, they are not. These are all first printing books. We are still looking into why and how we lost our '1' but there are no other printings prior to this one. You got the first printing!

Hope this helps clarify the snafu. Thanks.

Behind The Scenes

Some of our writer frieds have peeked under the covers of Iota, wondering if this mysterious world was really the realm of dark magic. One unveiled illusion caused lots of discussion and they suggested we post some details here about publishing timeline -- what goes on that takes a year (or more) to get a book published? So, here we go. This will probably be in multiple parts as we get time to discuss. Real timeline for one of our books that has a pub date of October, 2008.

Picking up at the beginning of 2008 (this book was contracted in June, 2007)
1-18 Submit database load information and cover (jpeg) to distribution
1-20 Initiate copyedit
3-1 Receive copyedit ms from copyeditor
3-1 – 3-10 Author & editor review copyedit
3-1 Send copyedit info to Author
4-15 Receive final edits from Author
4-16 Send ms to typesetter
5-1 Receive ms from typesetter (get page count)
5-1 Send order to printer
5-15 Pre-order appears (perhaps) on Amazon, B&N, etc.
5-15 Receive blurbs from author’s readers; Iota blurbers
5-15 Receive jacket graphic spec from printer to cover artist
6-15 Receive final jacket art, send to printer
6-15 Initiate local print of galleys
6-15 Update typeset manuscript with title graphics (to printer)
6-30 Receive galleys
6-30 Update website with book cover
6-30 Printer returns proof
7-1 Send 1st set of Galleys
7-1 Begin schedule of book tour, interview, and other PR plans
7-1 Contract placement of ads
7-15 Return corrections/proof to printer
7-15 Print run begins
8-1 Send second set of galleys to reviewers
8-30 Books off press
9-1 Launch final publicity campaign
9-1 Setup Amazon Look Inside
9-1 Setup eBook files
9-1 Ship books to distribution
9-1 Kickoff local publicity
10-1 Initiate book tour and other final publicity
10-1 Publication Date

2008 Writing Contest Announced

Our website was updated today (Feb 23) to announce our 2008 Novel Writing Contest. A $1000 cash award and a publishing contract will be awarded to the winner of the contest. Accepted genres are mystery, suspense, thriller, and sci-fi. The geographic focus from last year has been removed. The contest ends on April 30th, 2008.

Where have we been?

The summer months swamped us for a while. Between staff vacations, printing two books, and securing distribution, we have neglected our website. Now, with our head above water, we'll try to regain our focus here and provide an overview of what has been going on.

Printing is complete for Angels Fall and Anatomy Lesson. The books are actually in the warehouse! We used Malloy Inc. (www.malloy.com) as our printer. We drove our typesetter, cover designer, and Malloy rep crazy, but we are really happy with the result. Lots of lessons learned about not rushing and about getting each step exactly right before proceeding. At least we only had one round of changes in the proofs. You'll see the finished covers on the website soon.

Our third book, Borrowed Lives, was put on hold so we could finish the first two. Just too much to do at once. It is going to be released with our fourth book, In The Face (our contest winner).

We signed a distribution contract with IPG in early September. Although we looked at several options, the PMA distribution program with IPG seemed to be our best bet. Unfortunately, our release dates are now tied to those of IPG. In short, they need about eight months lead time. So, our first two books will be released in April, 2008. They're gonna sit in that warehouse for nearly nine months. Our second two books will be release later in 2008. There is still some possibility that we'll be able to add a third book to the second pair. In any case, we'll have another group of books for early 2009.