cralkhi wrote:It is kind of baffling to me that it generally takes publishers this long once they get the book... didn't one of Brandon Sanderson's WOT books come out like 4 months (maybe less?) after manuscript submission? And those are even longer than the Safehold books.
Most people don't realize how much goes into publishing a book. It has to be edited, possibly by more than one person, edits have to be reviewed by the author, it often has to go through that editing/review cycle multiple times, it can require entire rewrites of sections, it has to be proofread, the same thing has to happen with the cover art, it has to be formatted, and it has to be printed and bound. The physical process of printing can take weeks or months by itself. Editors, proofreaders, and authors all have schedules to keep and many other things on their schedule. Each cycle of editing to author review and back to editor can take months, if schedules don't match.
The single most important factor in how long it takes to publish is the publishing schedule. Publishers keep a schedule a year to two years in advance. That's mostly because they want the printing presses running constantly. The printing schedule is extremely tight.
Even before the manuscript gets turned in, the publisher is looking ahead at the schedule for the editors, proofreaders, and printers. They estimate when the editors can fit it into their schedule, when it can be proofread, how long it will take to print, when it will fit into the printing schedule. They look at their anticipated publishing schedule. They want to release X number of books a month, so that determines how they allocate printing time. They often announce their publishing schedule a year in advance, for publicity purposes and give distributors and retailers time to place orders and do their own publicity. Woe betide the author or editor who doesn't make deadline.
The age of self-publishing is giving people a distorted view of what real publishing is like. Vanity presses will take your submitted electronic copy, shove it into a small printing press, and print out a few hundred copies in weeks. But they don't have to worry about editing, proofreading, cover art. Printing a few hundred low-quality copies is a far different project than printing ten thousand decent quality copies. And scheduling a print run of one day is far easier than juggling a dozen print runs of weeks or months each. And many self-publishing companies don't even do print runs--they print on-demand, printing one copy each time a copy is ordered.
