What Is A Professional Publishing Operations Expert?

It's #WorkInPublishing Week, and if your LinkedIn feed is anything like mine, it is full of spotlights on editors, designers, production specialists, and marketing experts. All of these roles are integral to the process of creating and selling books, and they often get the lion's share of the attention because their contributions are normally pretty visible to the public.

So today we will be digging into the less well understood realm of publishing operations, specifically professional publishing operations. What does a professional publishing operations expert do, what makes a good candidate for this role, and how can this role positively impact the quality of your books and the longevity of your publishing house?

What Does A Professional Publishing Operations Expert Do?

Publishing operations is the mycelium network that is responsible for keeping projects moving, departments functioning, and data flowing. When it is working best, it's barely noticeable, even while impacting everything. It allows the individual publishing experts to dedicate the maximum time possible to their work, removing roadblocks and red tape and allowing them to dedicate their time and attention on what they do best.

For professional publishers, especially those still in the startup stage, a publishing operations expert fulfills many of the same expectations as a Chief Operating Officer, albeit from a highly specialized perspective:

• Overseeing business and administrative operations on the day-to-day
• Assessing and improving operating procedures for optimal efficiency
• Overseeing the recruitment process to help staff full-time and freelance experts
• Establishing policies that improve and promote company flourishing
• Gathering and evaluating data in order to develop improvement strategies
• Visualizing where the company can go next in order to maximize stability and growth

For aspiring founders and CEOs who know they want to take advantage of the boom in professional publishing but don't know much about the industry, the right publishing operations expert can offer everything from collaborative strategic visioning to individual project task management. The inherent flexibility of the role makes it especially useful for growth-stage companies or those in the process of a restructure.

What Does Publishing Operations Look Like On the Day-to-Day?

No two days are the same for a publishing operations expert, and no task is too big or too small. Develop a new department? No problem. Make sure Task 103a gets completed and Task 103b gets kicked off? Done.

A typical day might look like:

• Holding roundtable meetings with a department to brainstorm solutions to project hurdles
• Networking with freelance creatives on behalf of a partner publisher to find new talent
• Updating a resource library to include the most current SOP for a revamped process
• Meeting with tech support to discuss potential time-saving automations or integrations
• Drafting and presenting executive proposals for new offerings or service opportunities
• Onboarding new team members and acclimatizing them to existing systems and culture
• Auditing and editing workflows, templates, and project management resources for efficiency
• Brainstorming growth opportunities with a founder or CEO after attending an industry event
• Creating and tracking company-wide KPIs to manage and meet YoY growth goals
• Consulting on individual projects to meet internal and author client expectations
• Identifying high-cost, low-yield practices and proposing resource-saving solutions

Business jargon aside, perhaps my favorite way to describe my own role as a publishing operations expert is like this:

Before I specialized in operations, I was an editor. I was trained in both structural editing and line editing. This meant that I could take a high-level view of a given manuscript and see what was and wasn't working, and suggest effective changes that got the author where they wanted to go more effectively and economically. I could also get granular, focusing on individual sentences and paragraphs, implementing tiny tweaks to create a punchier, more enjoyable read for future audiences.

I view publishing operations like manuscript editing, except instead of a book, I'm responsible for editing a business. What's working that we can add more of? What's missing that would help fill a gap? What needs to change so that those engaging with the final product can be swept up, happily carried along for the ride, instead of getting bogged down with details or confused about what to expect?

And just like every manuscript, every business is different. No two authors or CEOs are alike, and often their differences are what makes them stand out. The point is to know all the rules, so you can diagnose and fix the problem, no matter what arises. (Knowing the rules is also helpful so you can more effectively break them when you want to make an impact and stand out from the crowd.)

Ultimately, if you understand the value that an editor brings to a book, you understand the value that an operations expert brings to a publisher.

What Makes A Good Publishing Operations Expert?

