Is Summer Really a "Slow Season" in Book Publishing?

A week in the life of a book publicist in June

Every year around this time, you start hearing the same thing repeated across the publishing industry: “It’s slow season.”

And, to be fair, in a lot of ways it is. For starters, a large chunk of the industry shifts to summer Fridays, people disappear on vacations, and meetings become impossible to schedule because half of the attendees are OOO.

On top of that, some literary agents temporarily close to submissions or slow their pitching activity.

And on top of that, bookstores often reduce or pause event programming for the summer months, especially in cities where locals leave town and tourists aren’t necessarily checking bookstore calendars.

And despite a few hundred strategically timed “beach read” releases, people really do buy fewer books during this period. Last year, Publishers Weekly reported continued softness in summer publishing sales, with August sales down 4.4% year-over-year, following another decline in July. Adult nonfiction was hit especially hard, dropping 17% in August alone.

There are probably a million reasons for this. People are outside more, or turn their spending toward bigger ticket expenses, like flights, restaurants, weddings, and concert tickets, instead of books. There also aren’t many major gifting holidays driving purchases.

So, yes, you might look at all this and label the whole season “slow.” But despite that, I’ve realized something funny after working inside the industry for a few years: everything still feels pretty fast.

Slow externally, busy internally

I think the disconnect comes from the fact that publishing works so far ahead of itself that the season you’re physically living in is rarely the season you’re mentally working on.

For example, my team is already actively preparing for fall books, holiday coverage, and even spring 2027 (it sounds crazy, but it’s true).

It’s not just publishers working ahead, but the partners we work with, too. Editors at magazines and newspapers aren’t building holiday gift guides in November; in many cases, they’re building them in July. Print publications especially need massive lead time for writing, design, approvals, photography, layouts, printing, and mailing.

Even beyond holiday pitching, summer can actually be pretty busy in publicity because there are so many seasonal hooks to pitch around. There’s:

• Pride Month

• Juneteenth

• Father’s Day

• Fourth of July

• Summer travel

• Beach reads

• Summer produce

• Back-to-school coverage

• Fall preview roundups

…and that’s before you even get into evergreen pitching. Publicists can continue finding opportunities for books months—or even years—after publication, depending on the subject matter and ties to current cultural conversations.

So even if we’re not working on anything “current,” we’re gearing up for fall titles, and still actively pitching books that came out in the spring.

What an actual week on the job this summer looked like

If anything, summer feels like an opportunity to get your ducks in a row before the chaos of fall fully kicks in. It can become harder to move large collaborative projects forward, so focus turns to smaller tasks, big-picture brainstorming, or other planning that you can get done on your own.

Here’s a look at what I got up to last week:

Monday

Things started off per usual with our weekly pre-acquisitions meeting. This is a time for the publicity and marketing team to review the book proposals that came in the week prior and discuss whether we think each book has merit. Sometimes, this comes from a campaigns point of view (is the author a candidate for interviews, do they have any industry connections, would they go on tour, do they have a platform or community around their work, etc), and sometimes from a more general point of view (is there a market for the book, how does it fit with our catalog, do the projected sales figures look achievable, etc).

The rest of my day was meeting-free, so I caught up on my weekly admin tasks, like sending asset requests, compiling links to all the press coverage that came in the week before, and prepping pitches for the rest of the week.

Tuesday

Following up on Monday’s pre-acquisitions was—you guessed it—the actual acquisitions meeting. I sat on a (virtual) roundtable with our sales, editorial, and comms team. Out of the four proposals that were raised, two were accepted, one was sent back for revisions, and one was rejected. Even with some colleagues out of town, we’ll continue to hold acquisition meetings throughout the summer.

Tuesday is one of my in-office days, so I made use of the in-house mail team and sent out a few book copies. One of the other main priorities for the afternoon was emailing bookstores, in-person podcasts, TV producers, and local influencers in order to start pinning down an East Coast author tour for November. That might seem awfully far away, but when an author will only be in each city for 24-48 hours, you don’t want to risk your targets making other plans. Lock them in early!

I also spent time mapping out campaign targets and marketing ideas for my assigned fall titles. In two months, when things are in full swing, I’ll look back and thank myself for coming up with ideas in advance.

Wednesday

Once a month on Wednesdays, the entire imprint comes together to share a business update. Usually, that means representatives from sales, editorial, production, and comms each give a short presentation on what they’ve been up to, how things are going, and exciting things to expect in the future. Except, well, it happened at 6 am EST (a very reasonable 11 am GMT in London), so I started my day by watching the video recording.

After a few more routine meetings (bouncing ideas off the editorial staff, catching up with my manager, etc), the major focus of the afternoon was compiling our holiday gifting catalog, creating a design brief, and sending it off to our graphic designer for formatting. This needs to go out in July, so it’s important to start compiling materials early.

Thurdsay

Most Thursdays, including this one, begin with a casual brainstorming session with rotating members of the editorial team. This is a chance for everyone to toss out trends they’re seeing, content creators they’re watching, and articles they’re reading. Half of the purpose is to keep our finger on the cultural pulse, and the other half is to ponder: could this be a book?

Throughout the rest of the morning, I created media lists and scheduled press release send-outs for three books publishing this fall. Each author was announcing their book online that week, which means it’s time to spread the word far and wide, even with months to go until pub day.

That afternoon, my manager and I nipped out of the office to catch what we could of the Knicks parade (I promise we weren’t playing hooky; it was our company-approved lunch break!).

To finish off the afternoon, I met with a potential brand partner to go over event ideas for an author collab/October book launch. Exciting things are brewing…

Friday

Well, this is a bit of a special case, as the office was closed in celebration of Juneteenth. But, normally, Fridays in summer are a great time to clean and sort your inbox in peace.

Saturday

You thought I was done, didn’t you! We had two authors on tour in NYC that week, and I spent the afternoon going to the newly opened Wild Sorrel Books in the East Village (if you’re a local cookbook fan, it’s a must-see) for a casual book signing, then over to the Chelsea Market for an ice cream shop pop-up promoting the book. God, I love my job.

We have one more author event this week, and that will be the last one until August. I love author tours, but I’ll admit it’ll be nice to have my weekends clear and stay in the same zip code for a while.

So… is summer actually a slow season?

I think the answer is yes and no.

Externally, summer is slower. Internally, though, the machine never really stops moving.

Even when the current moment feels quieter, someone is already editing next year’s lead title, pitching next winter’s trend story, designing next spring’s catalog, or trying to finalize a cover before half the team leaves for August vacation.

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