When I talk about “my publisher” I almost always mean the company as a whole with all of it’s numerous departments and moving parts. Some of the big-five companies do have one or more upper executive staff with “publisher” in their title (see Scholastic and Harpercollins, for example), but the role as a job description tends to exist more often in smaller publishers and magazines (see Riptide Publishing and Entangled). The person I deal with within the company most regularly is either my editor or the publicist assigned to handle my books. Usually, specific comments will come from one of those two people.

During my years as an editorial assistant at the magazine, the publisher was the person in charge of the business end of running the operation. This included managing budgets and costs, working out partnerships with other publications, and coordinating with the other segments of our parent company. Their role left the editor-in-chief free to focus on choosing the content of the magazine and managing both the staff and contributing writers. While this was true at my magazine, it may not be true across the board. At Riptide, for example, the person who holds the title of “publisher” edits books in addition to their management responsibilities.

- Mod @byericacameron

There are three main options here.

The most likely possibility is for your character to apply for a grant to help your character pay day-to-day living expenses and fund their research. In the HP universe, this would probably be through a rich individual, private organization, or a school, since the British Ministry of Magic seems more concerned with control and regulation than understanding magical creatures. However, other governments might be more open to new knowledge.

Another possibility is that your character could get a job as a reporter for a news organization — think the wizarding world equivalent of a reporter for National Geographic and do a story on giants. If that’s the case, the character’s expenses would be paid, but they wouldn’t get royalties beyond their regular paycheck and (I think!) they wouldn’t get copyright on their story, since all work/intellectual property they produce as an employee would belong to their employer.

The other, less likely option is for your character to submit a book proposal to a publisher, then negotiate for an advance. This is a way for an author to get paid before the book is sold, but it comes with some caveats:

My suggestion would be to go for option number one: the grant. This provides you with the opportunity to write someone, whether an individual character or an entire organization, that’s so invested in learning about the history and social structure of giants that they’re willing to fund the research.

If you want to go the advance route, there are a few things to keep in mind:

— mod @anauthorandherservicedog

Mod @byericacameron​ adds:

I’m sorry! We can only give advice on writing people who are writers, editors, publishers, or otherwise in the publishing industry. We can’t give advice on getting your work published.

Good luck!

Hi Anon!

The different production stages can differ from publisher to publisher, depending on parameters like size, workforce, internal workflows, the actual project (i.e. the type of book being published), potential publishing cycles (are books published at any time throughout the year, or only at specific times, like ahead of book fairs or Christmas?), whether it’s a run of the mill print production or other mediums are considered like eBooks, websites, apps, etc.

For brevity’s sake, the following will focus on a printed fiction novel and point out some variations along the way.

From Concept to Manuscript:

The first question in your case would be: does the concept come from the writer or the publisher? You did not specify whether your character is the writer themselves or someone working at a publisher. I will assume your character is an editor and work from that point of view.

If the author brings in the concept, it would either be unsolicited, a reply to a contest (unlikely, since most contests by publishers I’m aware of request finished stories, not concepts), or the writer is established at the publisher and encouraged/under contract to bring in new ideas on a regular basis. It’s uncommon to have a debut novelist bring ideas to a publisher, as editors don’t really have the time to read proposals. If you want to go that route anyway, I’d suggest looking into literary agents.

On the other hand, an editor would most likely try to find an established author to go to with whatever concept they have conjured up. If we are talking academic publishers that’s a different matter since in that case, an editor would be more likely to search for a renown voice in the field who may so far be unrelated to the publisher, or the concept would come from an academic writer trying to find a publisher for his work in the first place.

For pure fiction writing, the concept would likely be an up and coming trend, i.e. a genre that’s doing very well or is just getting traction, or because an agent told the publisher it’s going to be the next best thing. This means that, ideally, the editor would want the manuscript to come along fairly quickly. But “fairly” can mean a lot of things depending on genre.

For lack of a better example let’s take a thriller by an author à la Dan Brown: If the concept is, let’s say, based on the Enigma machine, coming up with a compelling plot would take a lot of research on the subject, travels, interviews, Youtube videos. It can take literally years just to sift through all the information and decide what should be put into the book and what can be left out.

And even if the plot of a book has been established: some authors write faster than others (point in case: Stephen King vs George RR Martin), some authors need more hand holding than others, and let’s not get started on the attitude some authors might bring to the table.

Bottom line: if you want to take your time, do it here.

Manuscript to Print ready Files:

So the author finally produced a text. If this whole thing started at conception stage, you may have already wasted a year or two, if the author brings in a “finished” manuscript, the work only starts here. I will not go too much into the actual editing process as this is a topic for another time, but in terms of development, let’s point out that the term “editor” can mean quite a lot of things depending on the publisher. Copy-editing can encompass anything from checking the text for grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors to consistency, plot, logic – basically, if the text makes sense. Some publishers may put more work and money into that process than others, and there’s also different philosophies when it comes to author involvement. While some authors may be such hot shots no editor would ever dare touch a single word they’ve written, other authors will welcome the constructive input and work very closely with that editor (Harper Lee is said to have worked closely with her editor on To Kill A Mockingbird).

