Approximately 3756 times a day I get asked when my book is
coming out, and nearly 100% of the queriers are SHOCKED when I tell them that it
isn’t until March 2014. (And I got my book deal almost a year ago, so imagine
the shock when I got asked back then!). Often times when I give this response,
someone mentions their friend or relative whose book is coming out next month,
and wants to know why mine isn’t coming out that soon too.
Fair enough.
But it’s a bit of complicated answer, so to save anyone from
having to hear my awkward, rambling, nonsensical speech once again, I thought
it was about time I did a blog post for the non-writers in my life to explain.
There are a couple different ways a person can go about getting
a book published. One of them is traditional publishing and another is
self-publishing.
Traditional publishing is when a publishing house (such as
Random House, Harper Collins, etc) buys the book rights from the author. They
pay the author an advance against future earnings, edit the book together with
the author, design and package the book, market the book, and distribute the book
to the public.
With self-publishing, the author basically becomes their own
publisher. The author provides the funds to publish their book (for example on
Amazon), as well as to create a cover. The author is also responsible for editing,
marketing, distribution, etc. of their book.
Both forms of publishing are valid ways to get a book out
there into reader’s hands. Each has their own positive and negative aspects,
and no one way one way is better than the other. But I’m not going to get into
detail on that because that’s not the point of this post (and also no sane
author willingly enters a conversation about traditional versus
self-publishing).
Why my book is taking so long to come out:
When you self-publish a book, you’re in charge—your book comes
out when you’re ready to put it out. When you publish through a traditional
publisher it takes much longer to see your book on the shelf (on average 1-2
years from the time you get a book deal).
My book is coming out through a traditional publisher:
Random House.
1-2 years is a long time, right? Some might say painfully
long. But a lot goes on in that time. A LOT. Here are some of the things:
- The book’s editor writes an editorial letter for
the author, marking all the areas that she thinks need work on a broader level.
This can be anything from ‘This character isn’t working for me’ to ‘I think
this particular plot needs re-thinking’. The letter can be anywhere from a single
page to 30 pages long (a friend’s letter was 28 pages!). Creating this letter takes
time—sometimes upwards of a few months as editors have many authors on their
list and other demands on their time. Of course it also takes time to complete
the changes after the author receives the letter, also sometimes months. Once
the changes are made and the author ships the book back to the editor, the
editor needs to read it again and:
- Line edit, which is basically when the editor
goes through the manuscript looking for issues on a sentence level (And that’s
if you’re lucky enough to get through just one round of major edits!). The
editor is now looking for things like awkward wording, repeat words, sentences
or paragraphs that need clarifying, etc. The editor then sends the line-edited
manuscript to the author to review, make changes, and send back. When this is
done:
- The book goes to the copy editor, who looks for
spelling and grammar errors that may have been missed and also for consistency
issues. In my experience, copyeditors are geniuses. (Fun fact: If you’re my
copyeditor, then you had to properly format ‘I want to tap that ass’ with the
right quotation marks. I like to think that she loved her life when this
happened). The author then receives the copyedited manuscript to read over,
accept the changes, and send back to the editor. After this comes:
- First page passes, wherein the book is printed
out with the proper font and spacing that will appear in the final book. This
is sent to the author, who will read it over, accept, and then send back to the
editor. Are you noticing a trend here? After this comes:
- Advance reading copies (ARCs): these are
uncorrected advanced copies of the book that come out several months before
publication. They’re sent to reviewers and book bloggers and are used in
giveaways and probably a lot of other things I don’t know about yet because I’m
not yet at this stage.
- Of course during all this time, there’s a lot
going on behind the curtains that the author never sees. The art department is
busy creating a beautiful cover for the book. Marketing and publicity are generating
media and public interest in your book. The subsidiary rights team is hawking
your book to foreign publishers all over the world. And I know I’m probably
missing many steps here.
This is all to say: it seems like a LONG time (and it is a LONG
time), but a lot of really great and important stuff is going on during that
time. So it’s all good. And stuff.
I’m starting to wonder if this blog post was more to make me
feel better.
**For a complete guide to publishing from the point when the
book is written see author Alison Cherry’s post here. Also add her book to Goodreads while you’re at it!
