Sue Campbell writes about design, books, writing, art, & life …

Here is a link to a really great explanation of why it does take so long for a book to get released from the traditional publisher. This post by Jay Lake, author with Macmillan about all the steps from both his POV and the publisher’s. Twenty six months! That’s a long, long time. But you’ll see that nobody is sitting on their hands at any point in the process.

It generally doesn’t take this long with smaller publishers, or self-publishers. (Though some would argue, it should.) All of those steps between acquiring the manuscript and first release are vital to the quality and success of the book. The reason is takes much longer at a larger pub house, is that they are doing this with several/many/hundreds of books at the same time—and resources are finite.

Smaller publishers are typically working with fewer titles and sometimes outsourcing the work to multiple contractors. So things can sometimes/usually get done a bit faster. However one resource remains finite—money. There are only so many books a small publisher can afford to produce/publish at one time. This is becoming more true at bigger houses too, even their deep pockets aren’t bottomless.

Very good post! Read it.

Tags: author, book production, book publishing, marketing, publishers, publishing, time management