Happy phone call this week – my Claire Cross book, ALL OR NOTHING, is a finalist in the Mainstream category in the Oklahoma RWA Chapter’s National Readers’ Choice Awards.
How fun is that?!
Winners will be announced at the RWA National Convention in San Francisco in July.
Yesterday, we talked a bit about the creation of a book, about the development of the glimmer of an idea to a finished manuscript. Today, we’ll talk more about the transition from manuscript to finished book, but first, a few things that happen at the publishing house simultaneous to the author writing the book (assuming it’s sold on proposal).
6. Cover Development
While the author is busily writing the book, the proposal that has sold to the house winds its way into various corners of the publishing house. It takes more than the book itself to sell the book into bookstores – the most obvious element of this is called “the package”. This includes the cover art, as well as the back cover copy and any review quotes put on the cover.
As a general rule of thumb, the publication date is scheduled for a year after the author is scheduled to deliver the finished manuscript – the production cycle takes roughly 12 months, although it can be either longer or shorter for any given book.
Some houses don’t work on the package until the book is in and approved, others begin early. It depends partly on whether they’ll have that whole 12 months for production, as well as the level of enthusiasm within the house for the proposal. If the sold proposal is for a series (like a trilogy) the house may want to work out the branding for the series early.
Frequently, the author is asked for ideas, either for the cover art or for the copy. He or she may be asked for review quotes, or to solicit review quotes from other authors, or for a list of authors that write similar work and might be amenable to giving a quote. The amount of involvement expected from the author changes from house to house and from editor to editor, but these kinds of questions often pop up when the book is still being written.
7. Revisions
After the book has been delivered – sometimes even before that! – the editor may ask for revisions. Sometimes these are extensive and sometimes they’re minor. They usually need to be addressed (discussed, discarded, whatever) in a fairly timely fashion – it’s typical for an editor to take 30 to 60 days for the first approval, then if revisions are requested, to ask for a new version of the book in 15 to 60 days, depending on how extensive the changes are. The second read will be much faster, because time will be of the essence.
Many authors cannot or will not revise. If you can take the emotional charge out of the situation, if you can respond to someone’s suggestions about your work in a logical and unemotional manner, it will make this process much easier for everyone. You don’t have to agree with everything suggested, but it’s more persuasive to argue that a suggested change would be out of character for the hero than to stamp your foot and claim that it’s your book and you won’t change it, nyah. It’s also helpful if you can get to the root of the issue of what’s troubling the editor – quite frequently, the author can suggest a less dramatic change that works as well or better. Editors read a lot of books, so listen.
If this is the last or only book on the deal, the author will return to the Glimmers and Ideas phase of the process, while the production of physical copies of this book continues.
8. Line and Copy Edit
You might think the book is gone at this point, but if so, you would be wrong. About 8 weeks after acceptance, it will land on your doorstep with a thump. This will be a copy of your delivered manuscript, but with other people’s writing on it. The acquiring editor will have marked changes and corrections, as will have a freelance copy editor. These are mostly spelling, grammar, continuity, etc. but either editor will mark questions or items they don’t understand. This is the author’s last chance to make substantive change to the ms.
9. Cover Art
Often in this interval, the author is shown the cover art and/or the cover copy. The art usually comes in a jpeg these days, and by the time the author sees it, it will have gone through a number of transitions and changes. This is the chance to make minor corrections and changes to the copy and to the art. It is unlikely that the art will be redesigned at this point, even if the author doesn’t like it — it’s more of a Ta DAAAAAA! moment than a what do you think? moment. The author’s moment for input is when he/she was first asked, all those months ago.
10. Page Proofs
About eight weeks later, the book will come back again! This time, though, it will be typeset and the page proofs will look like pages of the finished book. At this point, the author reads for typos and minor corrections, and with any luck there won’t be many of them. People in the production department at the publishing house will be reading the same page proofs, roughly at the same time. Unless there are huge horrific problems, this will be the last time that the author sees the book before it is bound and finished.
