Track Changes: After the Book Deal
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
What happens between signing the book contract and seeing a book on shelves? Industry experts walk us through edit letters, production schedules, cover designs, first pass pages, sales meetings and more.
We catch up with Jennifer de Leon as she prepares for the release of her debut young adult novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, on August 18. (Hear her First Draft interview here.)
Industry experts Katherine Tegen, publisher and editor at Katherine Tegen Books, at HarperCollins; Alvina Ling, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Little Brown Books for Young Readers (and co-host of the Book Friends Forever podcast); and Stacey Barney, Executive Editor at G. P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, talk us through walk us through edit letters, production schedules, cover design, first pass pages, sales meetings and more.
Catch up on the series so far:
Episode 2: Agents: Who Are They, What Do They Do, And How Do You Get One?
Bonus Episode: Publishing in the time of COVID
Episode 3: Selling Your Book (Part 1)
Sarah Enni: When a debut author sells a book, it’s often in a burst of excitement. Like when Jennifer de Leon sold her debut novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, to Caitlin Dlouhy at Simon & Schuster.
Jennifer de Leon: So January 2018 we sell the book, it goes to auction, and Caitlin Dlouhy buys the book. And then we send a couple of excited texts and voicemails. And then it's like, radio silence until March.
Sarah Enni: We talked about this on a previous episode -- the totally normal, but still slightly unnerving, silence that follows the book deal. But as strange as the silence felt, it was nothing to what came next.
Jennifer de Leon: I first got notes that April, and let me tell you, it was a total shock. It was 20 pages, single spaced, editorial letter and the manuscript mailed by UPS. And every page was covered in comments that she hand writes in green marker. It was basically like, “She has buyer's remorse. Oh my god, what am I gonna do? How do I even dive into this?”
Sarah Enni: Jenn had experienced her first editorial Letter. A rite of passage for every novelist, a moment of rude awakening when, after being courted by editors and told how brilliant they are, their precious manuscript is subjected to some cold, hard critique.
Jen and Caitlin went back and forth on edits for months. And while that’s a very normal part of the process it can feel lonely and frustrating. After almost a year of edits Jen was feeling deflated. But then, Caitlin wrote to Jen with a unique opportunity that put some excitement back into the whole process.
Jennifer de Leon: She sent an email and said, “I have a fun invite. If you want to come to New York for sales meeting we'll have lots of people there who you can tell them more about the book.”
Sarah Enni: We’re gonna get into a lot more detail about sales meetings later in the episode. But this was big. Jenn was getting the rare opportunity to go to her publisher and meet people whose enthusiasm could mean big things for her book. Jenn went to New York and stayed at a hotel overnight.
Jennifer de Leon: And the night before I had been walking around Times Square and just kind of killing time. And I walk past the building. And it's this huge building. It takes up almost a whole block and it says on the front, you know: Simon & Schuster.
Sarah Enni: This was it. This was where her book lived.
Jennifer de Leon: I took a picture; I had a stranger take a picture of me in front of it. It was a huge moment, because I'm like, “Oh my God. My book is being made and people are working on it inside that skyscraper!”
Sarah Enni: I’m Sarah Enni, creator and host of First Draft with Sarah Enni, and this is Track Changes, covering everything you don’t know you don’t know about publishing.
Today’s show: After the book deal. What mysterious machinations happen behind the scene at a publisher that makes your Word document into a book.
So, once you sell a manuscript, how long until you have a physical object to prove your superiority to that idiot who dumped you in high school? Like, one month? Six?
Katherine Tegen: Well, I'd say one to two years. Honestly.
Sarah Enni: That’s Katherine Tegen, publisher and editor at Katherine Tegen Books, at HarperCollins.
Katherine Tegen: I mean, if you have a complete manuscript and it doesn't need a lot of editing, you could probably do it in 18 months… probably? Maybe less than that. But yeah, as you know, there's a lot of steps.
Sarah Enni: First, the editor has to fit the book they just bought into the schedule for the publisher overall.
Alvina Ling: When we sign up a book, we slot it onto a certain season.
Sarah Enni: That’s Alvina Ling, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Little Brown Books for Young Readers. And when she says “season,” she’s referring to how publishing houses break down their book release dates, grouping books from certain months together as a “season,” kind of like a fashion designer. Actually, don’t quote me on that, cause I have no idea how fashion works.
Katherine Tegen: At Harper we have three lists, meaning the on-sale dates that are encompassed by the season. So winter, a winter list is January 1st through the end of April. Then summer, the summer list is the beginning of May through the end of August. And the fall list is the beginning of September through the end of December.
Sarah Enni: Things are different at different publishers. Like, Alvina says that until a few years ago, Little Brown was on a two-season annual schedule. But now they have three, like Harper.
So, what does that mean for an author selling their book right now?
Alvina Ling: So for example, if a book I'm signing up now, I would probably slot, depending on the subject matter, on either Winter 2022 or Summer 2022. And that's mainly because of due dates.
Sarah Enni: Alvina is saying that if she bought a book in July 2020, it would go on sale sometime between January and July 2022. And that’s because of due dates within the publishing house for things like copy editing, layout and design, and sales and marketing.
Alvina Ling: The first step is editing with your editor until you feel like the manuscript is final.
Sarah Enni: “Final” meaning, when the book absolutely has to move on to copy edits.
Alvina Ling: Our final due date to copy editing is January 15th, 2021. So right now, when we're talking, it's July. So that gives us a nice about six months to work and revise and edit together.
Sarah Enni: Yep--you’ll be done making meaningful changes to your book at least a year before it comes out in stores.
Alvina Ling: Then it goes into our copy editing department, when it gets copy edited. And so, I think a lot of people think that editors are the same thing as copy editors. But the truth is I'm actually very bad with grammar and I'm not a great speller. So the copy editor really edits the book with a fine tooth comb. And it can be anything from fact checking, to timelines, which I'm also not really great at, consistency, and of course, grammar and spelling and punctuation and all of that.
Sarah Enni: Authors get the chance to see and weigh in on what changes the copy editor suggests. Meanwhile, simultaneous to the copy editing process, the publisher’s design department is creating sample pages. That’s when the book starts looking like a book: fun fonts and folios, margins, ornaments.
Alvina Ling: And at least at Little Brown, this is the last chance that, as an author, you get to make changes before advanced reading copies or galleys are printed with the sales materials.
Sarah Enni: So the version of your manuscript used for advance reading copies is not the final version. You have the chance to make changes on that version, what’s known as first pass pages. But by that point, it’s line edit stuff, very, very SMALL changes. The time to drop a subplot has passed.
And once you turn in your edits on first pass pages, that’s usually it. It’s off to the printers for final copies, and the writing process, for this book, is over. But, as Katherine explains, that’s when the truly time-consuming part of publishing is just getting started.
Katherine Tegen: New authors will often say like, “Well, why does it take so long to make a book?” And I'm like, “Well, you know, we can actually probably get a copy edited and printed pretty quickly. But the part that takes time is the sales process.” The sales reps have to go and sell the book. You need to get orders for the book, otherwise there's no point in publishing the book. So, and that takes time.
Sarah Enni: Okay but before we get into all that, let’s back it ALL the way up to the editorial process. How much do editors and authors talk about the editorial process before signing a book contract?
Alvina Ling: So before a contract, I might have a discussion with an author about what kind of work we both think needs to be done. We usually don't go into depth about editorial notes, it's more if there's something really serious that I want to make sure we're on the same page about, and that the author is on board with making those changes.
For example like, "I hate the ending and I hope you'll change it!" A big change like that I do need to make sure that we're on the same page before we go to contract. I guess it's kind of like dating, like if there are any deal breakers, you need to figure that out before you sign on the dotted line.
Sarah Enni: So you’ve agreed on edits and signed the contract. What’s next?
Alvina Ling: I usually try to build in at least three rounds of revisions because that's, on average, what a manuscript needs. But I generally have a sense based on the state of the manuscript, how much work is needed.
Sarah Enni: And the first round of revision kicks off with … the Edit Letter.
