Traditional publishing process
As one of my recent posts says, I’ve been doing some research about the traditional publish process and how it works. While I do not yet have a solid understanding of how long these processes are, I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of what happens and in what order. This is more of a general overview, as more specific details will change between different publishing houses.
(all parts of the process listed below the cut)
1) Querying
When you’re done writing your manuscript, and you have decided it is as polished as it can be with the current resources you have, you start to query agents. This is usually done through email. It is important to make sure you do your research about the agents you want to query beforehand, and don’t query agents who don’t seem to be qualified, or who don’t seem to be the right fit for you or your manuscript. It is better to not have an agent, than to have a bad agent, and querying an agent you won’t want to represent you is a waste of everyone’s time. Make sure to follow the agent’s guidelines when you query.
Your initial query will not be your whole manuscript. That’s way too long for an agent to go through. But if an agent is interested by your submission, they may ask for a partial, which is usually somewhere around the first fifty pages, and/or they may ask for a full, which is your full manuscript. In some cases, you will get an R&R, standing for revise and resubmit, which is pretty much what it sounds like; you will revise your manuscript, and then resubmit it.
2) Choosing an agent
If an agent decides they want to represent your work, you and the agent will get on a call and hash out what the process would be moving forward, and what the relationship between you and the agent would be. Based on this, if you think that the agent is going to be a good fit for you and your book, do NOT say yes right away. Let them know that you would like two weeks to make your decision. This is pretty much industry standerd. In that time, you are going to email all of the other agents who have not gotten back to you and let them know that you have an offer. This gives these other agents a chance to make a counter-offer if they would like. If other agents do make a counter-offer, decide which offer seems like the best one for you and your book after the original two weeks, and let them know.
3) Revising your manuscript
Some, but not all, agents are editorial. This means that they will work with you to revise and polish your manuscript further. If this is the case, you and your agent will work on your book, possibly incorporating rounds of beta readers. Once you and your agent decide that it is the best it can be at this stage, you will begin to go on submission.
4) Going on submission.
When you’re on submission, your agent will begin pitching your manuscript to editors at publishing houses. This is not unlike querying, only on a slightly smaller (though just as important) scale; agents act as gatekeepers, meaning that there are a lot fewer things on submission than there are being queried.
Depending on the relationship you’ve set up with your agent, you may or may not be aware of what editor responses are. Some authors like to know everything that’s going on in the process, others just want to know when an editor picks up your work, leaving the rest to the agent. Both of these options are completely fine, and it has more to do with personal preference than anything else.
5) Acquisitions
If an editor decides that they want to work with you and your book, then you move on to acquisitions. This is when a publisher will pitch a book to the rest of the publishing house. Your book is not alone in these meetings; usually there are several books being pitched in the same time frame. The various teams will discuss whether or not publishing your book makes sense financially, and if there’s a market and readers to sell the book to. Remember: publishing is a business.
6) Getting your book deal
If your book passes Acquisitions and the publisher decides to publish your book, you will get a book deal. It is then up to your agent to negotiate the deal to get you the best possible outcome. Your agent should NEVER go with what the original deal is.
Be careful to read through the whole contract before you sign it. If you’re not careful, you can give away rights that you didn’t intend to, including audio or foreign rights. Also, your publisher may claim rights to the series, meaning that if the book doesnt’ sell well, or you don’t get a deal on future books, you will not be able to publish sequels through another publishing house. Always be wary of phrases such as “in perpetuity”
7) Your advance
In traditional publishing, you will get an advance when you publish a book. This is a sum of money that is payed to you, and is frequently split into two or three parts. The first is usually when you sign your contract, and other important milestones, such as when you complete your manuscript with your editor’s approval, and when you publish. Your advance is the publisher’s prediction of how much money the book will bring in, after the publishing house and your agent have taken their cut (in other words, it’s the publishing house’s prediction of what you will make in royalties off of your book.). So long as you uphold your end of the contract, the money is yours to keep (minus taxes, which are high); you do not have to give any of it back to the publisher. You will not yet earn royalties at this point (more on that ahead)
8) Editing
During the editing process, you will likely work with several different people. The first stage of edits is developmental edits. This is when you’re delving into the deeper structure of your book. During this stage, it is completely possible to cut or add entire scenes, or sometimes large portions of the book to make it the best it can possibly be.
Then there are line edits. This is when you and your editor will go into the sentences and paragraphs. You will be looking for things like flow, pacing within scenes, and redundant phrases or words.
Then there are line edits. This goes in even further. Your editor will look for places where there can be better wording, fix punctuation, and generally clean things up on a word by word level.
Finally there’s the proofread. There are usually several rounds of this, each one to try and catch any of the little mistakes that fell through the cracks on previous rounds of editing. Usually, several people will read through your manuscript to find these little errors.
As you may have noticed, edits start large and big picture, and then narrow down. The point of this is that there’s no use agonizing over trivial mistakes when you may need to cut or add entire chapters. And if you start with the small stuff, you’re just going to have to do it over and over and over as the overall content changes.
7) Promotion and Book Design
While your book is in the later stages of editing, the promo team will begin the promotional campaign. Depending on where you are in the publisher’s list (more advantageous books get pushed nearer to the top), the amount of promo help you will get will vary. You will likely have to help promote your book as well.
This is also the time when cover designers will be creating your book cover and others will be formatting your book. Depending on your contract, you may or may not get a say in the cover design, but the publishing house usually gets the final say.
Once the book is fully formatted, you will also get a number of ARC books (ARC standing for Advance Reader Copy). You can use these books as promotional tools. For example, having people on booktube review your book.
Members of the publishing house may also reach out to places such as libraries and brick-and-mortar bookstores (such as Barnes and Noble) to carry your book
8) Book Launch
When the big day arrives, your book goes live! Congratulations! You have successfully published your book.
9) Royalties
Depending on how well your book does, and how big your advance was, you may or may not earn royalties. The larger your advance, the harder it is to begin earning royalties. The reason is that you have to earn back all of the money from your advance. Meaning that after the publishing house takes their cut, and after your agent has taken their 15%, the cumulative amount leftover must surpass the amount of your advance before you can earn any royalties.
Note:
As I have not published yet, either through the traditional or indie route, I cannot say for sure what this is like on a first-hand account. That being said, what I have listed above is what seemed to be consistant across several sources. If you want to find more information, Alexa Donne’s youtube channel is an EXCELENT resource. If you have more to add, or corrections to make, do not be afraid to reblog with your comments.