A Production Schedule

Production schedules have recently been mentioned — I believe it was in an interesting blog by Russell Blake, which people have been discussing on a yahoo loop I follow. My question is, how detailed should a production schedule be? And what do you think it should include?

I’m thinking it could be as simple as the book will be finished by this date, the cover by that one, then the formatting, marketing and then publication of the book (notice, marketing comes before the publication date–too frequently with my books, at least I’m so focused on getting everything done I forget that).

On the other hand, a publication schedule, I suppose, could get even more detailed and could include such things as when each chapter will be done, or at least a rough estimate of how fast the book will get written. When it needs to be in the editor’s hands and then, possibly even a detailed marketing plan.

That is my goal in a publication schedule. I’ve got a very rough one that I make up very four to six months, detailing for myself what I’m going to be working on, when.  It’s more rough: I’d like this book to be done by this date, to the editor by that one (about two to three weeks later, allowing time for the book to sit for a week before I get to editing it and then allowing myself two weeks to edit.

Clearly, now that I think about it, my production schedule is much too mushy. I don’t have built in there when I need to get the cover done or when that marketing is going to begin, let alone exactly what marketing I’m going to be doing, which, I think is an important part of that schedule.

It’s hard to make such plans when a book is still more of an idea in my head than a reality on paper, but conceptually, at least, I know that I should be doing this. Hopefully, by the time the book is halfway done, I’ll have gotten more serious about creating this production schedule–to the point where I’ve actually begun to do it seriously.

What about you? Do you create a production schedule? If so, when? And what do you include? How detailed does it get?