How Much Do You Know About The Business Of Publishing

Over the years, I find that authors tend to only know one side of the business of publishing - they know how to write a story (OK, some don't but you get the idea). Unfortunately, so many out there simply have no idea of how books get from their computers to the bookshelves. They have no idea of how decisions are made about what books get selected, prices of books, or even the concept of book sales.

This is something EVERY author needs to know. 

Let's talk about a few.

BOOK SALES Do you know how those books get put on the shelves in book stores and your local grocery store? Do you know how long those books are there? The reality is that each month, publishers send out a box of books. When you hear an author say their book is being released in a give month, the odds are there are copies of that book in there. Then the "distribution person" shows up at the store with the box of books. You might have seen someone like this going though the store with a cart. They go to their shelves and pull EVERY book off the shelves and toss the books into a cart. They then reload the books with the books for that month. For the most part, you have 2-3 weeks of your book being on the shelf. If it does not sell out, the books are shipped back to the publisher. In the case of say, Harlequin Historicals, you might get 3-6 copies of your book at that store. If you don't sell those, these get factored into decisions about whether or not it is worth it to put those books out there the next time around. THE TAKE AWAY HERE?? Just because your book is out there doesn't mean it will sell.

ADVANCES These are based on a sliding scale. This depends on the genre, the publisher and the amount of time an author has been writing (and their sales - see above). I recently had an author submit a story to me and he openly stated that he would accept nothing less than a 6-figure deal for his debut novel. Umm, not going to happen here.

These advances are "predictions" of what the publisher thinks you will sell. It is a gamble. If you don't sell though, or make enough sales to meet that advance, the publisher has taken a loss on you. That also means that when it comes time to negotiate a new contract, the odds are you will not get a new contract. You were not able to prove you could make those sales. Sell through fast, the odds are you might see an increase in your advance. 

These advances are also based on a "standard" that is really an average from all the other books the publisher has sold that are similar to yours. Think of this as the comps of other houses around yours when you are thinking of selling your home.

THE TAKE AWAY HERE??? Publishers are not being stingy but are simply looking at market analysis.

THE TIME BETWEEN SIGNING AND BEING PUBLISHED This is a looonnngggg process. When you see the latest book on the shelf of your favorite author, you need to start backtracking in the calendar to figure out the timeline. Let's say your author just put a book out today JUNE 29. That book had to be printed which was likely 1-2 months prior (APRIL). That meant it had to be through the Copy Editor and in the circuit of all the other books 1-2 months early (FEBRUARY). Now before that, the author had to go through the editorial process with their editor which may have been a back and forth process so now we are at DECEMBER of the prior year. Are you following me so far? That means that the author submitted the full manuscript end of NOVEMBER. Assuming the author is a fast author, they were writing that book for say 3-4 months so let's assume they started it in AUGUST. Prior to that, they worked with their editor to make sure the premise was what they were looking for so now we are at JULY.

And that is for an established author who already had a contract. 12 months for that one book. 

If you are a new author think of it this way. To simplify things, I am going straight from author to publisher and skipping the agent factor. 

• Several months of sending out queries. 
• You get a response from an editor who now wants to read the full manuscript.
• If editor likes it, he/she takes it to their team where they attempt to sell it to the others.
• If editor gets that approval, the/she reaches out to you to offer you a contract.
• If you say yes it now goes to the business department to write up the contract.
• Contract is sent to you where (the odds are) you now want to take a couple of weeks to look over the contract and make sure it is what you want. Of course there are now those authors who think they are going to "negotiate things" that will be denied.
• You sign the contract and it is sent back.
• Once signed, the editor now reads the manuscript again with revision notes of things that need to be fixed to move on. You will be on a deadline here but they may give you several weeks to take care of those.
• Editor now reads it again to make sure it is OK.
• Then we can start to move forward.

Remember also that you are not the only author. There are a lot of other authors in the mix here. There are only so many books released each month and each editor is fighting for one of those slots. Remember also that editors are reading your new submissions AFTER their work hours. It is this reason that it often takes months before you hear back from someone. 

WHY THE TIGHT DEADLINES Writers hate to hear that they have to rush things in their writing. The time of leisurely writing is now gone. So why the rush? Remember that timeline up above. When you have everyone at a publisher at different phases of their writing, it only takes one stumble for everything to fall apart. When you have an author who "suddenly" needs an additional 2 weeks to finish a project because something happened at home, EVERYTHING needs to be rescheduled, not just for that author, but for other authors. Editors like to know that if something happens along the way, they have another author who can step in. 

This is just some things to consider. I hope that you can see, just with these three pieces the intricacies of this business. It is not just a factor of you write and then you make money.