I’m almost finished the final round of major rewrites on the new
book. That’s what I’ve been doing, if you’re wondering. It has been
more fun and less like pulling my brain out through my nostrils than
usual, so that’s good. I am feeling productive.
In a few weeks, I’ll be ready to start my next book! That’s exciting.
Except I have no ideas. None. I don’t even know which genre it’ll be.
By now it seems like I should have some sense of my own
place in the literary marketplace, but I don’t. Apparently
I do a kind of comedy-sci-fi-thriller-satire-romance thing.
But I don’t know where you shelve that.
I mention this because it occurred to me that I have this
web site, and you read it, so I should data-mine you for ideas.
There is possibly a less exploitative way for me to say that. But I mean,
if you’re on this site, I bet we have all kinds of things in common. Like
favorite authors. And being interested in what kind of book I’m writing
next. You’re basically me, with more perspective.
I don’t want story ideas, because those are personal.
You could have the best story idea in the world and
I wouldn’t like it because it wasn’t my idea. I’m very small
like that. Also, imagine the legal ramifications. Nightmare. But
I would like to know the very broad reasons you might pick up a book with
my name on it. Is it for yucks, is it for a page-turner, is it to snip out
the author photo for identity theft? You know. Broad strokes.
Then the next time I think, “Hey,
how awesome would it be to write a comedy about a sentient
toaster,” I might remember your comments and think, “Mmmm,
not that awesome.” This would be more efficient than
my usual process, which is going ahead and writing the book
and nine months later having my agent explain why it’s unpublishable.
In other news, I have been playing a computer game,
Diablo III.
This is one of the few games I’ve put significant time into
since my first child was born seven years ago, just as an FYI for
anyone thinking of having kids. The game is pretty fun, but what’s
fascinating to me is how much video games have changed.
When I was a kid, they were coin-munching sadists
designed to ruthlessly punish anything less than autism-grade
concentration. But now they are colorful piñatas for the
easily bored who will rage on Twitter if anything is too hard.
If I finish this rewrite and don’t have an idea for my next book,
I’ll post a review.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA: Mr. Jeremy Frost, proprietor of the area’s newly-formed Irony
Certification Agency, wears blue overalls. “People expect someone in a nice suit,”
he says. “But I want them to see that irony is just a facilities problem. Like
a leaky pipe.”
Mr. Frost’s business has been operating for eight months. In that time, he
claims to have rendered services to some of the state’s largest employers,
including a tech giant and two major insurers. But he’s unable to name
names.
“People don’t like to admit they had an irony guy in,” he says. “They see
the results. But they don’t like to talk about it.”
That’s something Mr. Frost aims to change. “Getting that first meeting,
convincing them I can help them, it’s tough,” he admits. “But once I’m
in, I’ve never left a customer disappointed. I figure if I keep doing
what I’m doing, people will eventually get comfortable enough to share
their irony problems.”
“Irony problems,” according to Mr. Frost, occur when places or objects
build up irony over time, and then trigger ironic situations.
He explains: “Say there’s a grocery store and they give
me a call. I might find a guy to take in—Mike Slipper, for example, or
Amanda Fall. I’ll have them walk up and down the aisles. Now, if
Mike Slipper slips, or Amanda falls, that’s a pretty good sign we’ve
got a source of irony somewhere nearby.”
It’s not always that simple. “I ask myself: what’s
the most ironic thing that could happen? Because even a little
irony nearby can be enough to set something off, if it’s potentially
very ironic. One time an insurer had me visit this guy—he was
a little accident-prone, and on a big, big policy. At first, everything
checks out, but I’m just not comfortable with his car. It’s more
likely to lock with the keys inside when you’re running late, the battery
went flat when I tried to drive it to the store to buy batteries…
nothing outside normal tolerances, but still, on the high side. Well, then I find out the
guy has been writing letters to the paper saying we don’t need seat-belt
laws. I can’t tell you the details of how that turned out, but let me
just say that insurer saved a ton of money.”
