On Thursday night, I got the final edits for my book from the publisher at Evernight Teen. And I was shocked when she told me the release date would be August 30.
Two weeks!
In e-publishing, everything moves much quicker than with traditionally printed books, but wow!
I thought I would share a bit about the process for those who aren't familiar with it, or at least the way it's worked for me.
- Write a book. (okay this really involves about 50 steps, but I thought I'd condense)
- Submit book to publisher via email. This is very cool because it saves tons of trees, not to mention the expense of printing out a whole manuscript, copying it, and mailing it off to who knows how many agents and publishers.
- Hopefully, get book accepted. I was extremely lucky because I know most authors have to do step 2 a whole bunch of times before finding a publisher to take the book. Believe it or not, Evernight was only the second publisher I submitted this book to, and that's probably why it was so hard when I got the first round of edits back! Harper Voyager was the first publisher and I fully expected that rejection.
- Sign contract and wait for first round of edits. In my case, there was a large gap between the contract signing and the first round because of some changes in personnel. My book got shuffled from one editor to another, and then re-evaluated by the acquisitions editor.
- Complete first round and send back. Except this part took me 3.5 months! There were major issues identified with the original manuscript, especially concerning the target audience. Essentially, the way I had written it was more suited to an early teen audience rather than the upper YA target. Hence, the massive re-write.
- Receive second round of edits and send back. Thankfully, the second version of the book fit with what they were looking for, and I had just a few things to smooth out. That took me less than a week!
- Receive final edits and send back. The first two rounds have to do with the content and continuity of the story more than the grammar, spelling, punctuation. The editor will correct those too, but the last round focuses on it. Of course, I still found some mistakes that not only I had missed in all the times I'd gone over it before, but the editors had missed as well. This happens. And I bet the readers will find others that we missed along the way, too! Sorry!
- Formatting and uploading to retailers. This is the part that I don't have anything to do with. The publisher will take the Word document and format for all the reading formats (e.g. pdf, epub, mobi, lit, etc) along with the cover (which I'm hoping to receive soon!) and then they send it to the retailers.
- Release day! It may not get to all retailers right away, but will definitely be available on the Evernight Teen site and Amazon. Don't worry. I'll post links :)
For me, the process from step 2 when I submitted to Evernight, took just over 7 months. And that's only because it took me so long to do the revisions. With a traditional publisher, it would have been over a year, or more.
If you'd like a print copy of my book, they'll still be available, but they use a print-on-demand system. This works out well because it means there aren't piles of the book sitting around gathering dust in stockrooms and warehouses. The retailer prints only a few at a time.
So now, I'm just waiting and counting the days! I should be receiving the cover in the next week or so, and I'll do a cover reveal when I get it. Stay tuned!
