The Publishing Experience Thread

[Ryuukokoro]

Okay I said I'd do it, so I'm doing it. XD

I worked in publishing for about three years, I landed the job right out of college. The name of the press is Alice James Books, a small nonprofit publishing house that does about 6 poetry books a year. You can check out our website here if you like! (It was one of my many jobs to maintain the website when I was working there, so I'm pretty proud of it.)
http://www.alicejamesbooks.org

My three years at AJB taught me tons about the publishing world, from small nonprofits to the giant corporations in New York like Random House. So feel free to ask any questions in this thread and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

If you have any publishing experience yourself, please feel free to chime in and answer people's questions!

Disclaimer: Anything I write here is my own personal opinion, based on personal experience. It's not written-in-stone law and someone else in the publishing world might tell you something completely different. XD

[SplitX]

Hmm. Let's say I've finished my book, and I just have to send it in to an editor. Do you know how long it usually takes for the final editing process? I mean, I am most certainly sure it depends on the book, but does it take weeks, months, years? I am hoping to finish my book within one year from November, because I know how hectic life gets & the like, but yeah. XD I'm just curious 'cause I'd love to have my book published by the time I'm done with my first year of college. This summer, we have a cruise planned, and that's pretty much it, and I figured that would be a relaxing time to knock out my book so yeah. X3 I'm just wondering how long the process takes after I've done my final edits, and I send it off to an editor. OR does that not have anything to do with the publishing process? I mean, I didn't know if the publishing companies had editors that worked for them & the like.

[Ryuukokoro]

Hmm, now that's a good question! As far as I know, you yourself are mostly in charge of editing your book, to make it the very very best it can be, before you send it out to publishing houses. Make sure you read through it at least twenty times. (Seriously. At least twenty!) Read it out loud to yourself. Give it to friends and family members and anyone else you can get to read it, and even give them a red pen so they can write in the margins as they're reading. The editing process is the longest and most annoying part of getting work published (in my opinion anyway!) but it's also the most important.

Typos and grammatical errors will kill a book trying to get published. Not one or two of course, but if there's enough to notice, the publishing house is going to throw your manuscript into the reject pile without bothering to finish looking at it. And not just typos, but plot holes you missed or places where the plot maybe wandered off and you never came back to it. Stuff that needs to be clarified that to your brain was plenty clear. All the fun things editing is needed for!

In the world of published poetry, you don't really send your book off to a freelance editor. I'm not too sure about the novel world. Well, I'm sure there are freelance editors who will look at your work and give you opinions, but I haven't dealt with anyone like that personally.

Your agent, should you choose to get one, would probably be able to give you a list of good freelance editors that he/she trusts. And always ask questions like yours, how long will it take you to to complete your edits?, before you hire the editor. Don't be afraid to say "thank you for answering my questions, I'm going to talk to a few other people and then get back to you" either!

Now my boss at Alice James Books was the editor of all the books we decided to publish, but that is a little different. At that point, we have already agreed to publish the person's manuscript and the contract has already been signed. She then sits down with the author and says "You should really make this change and that change and do this and that", but it's all just final polishing. After she met with the author she usually gave them a week to make the changes and then re-submit the manuscript to us. (After the contract is signed there's quite a bit of going back and forth between the publishing house and the author with updated and tweaked versions of the manuscript.)

And yes, that is a very, very hard part of getting a book published. You're at the point where you've got the contract signed and you're finally going to get your book out there, and then the publishing house editor slashes off half your stuff! (Well, it won't be half, but it will feel that way.) And I won't say "Oh do whatever the editor says, because she/he knows best." And I won't say "Ignore everything they say and stay true to the words you wrote!" Because both of those are wrong. Instead, you're going to have to work hard to reach a compromise. Some of the stuff the editor says is going to be hard but you should listen to it. Some of the stuff the editor says is going to sound like they missed the ball and you're going to have to make an argument with the editor to keep it the way it is, and state your reasons why you feel that way.

I'd like to give an example. We agreed to publish one lady's book of poetry, a very nice manuscript about feeling alienated in our country. She called the manuscript Dog In The Road. (It was part of a longer antecdote she heard once...something about a dog walking down the road, in the middle of a journey it hadn't finished yet.) Which is all nice and good, but if you call a book "Dog In The Road" then the first thing anyone is going to think of when they see the book on the shelf is: roadkill.

So my boss says to the writer "We're going to publish your book, but you have to change the title. It just won't work with that title." And the writer argued and gave her reasons why she wanted that title and what the title meant to her. She even sent us a letter with several friends of hers who had also said what a great title it was. But in the end, my boss, the house editor, knows how to sell a book. It's her job, and she has twenty years of experience publishing books. If she says a book won't sell with that title, she's serious. So we finally got the author to agree, and the book was published with the title "Beloved Idea" and a very gorgeous photo of the Statue of Liberty on the front. VERY different from what the author had in mind, but that soemtimes happens when you get your book published!
http://alicejamesbooks.org/beloved_idea.html


Err, man this got long-winded haha. Hope that helps! Somewhat, at least!