Thursday, August 28, 2008

We Have...a Title and Release Date?

As most Generation X or younger sports fans who troll the Interweb and blogosphere know, Bill Simmons has taken the summer off to work on his long-delayed book, while gracing us with the occasional podcast. Some people have grumped about this, but hey, whatever gets you writing. Well, according to Amazon, the good Mr. Simmons has a title for his tome: "The Best Basketball Book Ever Written", and will be exactly 336 pages. The site also notes that the book is going to be released on May 5, 2009. Now, I confess to knowing absolutely nothing about the book publishing process, but this is a good eight months out. I have no idea if this means that he's still got a chunk of writing to do, if the editorial/fact-checking/revision/publishing in hardcover process takes that long, or if they're lining up the release to coincide with the NBA playoffs and a summer book tour. Any of that is possible. Still, given the somewhat-distant release date that resembles a gestation period, it's worth questioning just how much Bill will be "back" come September, especially given the frosty few months he and tWWL had earlier this year.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A publication date 9 months out from delivery is standard in the publishing industry. Editing/copyediting/production takes about 2 months, then you have to "launch" the book. That means preparing internal sales/marketing materials so that your sales force can sell it into bookstore accounts across the country. Also, a publisher will print a select number of galleys so that bookstore buyers can read it first, as well editors and reviewers at newspapers/magazines/radio, etc. A publicity/marketing campaign starts months in advance because you want all the coverage to coincide with your publication date, and of course people need to read the book before covering it (especially in the case of long-lead magazines, radio shows, and TV shows, which are booked months ahead of schedule).

El Angelo said...

Appreciate the info. That's not at all surprising, given that Simmons is anything but low profile. Thanks.

Teddy said...

336 pages? That's what, two and a half NBA columns for Simmons?

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