A year ago this week, I signed the lease on our office. It is a small space, just under 600 square feet, in a building that also houses a pottery studio and a freelance accountant. The rent is reasonable. The heating is unreliable. There is a persistent smell of kiln dust in the hallway that I have come to find comforting. It is not the kind of office that appears in magazine profiles of publishing executives, which is fine because I am not a publishing executive. I am a person who publishes books, and this is where that happens.

I want to describe what a year in the life of a small publishing house actually looks like, not the highlights-reel version with prize shortlists and glowing reviews, but the daily reality of running a business that produces and sells books. I think there is value in this kind of transparency, because the publishing industry tends to obscure its operations behind a curtain of prestige, and the result is that most people, including many aspiring publishers, have no idea what the work actually involves.

January and February: The Planning Season

Our year begins with planning, which sounds orderly but in practice involves a lot of staring at spreadsheets and arguing about priorities.

In January, we finalize our publication schedule for the coming year. This means confirming which titles are on track for their planned publication dates and which ones need to be pushed back. There are always pushbacks. An author needs more time for revisions. A cover design is not working and needs to be reconcepted. The printer has a backlog that will delay delivery by two weeks. Each of these adjustments ripples through the rest of the schedule, and the first two weeks of January are spent rearranging puzzle pieces until they fit.

We also set our budget in January, which is a euphemism for figuring out how to spend less money than we will need on everything we plan to do. The budget process at a small publisher is an exercise in creative deprivation. You know that you should spend $3,000 on marketing for each title, but you have $8,000 in your marketing budget for four titles, so someone gets shorted. You know that you should send advance copies to 200 reviewers, but postage alone for 200 copies would eat your entire publicity budget, so you send 80 and hope for the best.

February is when we start thinking seriously about acquisitions for the following year’s list. We review the manuscripts that have accumulated in our reading queue over the previous months, and we reach out to agents whose clients might be a good fit for our program. February is also when we attend our first industry event of the year, usually a domestic conference where we can reconnect with booksellers and agents after the holiday quiet.

The mood in January and February is cautiously optimistic. We have a plan. The plan seems achievable. We have not yet encountered the surprises that will blow the plan apart by April.

March Through May: Production Intensity

Spring is our heaviest production period. We typically have two or three titles in active production simultaneously, each at a different stage: one in late-stage editing, one in design and typesetting, and one in the final proofing stage before going to press.

Managing three titles in production with a small team is a logistical challenge that I consistently underestimate. Each title has its own timeline, its own set of freelancers (designer, copyeditor, proofreader, indexer), and its own complications. The cover design for Title A is stalled because the author and the designer disagree about the color palette. The copyeditor for Title B has found a factual claim that needs verification and the verification is taking longer than expected. The proofreader for Title C has discovered a formatting inconsistency that requires going back to the typesetter.

Each of these issues is manageable in isolation. Stacked together, they consume enormous amounts of time and mental energy. Spring is the season when I eat lunch at my desk most often and when my email response time is worst. It is also the season when the quality of our books is determined, because the decisions made during production, about cover design, interior layout, paper stock, print quality, are the decisions that readers will experience when they hold the finished book.

I try to remind myself, during the stressful weeks of spring production, that this is the core work. Everything else, the marketing, the conferences, the industry networking, exists to support this. Making good books. Getting the details right. Giving each title the production attention it deserves. When I lose sight of this, which happens more often than I would like, the quality of our work suffers.

June and July: Launch Season

Our primary publication window is late spring through early summer, which means June and July are dominated by launches, publicity, and the anxious monitoring of early sales data.

A book launch at a small publisher is a different animal from a launch at a major house. We do not have a dedicated publicity team. We do not have relationships with producers at morning television shows. We do not have the budget for a national advertising campaign. What we have is a personal network of booksellers, reviewers, and fellow publishers who trust our editorial judgment, and we rely on that network to give our books their initial visibility.

The weeks leading up to a launch are filled with emails. Dozens and dozens of emails. To booksellers, asking them to stock the new title. To reviewers, following up on the advance copies we sent three months earlier. To literary bloggers and podcasters, pitching interview opportunities with the author. To bookstagrammers, offering complimentary copies in exchange for posts. Each email is individually composed because form emails do not work in our niche. The bookseller in Portland wants to know something different from the reviewer in London, and both of them want to feel that they are being addressed personally rather than mass-mailed.

The launch event itself is usually the most enjoyable part of the process. After months of solitary production work, it is genuinely exciting to watch an author read from their finished book to a room full of people. The energy in the room at a good book launch is unlike anything else in publishing: the author is nervous and proud, the audience is curious and generous, and there is a feeling of shared celebration that makes all the logistical headaches worthwhile.