Once Mr. Frost identifies a source of irony, what does he do?
“Well, bear in mind, I do Irony Certification, not Irony Disposal.
If you’ve got a restaurant on Ebola Avenue, I can check the premises
over and tell you whether you’ve got a problem,
but I can’t relocate your business.”
This is particularly the case when the source of irony turns out to be
a person. “It is awkward, yeah,” he admits. “You have someone who’s been
a long-time model employee, she owns a dog named Buster, and suddenly you’re telling
her she can’t work in the accounting department any more. It’s not her
fault. We still don’t know how the build-up of irony happens. We just
know it’s there.”
Mr. Frost is straightforward about the skepticism he receives on the
job. “Everyone has an opinion about irony,” he says, a touch wearily.
“I do get people coming up to me, saying this isn’t really ironic, or that other thing is.
Sometimes, a guy comes up, and three words in, I can
tell from his accent where we’re going.” He shrugs. “But it
doesn’t bother me. When you’re an Irony Certification Officer working
on an irony-laden site, people telling you you’ve got the definition
of irony wrong is just part of the job.”
Why does it take a year for a book to go from a draft
to bookstore shelves? Is it to build anticipation?
Because publishers are modern-day Neanderthals, trying to
make e-books by rubbing sticks together? Because authors
are so precious?
The correct answer is: yes! In more detail, it’s because this*:
MONTH 1
The editor and the author kick things off
by exchanging emails about how happy they are to be
working with one another. The editor prepares an EDIT LETTER,
which is a document describing how fantastic the
book is, and how even more fantasticer it would be if
the following thirty or so issues were addressed.
I put EDIT LETTER in caps because it’s very important.
The author considers this. There is some back and forth
over any parts of the EDIT LETTER that the author requires
more clarification on to fully understand what
kind of universe the editor must be living in to say such
a thing.
MONTHS 2-4
The author rewrites. How long this takes
depends on how much rewriting is required, and how depressed
the author gets. All books have been through
at least a couple author-driven drafts before they’re picked up by
a publisher, but obviously another pass is needed,
because why else editors. An editor who says, “Fine as is!”
might as well go panhandle.
Also, books at this stage really do need rewriting.
In my case, I did a lot of rewriting for my editor on
Company, and the publication process took 22 months.
I didn’t do much on Syrup, and it took nine.
So there is possibly a causal link there.
The art department begins fooling around with cover ideas,
under strict instructions to not share them with anybody,
especially authors.
MONTHS 5-6
The editor approves the rewritten draft and
shares it internally with salespeople, the art department,
and unrelated editors’ assistants. I’m not sure why assistants; I
just know every editorial assistant I’ve ever met has
read all my books.
The editor and author begin seeking people to provide a
blurb/cover quote. The first edition can’t
have actual reviews on the cover, because those
will be received too late. But you need someone
to say “MAGNIFICENT… STUNNING,” so you have to hit up a
fellow author.
The copyeditor prints out the new draft
and scrawls arcane markings on it by the light of tallow
candles using quills.
This ensures the book can no longer be shared electronically, and
all subsequent changes must be done by hand. This five-hundred-page
monstrosity is photocopied and e-mailed to the author.
Sorry, that was a typo. I mean mailed. You know. Mailed. When
they physically transport something. The author
reads this by light of a virgin moon, which is the only time the
unicorn ink becomes visible, and accepts some changes while giving
others a jolly good
stet. This can be a difficult
time for the author, who must defend grammatical errors
as stylistic choices in order to not look stupid.
The editor emails the author a scan of the finished cover art, saying,
“Everyone here loves this!” The author may object to aspects of
it, if he is an ungrateful asshole who thinks he knows how to
publish books better than a, you know, publisher.
The book’s layouts are developed: the internal artwork, including the
fonts, spacing, and style of chapter headings.
Publicity plans are developed, and final-ish decisions made on things
like price and publication dates.
