Long Term Words
June 23rd, 2005
It’s amazing how long it takes for a book to make it to the shelves.
And at the same time, it’s amazing how…sometimes, if a publisher really wants to rush a book into the marketplace they can do so in a relatively short amount of time.
Let’s compare Consumer Joe and Amber Frey’s Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson. I sold my book in July. Contracts were done by November. The book didn’t come out until the following September. In all, even though the book needed zero editing because you couldn’t alter the letters in the book — it still took (from sale to release in stores) about fourteen months.
Amber Frey’s book — was announced and released in about three.
A lot of times people ask me why the hell is seems to take so long for a book to be released — and the reality is that it’s all about sales. A book like Amber Frey’s doesn’t need any of the selling because the entire American public knows who she is and can’t wait to read what she has to say. But a book by someone who is not fully entrenched in the spotlight, well, requires some leg work.
Such leg work includes things like adding the book to a variety of “upcoming titles” documents that go out in Publisher’s catalogs, which go out to book stores, which go out to foreign publishers and what not. Salespeople from the Publisher also go out before even the galleys (rough versions of the books that are sent to magazines and papers for review) and hit the pavement — trying to get the big book sellers to commit to picking up quantities of the book in preparation for its release.
You’d think (at least I did) that the process of selling a book out there would be much easier. That a big publisher would simply send out a book and everything would happen. In reality, there’s such a process behind it all…that for good or bad, is intriguing nonetheless.
What’s always fascinated me, or at least did during the first book’s release, was how magazines deal with book reviews. Did you know that magazines are always working on their editions that are coming out three months in the future? If you don’t get a book to a magazine editor at least three months before the release date of your book — the chances you’ll get a timely review (if any, of course) is rare. (Same goes for writing for magazines, too — my July pieces just about to come out were delivered to them in April/May.)
In the end, all in all, it’s an interesting process that seems like it should take far less time than it does — but in selling something to the fickle American public, I guess you gotta hedge your bets just like the rest of ‘em…