Ideally, all the editing work is out of the way by the time the manuscript is deemed ready for the typesetting stage. This is where the text is formatted for print and/or ebook production, which usually should not take more than a couple weeks. Unless you also involve an illustrator.

There may be more editing stages throughout the process to check for certain formatting errors. If you want to drag it out even longer, the publisher may give the author permission for one last look at the text before files are finalised. (This can be quite fatal. From experience, authors from the academic field love to rewrite whole paragraphs at this stage, just to make the typesetter’s life more miserable. I am being told by mod @byericacameron that a fiction author would rather not go down this rabbit hole, however.) The sensible thing would be to restrict the author in how much they can edit, and then enjoy the fallout when editor and writer start fighting about word choice and whether or not that plot point needs another 14 paragraphs to make sense.

A quick side note on illustrations and cover art: all that would usually run parallel to the editing process, and the author’s influence can once again differ greatly from publisher to publisher. Especially when it comes to the cover image/illustration, and the title of the book, the publisher may reserve the last word on account of their marketing team usually being more informed about target group and current trends.

Printing, Delivery and Distribution:

I won’t go into too much detail here. At this point, the editor is usually handing responsibilities over to the production team and focuses on a new project. Small publishers may force their editors to see the project through to the end, though.

The production lead time from delivery of the print ready files to the finishing of the bulk can take anything from 2 to 8 weeks depending on quantity, the extent of the book, and how complicated the product is. Going with the run of the mill novel, the average would be 3 to 4 weeks plus shipping, which, in turn, can take anything from 1 to 4 weeks (depending on where the books are actually printed and where they need to be delivered to).

Absolutely anything can go wrong during that time, but none of that would necessarily concern an editor unless they have to continue communications with the author.

The same is true when it comes to distribution. All of that runs independently of the editor and author, so neither would be necessarily involved in the process.

The author will receive a couple personal copies free of charge, quite possibly even a discount when buying more copies, and books will be provided for signings.

If you want to build up a sense of urgency in your story you can have your characters work towards a deadline, i.e. a book signing or maybe a special event for which the book is being written for, and then have everything that can go wrong go wrong, because that’s just how it works.

And there you have it: your finished book.From proposal to publication, this would take anything from a year to maybe even two years, and if that isn’t long enough for you, please refer to the various points given above that would delay the production in whichever way.

(Please note the above does not include anything about sales, co-editions, product development or licensing rights, so if you’d like to know more about either or all, or the actual production of a book, please feel free to submit a follow-up question!)

- mod @onequoteperday

These days, an author’s entire writing career can be handled online, from manuscript submission via email all the way through getting royalties through PayPal. Snail mail might not be involved at all.

Please note, convenient technology doesn’t minimize the value of in-person meetings. If your character isn’t too introverted or strapped for cash (but let’s be honest – many writers don’t even make minimum wage from writing), you might want to have her look into attending a conference or convention where she can make in-person contacts.

Other things to consider:

- Staying in contact via Skype or other chat programs is useful but also intrusive. Have her consider turning off chat during her writing time to minimize distractions.

- Miscommunication is also a thing, especially without an in-person connection. You might want to have your writer worry about whether or not she’s a priority for her agent or editor if her emails, texts, and calls go unanswered. I’ve seen situations where it takes more than a month for an agent to answer their author’s emails, and those answers required the author to make multiple attempts at contact. While yes, agents are all busy-busy-busy, some of them are terrible at keeping in touch with their authors/answering their authors’ questions. If you want a reason for your character to get anxious or even paranoid, miscommunication and missed communication are your go-to plot points.

- Sometimes, your writer character will be involved in conference calls or chain emails. Usually, these will be around collaborative decisions, like cover art or book titles. Keep time zones in mind!

- When it comes to publicity, the glory days of authors being flown around the world in first class, from one book signing to the next, are over. Sure, it happens with some authors, but most book publicity these days happens via blog tours. This means that somewhere around the final proofreading stage, your author is going to have to write a bunch of blog posts (I’ve been asked for 5-15 unique posts) and possibly to find some good snippets from the book (usually 500-1000 words). For many authors, this is a horrible experience that involves a lot of flailing, panicking, and desperate emails sent to author friends, demanding to know what to write about. :)

- mod @anauthorandherservicedog

All of the above is true, but a lot of the particulars depend on personality and other individual factors. For example, I almost always have several chat programs logged on even if I’m not actively talking to someone, but I do use Freedom to block social media sites while I’m working. As for agents, the two I’ve worked with have been both easy to get in touch with and communicated well. The only problems we’ve had was because of business complications and/or artistic differences.

Publicity, however, is exactly as awful as described above.

- mod @byericacameron

Thank you so much! We’re really happy to be here. :)

- mod @anauthorandherservicedog