5 things I've learned working in publishing
Depending on how long you’ve been interacting with me, you may or may not know that in addition to getting my debut novel published this year, I also work in the production side of publishing during the day. (Which means marketing is still nebulous to me. Don’t ask me about marketing—I mean, I guess you can, but know that I’m figuring it out as I go and by asking a lot of questions myself.) So here are a few things I’ve picked up as a result of being on the other side of the table.
It takes a long time to get a response to a submission because everyone is busy. In a traditional publishing house, even the smaller presses if they have distribution, everything has a deadline and everything has to be done on a schedule. In a smaller house, acquisitions is usually broken up among people with other ‘main’ jobs. Most of the effort is being put forth to keep current projects on time, and reading submissions will happen at night, on the weekends, or during the rare quiet day.
Your pub date is eighteen (or more) months in the future because of everything that goes in to marketing, producing, and distributing your book. For example, your cover must be in to your publisher’s distributor by a certain date. (If the book is coming out in Spring ‘24 for instance, that deadline is likely sometime around August ‘23.) This is so that the distributor can put their catalogue together and get it to their sales teams to go sell books to their retailer. I could go on.
An author’s job is by no means even halfway done when they’ve sold the book. Maybe this used to be the case back in the mythical ‘good ole days’ or something, I don’t know, but now even authors with big publishing houses have to do some legwork. (Unless you’re a giant like Stephen King, and let’s face it, most of us aren’t.) The connections you make matter. Be prepared to spend money on conferences, buy other authors’ books, pay dues to writing societies, etc. For instance, often authors are more willing to blurb a book by an author that they know (even peripherally) than they are if they get a request from a publisher via their agent. Trade reviews usually aren’t out before the book has already gone to press. If you want a blurb on your cover, you’ll likely have to do some work.
Respect the hell out of everyone else’s time. If your editor gives you a reasonable deadline, and you say that you can make it, make it. Unless there’s a legit, high stakes emergency, make your deadline. Because likely that editor has scheduled reviewing your edits into her calendar, scheduled a copyeditor, and told production when they can expect the finished manuscript. Production has scheduled proofreaders. If you’re lucky enough to be getting an audiobook, your voice actor has been scheduled with the studio and they have been told when to expect the script. If you’re late, you’ve screwed up a ton of other people’s schedules. Yes, usually there’s some wiggle room built into the schedule, but this is for printing mishaps, proofing errors, acts of God, etc.
Trust in the fact that you don’t know everything and that the people who have been doing it longer just might be a bit more savvy. Pick your battles. Not every hill is worth dying on. This was the most surreal part about ‘speaking both languages’ as it were. I had been in the production side and watched some authors come through and put up fights over every little change, and most of the time, objectively, I felt that they were wrong. For example, when my cover came through (all of the concepts were beautiful) but as we narrowed them down, I fell head over heels for one of them. Most of the production team felt that it was too YA and sci-fi-looking and didn’t give the right vibe for my book. We went with my second choice. I realized that I was lucky to have a say in my cover at all, but also, even while my little heart sank in disappointment, I recognized that marketing was positioning my book for success, using everything they knew about the landscape. So I kept my mouth shut. I love my cover now. This was even more difficult to do when editing the words. For the most part, I thought my editor was absolutely spot on about everything, but as we got into line edits there were sections where I thought, “that’s funny though, she doesn’t think that’s funny?” But I remembered going through several books at work with changes marked where I objectively sided with the editor 99% of the time. So I would content myself with an annotation like, “I prefer the way I had it, but if you really think this is better, I won’t fight it.” If I had a reason beyond “I like it” I would say, “I want to keep this because I feel it shows the character’s empathy, but I won’t fight it if you need to change it.” Sometimes she changed it anyway, other times she kept it the way I had it. Only in spots where I absolutely knew I was correct (Cajun French phrases, for example) did I push back.
I’m still learning. On both sides of the table. And I think, ultimately, that’s a big part of success in any area. You never know everything, and you can always learn something from anyone.