Why Publishing Takes So Long
Greetings and salutations Scribblers!
Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the publishing process. This is mostly for authors who take the traditional route, but much of it can also be applied to indie and self-published authors. If you’re a writer who’s new to the scene, listen up and if you’ve been here a while, feel free to share this video with relatives and friends when they ask when your book is going to be available to buy (before they inevitable ask you for a free copy **pointed stare** )
First off, I’m going to be speaking in generalities and averages. There are always exceptions for those whose journey is faster and those whose journey is much, much slower. Our imaginary author has just finished their first manuscript. Congratulations!
Year One
A first draft can take anywhere from a month or two or six or even a year. Let’s say it takes them six months to hammer out that first draft. Now, they need to find critique partners and go through a revision of that manuscript. Let’s say that takes another six months.
So we have a year into the process and we’ve written a manuscript and revised it once. It may or may not be ready to query to agents. In most cases, a manuscript with just one revision under its belt isn’t ready, especially for a first time author. So let’s give them the means and community to have fantastic beta readers or they worked with The Scribbler’s Den on a comprehensive developmental edit and they take another year to do revision. While they’re doing this, they prepare their query package.
Year Two
We’ve hit the 2 year mark and now we have a solid manuscript that’s ready to send to literary agents. Our author starts sending out their queries. On average, rejections come in fast, but requests for pages are a bit slower and could take up to two to three months. So, our author gets a request. They send their full manuscript and wait another 3-6 months, sometimes longer for the agent to read and make their decision of whether or not they want to offer representation. At this point, we’re getting close to the three year mark from when the author started the process of writing.
Year Three
We’re going to imagine this author’s first book gets them an offer of representation. For as many authors who get an offer on their first manuscript, there’s an equal number who are querying their third, fourth, or higher manuscript. But the stars are aligning for our author, so three years into the process, they now have a literary agent.
Year Four
At this point, their agent is likely going to do at least one more round of edits with them before sending the book on submission to editors. Let’s give them six months to read and get the manuscript back to the author and the author to do revisions. Now the book goes out on sub to the list of editors the agent has created. This works a lot like querying, but from what I’ve heard, is even slower…
But again, our author is on the golden path, so we’ll give it six months when they hear back from from an editor that they’re interested and taking the book to acquisitions with their publisher. Acquisitions is where the editor meets with the financial team and marketing teams and pitches your book as something that will make them money. There are usually at least two rounds of acquisition meetings and this part often takes just a few weeks, so we’ll round to a month to keep things easy for doing math.
If you’ve lost track, we’ve in the fourth year from when the author started querying the book. Congratulations to the author, they’re getting a book deal! There may be some negotiations back and forth, but the contract is often signed and sealed with in a month after the initial offer.
Now, the author isn’t allowed to tell anyone, other than their closest friends, or maybe their cats, that they have this deal until the publisher decides they’re going to announce it. This can happen fairly quickly, or in the case of one author I know, it’s been over 5 years since the contract was signed and the book turned in and they still haven’t announced it because publishing is weird. Let’s give our author a three month wait until they can announce that the book will be coming out in a year and a year.
Between the contract being signed and the publication date, the author is going to do at least one more round of edits with the editor they submitted to. Then they’ll do a round of copy edits, and finally pass pages. Before, hopefully getting advanced reading copies of their book three-six months before their book comes out.
Year Five
So here we are, five years after the book was first queried and the book is finally available to buy at your favorite indie bookstore!
A few things to note.
First, like I mentioned before, this is pretty ideal situation, most authors do not encounter this. There are delays, oftentimes the book that gets you an offer of representation from an agent isn’t the book that gets you a book deal. This means you’ve gone through the beginning stages of this journey at least one or two more times.
Second, self published and indie published works tend to take a bit less time because you’re not waiting around for someone to offer representation or give you an advance, so you go from writing your book to doing comprehensive edits to going through the process of getting it on the shelves in about half the time of an ideal traditional publishing timeline.
Third, just a reminder these are all just general averages! There will be people who query and get an offer of rep after a day, they immediately put the book on sub and a week later it sells. It’s happened before. And there are authors who are still waiting to announce books that sold years ago. Publishing really has no rhyme or reason sometimes.
Fourth, there is no actual timeline you need to hit! Time is a construct and no one is running out of time. You can start writing young, or wait until you’re older. No matter what, your words matter and they’re going to impact someone’s life, so keep moving forward.
So, the next time you have someone ask you why it takes so long, send them this video!
As always, your mileage may vary! Take what helps and leave what doesn't! I’d love to hear what your writing/publishing timeline has been. Tell me about down in the comments!
