The Next Few Days: A Plan of Action for the Project

I've been looking into some of our key parts in this project of ours and have come to some early conclusions about how we ought to proceed as far as a schedule goes. We will need to do a little bit of front-end lifting to ensure that things later on are much easier.

Specifically, the areas of Design, Content Editing, and Publication. This shouldn't be horribly heavy lifting, but I think that getting a few of the initial concerns off the table entirely will be a good idea. 

As has been planned already, We will be getting our early drafts to Meghan so that she can get an early build up an running. 

Before we do that, I would like to have some of the formatting information from Publication to be in Meghan's hands as well. I don't want us to get four weeks into the project and suddenly realize that we are in the wrong format, and have that cause us a major hassle. If I'm not horribly mistaken, I believe that I am part of the Publication duo. If so, let me know. I can get on that soon. 

Since most of us will likely seem to have nothing to do over the weekend while Meghan will have a lot of work ahead, I would suggest the following:

1. Work on some first edits for at least one of your two chapters and send it to our Editors and Researchers. Editors, send them to each other. The sooner we have fresh edits, the better. We will be editing a lot, and we need to. Editors, don't be afraid to tell people that a paragraph or two need to be thrown out. Part of writing well is realizing when a paragraph needs to go, just as much as knowing when one needs to be added. Those being edited, remember that even Shakespeare needed an editor. 

2.I'd like for the Social Media Publicists and Impact Editors to have some ideas for us by Monday, as well. Work together on this one. I don't think we need a 20-minute marketing presentation, but a good list of options and a summary of the general plan would be great. I was going to be in Advertising at one point, and so I still carry around that skill set. I also still have friends in that program who I could network with. My early recommendations are to know how frequently to post about it, and which venues will allow the most traffic to see it. I would also preview individual chapters or things about the book itself to engage interest. There are surely hundreds of books like ours out there, but not all of them include using The Giver as a metaphor for the "long tail." 

3.Researchers, take your copies of the edits and do a quick double-check of some of the major claims. If possible, make some top-ten lists of the best features that Amazon, Goodreads, and the Kindle have to offer. This gives us some ideas to work with as we better our chapters. 

4.As for the Managing Editors, I would like for us to have a more thorough calendar by Monday or Wednesday with actual dates involved, and hopefully some method by which we can measure our progress and celebrate the little victories along the way. This project may prove difficult, so I would like to make sure that we occasionally take a moment to appreciate how far we've come before barreling ahead and drowning ourselves in work once again. Like my Momma always said, "Take time to happy-dance." 

If you have any issues with this calendar, PLEASE let me know. If it's too fast, too slow, if I'm an idiot, all of the above, let me know.