Decide who is publishing the book
Create the master deadline calendar
Put review, award, production, retail, and launch deadlines on one calendar tied to the publication date. If the date moves, update the calendar before deadlines quietly pass.
Why it matters
The most common regret authors describe is not a mistake but a discovery: finding out a review window or award deadline closed months ago. A calendar built early is the only reliable defense, and it also shows you when the workload peaks so you can ask for help before it does.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Publicist. Author builds it; a publicist may maintain it if you have one
- When
- Nine to twelve months before publication, as soon as the publication date is known, and rebuild it if the date moves (Decide who is publishing the book: as soon as the contract is signed, or the decision to publish is made)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Publishing deadlines are mostly counted backward from the publication date, and they start earlier than most authors expect. Trade reviewers want advance copies three to four months out. Some awards close before the book exists. Retail preorder windows, catalog deadlines, and library vendor lead times all have their own clocks. A master calendar puts them in one place.
Ask whoever else is tracking dates for their list, then add everything they are not tracking. A publisher's schedule covers production and often review submissions, but it rarely includes the things only you can do: your own outreach, award entries the publisher will not make, your website, your events. Assume anything nobody named is yours. Then build the rest backward from the publication date, starting with the earliest review submission windows, and let the calendar tell you whether that date is realistic.
The Author Profile on this site can generate dates from the publication date for many items. Export them or copy them into whatever calendar you actually look at.
Common mistakes
- Starting the calendar at launch and working forward, which misses everything that had to happen earlier.
- Keeping the calendar in a document nobody opens instead of the calendar you check daily.
- Entering award deadlines from memory or a blog post rather than the official page.
- Not rebuilding the dates when the publication date changes.
What done looks like
- Every deadline from this checklist that applies to you, entered with its owner and its anchor (days before or after publication).
- The publisher's production and publicity milestones added where they have shared them.
- Award and review windows entered with the specific cycle dates, not guesses.
- Reminders set at least two weeks before anything that requires shipping physical copies.
- The calendar rebuilt if the publication date moves.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified