Why do we have to wait a year for your next book?

I've been getting this question a lot lately, so I thought I'd blog on it.

"Okay Lisa, you turned in The Trouble With Demons to your editor last week. Why do we have to wait the eternity of almost another year before we can read it?!"

That's a danged fine question, folks. ; ) One that until I became a published person, I never understood either. It killed me to read a book by a favorite author, only to know that I'd have to wait another year to get my grubby hands on their next book.

Here are the high points of the book publishing process from the my point of view. I know there's much more than this involved, but these are the steps in the process that I'm involved in (and/or know about).

I turned in The Trouble With Demons (TTWD) last week. My editor has three books ahead of mine to be edited before she can work on TTWD. She said that she'll have her editorial comments and suggestions back to me in about a month. Then I'll have about 4-6 weeks to make the edits that I agree with. And seeing that Anne and I are always in agreement on what's best for my books, that means I'll make almost all of her suggested edits. Of course, there's always an exception to this. Anne's "edits" on Armed & Magical consisted of one question for me. I added a sentence in the manuscript to clarify that one point and voila, the edits were done. I believe that's why A&M was able to hit the shelves at the end of April versus the end of May. No edits needed. Of course, "no edits" is rare. Though I wouldn't be opposed to lightning striking twice -- aka no edits on TTWD. We'll see how that works out. ; )

After the editor's comments are addressed, the manuscript goes to the copy editor to check for grammar boo-boos, typos, etc. (And BTW, it is virutally impossible to catch them all regardless of how many people read it.) The manuscript then comes back to me and I'll proof it myself and either approve or "stet" (meaning leave it as it was) the copy editor's comments. Most I agree with, some I don't. Next comes typesetting (the manuscript was still in Word document format up until now), then another round of proofing (me and the copy editor in New York).

While all of this is going on, the cover is being developed, front and back cover promo copy is being written, marketing and sales meetings are taking place, etc. And on top of this, publishers have to schedule publication dates for books way in advance. When I sign a contract for a book, it includes a delivery date that has been negotiated and agreed upon ahead of time. Basically this means that Anne asks me, "Does May 1 work for you?" I say "Yes," and it gets put into the contract. When the delivery date is agreed upon, that pretty much sets the "on shelf" date. Publishers (especially mine) have a lot of books to come out every year. Everything that has to happen to get a book from the author's laptop to your local bookstore takes time, and then multiply that times the number of books a publisher has coming out in that year.

So in a nutshell, that's why readers usually have to wait about a year to get the next book from their favorite authors.

Coming up tomorrow: I'll tell you why I "interview" my villains before I start writing a book.

Lisa