From Manuscript to Shelf – An Overview of the Traditional Publication Process (Patreon)

One of the most-requested topics in my nomination poll and beyond was a timeline of the traditional publishing process, so I’m going to do my best to give a non-exhaustive but hopefully-useful overview of what most book publication processes look like, specifically in adult SF/F book-length fiction.

Every book’s journey is unique, and some can vary from this outline by a great deal. This overview is not meant to be a universal blueprint, and your experience is likely to vary. As an example, my first novel was solicited from me directly, so I hired an agent after receiving an offer of publication. And that book was published very quickly (I sold it in Jan/Feb, it published in July).

But what this should do is help benchmark expectations and to pull back the curtain a bit on what happens on the publisher side.

Manuscript

Step One - you’ve written an excellent novel. It hits genre conventions, it fits into a reasonable word-count range for the category, and you’re able to pitch it effectively and accurately. This is pretty much the cost of entry in traditional publication. As with all things, there are exceptions – but most people and most novels are not the exception.

Let’s assume submission via an agent. There are a lot of writings on the process of getting an agent, so I’m going to move quickly to the publisher’s side that isn’t talked about as much.

Submission

Once you have an agent working with you on a manuscript, the agent will select a number of editors to pitch the novel to. Agents have their own processes and methods, so I won’t dwell on this part too much. A good agent will actively pitch your novel following a deliberate plan to maximize your chances of getting a good deal for the novel.

One or more editors get excited about the novel and follow their internal processes for saying “I want to buy this book.” In a small house, that process might just be the Editor-Publisher saying “I’m going to offer on this book” to their staff, or maybe it looks like an Acquiring Editor bringing the book to an editorial board (which is almost always what is required at a bigger publisher). In some cases, getting approval to acquire a book involves the editor passing the novel around for other people at the house to read before going to editorial board/acquisitions.

An editorial board/acquisitions meeting can take a few different forms, but tends to have some number of the other staffers at the house all reading some of the novel and weighing in on whether the house should buy the book. That might include staff from sales, publicity, sub-rights, etc. By default, the Publisher/Managing Director will have the final say on whether to offer. 

Often times a P&L projection is made to ask “Do we think this book has a good shot of being profitable?” P&L stands for Profit & Loss, and is in reality a form of publishing divination where someone makes their best guess on how many copies the book will sell in different forms and what it will cost to publish the book (likely advance, static costs for the publisher, art & design, etc.).

For the sake of the exercise, let’s say that the P&L looks favorable and the publisher’s decision is “go try to buy the book.”

The publisher offers (with an advance and terms depending on a lot of factors) and then the agent tries to get other offers if that’s part of the plan. Then the agent will negotiate between different offers and/or with the one offering house. The offer at this stage is the verbal offer or offer letter. A publisher will often detail the high-level terms at this stage, knowing that the full details will be settled in the contract. The high-level stuff looks like the advance, the number of books being acquired, the base royalty rates, and some other details as appropriate.

But let’s assume the agent and author are satisfied with the publisher’s offer. The author accepts! The agent and publisher negotiate the specific terms, expanding on the offer letter.

Pre-Publication

Once the deal is agreed, the process gets more complicated as several things happen at once. Let’s take them one at a time, though all of these different processes feed into and out of one another, including sometimes creating roadblocks a la “we can’t design the cover until we’re sure which direction the edits are going” or “we can’t get the promotional push underway without the cover.” It can get very tricky.

Editorial

“Editor” is a job with many hats. The big ones are the work of acquiring books, the work of hands-on-editing, and the work of project management. For this exercise let’s assume one person is wearing all three hats (they stack). After acquisition, the editor works with the author on the manuscript, starting with developmental edits, then line edits, followed by copy edits and page proofs. 

Here’s a quick explanation of the different editorial steps:

1) Developmental edits are the 10,000 foot view, focusing on structure, theme, and major elements of worldbuilding/characterization. 

2) The line edit is more hands-on, chapter by chapter and line-by-line. 

3) Copy edits focus on grammar, continuity/consistency, clarity, etc. 

4) Page proofs are the last check to make sure that no errors were introduced when the book was typeset. 

The editorial work on the first two passes (developmental and line) is generally done by publisher staff, while the latter two passes (copy edits and page proofs) are often done by outside editors with oversight by the acquiring editor. This process is timed to make sure to hit the deadlines for printing galleys/ARCs and having the manuscript ready to share with the sales team and major account buyers.

At each stage, the author reads through the editorial comments and questions and uses those notes to improve the manuscript as they see fit. The author has final say on the manuscript, but some contracts include a clause that says that if the publisher isn’t happy with the final manuscript, they can choose to not publish the book (this is rare). It’s better to talk through disagreements in the editorial process if at all possible. Agents come in handy here.