As professional publishing becomes more mainstream, the role of professional operations expert may become more standardized. But for right now, it is still new. There are no degrees or certifications that directly correlate with this position, and very few individuals are going to have direct experience listed on their C/Vs. Rather, I've seen fantastic experts come to this role from positions in production, content management, author experience, and process architecture.

So how would a professional publisher vet a potential candidate for this role? Or, as has come up in a few informational interviews with the next generation of publishing careerists, how would someone go about figuring out if this role is right for them? I would suggest these three qualifiers are the ones to keep an eye out for:

A Bottom-Up Organizational Brain

Operations expertise is about understanding not just how something works but why it works. Good publishing operations experts are highly skilled at delicately taking something apart, inspecting each element, and reconstructing so it functions even better.

This is especially valuable in the realm of professional publishing, as these businesses sit at the intersection of uncharted territory and inherited rigidity. Walking the balance between respecting how things have always been done and leaving outdated processes behind requires an organizational brain that can start at the base and build from there.

Signs that someone has this trait might be:

• Experience in building processes or workflows
• Experience in editing, auditing, or quality assurance
• Experience in data analysis and visualization
• Experience teaching or creating educational content
• Certifications in project management methodologies like Scrum, EOS, etc.

A Background In Publishing

Because this is not just a standard COO position, it is important that a publishing operations expert have some experience with the publishing process. The goal is to be able to begin collaborating meaningfully as soon as possible, having already established a baseline understanding of what a publisher does and what the end goals are.

While it would be ideal if an operations expert were well-versed in the specific type of publishing done by their prospective partner, it is not always necessary. Here are some previous roles that might indicate a good lay of the land:

• Content strategy or management at an SEO marketing firm
• Client experience or project management at a professional or hybrid publisher
• Literary agent or acquisitions editor at a hybrid or traditional publisher
• Freelance book coach who offers publishing support as part of their packages
• Author who has experience self-publishing or working with hybrid or professional publishers

Ongoing Industry Participation

Publishing operations experts are not usually externally facing, and probably tend to prefer deep work to networking. That said, a huge piece of the publishing operations puzzle is future-proofing through innovation. The niche still has so much growing to do, and is constantly evolving. Having a finger on the pulse of the industry as a whole is critical, not just vertically but horizontally.

The best publishing operations experts will be able to give their partners the lay of the land and advise on next steps with confidence and nuance. Some questions to consider when discussing a publishing operations role are:

• What is an exciting trend you are seeing across the publishing industry right now?
• What is something that a publishing company did that failed miserably, and what can we learn from it?
• Who is someone that you'd absolutely love to invite to be on your publishing team, if you had the opportunity?
• How do freelance publishing creatives feel about their prospects right now, and how are you seeing those hopes or anxieties being met?
• What is one misconception others have about the publishing industry that you would like to see change?

Who Should Work With A Publishing Operations Expert?

Every publishing company should have at least one person in charge of their day-to-day operations. But not everyone is the best candidate for a publishing operations expert. Some publishers effectively spread the role across multiple contributors. Others are established sufficiently that the flexibility and growth mindset brought by a publishing operations expert would not be put to good use.

Here's a helpful rubric to use to determine if partnering with a professional publishing operations expert is the best next step:

• You are starting a publishing company and do not have prior publishing operations experience yourself
• Your publishing company is entering a growth stage and you want to scale efficiently while leveling up your YoY impact and backlist
• Your publishing company is going through a downsize or restructure and you want to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future
• Your business wants to start a publishing department to create resources in-house and you aren't sure where to start or what it would look like

If any of these scenarios sound like you, it might be a good time to start looking into partnering with a professional publishing operations expert. Feel free to schedule a free 30-minute chat with me if you'd like more information about what this could look like for you.

And if you're someone with a background in publishing looking to expand your career horizons by becoming a publishing operations expert, you are also welcome to schedule an informational interview. I'd love to talk about what that trajectory looked like for me!