{"id":26981,"date":"2018-09-04T07:30:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T11:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=26981"},"modified":"2018-09-04T07:30:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T11:30:24","slug":"the-mystery-of-the-wrong-pub-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=26981","title":{"rendered":"The Case of the Confusing Pub Date"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>For major holidays, publishers release books\u00a0on a reasonable timeline; Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Independence Day\u00a0books arrive roughly when we expect them to start being in demand. Sure, we get some Halloween books in July and Christmas books in August, which is much earlier than I like to face the holidays, but on the whole, books ship on a schedule that makes sense. But for less specific seasonal offerings, release dates often stump booksellers.
\nEvery year, we encounter books published mysteriously out of season: camping stories that\u00a0come out\u00a0in September, for instance,\u00a0missing an entire summer’s worth of heightened sales. Or books perfect for summer beach reading rolling out in February, or late August, just too early or late for their optimal readership. It’s not that the books go unread, but their prime selling season seems to be lost, unnecessarily so.
\n
\nI\u00a0feel conflicted writing about\u00a0this topic.\u00a0As a reader, I know that good books obviously transcend any particular season. As a child, I loved pulling out winter books in July, when the Arizona heat in my backyard was high and I wanted a bit of sweet, cold comfort. I’m also resistant to holidays for holidays’ sake in general. But as a bookseller, I experience the waves of book interest from my customers, and I know that a certain kind of book that might have sold\u00a0three dozen copies in\u00a0June and July might sell just\u00a0five copies in September and October.
\nWhen we encounter these books, I always wonder how those release date decisions get made.\u00a0I suspect that publishers’ production\u00a0calendars \u2014 nighmarish webs of scheduling details that they are \u2014 must dictate some less optimal slots, especially for midlist titles. And perhaps some books that come out at the “wrong” time were originally scheduled for months that better suited them but delays on the author, illustrator, or production end pushed them into different seasons.
\nI’d love to hear from you editorial and production folks about whether or not you\u00a0feel that some of the books on your lists\u00a0end up releasing at the wrong time, and why that happens. Remember that comments can be made anonymously. I’d love to crack the Case of the\u00a0Confusing Pub\u00a0Date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, a book’s pub date seems strangely timed, and we ask publishers why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}