Business Post (Exclusive): Trad Pub - Editing and Timelines (Patreon)

Let's talk about one of the things that I've now had the chance to explore on both sides, working with PRH. Mind you, my experience is mine - I have heard a lot of other (terrible) experiences and other, great ones too. So, this is rather singular; but part of the reason it worked out was what I went looking for when I started.

So, let's get into it. Trad pub - editing and editing timelines, especially contrasting A Thousand Li and the Blade that Remains.

A Thousand Li - Editing (Or Lack of It)

For those of you who don’t know, A Thousand Li was self-pubbed before Ace Books (a division of Penguin Random House (PRH) ) licensed the print rights from me. I can’t go into the deal too much, but some of this is public information, like the fact that it’s a print only deal.

Now, because the book was licensed for print-only, the amount of editing that could / would be done was minimal. Mind you, it was something we discussed and agreed upon, not something that was forced on me – but to keep ebook, audio and print similar(ish), this was the compromise made.

However, Ace Books did want to make the print books more attractive, so one of the agreements we had was that I would write a short story that was exclusive for the print editions.

I was actually fine with that, and I’ve really enjoyed writing them. For those who don’t know, the short stories are all linked and involve Fa Yuan, starting with when she ascends the waterfall and featuring her and a few other semi-familiar faces (if you know the series). We get to see what she’s doing while Wu Ying is busy that first year and also hints about what the second arc of the series is all about.

Anyway, we’re talking about editing. So no dev editing or line editing was conducted, only copy editing and proofing and final proofs.

Yeah, they have like 3 rounds still, with A Thousand Li. The first (copy) was to pick out weirdness like the wrong name being used or the wrong word, the proofing was to check over for inconsistencies in transfer or anything else we missed, and finally, the final proofs were one last look at the files being sent to the printers.

This is very much a ‘geared towards print’ version of publication.

Now, along the way, I also got to see other things – like suggested design for the headers, the title pages, font choices, etc. All that is formatting and design but not editing, and often came between copy and proofing.

In all these cases, I had to go over the book (or at least their comments) to highlight where things might be wrong or off. When you hit proofing, you’re not actually supposed to be editing the sentences anymore because it will throw off the design.

Might make more sense in the next section where we go through all the stages with The Blade that Remains.

Mind you, most of this happened in a period of 4-6 months, so we would get first copies and then proofs coming in really fast, one after the other.

The Blade that Remains (TBtR) – Full Editing

Now, for the Blade that Remains, editing was very different. This was the whole process from start to finish, with some minor deviations. I'll discuss them here.

For my agent (Seth Fishman), he normally wants to read whatever I might pitch beforehand, make suggestions to help strengthen it. For the Blade that Remains, however, due to the way the entire signing occurred, he never had a chance to provide his feedback before Anne (my editor) read it.

Once Anne had read it, we actually had an editors call beforehand. Same with the other tradpub house that we pitched the book to. However, the comments that Anne had (over just a simple readthrough) showed me how insightful she was and her suggestions had me already thinking about how I could improve the work.

This is probably the most important thing - having a call with an editor beforehand to see what they think about your work. If they are not enthused, if they do not see the same vision as you do, you might not want to work with them. This is where, I think, a lot of the horror stories about editors 'changing the vision' of the book occurs, because of a mismatch between editor and author.

So, we skipped that initial agent edit, had Anne read it over, make the offer in Dec 2024 and then we waited.

Because we had A Thousand Li running at the same time, Anne had a LOT of work to do (I'm also not her only author obviously); so in many ways, we were waiting for the edits on ATL books 1-3 to be finished before she could tackle TBtR.

Mind you, one of the first changes we did make was the title. It went from my working title of 'A Father, A Son and a Demon Lord' to 'The Blade that Remains' after some discussion. I think they're still both good titles, just different markets would be attracted to each one.

Okay, so editing process I saw was:

editor call in Nov 2024

Dev Edits - Oct 2025

Line Edits - May 2026

Copy Edits - Aug 2026

First Pass Page Proofs - Oct 2026

Final Proofs - (???)

Obviously, don't have the final proofs yet.

So, by the time I finished the copy edits, I'd read over and did major and line level edits on the book 5 times.

By the time this process is over, there'll be at least 7 times that the book has gone thorugh my hand for checking for spelling mistakes and the like, with at least 5 other people on trad pub's side who have seen the book.

Now, this is a major contrast to indie editing for ATL where we had 4 revisions on my side (2 before the book went to my copy & line editor, 1 going through their edits, 1 more with the proofer) and 2 other people who saw the work (editor and proofer).

It's no wonder that there (usually) are fewer spelling or other mistakes with tradpub.

Mind you, I'm working with Ace Books (PRH), a big 5 company. If it was another company, or another division, the number of edits and what not might be significantly lower or different. So that's well worth noting.

Thoughts on the Editing Process

In some ways, going over the book over and over again is a pain. Especially by the time you hit proofs, you can't make any major changes. You're just looking for minor errors. So I hate that part, it's the kind of detail work that I fail at as an individual.

However, the dev edit process was amazing. Anne Sowards is everything you'd want in a dev editor - able to see both the intent on the books, highly complimentary (heh!) and also incisive. Her suggestions sparked off thoughts on how to fix things, highlighted problems that I generally end up repeating in my books (which I'll try to fix) and most of all, when I did things slightly differently from what she suggested, was happy with the fix that I suggested because she saw I understood the intent of her suggestions.

The dev edit process was a dream, the line edit was very good and helped clarify aspects that needed clarifying, especially to make things easier for people not as versed to read. The copy edits were, surprisingly, not terrible. I was kind of dreading them, and I ended up doing them during my VERY busy period of editing this year, but because I'd read and edited the work multiple times already, I was going through and editing 30-50 pages a day. Much, much simpler than the 10 pages a day push for other first draft edits.

Proofs still suck though. I hate those, even if they are necessary.

Hmm... I think that's about it for editing. If there are questions, happy to answer them if I can.