Learning about publishing

I've just come out of an all day strat planning meeting with my publisher and the session was well worth the time I invested and the resources that they put in to make it happen.  Issues  that we covered included what makes a good publisher, qualities of a good project manager, stakeholder, author and self-management.

The session that kept me wide awake though was on copyright. Some of my preconceived notions were blown out of the water and I realised I know so little I decided to research South African copyright law and maybe even read the Bill that is currently being developed. ( I'll share more info on that in a future post).

I also learnt to appreciate that in the traditional publishing process, things can and will go wrong. The key to success is how I deal with the problems. It made me feel better as a publisher, because sometimes, when working on this client's projects, I felt like I was problem-solving all the time and I wondered if other publishers were dealing with their projects in a better way than me. Turns out having stamina and just knuckling down to deal with issues as they arise and communicating constantly is a good asset.

I'm also leaving the meeting motivated to carry on with the work, and to handle certain tasks in the publishing process differently (e.g, meet with the authors more, phone more, email less because personal contact is very important).

I also decided to take more publishing courses ( in person, rather than just online).  Being able to focus just on learning was invigorating.