Deadlines

Disclaimer: All of the information below is based on my personal experience and that of my friends.  Your mileage may and will vary.

Deadlines

Question:

I am curious about deadlines, as I’ve read a lot of complaint/comment on them by authors. Mostly about missing them.

So, first, when you’re doing a contract, do you normally have deadlines for when a book is supposed to be complete? and what happens if you miss it?

…some authors seems to not have deadlines for series, and come out with other books instead, even when they say they have, say a 5 book contract or something…so how does that work?

Also, whats the general timeline from when you start working on a book to the time its published?

Answer:

Deadlines are a standard part of most professional publisher contracts.

Example:

3.  (a) The Author shall deliver to the Publisher on or before April 1, 2008* one disk and two (2) complete typewritten copies of the manuscript of the Book in its final form, in the English language, consisting of approximately 90,000 words in style, content, length, and form satisfactory to the Publisher.

______________________________________

* (a) The Author shall have approval of the final copyedited manuscript for the Work, such approval not to be unreasonably withheld or denied.

Note that this paragraph of the contract specifies several things: date of delivery, length of the work, and form of the work, including language and content.

Let’s take care of the date first.  The publishing process goes somewhat like this (We will talk about proposal vs full length in another post and assumed for the time being that the author provides full manuscript at the start.):

First Edit

The author provides a completed copy of the manuscript.

The editor reads the copy and requests changes.  These changes can be light as in “I think the ending needs to make a stronger impact” to heavy “The romance plotline needs a lot of work.  Perhaps you could add more scenes with the hero’s point of view so we can understand why he wants the heroine.”  Usually this is the stage where the major changes take place, such as taking out a character, adding a character, cutting down length or increasing length and so on.

Second Edit

The author implements changes and returns the manuscript to the editor.

Editor reviews the changes.  Ideally, the heavy lifting had been done in the first edit and the editor makes light corrections.  However, there are times when a breakdown in communication occurs.  The author may have misunderstood what the editor wanted, or the editor might have been mistaken and the changes he requested made the book worse, or perhaps the author dug her heels in and is refusing to alter the manuscript.

I do not recommend the last.  Usually when they tell you to make changes, you make them.  If the editor requests that you add more scenes about the character’s childhood, trying to get away with a couple of paragraphs here and there probably won’t go over well.

If the changes are not satisfactory, the editor returns the manuscript to the author requesting further alterations until the manuscript is satisfactory to both parties or until they agree to disagree and dissolve the contract.

Copyedit

A copyeditor is a special type of editor who checks the manuscript for grammatical, punctuation, and continuity errors.  A copyeditor has one mission: to make sure that the manuscript is clear and doesn’t contradict itself.  If the character has brown eyes on page 3, he can;t have blue eyes on page 57.  If the wording of a phrase is unclear, the copyeditor will point it out.

Here is an example of a copy-edited page (Click the image to enlarge):

As you can see, the CE pointed an inconsistency, I acknowledged it and corrected.

The editor usually goes through the manuscript again at this stage and you may get corrections from both (Click to enlarge):

Galleys

Once the author returns the copyedited manuscript, it is set with the appropriate font, margins and so on and made to look like a book.  This almost-book is printed and sent to the author once again to weed out typographical mistakes and glaring mistakes.  Changing the book at this point is very expensive, because any significant change will result in a resetting of the page, so the author is usually asked to limit their changes to 10% or a set number.

Simultaneously with the author, a proofreader goes through the galleys as well.

Pre-Publication Promotion

The publisher may print ARC’s, Advanced Reader/Review Copies. (I’ve heard it called both.)  These are the galley almost-books, and they usually do contain mistakes.  These ARCs require time to print and to be sent to reviews in time for the reviews to hit the page in time to coincide with the books release.

The author also must allow some time for promotion on their end.  Some people don’t do promotion or fan service.  I personally think it does help a little bit and it also shows the publisher that you are committed to the project.

To reiterate, this is the timeline from the author’s side:

• First Edit
• Second Edit
• Copyedit
• Galleys
• Promo

The timeline from the publisher’s side is slightly different.  It has all of the components of the author’s timeline, but in addition, the editor, the marketing, and the art department must meet and agree on the cover, the art department must hire an artist, obtain the cover, and  design the book jacket.  This may cause delays.

