Frequently Asked Questions
(and Answers!)

We’ve produced thousands of beautiful books, but it’s the “Girl Friday experience” that’s kept authors coming back for two decades. Your path to publishing begins with our evaluating your project, your goals, and the best available opportunities across sales channels and reader engagement points. We know that publishing a book is an exciting journey, and that it’s also demanding and complex. That’s why we create custom internal teams that support you, including a dedicated publishing manager and marketing strategist.

They do more than just sell (though they do!):

• Our books regularly reach #1 New Release and Bestseller status in their category on Amazon, popping their visibility and driving conversion.

• They rake in awards across categories including Fiction, Multicultural Nonfiction, Memoir, Business and Economy, and more.

• They garner stellar industry reviews and impressive numbers of 5-star average reader reviews.

• They land rights deals and are published in scores of languages and in various countries.

We’re known for our high quality and distinctive design and your book will be gorgeous no matter which print option you choose. From print-on-demand to offset printing to special editions, we are fully equipped to bid, contract, and manage any type of printing, both overseas and domestically.

It generally takes about eight to ten months from finishing your manuscript to having books available for purchase. We can work with you to accelerate schedules and meet hard deadlines, so please ask and we’ll see what we can do!

Following submission and acceptance, we’ll craft a book plan and schedule just for you. Unlike other firms, we provide a dedicated publishing manager who acts as your personal consultant. Your in-house team also includes a marketing strategist, art director, and production editor, who will arrange vetted specialists, including a designer, developmental editor, copyeditor, proofreader, and ebook converter. Other specialists may be engaged depending on your project scope and genre. Our team does the work and consults with you on approvals.

It’s important to enter the editorial phase with a strong manuscript. If you’re not there yet, we offer customized book coaching to help you refine your concept, develop a strong hook, understand your audience, build a structure and framework for your message, establish your voice, create a chapter outline, and position your book for success. Your coach can also be available to you throughout the writing process to serve as a sounding board.

We distribute through all major online retail channels, including Amazon, Chapters, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble.com, Books-A-Million, Bookshop.org, and more worldwide. Our reps also sell into gift and specialty retail, libraries, airport bookstores, and indie bookstores across the country.

We produce gorgeous hardcovers and paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks as a matter of course, though we’ve also created boxed sets, special editions, and even pop-up books! Your publishing team will advise you on specs, format, and pricing for your project.

We create custom proposals based on your manuscript and your publishing goals. We encourage you to procure multiple bids—it’s an important decision!—and compare apples to apples. Read the fine print on custom vs. templated work, the scope of editorial services and marketing support included, and the makeup of your dedicated project team.

Books provide a variety of opportunities for ROI. Many of our clients use their books to establish their position as an industry expert. This enables them to secure speaking engagements, grow their client base, raise their rates, and more. We also encourage authors to think of rights sales and different forms of content creation as possible revenue-earning channels.

Our hybrid publishing authors receive 70 to 80% of net proceeds while custom publishing clients receive 100% of net proceeds.

Yes! Our in-house strategic marketing program is the best in the business. We use our decades of experience to craft customized digital marketing campaigns based on your objectives, book genre, and target audience. Your strategist will perform in-depth market research on your target readers’ buying habits in order to determine the most effective sales channels. We advise you on the most worthwhile tactics to pursue—and execute those on your behalf, if you want us to.

We prioritize digital marketing over traditional publicity in our selling strategies for most authors. However, we do offer a PR Groundwork package for our authors that offers an excellent basis. For clients who want more elaborate, complex campaigns, we have a number of firms we are pleased to recommend.

We’re called “Girl Friday” because our founders, Ingrid and LAM, realized that our collective publishing and editing journeys and experiences gave us the ability to help clients in many different ways—from ghostwriting to agent pitches to developmental editing and more. We also liked the irony, taking a phrase that in conventional wisdom meant “a secretary” and reclaiming her power. We were the female heads of our own firm and completely in charge of our business arc and our destiny. The only ones we get coffee for are ourselves (or each other), or you if you come into the office!

Of course!

If you’re an author who values collaborative (dare we say fun?) relationships and communication; who craves honesty and transparency about this opaque world of publishing; who wants to put out the very best version of their book, from dev edit to cover; who needs a skilled publishing advocate and consultant on speed dial; and who demands equal belief in you and your book; well then, you’ve arrived.