Alvina Ling: I would say that for the first editorial letter, that's the big one, that's the main one. And that's the one that I probably spend the most time on. So when I'm sitting down to edit the manuscript for the first time, I will reread the manuscript at least once, ideally more than once. I edit electronically now and so I use track changes.
Sarah Enni: Yessss, Alvina is the character in the movie who says the name of the movie. Track Changes! The program that lets you make edits and notes in line in a Word document.
Alvina Ling: I'll kind of make notes as I go. And then usually themes emerge. So it could be like, "Oh, you know what? This character, I have a lot of comments on this particular character. So I think this character needs a lot of work." It might be plot issues, or things that just don't feel satisfying. So I'll reread and reread my notes and see what themes emerge. And then I start drafting my editorial letter.
Sarah Enni: Editorial letters are as unique as every editor, every writer, and every book. Alvina says that, since she often puts a lot of comments on the actual manuscript with track changes, her editorial letter is now usually between one and four pages. This stage is commonly referred to as “developmental edits.”
Alvina Ling: I would say developmental edits are more like looking at the plot and the pacing and just more big picture. So usually the first editorial letter that I send are more focused on the big picture. And then as each round goes by, it gets narrower and narrower and focuses in on the details.
Sarah Enni: And how long does this take for the editor?
Alvina Ling: As Editor-in-Chief, I'm in meetings almost all day. So my editing is pretty much reserved to weekends. And I'll know for a young adult novel that I'll need at least two weekends to edit. So for a young adult novel, it would be twenty or thirty hours.
Sarah Enni: So, on all those days when you’re refreshing your inbox, waiting for word from on high, think of the editors planning out their weekends to read your book.
Now, when it comes to the actual contents of that edit letter...
Alvina Ling: You always start with praise. So usually the first paragraph is just gushing about how much I love the manuscript. Because, of course I do, or otherwise I wouldn't have bought it. And then I always have a line in there that says, "These comments are my opinion only. But I am acting on behalf of other potential readers. But you should only make the changes that you feel comfortable with. This is a hundred percent your book and I don't want you to just blindly make changes just because I suggest them."
Sarah Enni: That being said...
Alvina Ling: If I make a suggested change or I suggest a solution, they might not agree with the solution, but they'll realize that this is a problem so I need to address it in a different way.
Sarah Enni: Okay. And the rest of the letter?
Alvina Ling: And then, as I mentioned earlier, I do just kind of go by category. So it might be plot, it might be pacing, it might be characters. And so I end again with praise, and then I'll also end with a schedule. So I might say, depending on the amount of work I am requesting of the author, I will suggest a time like, "Do you think you can get this back to me by this date? And if so, you know, but let me know if you need more time."
Sarah Enni: Writing the edit letter is one thing. Being the author who reads that edit letter… it’s not pretty. And, editors say they get it.
Here’s Katherine again.
Katherine Tegen: I know people hate to get them, but that's kind of how you fix your book. For me, it's just helping the author make the book the best it can be. I rarely go in and say like, “Well I have a vision for this book. It's not really your vision, but it's a better vision, so I'm gonna make you do it.” I'm usually like, “How can I make this book that this author created its best self?”
Sarah Enni: So, Maybe open that email, read the notes, and then…. don’t do anything for a few days.
Alvina Ling: My first piece of advice is to read everything over and then just sit with it and don't respond. It's fine to not respond right away. To be honest, it would be great if you responded and said, "Got it. I'll get back to you if I have any questions." And just leave it at that.
I have an author that I've worked with for quite a few years who told me that as soon as he receives an editorial letter, he gets immediately angry and defensive. And he knows this, this is part of his process. So he makes a point to really just let it sit for at least 24 hours, maybe even longer. And then, of course, by then inevitably everything starts to sink in and he realizes, "Okay, you know, she's right." Or, "She has a good point." So just sit with it and keep an open mind.
Sarah Enni: And as you’re moving through the editorial process, be sure to keep an eye on the schedule you and your editor agreed on.
