People occasionally ask me what it’s like running a publishing company. I always smile because I know what they’re imagining.
Somewhere in their minds, they’re picturing long lunches with famous authors, elegant offices lined with leather-bound books, and me strolling through the building offering profound literary advice while sipping expensive coffee. There are probably tweed jackets involved. The reality is… somewhat different.
On any given morning, I might begin the day as the publisher. Ten minutes later I’m the production manager because an EPUB has decided that Chapter Eight no longer believes in margins. Five minutes after that I’m the IT department because a website plugin has chosen violence. Before lunch I’m customer service, answering an email from someone who accidentally bought the same ebook twice and is apologizing to me for the inconvenience.
After lunch I become a graphic designer because a cover needs one title moved three millimetres to the left. Then I’m an accountant trying to remember why one distributor’s sales report appears to have been generated by a committee of caffeinated squirrels. Somewhere in the afternoon I’m the marketing department, wondering how many times it’s acceptable to mention a new release before readers start hiding behind the furniture when they see my name pop up.
By supper I’m usually an author again, trying to convince imaginary people to behave themselves long enough to finish a chapter.
Of course, that’s assuming nothing catches fire.
Not literally, thankfully, but publishing has an uncanny ability to invent emergencies that didn’t exist five minutes earlier. A printer suddenly decides it doesn’t like a font. An ebook distributor rejects a file because of one invisible formatting error hiding somewhere in three hundred pages. A newsletter sends perfectly to 4,997 people and stubbornly refuses to deliver to the remaining three, who will inevitably be the first to write asking why they’ve been forgotten.
These are the moments nobody puts on Instagram.
Nobody posts a glamorous photo captioned, “Living the dream!” while spending forty-five minutes trying to discover why one chapter heading is half a point larger than all the others.
The funny thing is, I wouldn’t trade it.
There’s something deeply satisfying about taking a manuscript from “almost there” to a finished book someone can hold in their hands. Every cover, every edit, every proofread, every marketing email, every late-night formatting session is another small step toward putting a story into the world. Readers only see the finished book, which is exactly as it should be. If we’ve done our jobs well, all the frantic juggling stays safely behind the curtain.
So yes, running an independent publishing company means wearing a lot of hats.
- Publisher.
- Editor.
- Designer.
- Website technician.
- Customer service representative.
- Marketing department.
- Accountant.
- Occasional therapist.
- Professional finder of invisible formatting errors.
And every once in a while, if I’m very lucky, I even get to be what I wanted to be in the first place.
A writer.
— Mark