Page proofs are when I say goodbye to my characters and push them out of my thoughts. I’ve given them their H.E.A., pushed them and challenged them, gotten to know and to love them. But their stories have been told. They won’t haunt me like the ghosts I mentioned yesterday, because I know they’ll be happy. They’re more like old friends off on new adventures. So, I shake their hands and kiss their cheeks and wish them well, and generally I will not read their story again. Other authors I know have a different process, but for me, the page proofs are the end of the cycle.
11. Advanced Reading Copies
These are made from the page proofs, when they are made, so they include the typos that are in the page proofs that the author reads. ARC’s are not made for all titles in the publisher’s list, especially those titles destined for a mass market format, and they are expensive. They don’t turn up for a few weeks after the page proofs.
Be happy when there are ARC’s of your book! ARC’s are sent to bookstores, reviewers and media, to develop buzz for a book in advance of its publication. The house may give some to the author for distribution, or might handle all of the distribution themselves. They might ask for input from the author on potential reviewers or not.
12. The Real Thing
Sometime prior to publication – in an ideal world – the author will receive his/her complementary copies of the finished book. The number of copies will have been negotiated in the contract. There’s something very exciting about opening a box to find a whole bunch of copies of your book, all dressed up for the market. Some authors settle in to read the book and enjoy it. I snag a perfect one for my bookshelf, then play with arranging the books there.
It’s always interesting to me how the lifelines of different books can be entwined.
I received copies of KISS OF FIRE, for example, while I was doing the line/copy edit of KISS OF FURY and writing KISS OF FATE. We can talk about that another day!
Have a good weekend. 
I was thinking the other day about the way books come into being. Part of that is the production process at the publishing house and part of that is the creative process of the author. You’d think that one would get done before the other, but in reality, the two parts of the process tangle up a bit. So, I was thinking about that – as I read page proofs – as well as my emotional connection with my work and how that waxes and wanes over the process of the book’s creation.
So, guess what? I’m going to share all of that with you.
1. Glimmers.
Books start with glimmers. These aren’t even cohesive enough to be called ideas. They’re notions, “what-if’s”, little bits that are intriguing. A glimmer can be a line of dialogue, a line of prose, a description of a character, a sketch of a conflict. Glimmers are intriguing one-liners. Catching a glimmer is like seeing something move in the woods, but not seeing it clearly enough to know what it is or was. You never know which glimmers will amount to anything.
I used to write down my glimmers, but after filling a couple of notebooks with bits and pieces, I gave it up. I cast my glimmers into the domain of “survival of the fittest” – the glimmers I remember are the ones that count. (Although I still write down the occasional glimmer that I really like.)
2. Ideas.
Ideas have more meat on the bone than glimmers. Ideas are more comprehensive. Ideas are of the “what if this kind of character met that kind of character and they were on opposite sides about this situation?” variety. Ideas are intriguing, maybe more intriguing than glimmers. The details of ideas aren’t all worked out yet, but ideas are more substantial than glimmers.
My ideas tend to be more structural while my glimmers tend to be more poetic. They both need to come together and integrate to make the work interesting, in my opinion.
The thing with ideas is that they are literally a dime a dozen – in fact, it would be neat to get that much money for them! I have hundreds of ideas, they just generate all of the time. Like glimmers, I stopped writing ideas down years ago. I cannot possibly write books from all of the ideas that I have – which means that they too are subject to natural selection. It’s a blessing when I forget some of them because choosing which ones to develop is always the hardest choice for me.
3. Proposals.
Proposals are formal documents. A proposal is what an author sends to the publisher when the author is seeking a new contract – it’s how ideas are presented as books, before they are actually written into books. A fiction proposal typically contains a synopsis – where the author has to get down and dirty with the idea and prove that it works as a story arc – and some sample chapters. Depending on the author’s sales history, that sample can be a scene or a chapter, three chapters or a whole book. The sample shows the tone and pacing of the planned book and is a taste of the product to come.
For me, writing the proposal is the first time I commit the idea and the glimmers to paper (or a comparatively fixed medium, like a word processing file). This is when I get serious about the idea and the glimmers, sufficiently serious that I’d like to write the actual book. When I write the proposal, I’m in for writing the book.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way.
