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demystifying publishing

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Good morning! I have been awake since six am, and wow! It is a beautiful day. I have the windows open, and there is a wonderful cold breeze blowing in. My bedroom window faces Manhattan, which means it faces the water, even though I can't see the water, and I get wonderful breezes -- although when it's freezing outside and the wind chill is, like, negative seventy-million, it's not so much fun.

(All I want this morning is a cup of coffee and a Danish. Wow, how bad do I want a Danish? Pretty badly. Instead I had a crescent roll. Not quite as good, but what's a girl to do?)

I want to thank again everyone who provided me with links and stories on Monday -- that was awfully nice of you guys and I really appreciate it! I am well on my way to recovering (especially now that my dentist has called in a new prescription for me, and I have much stronger painkillers, phew).

Now that I can focus for longer than 500 words, I am ready to write more about demystifying publishing.

I am really glad that these entries are helping y'all. And I am flattered that so many people are reading them -- I know I tend to be pedantic and long-winded, so it's amazing to me that you guys can get through these entries. *g*

I do want to remind you that these answers are by no means universal. Remember the first rule: Don't be an idiot.

Publishing is Hard!

Writing is an art, but publishing is a business -- and here are a few basic suggestions on how to navigate that business. Complete with explanations of various departments within a publishing company, and how they all work together to make your book. And, of course, my witty and charming commentary!

Thanks for reading; I hope this has helped at least some of you!

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I followed a link here from

whitemunin's LJ and just wanted to say thank you, it was a very helpful and interesting post! I'll definitely go back through your archives to read the other "demystifying" entries as well.

I am just chiming in to also say "thank you" for doing these. Your "don't be an idiot" approach is really soothing. I am putting them all in memories so that I can successfully act like an adult when I finally get published!

Your "don't be an idiot" approach is really soothing.

?!?!?!?!?
AWESOME. I've actually been a little worried that it's kind of offputting, but I've never been a bullshitter, so why start now?

(And, actually, credit where credit is due -- it was

jaylake who pointed out that all my advice boils down to "Don't be an idiot" -- here (http://alg.livejournal.com/72895.html?thread=1002431#t1002431). :))

Well, not to contradict

pnh, whose word seems pretty authoritative, but I'd take B&N's dataset with a grain of salt. That is, it may only suggest that this is what B&N has found works, within the assumptions they've made and industry practices they've established. Obviously I have no data contradicting it, but I haven't seen any attempt by Waldenbooks, say, to determine what characteristics are making customers buy the books they do. That is, they've never asked me. (I, obviously, am the last word on customer preferences.)

I'd tell them that the cover factors in very little for deciding to buy books or authors I don't know. (I admit I don't read romances.) Title a bit (the less cliche'd, the better), blurb about the central shtick even more, but those two I can entirely forget about if when I flip it open and read the first page or a page at random, the writing simply sucks me in. I may, though, simply be ~~less ruined by TV~~ less visually oriented than many people.

I certainly don't object to there being a dragon on the cover if there's a dragon in the story, or that the dragon is gaudy, or even if the dragon's, or anyone's, appearance doesn't match the description in the story. If it's a historical, I don't require accuracy in period clothing. It would simply be a lot to coordinate, it seems to me.

It's the fact that a heroine who fights with a sword, in

ellen_kushner's upcoming The Privilege of the Sword was shown on the cover with unbound hair flowing to her knees. (Oh, no, tripping on it is no problem in a fight.) Or the fact that sometimes the cover doesn't appear to relate to the story at all, like

marthawells's The Element of Fire.

The things you're asked to suspend your disbelief about in a work of fiction usually seem to be presented early. Which is why, I'm told, you can't establish that magic exists, two-thirds of the way into the story. (That very sin, for example, ruined the movie The Green Mile for me.) And for me, anyway, it's possible to be asked to believe too much. I guess my view is only that it doesn't help when the cover sets off your bullshit detector before you even start; for me, it leaves less "belief" currency for the writer to spend.

But I suppose I'm a minority, that way, at least according to industry practice and research. :-)

I do a few textbooks, but for the most part I work on scholarly and trade books--my acquistions area is business and economics. For the scholarly books, content is always more important than style, with the result that we sometimes hand a book over to production proud that we got all of the pages facing forward, and nothing more. That said, I like what I do, even if it is far removed from the fiction editor I imagined that I would be when I was twelve.

Tact is rampant in publishing. This is not always a good thing. Coming from a trade background, I think I am much louder about issues than my colleagues, but production and marketing appreciate the honesty (usually), and my books always get the attention they deserve. I am nice to authors, so that when I sometimes have to let them have it, they know I mean it. And, really, don't mess with my assistant.

Yeah I was weary of it until my book was just sitting on Amazon with a clever title and no author that anyone knew about and then I got around to sending Amazon the book and I've actually gotten sales that way.