MONTHS 7-8
The manuscript is transformed into a galley, which is the
final, copyedited version embedded in the layouts. When I say
“transformed,” I mean someone sits down with the five-hundred-page
copyedited manuscript, which by now has
been scrawled on by at least two and probably four different people,
with additional pages inserted here and there, and some of the changes
stetted and then destetted and maybe redesteted again,
some of which are impossible to read because I had to use a green pencil to
signify which changes were mine and I couldn’t find a sharpener and I was trying to squeeze
between the printed lines and thought I had enough room but didn’t.
This person types all that out. I have never met them,
because, I assume, they are kept in a basement and fed raw fish.
The author is sent galleys of forthcoming books by authors who agreed
to consider giving a blurb, in case he wishes to reciprocate,
while maintaining artistic integrity.
The Advanced Reader Copies are produced, which are like galleys,
but one step closer to the finished version. They’re for
reviewers and various promotions (a lot of Machine Man
ARCs were given out at Comic Con last year), and are essentially the finished
book, minus any late editorial changes, printed on cheap paper,
and possibly with different cover art.
The author reads the latest galley/ARC and notices several horrendous
errors that somehow escaped previous notice. He writes in with
corrections.
The audio version is developed.
The author corresponds with translators attached to various foreign
publishers, who want explanations for odd word choices. These will
probably be published many months or even years later, and look
super exotic.
MONTHS 9-10
The publisher pitches its quarterly list to large bookstore chains
and buyers. I believe they actually sit down in a room, and the editor or
marketing manager or whoever says, “Now THIS is a title we’re very
excited about, it’s OH GOD PLEASE BUY ME by Max Barry,” and they
have a little discussion about the author’s sales record and whether
people are really interested in that kind of book any more, so
that the bookstore chain/buyer can decide how many copies to stock.
If they choose a low number, the book is essentially dead, because
no-one will see it, and the publisher will scale back its marketing
plans, because why spend money promoting a book no-one knows
about. But if it’s a high number, there will
be renewed excitement and high-fives and a little extra marketing
budget for things like co-op (payment to bookstores for
favorable shelf placement). The author can tell which it is because
if it is a low number, the publisher won’t tell him.
Thanks to the
amazing new website
Random House has for its authors, I know they call this process
“working with the accounts on an ongoing basis to estimate initial
purchase quantities.”
The ARCs go out to newspapers, blogs, magazines, and anyone else who
wants a copy and has an audience of more than three people.
Interview and feature requests begin to come in and are scheduled
by the publicity department. Early reviews come in and are
forwarded to the author, unless they’re bad.
An e-book version is developed via a process involving priests and goats’
blood. Not really. It’s really done by re-typing the entire
book from the finished, typeset manuscript. Nah, I’m still kidding.
They take the last electronic document and just try to reimplement
all the manual changes made since then by hand. You can decide which of those
it is.
Due to piracy concerns, the e-book is closely guarded, so often cannot
be reviewed by the author. Instead it is
distributed to anyone with a blog and a
netgalley.com account.
MONTHS 11-13
More reviews come in, and early interviews/profiles
are conducted. The author, who has spent the last two years alone with a keyboard,
begins spending large parts of each day talking or writing about himself,
sowing the seeds for future personality disorders.
The publisher does whatever it is that needs to be done to ensure
that tens of thousands of physical copies end up in the right place at the
right time. I assume that’s something.
The book is published! The author catches the bus to the nearest bookstore
to discover they’re not stocking it. Calls to agent ensue.
The author may go on tour, which could involve dozens of cities over
many weeks, or just popping into local bookstore and
plaintively offering to sign copies, if they have some, like
out the back or whatever.
During a book reading, the author notices a horrendous error that
somehow escaped the editorial process.
The author wakes three-hourly to check his Amazon.com sales ranking.
And that’s about it.
* Note: Blog may represent one-sided author’s view
of a process he actually knows little about, with gaps in knowledge
filled with speculation and lies.
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