Then the sales data starts trickling in, and the mood shifts. First-week sales are almost always lower than hoped, no matter how realistic our expectations were. We tell ourselves and our authors that early numbers are not predictive, which is true but does not make them easier to look at. The real test is the slope of the sales curve over the following months: is it declining, holding steady, or (in the best case) building? We will not know the answer to that question until autumn.

August: The Lull

August is the quietest month in publishing, and I have learned to embrace it rather than fight it. Everyone is on vacation, or pretending to be. Agents are not pitching. Reviewers are not reviewing. Booksellers are dealing with summer foot traffic and not thinking about fall orders. The phone does not ring.

I use August for the work that requires sustained concentration and no interruptions. Reading manuscript submissions. Working on long-term strategic planning. Catching up on the industry reading that has accumulated in a pile on my desk since January. August is when I read the most, both for work and for pleasure, and the reading I do in August often shapes our acquisitions decisions for the following year.

August is also when I take my own vacation, usually a week somewhere without reliable internet, with a stack of books that have nothing to do with publishing. This week of complete disconnection is, I have come to believe, essential for the health of both the publisher and the person running it. By late July, I am usually depleted in a way that is not fixed by a weekend off. I need a full week away to remember why I got into this business and to return with the energy and clarity that the fall demands.

September Through November: The Selling Season

Autumn is when the year’s titles either find their audience or do not, and it is the most commercially intense period for a small publisher.

The fall literary festival season is our primary marketing channel. We attend two or three festivals between September and November, usually with an author in tow for readings and panel appearances. These events are our most reliable source of direct sales and new reader acquisition. A strong festival appearance can sell 50-100 copies in a weekend, which does not sound like much until you remember that our total print runs are 1,500-3,000 copies. Selling 100 copies at a single event is meaningful.

September is also when we do our most intensive work with independent booksellers, because independent booksellers drive a disproportionate share of our sales. We send catalogs, make calls, and visit stores when possible. The goal is to make sure that every independent bookstore that carries literary fiction is aware of our current titles and has copies in stock heading into the holiday season.

October is prize season, and even though I have written elsewhere about the peculiar economics of literary prizes, I cannot deny the anxiety that accompanies prize announcements. Longlists come out in September and October. Shortlists follow in October and November. Winners are announced in November and December. If one of our titles is in contention, the waiting is excruciating. If none are, we watch from the sidelines and take notes on what is being rewarded, which helps us calibrate our editorial judgment and our submissions strategy for the following year.

By November, we have a clear picture of how the year’s titles have performed. We know which ones met expectations, which ones exceeded them, and which ones disappointed. We know which marketing strategies worked and which did not. We know which booksellers are our strongest partners and which relationships need attention. This knowledge feeds directly into the planning cycle that begins again in January.

December: Reckoning and Renewal

December is a month of contradictions. The holiday season generates our strongest retail sales, particularly direct sales through our website and at holiday book fairs. At the same time, December is when we confront the full-year financial picture, which is sometimes encouraging and sometimes sobering.

I spend the first two weeks of December processing returns. Returns are the bane of book publishing: booksellers have the right to return unsold copies for a full refund, which means that a percentage of every sale is provisional until the return window closes. Our return rate typically runs between 15-25%, which is lower than the industry average but still significant. Every returned book is a book we printed, shipped, and accounted for as revenue, only to take it back and write off the cost. The returns process is physically and emotionally draining, involving literal boxes of books coming back to our office and literal adjustments to our financial statements.

By mid-December, I have a preliminary full-year financial picture. In a good year, we break even or show a small profit. In a bad year, we lose money and I have to figure out how to cover the shortfall. In our best year so far, we made a profit of about 4% of revenue, which in any other industry would be considered anemic but in independent publishing is respectable.

The last week of December is when I write the annual letter to our authors, updating them on how their books performed and what our plans are for the coming year. I take these letters seriously. Our authors have entrusted us with their work, and they deserve a full and honest accounting of what we have done with it. I report sales numbers, marketing activities, review coverage, and any awards recognition. I also describe our plans for the title going forward: are we planning a reprint, a paperback edition, a translation sale? Are there upcoming events or promotions that might generate new interest?

Writing these letters is one of my favorite tasks of the year, even when the news is mixed. It forces me to reflect on what we have accomplished and what we could have done better. It reminds me that every number in our spreadsheet represents a book that someone wrote, often over years, and that our job is to give that book the best possible chance of finding the readers it deserves.

That thought is what carries me into January, when the cycle begins again. The spreadsheets come out. The budget arguments start. The manuscripts pile up. And I sit in my office that smells faintly of kiln dust, surrounded by books that we made, and I start figuring out which ones we are going to make next.

Every title on our list, from The Last Archive and Echoes of Iron to Still Waters and The Cartographer’s Dilemma, has been through this annual cycle. Each one bears the marks of the planning, production, launching, selling, and reckoning that define a year at ScrollWorks. It is difficult, often unglamorous work. It is also the work I would choose over any other, every single time.