Why Does Traditional Publishing Take So Long?

Why does traditional publishing take so long, and does the extended publication process actually increase sales? 

From Mod R:

There’s a perception that once an author finishes a book, the traditional publisher simply sits on it for months, deliberately delaying release to manufacture anticipation or increase sales. Arbitrary treatment of readers at best, exploitation at worst. We’ve had comments questioning whether making such a “big production” out of a release actually improves commercial performance, and emails comparing the delay to “a garage refusing to return a customer’s car after completing the repairs” and holding them to ransom.

In traditional publishing, release dates often end up being a year or more in advance of the author turning in the manuscript. There are two sides to this coin: scheduling and production.

Scheduling

Let’s go with a very simplified example.

Imagine a movie theater. It has several screens. One of them is huge, in a theater with many seats, and the other ones are smaller. The movie theater has to decide which movie goes where. A huge blockbuster will go on the big screen, in the room with the most seats. An artsy film will go on one of the smaller screens.

That’s roughly how publishing works. Each book requires a team of people to produce and then another team of people to convince the retailers to devote shelf space to it. A publishing imprint doesn’t have infinite resources, so they must choose which books they will be releasing every week.

Suppose you have “Of Yearning and Tears” and “Only One Bed,” both of which are hotly anticipated romantasy releases. Each of these is “a big screen” type of book. There is no point in releasing these books at the same time – they will compete. Not only they will have to war with each other for readers’ attention online, but the shelf space in the physical stores is limited.

It’s much better to release Of Yearning and Tears with a quirky book that might get an uptick in sales and then follow that up with Only One Bed three months later than try to jam everything on the shelves at the same time.

Production

The majority of this perceived “delay” comes from production. The below describes in general terms how this process is supposed to go. Your mileage may and will vary. This post contains exaggeration of author reactions for comic purposes, because otherwise it will be pretty dry.

Once the first draft of the manuscript is turned in, a tentative release date is assigned, and the publishing machine starts. Imagine a massive conveyer that splits into three different belts: Editorial, Production, and Marketing. These belts move parallel to each other until eventually they converge in the same place, on the designated release date, and magically make a book happen.

Anything that delays the flow of one of these conveyer belts puts the release date in jeopardy.

One of the things to remember is that nobody is sitting around waiting. Meaning, the editors, the copyeditors, the artists, everyone involved in this process, are also working on other projects. When you miss a deadline, you force them to readjust their schedules and the whole thing can collapse like a row of dominos.

Belt 1: Editorial.

Manuscript is delivered to the editor.

First Content edit: the editor reads through the manuscript and makes suggestions to improve the story. This is the most in-depth edit and can take up anywhere from a few weeks to several months. It takes so long because the editor has to think about how to best shape the book, and because they have many other projects.

At its busiest, one of our editors was responsible for 52 books a year. A book a week. Imagine that we missed a deadline. She would have had to shift her entire schedule around to make our late book fit somehow with 51 other projects.

First Author Edit: the writer receives the First Content Edit, throws a fit, calls their BFFs, vents, rips out their hair, admits that the editor does have a point, and sets about to implement changes. This can also take a few weeks to several months depending on the severity of the issues.

For example: one of our friend turned in a manuscript and the editor requested a seemingly minor but important change. Unfortunately, that change meant that the whole book had to be rewritten.

Second Content Edit: the manuscript goes back to the editor, who reads it again and asks for clarifications before the copyedit. This is usually faster, 1-2 weeks.

Second Author Edit: author implements the second round of edits.

Acceptance: the editor reviews the Second Author Edit and if all goes well, the manuscript is formally accepted: the author gets the contractual payment marked “on acceptance.”

Copyedit: a copyeditor receives the manuscript and scrubs it, clearing up inconsistencies, obvious errors of fact, timeline issues, etc. This can take a month or longer, but typically lands somewhere between 3-4 weeks.

Internal review: the copyeditor turns in the manuscript, and the editor looks at it again.

Third Author Edit: author gets the copyedited manuscript, swear bloody vengeance, screams incoherently, and starts fixing things. A month is typical here, but sometimes the publishing house will ask the author to turn the copyedit around in 2 weeks. Less than two weeks is a crime against all that is holy.

This is usually where the digital ARCs happen. The manuscript has gone through the copyedit but not through the final scrub.