4. Ghosts
Writing a proposal, however, is no guarantee that any editor will buy the proposal or that the proposed book will ever see publication. It’s really common to write a proposal and find that it doesn’t strike the editor as interesting or marketable, or that the proposal doesn’t jive with the direction the house would like to take the author’s work – or with the direction the house has decided to take their own list.
This is where commerce and creativity can collide. It’s really common for authors to get hooked on telling the stories of continuing characters, for example, and the publisher to be ready to try something new and fresh, maybe to invigorate the author’s brand. It’s common for authors to get excited about new ideas that don’t excite anyone else, maybe because the author is the only one who can envision the finished book in all its fabulousness, maybe because the author is, um, wrong about how terrific the idea is.
Yes. It pains me to admit that, but the truth is that authors are the creative party at the table and publishers should be the sales party at the table. Editors should know what is selling, what their house can sell well, and have an idea of where the market is going. It’s all speculation, of course, but publishers have much more data than authors. We run more on gut, on “wouldn’t it be cool if…”, we chase our muse and get seduced by her chatter, and sometimes we’re right and sometimes we’re wrong. And sometimes maybe we’re just not sufficiently persuasive!
I call proposals that don’t sell “ghosts”. Characters who have had their proposals written are more tangible than glimmers and ideas – they have begun to take shape in my mind, because of the process of writing synopses and sample chapters. I can hear their voices. I can see them. I know what they will do in some situations and am curious to see what they will make of the situation I intended to put them into. So, they’re harder to banish or to forget than glimmers and ideas. In a way, natural selection doesn’t work because they’re already survivors – they’ve fought their way through to proposal and aren’t going to disappear that easily.
I think I’ve probably packed three or four dozen ghosts into my office over the years. I don’t want to count them and find out, because there are probably more than that. They are a casualty of the publishing process and the vagaries of the market.
5. Manuscript
When a proposal does sell, it’s time for the real work to begin. The book has to be written, usually in time for an agreed deadline. This can be any number of months away, depending upon what has been negotiated between author and editor.
In this phase, the synopsis gets fleshed out into scenes, the characters take on serious substance (and will often insist upon changing the story line to suit themselves) and the book grows beneath the author’s fingertips. It’s an exciting process and a challenging one. I love the actual writing of the book, the polishing and the obsessing, the charts and the spreadsheets and the pages of notes, the post-its stuck all over my desk, the dreams and revelations. It’s what I do, possibly even what I do best, and I am in my glory when I’m writing a book.
One mistake that new authors often make is assuming that this period of time will be uninterrupted – but the purchase of the proposal has kicked the publisher’s production process to life. So, my tip from me to you (new author) is to figure out when you think you can finish the book manuscript and add a month to your delivery date, just for insurance. If you deliver early, everyone will love you – the same cannot be said if you deliver late.
Wow, five stages and we haven’t even looked at the publisher’s production processes yet. Let’s break this post up – more tomorrow about book birthing!
Today, I’m guest blogging over at a new joint blog focussed on shape shifter romance called Shape Shifter Romance. I’ll be talking about dragons and shape shifters, so please stop by – here’s the link to my post.
Make a comment and you could win an Advance Reading Copy of KISS OF FURY.
Becky won the ARC yesterday! Congrats to Becky!
I haven’t heard yet from Romance Junkies about who won the ARC there, but it often takes a few days for them to tally things up after one of their promo events. They are wild parties!
There’s a third ARC up for grabs – tomorrow I’ll be guest-blogging at a new joint blog about shapeshifters, called Shapeshifter Romance. We’ll talk about dragons tomorrow. You can have a peek here or wait for tomorrow’s link.
Tameka also asked in the comments whether I had a yahoo groups loop, which I do. It’s announcement only – subscribers get a monthly update from me around the first of the month. I also ping my members when there’s a contest here. You’ll hear about all of my books, not just the Dragonfire series. The listserve is called Chestwick on yahoogroups and here’s a link to subscribe.