A work stream is a way to divide up large projects. It’s not a will-nilly division though. The lines are drawn along categories of work. I’ve heard some folks compare work streams to buckets, which makes sense because of the categorization aspect, but unlike a bucket, work streams break things down into categorized tasks - not a monolith bucket of work.

Let's compare.

The 5 Book Launch Work Streams

I have to come clean here. I am an indie author, but I also have a long career in tech. My tech job is too complicated to explain here, but suffice to say that I had two major uses for work streams:

1. to organize my own work;

2. and to research how other people were working, and design work streams that would help them get it done.

When I first approached the world of indie publishing, I found myself quickly overwhelmed with the sheer amount of – seemingly random – work to do to get my book from “Hey I have this book idea” to “Wow it's published and people are buying it.” My work looked more like this:

Which, frankly, is unacceptable for someone with my background. I was mortified. So I did what any good tech nerd would do, I researched the entire process, categorized it, then organized the tasks into reasonable work streams. This, my friends, was how Frontlist was born.

I came up with five work streams that define the book launch process. Now, keep in mind, I am of the solid opinion that your book launch starts the day that you start writing your book, so that’s where my work streams begin. Here goes:

1. Writing & Editing

This is the starting point. The tasks in this work stream include writing the first draft, all editing (developmental, line edits and proofreading) and all revisions. It’s the heavy duty work of actually authoring a book. It’s your craft. In short, it’s the fun stuff. 

2. Production

Production is the act of producing the actual book. It’s the design of covers, layout of pages, compiling of files, printing, and uploading.

Production right and proper can’t begin until the Writing & Editing is completely finished. No one needs to be producing an unfinished book! But there are some early production tasks which can overlap with the end of the Writing & Editing phase. For example, cover design can be kicked off once the writing is done, but before that final proofread is complete.

3. ARC

ARC is an acronym for Advanced Reader Copies (or Advanced Review Copies, depending on who you ask). To quote a friend, Cyndy Aleo, ARC copies of your book are “not copy edited; they are usually put together before the final copy edit / proof / formatting check.” In other words, there are plenty of overlapping tasks in the Production and ARC work streams.

Similarly, the ARC phase can go right up to the launch date, so many of the tasks from the Launch work stream will be interspersed with those closing out the ARC work stream.

4. Launch

For obvious reasons, this is the work folks generally think of when they hear “book launch.” It is also the work stream which might be most easily confused with Marketing since there’s a big marketing push right around the launch date.

Believe it or not, it’s the shortest of the work streams, with most of the work getting done in preparation for launch.

5. Marketing

Marketing starts the day you start writing your book, and it continues all the way through to Launch and beyond. Tasks from the marketing work stream are littered throughout the entire project, whether it’s posting on socials about how your manuscript is progressing, to celebrating major editing and production milestones, to advertising your ARC program, to getting your name and face out there during launch. Marketing. Is. Everywhere.

There is no time when Marketing isn’t happening in some form or another.