Alvina Ling: So we're always working towards our production deadlines. So the deadline, the main deadline that I'm working towards with the author, is the final manuscript to copy editing. And that is an important date because if we are to have the proper sales materials, like advanced reading copies, or galleys, we need to have the manuscript into copy editing within a certain date. And there is a window and there's a little bit of wiggle room, but it really is not more than a month, maybe two months tops. And if we miss by that much, we will have to talk about moving seasons.
Sarah Enni: There are some circumstances where a publisher is less fussy about fudged deadlines.
Alvina Ling: Usually I feel like we're more forgiving of the deadlines for more literary work, because we know like, "This is a book that maybe is on an award track. We're going for starred reviews. We can't rush it. And we want to just make sure that it's the best that it can be." And in that case, it's worth the wait and it's fine.
Sarah Enni: But, Alvina says, the longer you’re in this career and the more success you have, the stricter those due dates become. Ultimately, publishers count on authors for the bottom line.
Alvina Ling: We do have things like budgets where we say, "Okay, well, we are relying on this book." And it's funny because I've worked with authors for a long time and earlier in their career, they were so used to being able to just move books and deadlines with no problem. But as their career grows and our sales expectations grow, all of a sudden it actually does matter if we move a book or keep a book in a certain year, or a certain season.
Sarah Enni: And, for authors who sell a multi-book deal, or who have an option book in their contract, the copy-editing stage for this book is when conversations about that other project are likely to start.
Alvina Ling: So if a book was a multi book contract, or if it was just one book, I would say once a manuscript is into copy editing, then I'll start the conversation of, "Oh, what's next? Do you have any ideas? Are you working on anything else?"
Sarah Enni: While the book is moving through copy edits and having sample pages designed, the design team is also working on your cover. Oooh the cover! Your book’s face to the world! And the thing that a lot of misinformed readers will think you designed yourself!
Alvina Ling: So the way things work at Little Brown is, beforehand we ask the author, "Do you have any expectations about your cover? Do you have any pet peeves?" For example, you hate books that have the character on the cover, or you hate photographic covers, you prefer illustrated covers.
Any kind of expectations, we want to know in advance. And also, "Are there covers in the market that you love or dislike?" And if it's for example, usually for more for middle-grade, "Is there a scene that you feel would be a good scene to depict on the cover?"
So we ask the author all these questions. We share that, we put it into a, it's called a Cover Positioning Form, and that gets shared with our design department. We have a whole jacket committee where usually sales and marketing weigh in. And we try to communicate and we like to go back and forth with the author.
Sarah Enni: A quick note on covers: We talked in the contracts episode about how sometimes your agent can negotiate for what is called “cover consultation,” or, more rarely, “cover approval.”
Stacey Barney: Consultation, it’s just a way that agents try to protect authors from getting a cover that's just been presented to them and sort of say, “Well, this is your cover. Bye now!” Right?
Sarah Enni: That’s Stacey Barney, Executive Editor at G. P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Stacey Barney: And then approval is when the author has absolute approval over what the ultimate cover will be.
Sarah Enni: Like, you know, I bet if Stephen King doesn’t like his covers, they get changed.
Authors have strong opinions about their covers. Of course--how could we not? But Stacey and the other editors I spoke to emphasized the importance of having professional designers and marketing professionals weigh in on covers, too.
Stacey Barney: I think that consultation is the best place to be because it does lend itself to a collaborative effort. I want to rely on the strengths and talents of my designer, and I would love for authors to also rely on the strengths and talents of their publisher. And I think sometimes when authors, just like an editor, can have an absolute vision for something, how they want it to look, they may not stop and consider, “Well, how will that really function in the marketplace?”
And if marketing, and publicity and sales, particularly sales, who are on the front line of getting their books into the bookstores, are telling you, “No, that's not really what the market is looking for right now.”
Sarah Enni: At this point, your book is a team sport. So any one person taking total control can be bad for the project, and for team morale.
Stacey Barney: It just stifles the opportunity for collaboration and for everybody, every party, to lean on the strengths and talents of everyone working for the good of their book.
Sarah Enni: And at the end of all this, that cover is put on advance reader copies, or galleys. And when those show up and they’re all gorgeous and book-shaped---that’s a big deal. And not just for the author.