Production

Most books acquired by traditional publishers come out 12 months or more after acquisition (closer to 18 or 24 months after for many YA books). Because of this, the publisher’s art director will ideally start working on the art brief shortly after acquisition, developing a vision for the cover and how that cover best represents and positions the book in the way the publisher wants. Once the cover is in, the art director, cover artist, or someone in the production department will design the title, author byline, and any other text to go on the front cover (like a strapline/shoutline). Right now in the traditional world, it’s best to have a book’s cover ready around 8 months ahead of publication, or earlier if possible (see the sales process below).

After the MSS has finished copy edits, the MSS is handed to the production team. The production team typesets the MSS, adds the standard front and back matter (copyright page, dedication, title page, acknowledgements, glossary, etc.) and the design of the full cover wrap (front cover, spine, back cover). The book goes to the printers in time to be printed and shipped to the warehouses just over to more than a month before release.

Ebook production splits from physical book production around the typesetting phase, turning a (usually) word file into an epub and mobi for the ebook retailers, with hyperlinks as needed, a table of contents, etc.

Sales Process

Shortly after acquisition, someone in the sales or editorial team will write the TI (Title Information) sheet. TI sheets (or TIs) are very similar to catalog pages. They contain a snapshot of all of the most important metadata (cover, publication date, author, genre, cover copy, cover, etc.) as well as other material used by the sales team to drum up excitement for the book.

Internally (as in within the publishing company or to a distributor), books can be presented up to two times in a big way – once at sales launch, and then once at sales conference. In my experience, launch is a smaller, strategy-level presentation focusing on lead titles and soliciting feedback from the sales team about books that need more attention/buy-in. Sales conference is the “everything’s ready, here are the books, go sell!” meeting where everything does need to be ready for a book to have its best chance to succeed with buyers.

Buyers (indie bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.) tend to want to see a cover very early (since a good cover makes a book much easier to sell), so as the sales representatives prepare for their meetings, they’re drumming up everything they can – early blurbs, a finished cover, finalized comparative titles and promotional plans. The publisher’s representatives go in to their sales calls with everything they can get and try to tell the best story of why that book specifically is great and deserving of support from the account. 

Reps sell to Amazon, B&N, and other key accounts around six to eight months before the book’s publication date, and reps will sell in the field (to indie bookstores, wholesalers, etc.) several months to most of a year ahead of pub date. Note also that field sales reps are selling dozens and dozens or hundreds of books in each sales meeting. When I was a sales rep, I mostly sold on a two-season year, so I was selling six months of books from every publisher my company represented in each sales call during the season. Unfortunately, it’s not viable to push as hard as you can for every single book. Reps have to be strategic with their time and focus, following the direction/guidance of the sales team and their own judgement.

After sales calls, reps confirm the orders from accounts and feed that information to the production team to help set the first printing amount. A first printing needs to at least cover the initial orders, and more practically, you want to be able to cover some number of weeks or months’ worth of orders, depending on how fast you expect the book to move. Setting print runs is its own arcane science deserving of a separate essay.

Marketing/Publicity

As a TI and the vision for a book is developed, the marketing publicity team will help set targets for blurbs/endorsements as well as ideally giving input on the packaging/positioning for the book. 

Marketing and Publicity are different roles, but they are sometimes combined in one role or department. These staffers will decide who to send ARCs/galleys, how to pitch reviewers, what types of promotional materials to create (if budget allows), where to buy ads, etc. Promotional plans should be developed early enough to include the author and their buy-in, so that everyone is on the same page in how they’re talking about the book and where they are focusing their efforts. 

Publicity pitches, ad buys, blurbs, convention appearances, and everything else in the promotional plan should stem from a unified vision of what the book is and who the primary audience is going to be, but also includes flexibility and paying close attention so that the team can pivot if something isn’t working or if a new opportunity presents itself. Here’s an example - a book about a ghost-hunting hockey player is pitched mostly to urban fantasy fans but a bit to hockey fans and the publishing team pivots into pushing more on the hockey angle when the book gets a big shout-out by hockey players with a large platform.

Distribution & Release

Finished books are shipped out to major accounts most of a month before the publication date. This is most relevant for wholesalers and for accounts with their own internal distribution system (Amazon, B&N, etc.)

The promotional train is often up and running a month before release, with early blog posts, reviews, pre-order campaigns, and more. The precise shape of the plan depends on the book and each book’s launch strategy should draw on the publisher’s strengths, the book’s strengths, and the author’s strengths.

Conclusion

There are a ton of small, interconnected steps in the publishing process, and to talk through every single one of them would be a book-length project at least. But I hope this has provided a useful overview of what happens inside a publisher to go from manuscript to book and launch. 

As I’ve said before, good communication is essential and will help you set expectations with your publisher so you can hold them accountable and know where you need to be doing what to give your book the best shot of success.