Proofread and Cold Read: The copyedited manuscript is read by people who have never seen it before. It is scrubbed for typos and assorted weirdness.

Belt 2: Production

Manuscript is delivered to the editor. (These belts are moving simultaneously, so we are back to the moment the first draft landed in the editor’s inbox.)

Cover Art Design: the art department has a meeting with the editorial and settles on possible artist and the concept for the cover. The cover is commissioned. This takes months, because the artist needs to create the cover, and they also usually have a full schedule.

Cover Revisions: the author doesn’t usually see this; it’s an internal process.

Cover Consult/Approval: depending on the contract, the author has a right to offer their opinion or to veto the cover. This is the point where the art department sends the cover to the author, at which point the author calls their BFF again and says things like, “Can you please photoshop the weird shadow off her butt, because I can’t explain to them what I mean so I have to show them?”

Second Cover revision: the art department tries to implement the author’s request. Sometimes with hilarious results.

Jacket Design: the text that goes onto the cover and inside the flap. This happens at the same time as the cover.

For example, here is the Czech Jacket for TKWNKM:

Meanwhile Belt 3: Marketing and Sales is also moving. The cover and jacket will have to be run by Sales and Marketing for their opinions.

By now, we have reached the point of post-copyedit on Belt #1: Editorial.

Text Design and Formatting: the typography is laid out, the fonts are selected, the chapter graphics, etc. This can make a huge difference in the feel of the book.

Audiobook Production: this cannot begin until the final-final-final-Divine hep us final manuscript. By now 12 people looked at the manuscript and still the audio reader find typo on page 3.

Finally everything is set and we are moving onto the next stage.

Physical production: An order is placed with a factory for printing and binding. The factory isn’t just sitting around doing nothing, right; it has its own schedule. So the book goes into their production queue. Sprayed edges take a lot longer. Not sure why that is, but it does add a lot of time to production.

I’ve been talking to a Chinese printer about some special edition. They quoted me 90 days and I do not believe them. I’m pretty sure that safety margin from the complete manuscript and artwork to books delivered to my door is about 5 months. And that’s just a small print run.

Shipping: The book is printed and shipped back to warehouses.

Distribution: The book is shipped to retailers.

Belt 3: Marketing and Sales

Manuscript is delivered to the editor.

Sales Cycle: this is mostly an invisible mountain of work that goes unnoticed by authors. This encompasses everything from reaching out to individual stores to larger retailers trying to convince them to put in orders for the books. I don’t know how long it takes, because it is not my area of expertise.

Publicity: advertisement that doesn’t require money. Interviews, appearances, etc.

Marketing: advertisement that requires money: adds, promo materials, etc.

Sales and marketing are consulted on every turn to make sure that the book is positioned for success.

This is so complicated…

Yes. And it also doesn’t follow any kind of reasonable and set time frame because books are not widgets. Different books have different challenges.

For example, This Kingdom went through three edits after being acquired, which took somewhere around 6 months. We were still trying to discover exactly what kind of story we were trying to tell.

This Redacted took half that time despite being longer, mostly because we knew the world and everyone agreed on what the final book should feel like, so it was the matter of getting it to that point. But it took a lot more time to write in the first place because it’s a longer work.

What about preorders and so on?

Preorders are very beneficial for the authors and the readers for many reasons. There are so many books, and there is a chance that the readers might forget that a sequel to their favorite is coming out. Preorder guarantees that the book will not be forgotten. Strong preorder numbers lead to more sales to physical retailers and also help the publisher determine the size of the print run.

Some of you preordered Beasr Business in audio. Can you recall off the top of your head, without checking, when exactly is it coming out? I can’t, and I’m one of the authors.

There is nothing nefarious about the preorders. Nobody is trying to create a FOMO scenario. The traditional publishers are not doing limited edition lipstick drops – they want to sell as much as possible.

What about the special edition publishers?

Different conversation.

Selfpublishing

Selfpublishing is faster because it skips a lot of steps. Usually there is only one content edit, one copyedit, and one proofreading pass. Most self published authors do not care which big release is coming out when, and they usually stick to POD books for print, which are printed locally. They are more expensive but they are usually available faster.

In conclusion, now you know way more about publishing than is necessary.

Additional resources: Trad Publishing Glossary