Alvina Ling: When I get in sales materials. So whether it's an ARC or for picture books, we call them FNG's, Folded In Galleys. So when they come in in-house, I love to send a note and just say like, "Oh, it's almost a book, and look at it!"
Sarah Enni: As we covered in the bonus COVID episode of the series, there’s some talk of abandoning physical galleys and moving exclusively to digital early editions. I would understand if that were to happen from a cost standpoint, and environmental, and all that. But personally… I’d be really bummed.
Now that the book has been edited, copy edited, and the interior designed and the cover revealed, it’s time for the book’s editor to kick off its next phase of life.
Alvina Ling: So around this time is also when we have all these internal meetings.
Sarah Enni: Editors present the book to their sales and marketing colleagues at the pre-sales meeting. That kicks off the marketing phase of a book’s launch. And then, at sales conference, the marketing team presents the book to sales, this time complete with their plan to promote it.
Let’s start with pre-sales.
Alvina Ling: At some companies they're called presales or launch meetings. At Little Brown, for whatever reason, we call it focus meeting, which I think is a confusing name, but that's what it's called. And so this is the first time that editorial is presenting a season's list, internally. So to sales, publicity, marketing, sub-rights, all of the departments that basically are gonna have to turn around and do something with these books.
Sarah Enni: The second, later meeting, is sales conference.
Katherine Tegen: Sales conferences are, again, a lot of presentations. So the marketing people pitching the books again, which the salespeople have mostly heard about these books by now, but it’s you know, one last time to sort of crystallize the positioning and the marketing plans for each book.
Alvina Ling: Sales conference is kind of that's when marketing and publicity are presenting the books to our sales department and saying, "This is how we're positioning the book. So this is the ammunition you can take to sell this to your accounts." Whether it be Barnes and Noble or Target or Walmart or Costco, or the independent bookstores.
Sarah Enni: So pre-sales conference is where the editor gives an internal presentation to sales and marketing, and that’s basically the hand-off from editorial to marketing. Then at sales conference, the marketing team presents to sales representatives, to make sure that those reps know all about the book and its marketing strategy before they go to their bookstore accounts and talk the book up.
But over the last few years, big box store timelines have shifted things slightly.
Katherine explains:
Katherine Tegen: The interesting thing now is the way our accounts have evolved over the years. It used to be, in the old days, we were just selling to independent bookstores. And sales conference was sort of the main event because that's when the editors and the marketing people would talk to the sales reps who were going out literally to all these independent stores and taking orders. Now with all of the national accounts that are dominating our retail landscape these days, they're working way ahead of what those indie reps will be doing. So pre-sales is probably more useful for them, cause they're going to go to Target now or B&N and sell those books.
Alvina Ling: Sales conference is usually about six months prior to the season. So, you know, actually some of the accounts have already been sold in to, for example, our mass accounts like Target or Walmart, they get sold in about nine months prior. So everything is kind of works on a different schedule.
Sarah Enni: That means that pre-sales meetings, where the editor themselves pitches the book, are more important now than ever. When we talk about editors as advocates for a book in-house, these meetings are the primary examples.
Alvina Ling: This is the meeting where really the editor has to position the book. And just kind of convey my passion for why I wanted to publish this book, why I love it so much. I'm not a natural public speaker and I would practice in front of my mirror and I would memorize my scripts and, you know, there's nothing more boring than watching someone read from a piece of paper. So you really have to be engaging and try to be funny. It's, you know, it's not easy. It's a lot of pressure. But it is really important and it can make a big difference.
Sarah Enni: So, yeah. Pre-sales and sales conferences are a big deal. And it’s something that very few authors will ever be privy to. Luckily, we’ve been talking to someone who got a glimpse of the sales conference process first-hand.
Jennifer de Leon: Caitlin, my editor, had told me to prepare an 8-10 minute talk about the book, and why I wrote it, and who I am.
Sarah Enni: So Jenn had taken the train down from Boston, spent the night in the city, got a selfie of herself in front of Simon & Schuster. She was excited - she was prepared with her talk - and she had a little extra time the morning of the conference.
