Randy Blackwell's Blog - Posts Tagged "riseofthemagi"
The Publishing Process
The Publishing process as I have experienced it:
First I will say that from what I have read, it is rare to find a publisher as fast as I found one. I started off creating a fantasy world for a game. As I grew my company, I got on facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, and youtube gaining followers of my company through social media. After 5 years of this I had over 11k followers on the various social networking sites. This was very appealing to publishers as writer marketing is very important to the success of a novel. It was not only evidence that I would market the novel, it also was a market base already there for any product with my fantasy world.
Marketing is key in the selling of any product and I think we as consumers underestimate the power of marketing. This is how I like to put it. How many bad movies have you seen in the past 5 years? The most common answer is “I can’t even count them all”. Why is this? What got you into the movie? Most likely marketing whether it was the creation of a good brand name, good advertising, or a misleading preview. The point is that the reason you spent your money to see the movie is that you had the belief or hope that it was a good movie.
Like any investor, the Publisher wants to know “How am I going to make my money back and make a profit from this?” It’s the first consideration because publishing is a business and business is about making money. I know I am stating the obvious but sometimes it necessary.
After I got a literary agent it took us 2 months to find a Publisher. A bit of advice I received from a New York Times Bestselling author (Orson Scott Card) that I would like to reiterate and pass on: Do not pay a literary agent one cent up front. If they ask for money, run. It’s a scam and they don’t believe your novel will make them money.
Next was the contract. Once the publisher was interested, I met with the CEO. It’s a small publishing company which I think is a good thing for a first novel. Im blessed that the exec VP for my company is an attorney who specialized in contract law. But your literary agent should be able to review the contract to be sure that nothing shady is going down.
The next hurdle which was very hard for me was coming to agree on a name. The original name for my novel was “Secret of the Magi”. That had been the name for the year I had written it. I had my fan base familiar with the name and they were attached to it already. But I had to realize that this was an investment for the Publisher and I needed to be open to changing the title. Just like any relationship I believe it is important to pick your battles. I was willing to debate the title because I wanted to save digging my heals in if I needed to for the content of the novel. We passed around a lot of names. Some of the suggestions by the Publisher freaked me out but in the end we came up with “Rise of the Magi” which I liked and felt was appropriate for the book content. It took us a month or two to come to an agreement on a title.
Next was the book cover. Normally all of this is done by the publisher. But my publisher had been an Art Director. He saw the art that was done for the video game and realized the talent there was worth utilizing. So I introduced him to my best artists and they worked out a contract where he would pay my artists for the cover. This also took about a month to a month and a half. Normally it should take about a week or two but there were some hiccups in the process that we got past.
Then came the edit. My novel went through a very in depth editing process. Im no English major so I feel sorry for the poor guy who was given the task of editing my novel, but he did a really good job. Placed where he re-worded things were perfect. This took two to three months. The editor worked up the first 2 chapters and they sent it to me to give an example of what they were going to do. I approved it and they moved forward with the rest of the novel.
Next was the first proof. A proof was sent to me and I was asked to mark any changes I would suggest. There were a lot of things that I found that needed to change. Places where things were re-worded but incorrect to my fantasy world or didn’t keep true to the characters. It took me a month to comb through my novel. This was about the 5th time I had read my own novel and I struggled through it getting a little bored through it because I knew this story.
At this point I m waiting on the 2nd proof. I made my suggestions using Microsoft Word which I find to be best because you can use comments and change tracking. This will help when they send me the 2nd proof because I will be able to get through the changes I suggested, find if they took the suggestions or not and move through it quickly. I won’t have to read the whole thing over again.
First I will say that from what I have read, it is rare to find a publisher as fast as I found one. I started off creating a fantasy world for a game. As I grew my company, I got on facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, and youtube gaining followers of my company through social media. After 5 years of this I had over 11k followers on the various social networking sites. This was very appealing to publishers as writer marketing is very important to the success of a novel. It was not only evidence that I would market the novel, it also was a market base already there for any product with my fantasy world.
Marketing is key in the selling of any product and I think we as consumers underestimate the power of marketing. This is how I like to put it. How many bad movies have you seen in the past 5 years? The most common answer is “I can’t even count them all”. Why is this? What got you into the movie? Most likely marketing whether it was the creation of a good brand name, good advertising, or a misleading preview. The point is that the reason you spent your money to see the movie is that you had the belief or hope that it was a good movie.
Like any investor, the Publisher wants to know “How am I going to make my money back and make a profit from this?” It’s the first consideration because publishing is a business and business is about making money. I know I am stating the obvious but sometimes it necessary.
After I got a literary agent it took us 2 months to find a Publisher. A bit of advice I received from a New York Times Bestselling author (Orson Scott Card) that I would like to reiterate and pass on: Do not pay a literary agent one cent up front. If they ask for money, run. It’s a scam and they don’t believe your novel will make them money.
Next was the contract. Once the publisher was interested, I met with the CEO. It’s a small publishing company which I think is a good thing for a first novel. Im blessed that the exec VP for my company is an attorney who specialized in contract law. But your literary agent should be able to review the contract to be sure that nothing shady is going down.
The next hurdle which was very hard for me was coming to agree on a name. The original name for my novel was “Secret of the Magi”. That had been the name for the year I had written it. I had my fan base familiar with the name and they were attached to it already. But I had to realize that this was an investment for the Publisher and I needed to be open to changing the title. Just like any relationship I believe it is important to pick your battles. I was willing to debate the title because I wanted to save digging my heals in if I needed to for the content of the novel. We passed around a lot of names. Some of the suggestions by the Publisher freaked me out but in the end we came up with “Rise of the Magi” which I liked and felt was appropriate for the book content. It took us a month or two to come to an agreement on a title.
Next was the book cover. Normally all of this is done by the publisher. But my publisher had been an Art Director. He saw the art that was done for the video game and realized the talent there was worth utilizing. So I introduced him to my best artists and they worked out a contract where he would pay my artists for the cover. This also took about a month to a month and a half. Normally it should take about a week or two but there were some hiccups in the process that we got past.
Then came the edit. My novel went through a very in depth editing process. Im no English major so I feel sorry for the poor guy who was given the task of editing my novel, but he did a really good job. Placed where he re-worded things were perfect. This took two to three months. The editor worked up the first 2 chapters and they sent it to me to give an example of what they were going to do. I approved it and they moved forward with the rest of the novel.
Next was the first proof. A proof was sent to me and I was asked to mark any changes I would suggest. There were a lot of things that I found that needed to change. Places where things were re-worded but incorrect to my fantasy world or didn’t keep true to the characters. It took me a month to comb through my novel. This was about the 5th time I had read my own novel and I struggled through it getting a little bored through it because I knew this story.
At this point I m waiting on the 2nd proof. I made my suggestions using Microsoft Word which I find to be best because you can use comments and change tracking. This will help when they send me the 2nd proof because I will be able to get through the changes I suggested, find if they took the suggestions or not and move through it quickly. I won’t have to read the whole thing over again.
