5 Things Your Project Manager Wishes You Knew
By Marina Reis

During my nearly eight years as a Project Manager (PM) with Word Alive Press, I have had the privilege of working with well over one hundred authors. Many of these authors, and their books, remain with me over the years, and I can only hope that the time we spent working together meant as much to them as it did to me.

During a working relationship with an author, as with any interpersonal relationship, there are times when it can be tricky to know how to word the right advice. Honesty is always the best policy, but there are times when I find myself tiptoeing around the best way to provide honest and helpful feedback to an author.

In light of that, I have compiled here a list of 5 things your PM wishes you knew:

1. Your Project Manager wants the best for your book.

I promise. Second only to you, the author, your PM wants your book to succeed—in whichever terms that means to you. We want your book to be something that you feel proud of, whether showing your cover design to family and friends, or promoting it to readers on social media.

However, unlike the author, your PM has the benefit of objectivity. What is best for your book in our eyes will never be enmeshed with all the emotional toil that went into thinking about, planning and ultimately writing your book. Please keep in mind, none of the advice you receive from your PM is ill-intentioned or meant to be taken to heart.

2. No, we don’t like the cover idea you created.

I mean, sometimes we do…but sometimes we don’t. However, what we will always do is try to make your book’s cover as marketable as possible. It is not a matter of whether we personally like it or not, but if we truly believe—based on what we know about the current book market—that it will do well in a crowded bookstore with competing covers. So, if your PM advises you to reconsider your cover design, or *strongly* recommends a different idea, we highly propose that you take this advice into consideration. Once it hits the publishing phase, your cover design should not first and foremost be an extension of the natural emotional attachment and possessiveness that you feel towards your manuscript, but instead, a conduit to entice the potential reader. Marketability is always the final goal with a cover design. Leave the sentimentality that you feel for the words between the covers.

3. Word Alive Press is not Amazon.

Ironically, working for Word Alive Press garners many questions about Amazon. For the record, we are not related. We are a customer of the conglomerate that is Amazon along with hundreds of other publishers around the globe. There are many (many) moments when something goes wrong, such as a book not currently listed or a discrepancy in retail price, and we are at the mercy of Amazon as much as the author.

All that being said, your PM is definitely here to help you, and if you do see an issue with Amazon, you are more than welcome to reach out or send an email to our Author Care Specialist. Word Alive Press is not Amazon, but what we are is here to help as best we can.

4. Please advocate for your book.

And on that related note, please do advocate for your book. Whether it is approaching a real-life bookstore to do a book signing or promoting your book on a well-crafted and professional social media page, you are your book's biggest asset.

Writing and publishing a book is a very personal endeavour, an extension of you, and deserves to be celebrated as much as any other book out there. One thing that there is no shortage of is good books, so you want to make sure that your book stands out even among the greats—just as it deserves to.

5. We do want to hear from you again!

As I said at the beginning, many of the authors I work with, and their books, stay with me long after a book comes off the press. As your book and life as an author takes off, please don’t be a stranger. Writing a new book? Send your PM a quick email with progress updates. Are you wondering about what other editing services we offer that you might not have known about the first time around, like a developmental edit or the Spark Mentorship Program? Ask your PM for more information. Do you need a reprint for your book? Let us know!

We want to stay in touch and hear of your successes. In other words: don’t forget us when you’re famous!

About this Contributor:

Marina Reis is a Senior Project Manager who joined Word Alive Press in 2017. She graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.