Basketball, Baseball and Football are team sports, and so is book writing and publishing. The process is a conglomerate of brains and experts who work together to get the manuscript from the author’s desk into the hands of readers.
Wondering how some books get to become bestsellers? It’s the deep understanding and effective use of every aspect of the process. If you are an author that has a publisher, you’ll be happy to know there is a whole team of people involved in helping to “set up” your book for publication. If you are self-publishing your book, the phases of publication are the same, but you’ll be doing more of it yourself, or you’ll be paying someone to do some of the steps.
A publisher’s team includes the book editor, of course, but also tens of pros in many areas, like design, production, sales, contracts, subsidiary rights, marketing, publicity and more. All these departments work closely to take your chef d’oeuvre from proposal or manuscript to finished book.
Book Editing
This is the first stop in the process where, together with the author, the editor spends months helping guide the language and flow of the book’s content. Like a blacksmith, he beats the manuscript into a readable and publishable shape. Book editing involves the conception, planning and specifying of the contents of a book.
The role of the editor is to transmit the author’s message to the reader in the best, most satisfying and most profitable way possible.
Book Production
After the manuscript leaves editorial, it goes into the hands of production. At this stage, a host of hands design and lay out the pages of the book, determine its size and page count, work to get the cover of the book designed, and see the book through printing and binding, or e-book creation.
The first contact here is the copy editor. A copy editor reviews and corrects written material to improve accuracy, readability, and fitness for its purpose, and to ensure that it is free of error, omission, inconsistency, and repetition.
Book Marketing & Publicity
The final destination of the book publishing process is the readers. So, it is the responsibility of the marketing and publicity department to design the strategies by which the book will get to the buyers. The personnel here work to prepare for the launching of the book into the market place.
The marketing and promotion department works with the editorial department to develop tools (like seasonal book catalogs) and marketing strategies and plans to help get the books in front of the account book buyers. A book’s online marketing also usually falls under the marketing department. The publicity department is responsible for dealing with the broadcast of print and online media, all potentially powerful assets in getting the word about a new book.
Book Sales
This department sells your book to readers. They sell to the many and varied retailers who sell books – from small independent bookstores to wholesalers who supply a variety of accounts to special markets like gift stores.
Under the sales department are the sub-rights. This department sells the right to publish a book in alternate formats, different languages, and to adapt it for different media.
All of these processes work toward the “launch” of the book into the marketplace. Also, sales, publicity, marketing departments continue afterward as well to help get the book out of the bookseller’s hands into the hands of the reader.
These stages cannot be overemphasised if you would make your book a topnotch and draw a large audience of happy readers. Book publishing isn’t just writing and selling to readers. All these stages are primary to get the best result.
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