It doesn’t always take two years to get from a book deal to a publishing date, but in my case—because I was quite lucky—it has. (Lucky! you say. Yes, as I will explain below.)
When I tell friends about the publishing process, one of the most common misconceptions I encounter is about the role of the editor. People ask if I like the editor I’ve “been assigned,” and they either assume by editor I mean someone charged with spotting typos, OR, when they learn an editor asks for structural changes, will offer me words of encouragement like “Don’t give in to her! Stay true to your book!”—as if I’m in a war and the editor’s trying to destroy my artistic integrity.
The reality is quite different. For fiction, one’s editor is the person who found your manuscript in her submission pile and liked it enough to offer you a book deal. In most cases, she has to convince acquisitions teams at her publisher to even allow her to offer you money for it. And she’s in charge of moving it through revisions and all of pre-publication stages—a bit like a producer for a movie.
She isn’t a copy editor or a proof-reader, though she will hire people to do these things for your book when the manuscript is polished and ready for them. In the meantime, she asks the author to make structural revisions. In my case, my editor asked for a year’s worth of them. I rewrote most of my novel from the ground up—twice.
This news is usually what causes people to start talking about “standing my ground” and “artistic integrity.” When I tell them I’m grateful for the year spent on revisions, they’re incredulous. How could someone telling you to change your book make it something you like more?
The thing is, revising a book is a bit like revising an essay for school—just 100 times longer. You’ve got something you’re trying to express as well as possible, but you need someone—a fellow student, a teacher—to check you over and make sure your argument makes sense. As a writer, I know what I want to say. What I don’t know is whether it’s coming through to the reader. The best kind of editors figure out what you’re trying to say and help you say it, better.
What did we work on for that year of revisions? Things I knew were problems already but didn’t know how to solve. Such as:
- Pacing. Numerous readers complained with the earlier draft that they started to feel bored but couldn’t figure out why. My editor figured out why, and we fixed it—which didn’t require writing new scenes so much as moving the original ones around—and then rewriting them to fit the new spots they were in.
- Character development. I knew one of my characters basically didn’t have an arc but didn’t know what to do about it; my editor made me keep at until I found it.
- Bad writing habits. We all have them; I know what mine are; they’re the crutches I use when I’m tyring to hammer out a scene while tired. (You know you’re having an uninspired day when the characters start doing a lot of eyebrow raising). These were the last to go, as we worked on the line level to make sure the prose was as polished as it could be.
At the time, I thought that year in revisions was going to kill me, and I can’t count the number of times I actually slammed my forehead on the keyboard in frustration as I struggled to untangle knots I couldn’t see my way out of. But now, I’m proud of what my book has become, and grateful that I had the luxury—as not all authors do—of having the time I needed to get it there.
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That all took the first year. But what accounts for the SECOND year, between finishing those big revisions and and October 2019 when the book comes out? A brief timeline:
-I begin writing the sequel, aiming to finish it by the time the first book hits shelves (in other words, I have 12 months to do a process that, for the first book, took 5 years—but now I’ve got an amazing editorial team to help me through it.)
-The first book changes hands from the editor to the copy editor, who goes over it for consistency, grammar, and typos, then back to me and the editor for approval
-From there it goes on to design, who lay it out in a design program and start to make it look like a real book
-In a charmingly analog holdover, the publisher overnights a printed version of the designed manuscript to me, and I mark it up for final changes
-The editor finalizes jacket copy (the official blurb that pitches the book) and works with a designer and illustrator to create a cover.
-Once jacket copy, cover, and pages are deemed good enough to go, galleys—otherwise known as advance reader copies or ARCs—are printed. This is a limited pre-publication printing of not-for-sale copies that will be distributed to reviewers, bloggers, and at conventions to generate interest in the book before it hits shelves.
-The book is proofread AGAIN to eliminate any typos not spotted in galleys for final publication (we really do try to get rid of them, guys!)
-I start pestering everyone I know to preorder my book so that its first week sales are high when it goes on sale October 15 (In fact, you can do that already! Check FIREBORNE out on Amazon, B&N, or Indiebound)
-October 15, Book 1 hits shelves and arrives on doorsteps.
-Around the same time, I turn in Book 2 and this whole process repeats while I begin writing Book 3, because it’s a trilogy.
Whew!