Right around this time, I hear lots of people with their big plans of getting their next (or first) book out before the holiday season.
There are other times when people set important deadlines for their books to get published, but this is definitely the most common. And if you’ve published a book before, have prepared for the crunch, and know what you’re doing, you might pull it off.
But if you’ve never published a book before, it’s time for a wake-up call. Publishing a book takes time. Writing the initial draft was only the first step.
See, once you’ve finished that first draft, it’s time to edit the thing. And while it is good to go through it yourself and make your own corrections, it’s also important to get either a professional editor or someone you trust who will look it over. This means working around their schedule, since a professional usually has a backlog of other manuscripts to go through, and the holiday season is when they’re the busiest, and an amateur has to look over your manuscript when they can get around it.
And while I would argue that you should go through the editing process first, you’re still not done once you and one other person have gone over the editing process. Next, you need to have your beta-readers take a look at it. Since I firmly believe you should have a minimum of two beta-readers, at least one of each sex, you need to call them up and get them to read the edited script. Not the pre-edited script, mind you. You should finish the edits so that grammatical errors don’t break them out of their reading of the story. That means you have to finish the editing process that revolves around the editor’s schedule, and only then can you start the beta reading, which needs to be done on your beta-readers’ schedules.
Remember: the longer your book is, the more time people are going to need to go through it.
Finally, once the beta reading process is over, you need to edit again. This time, the editing can be done entirely by you, but it’s still a step that needs to be handled, unless you want errors in your writing that come as a result of the changes you made thanks to the beta reading.
Somewhere in the process, you need to get your cover art. If you draw it yourself, you’ll want to do that while the manuscript is being edited or checked by your beta-readers. If you’re like me and you can’t draw for spit, you’ll want to hire an artist to start working on the art during that same time frame. This is one step in the process that you can sneak in between the other parts, and it’s especially important to do this if you’re hiring an artist to draw your cover, since once again, you have to default to their schedule.
Another thing you can do while the editing and beta reading is going on is put together your copyright and acknowledgments pages, along with any maps in the books or other important details you want to include. You don’t have to get every detail setup; some things, like the date you publish or even the people you want to include in acknowledgements can be adjusted later.
Once you have completed the cover art, the beta reading, and the final edits, you have to format your novel. This is the process of turning your document file (or whatever file you’ve been using to write your book) into a format that can be printed and published. Reedsy and Amazon have their own formatting software you can use, but you’re still going to have to actually do the job. I have heard of AI programs that can format the novel for you. I have tested a few of these out, and I’m not impressed. They make mistakes, especially with things like maps in books. Depending on how much time you have in your schedule and the length of your book, this process can be done quickly, or it can take a week.
And finally, you’ll need to get an ISBN number, fill out the details on whatever publishing site you’re using, and order some author’s copies. Ordering a few copies that you can show to your friends and family is one of the key steps of marketing, and just because the book is published before Christmas doesn’t mean people are going to know about it.
In all of this, it’s very easy for things to slip, and for your book to take longer to finish than you expected. That’s OK. It is better to take your time to finish a good product than to rush your book and squeeze a shoddy story out the door before a specific due date.
It’s come to my attention that people who just read my blog don’t know about my recent videos, specifically regarding the evolution of Satan and Bioshock Infinite, which you can still find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fqLLm4pmfc and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxtBoqaaJM
I’ll make sure to give better notice for future videos, especially the one I have planned for this month. I might release it a little closer to Halloween, since it is spooky season, so stay posted.