Jennifer de Leon: So I went and I Googled a place where I could get my hair blown out. So I ran over there and just as she's finishing, I get a call from my publicist who's like, “Actually, can you come early? Um, like, now?” And of course it's raining. So I'm, like, jog-walking to Simon & Schuster. I get there, I'm sweating. I'm like, “This is great. My hair is a frizz bomb.” I'm like, “What did I just get it blown out for?” And I meet my editor in a rush, and in the elevator. She's like, “Hi, hi!” I'm like, “I can't believe this is how I'm meeting you.”
Sarah Enni: Oh yeah - this was Jenn’s first time meeting her editor in person.
Jennifer de Leon: But at this point, I'm running on pure adrenaline, so it almost didn't matter.
Sarah Enni: Caitlin ushers Jenn into the conference room...where the cover of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From is projected onto this big screen at the front.
Sales reps, design and marketing specialists, publicists….about 60 people in total are in the room, waiting for Jenn to present.
Jennifer de Leon: It is intimidating to think on some level, there's someone in this room who's the Target person; they get to decide, or have a lot of influence over, the books that are on those shelves in every Target store in this country. There's the Barnes and Noble person. But if I let myself go down that path of like thinking all of these things, I think I would have just been paralyzed with fear. So I just tried to go back to all I can do, which is like be a storyteller.
Sarah Enni: And that’s exactly what Jenn did. She told them her story, and the story of her book, and why she wrote it.
Jennifer de Leon: They were smiling, they were nodding, they were a great audience. I just had this like thumping in my chest that was like, “This is your opportunity.”
Sarah Enni: For Jenn, the experience marked the shift from being the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From to its head cheerleader and salesperson.
Everything you want to say about your book, and you, and how you've wanted to be a writer your whole life, and your whole family's history and immigration story. The future of this book is in this bubble of nine minutes.
Sarah Enni: And that sense that Jenn got of her book moving into a new and different phase of its life? Stacey says that’s true for editors, too.
Stacey Barney: From the point of acquisition through publication, my role ultimately is a cheerleader. And as we get closer to publication, my pom-poming gets just more frenzied.
Sarah Enni: This is also around the time that an editor begins to emotionally part ways with a book, like a parent dropping their kid off at kindergarten. To be honest, I know just about as much about parents and kindergarten as I do about fashion, but that’s how I imagine it.
Here’s Alvina again:
Alvina Ling: Sales conference is kind of the, I don't know... a kickoff, I guess I would say. I feel like once I get past sales conference, I feel pretty much done. There might be the final touches of, you know, book production, but for the most part, by then, I'm already focusing on the next season.
Sarah Enni: And it’s when other teams, like publicity and marketing, take the reins.
Quick note about this part of the process: We just talked about a lot of people who worked on your manuscriptbook that you may never meet or talk to. But they made a huge difference in the life of your book, and you should think about including them in your acknowledgements.
Alvina Ling: I think it's really nice when an author is writing their acknowledgements and they ask the editor, "Can you tell me who helped work on this book?" Because there are a lot of people behind the scenes. For example, you will probably never meet your production manager. You'll probably never meet your designer or your copy editor. So I think asking who those people are and putting them in your acknowledgements. I know that it really means a lot to those individuals. I feel like if you put those people in the acknowledgements, they will also become advocates for your book and help spread the word and the love.
Sarah Enni: Speaking of spreading the love: marketing and publicity. Woof. There’s a lot there.
Jennifer de Leon: I think being a writer is one thing. But then promoting your book, as I'm learning, is an entirely different thing and no one necessarily signs up for that when you write a book.
Sarah Enni: We’ll get into it next time, on Track Changes.
Sarah Enni: You can follow Jennifer de Leon @jenniferdeleonauthor.com. And you can follow me @SarahEnni on Twitter, Instagram, and everywhere. Follow @FirstDraftPod on Twitter and Instagram, and head to FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges for more information and updates on Track Changes. And check out the First Draft Facebook group to join the discussion.
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