How Does One Make A Book?

Oh damn, it’s been more than a month. In my defense, it’s spring, which means that I am 90% allergies, and 10% allergy medication. I’m also through copy-edits for The Iron Garden Sutra which means I am approaching the “speak now or forever hold your peace” stage of editing and it’s making me question everything in this book.

Because believe it or not, this book was drafted in early 2022!

‘Twas a snowy (for only the second time in 50 years) night in Victoria, BC when I first started drafting and the final product won’t see the shelves until February 2026. So, why does it take so long?

1. You need a manuscript. You need a functional novel that has been edited into the best version it can be (by your hand). Some people will hire editors for this step. I can’t say that you need one. You can hire one, if you have the money, but you don’t need one. You can get a pretty polished manuscript by being ruthless with your editing, having honest and trusted beta-readers, and stepping away from the damn thing for a few months and let it sit.

2. You need an agent. Some smaller publishers will sometimes open to unagented manuscripts (keep an eye out for those!), but otherwise, you will need to go out there into the world and query your novel. This means you’ll have to write a query letter, a synopsis (hiss), and anything else specific agents require and start yeeting it out into the world. If you have connections, great, this is the time to use them. If you don’t, despair not, most people get their agent through cold querying.

3. Edits with your agent. Once you get one, your agent will probably want to do a few rounds of edits on your manuscript. Depending on whether you really share the vision for the manuscript, what the turnaround time is, etc.. this might take a few weeks to a few months.

4. Going on sub. It’s just like querying, but somehow more stressful! Going on submission means your agent is now sending your manuscript to editors at publishing houses and those editors decide whether they want to take the manuscript to acquisitions. Very often, an editor will absolutely LOVE a piece of writing, but they know that the market isn’t right for it or that their publisher just acquired something similar, so they will pass. It rarely has to do with the quality of writing at this stage and more to do with the business side of publishing: the trends and the budgets.

5. MOAR EDITS. So, your book good acquired! Congratulations! More edits are on the way. These include any remaining structural/ dev edits, line edits, copy edits. Let’s throw in pass pages in here as well. These come from your editor and you usually have between a few weeks to a few months to finish them. Pass pages go by faster. The coolest stage of these is the copy edits (in my opinion). I absolutely adored working with my copy editor who did a great job of making sure I don’t accidentally break the universe. She kept track of all the celestial bodies, what everyone wore and when, what people said, who ate what and when. The amount of labor that goes into copy editing is bonkers and I have tremendous respect for copy editors.

6. Layout. I want to do a whole newsletter on this at a later date because out of all the stages, this is the one I knew nothing about. Turns out that the font, the spacing, the little icons that separate the scenes are all decided on at this stage!

7. Cover. I should probably do a whole newsletter on this too since it’s a VERY involved process. There whole teams assembled to best design the cover so it stands out, signals the genre and the mood, and looks good as a thumbnail on things like Goodreads.

8. Ready to print! Well, the ARCs (the advance reader copies) are ready to print. These usually go out about 6 months out of publication. They will go to bloggers, trade magazines, reviewers, booktokers, bookstagrammers, etc… the purpose of the ARCs is to begin building up the hype! it takes time to build up hype, especially given how many manuscripts all of these people get! It’s at this stage that most publicity/ marketing scheduling will begin as well.

9. Print the book. Ship the book. I have no idea what happens during this stage because I’m not there yet! But I’m sure many exciting things like paper costs, delivery dates, and distribution channels will be of outmost importance here.

….and that’s it! Importantly, if you’re on a two-book deal or you have an option, you might be starting to work on your second book (or even receiving edits) during the pass pages stage! The stages start to overlap, your heart rate begins to climb, but at least you don’t have to be in the query trenches again, right?

Sometimes schedules may also be delayed because editors change publishers and entire imprints fold! The publishing industry is never short on drama, but it all tends to stem from one important ingredient—money! Editors are chronically overworked and underpaid and imprints of larger houses at the whims of their bosses.

The Iron Garden Sutra managed to hit the most middling timelines the entire way through. I spent about three months drafting it, setting it aside for a month (while beta-readers had it) and then polishing it up in two more months. I spent five months in the query trenches and then a few months in agent revisions. Then another five months on sub and voila!

Excited to see where the process will take me next!

Writing News

In more awards news, Dragonfly has been named a finalist in the Aurora Awards! This was super unexpected and I am eternally grateful to all Canadians who nominated my angry novella!

I also had a lot of fun doing a reading with Space Cowboy Books! I joined Jenna Hanchey and Phoenix Alexander to read some flash pieces! Check it out below.

…and surprisingly, that’s all for writing news! I’ve been mainly hauled up in an editing hole for a sport horror I recently drafted while waiting on the second book of the Cosmic Wheel duology to return from my editor!

As always, thanks for reading.

Cheers!