From Manuscript to Bookshelf: How a Book Gets Published
Bridget, our art book editor extraordinaire, walks through each step of the book-publishing process.
When you work in publishing all day long, you come to think of the process of making books as being this natural and organic thing that everyone understands just as intuitively as you do. But alas, many of the processes of book publishing are not familiar to the general public, or are cloaked in industry jargon, or both. Let’s demystify some of this stuff, shall we?
This is a general overview of some of the most usual publishing practices that we use around here—of course, there are always exceptions and other possible scenarios that come in to play from time to time, and other publishers may do things differently. But here are the basics of how it works here at Chronicle Books, in a dozen simple steps.
To kick things off, you send in a book proposal. Publishers have submissions guidelines telling you what to include in your proposal and how to send it. Chronicle’s submission guidelines live here. (And a handy post I wrote about how to propose an art book lives here.)
Step 2: Initial Conversations and Approval
First, there are some initial conversations between you (or your agent) and your would-be editor. If the editor likes your proposal and wants to publish it, he or she takes it to an acquisitions board meeting for official green-lighting.
The editor is now empowered to make you an offer. This is a formal letter outlining the materials you will deliver, due dates for those deliverables, how much the publisher is offering to pay you, and other details.
The financial piece of a standard publishing offer takes the form of an advance against royalties. An advance is a sum you are paid upfront to help offset your costs of working on your book. Royalties are the percentage of the sale of each copy of the book that you earn. Down the road, when your book starts selling, the royalties on each copy go towards earning out the advance you were already paid. When enough royalties have accrued to zero out the advance, you start getting royalty checks. But even if your book never sells enough copies to earn out your advance, the advance is still yours to keep—you do not have to pay the balance back to the publisher.
You (or your agent) negotiate a deal with your editor. Once you’ve reached an agreement you both are happy with, you virtually shake hands and you have a book deal. A contract follows several weeks later. Since the contract contains a good deal more detail (and a lot more legalese) than the offer letter did, there may now be some new points for negotiation. Once that’s done, the contract is signed and everything is official.
Step 5: Writing/Art Making
You go write a book. Or, in the case of many of my authors since I work on art books—you go make the art for a book.
Read the rest over on our blog!
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