The marketing department must evaluate the book and hand-sell it to buyers for major chains and distributors.  This also can cause delays.  Big book chains have certain buyers.  Suppose B&N buyer hates the cover.  The publisher has a choice: change the cover or lose all those potential sales.   Or one of the big chains might want the date of publication moved so the book might be included into a special promotion or won’t conflict with some other title.

And, while the author is only concerned about this one title, everyone on the publisher’s side juggles dozens of titles every month.  That’s why once the marketing and the editor determine the best possible calendar date for the release of the book, that date is considered to be set in stone.  Otherwise the publisher runs the risk of having their own titles compete with each other.

For example, suppose Jim Butcher and Patti Briggs are released on the same day.  The customer loves both, but only has enough money for one hardback.  But if these titles are spread to different months, it’s likely that both of them would be purchased.

Another example: MAGIC BITES was bumped back by two months so it wouldn’t compete with Mark del Franco’s UNSHAPELY THINGS.  We were both debut authors and our works are similar in tone: both are lone wolf UF mysteries.

Publishers do not like to change the publication date without a really, really good reason.  But things happen, so they try to allow for an optimal amount of time from manuscript to publication date.  When we started out, it was about a year.

MAGIC BITES was released on March 31, 2007.

MAGIC BURNS was due on March 31, 2007 also.

The edits took about 6-8 months, with first edit having the largest chunk of time, second edit having a deadline of roughly a month or two, copyedit was three weeks, galleys were maybe ten days or two weeks.

Missing deadlines

Missing one of those deadlines means that the entire schedule is thrown out of whack.  Think of it as a relay race.

First, missing a deadline is selfish – you took extra time, but everybody else on the publisher’s side must now drop everything and make up the time.

Second, the quality of the manuscript may suffer and you make things harder on yourself.  If you have 6 months to send in a manuscript, and you take ten, you might just get two weeks for your second edit.

Third, you risk messing with the calendar: your title might get bumped to a different month, your fans will send you long and fussy emails, and the publisher will have to readjust the schedule. And in some cases, the publisher and you have to pull your advertisements, because now all of the adds have the wrong date and you and they wasted your money.  Publishers can’t afford to waste money.

Can you ask for an extension?  Yes.  Usually with a year schedule, you get about a month or two of breathing room on the first edit.  That time is significantly shorter for other stages.  For example, BAYOU MOON was due October 31st.  There was no way we could’ve made it, because we just came off the second edit of MAGIC BLEEDS.  It was a difficult book and we were tired.  So I called our editor and I said, “I have a problem.  We can’t make it.”  She said, “I understand.  How does December sound?”

Now, sometimes that 12 month schedule is shortened and you might have a book every nine, seven, or six months.  Then there is no room for mistakes.  As an author, you must make the deadline or your publication date will be moved.

What about all those authors who don’t seem to have a deadline?  In reality, they probably do.  You, as a reader, just don’t know about it.  Yes, there are some exceptions to the rule: an author might be ill and can’t provide a firm date due to health reasons.  An author might be suffering from a creative crisis.  We’re not machines.  We can’t always produce on demand.  Or, the publisher might have a secret plan for the author’s works.

Let’s take an imaginary Author X.  Author X has a very successful series.  Author X has also written a book in a second series.  The publisher knows that the author’s fans are frothing at the mouth for her original series, but it wants to get them addicted to the new one just as well.  So the publisher makes a mercenary decision: they will delay the next book in the original series by 18 months and meanwhile throw the  first few titles of the new series out there.

Will the readers be told about this master plan?  Well, no, probably not.  It’s a business decision.  After all, Coke doesn’t really tell you, “Hey, we’re discontinuing mango coke and launching pineapple coke instead.”  Nor will the publisher advertise a book 18 months prior to publication – why?  Most readers won’t remember it.  So it might appear as if Author X doesn’t have a deadline, when in fact she turned the book in six months ago.

I hope that cleared things up a bit.

I will take follow-up questions in the comments.