Although

jourdannex just gave me permission to use her journal entries verbatim. That was probably the best coup of the book, although anyone can read most of them for free on her LJ.

Thank you~! :O).

As usual, BRILLIANT! You've earned a vegan delight of your choice in San Antonio for this post, and I'll be linking to it in various places! (BTW, I sent you an email, but you'll probably see this first. ToE debuted at #21 on bookscan! Woo! You're the BEST!)

Excellent posts, really are. Thanks for taking the time for some good solid thoughts. I think about ten people on my flist have put directions to get here.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! #21!!! WOO!!! That means the # of copies sold is -- well, probably pretty high. That is awesome, Cathy! YAY!!!!

And thanks! Brilliant, huh? *beams*

Thanks! I appreciate that a lot -- I'm glad to hear so many people are helped by these posts. :)

AND...! Stopped by Waldenbooks today and discovered that it's no longer located on an end cap. No, it's been moved...to the Walden's Bestseller's Rack at the front of the store! !

I think I love you.

OMG YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!1

Of course...it couldn't hurt for a certain beloved editor to mention it on her blog one of these days.

Kiss, kiss.

Hey, I mentioned it at the end of last month! But you are right, I should mention it again. Let's wait until next week and see if it ends up on a bestseller list. :)

Heh. I think part of what makes it so great is first of all, that I hate BS myself--it just makes me nervous, because I always feel like there could be something else HORRIBLE going on beneath the surface and I would never know. That's one reason I find your conference presentations so helpful--everyone is saying that they never take an agent's personality into consideration, and you're like, "You know what? If you think your agent is a heinous bitch, SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE." And of course that's common sense, but common sense gets lost sometimes.

Which is the other reason these are so great--on a lot of writer listservs and so forth (not all, but a lot), people get so caught up in nitpicky details like "OMG I put my page number on the lower-right-hand corner and then I heard I should have put in the upper-right-hand corner and I have a full out and should I send a new copy and should I call and should I e-mail and OMG my career is OVER!" So it's refreshing to hear that, hey, you know what, just being a mature person and researching what you need to do and then nicely and politely doing your best is FINE.

I know that some people don't respond well to it, but it works really well for me personally. So yeah, thanks again.

Well THANK YOU!!!! This is always nice to hear. Clearly my attitude doesn't work for everyone (I am shocked at the things people will say about me in public livejournal posts *g*) but I'm glad it works for some!

Thanks again -- I appreciate hearing that I've been helpful. :)

Definitely a post I'll bookmark. Many thanks.

May I be an idiot for a moment and ask you to clarify a point on the "be polite" bit? From an editor's (i.e., your) point of view, if an author queries on the status of a manuscript, do you prefer the author cite the dates/history of the manuscript's submission and previous queries? On one hand, it seems to me that it might help the editor if the author provided as much specific info as possible in case the editor's tracking log is imperfect; on the other hand it could be construed as less than polite if the author said "I submitted the first three chapters in June 2003, submitted the full manuscript at your request in December 2003, queried as to the status of the manuscript in August 2004 and May 2005...." etc.

I suggest you go back and read the rest of the demystifying publishing tags (http://alg.livejournal.com/tag/demystifying+publishing), as I covered this a bit earlier. Hopefully you'll find some other information to help you as well. Good luck!

Wow, this is like all of my Publishing 101 courses all condensed into one great post.

- Ronni (assistant production editor who wears many hats for McGraw-Hill/Glencoe Education)

I've friended you, by the way.

Hi!

I've got several posts of the like, and will be posting several more. Feel free to pipe up at any point if you want to add something to anything I say -- I'm very open about the fact that all of this is biased toward what I think/like as an editor at Tor.

:)

I hope you know what a godsend you are to people suffering the tyranny of distance. I might not get to hear your personal presentations, but I've learned so much by lurking, listening and learning. Thank you!

Melinda from Australia

I've seen paranormal regencies--mostly traditionals with paranormal elements, I guess. Most of them were bad, but not all. I can think of several ghost/psychic plots, a vampire plot (by Karen Harbaugh), and a vampire-themed anthology (published pretty recently, I think, and including a novella by Kate Huntingdon).

Outside of trads, Madeleine Robins writes alternate-history hardboiled Regency mysteries--not romances, of course, but they're GREAT (they're published by Forge, too). Then, there's my favorite paranormal Regency of them all, Sorcery and Cecilia, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. It's recently out in a new edition and has a sequel. Patricia Wrede also wrote a 2-book fantasy Regency series on her own (Mairelon the Magician, the first one was called).

Anyway, I know probably none of this is in exactly the same segment of the genre as your book, but clearly at some point, someone has thought that fantasy set in the Regency could sell well. =)

your book is a special snowflake butterfly

LOL! *choking on coffee*

Great post. Thank you!

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peaking out from under the rock...

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Re: I only read part one...

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