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Why Publishing A Book Takes Longer Than You Think · If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion

• 0:11
  Joel: Welcome to If I'm Being Honest, Straight Talk About Book Publishing and Promotion.
• 0:15
  Joel: I'm your host, Joel Pitney.
• 0:17
  Sayde: And I'm Sayde Walker.
• 0:19
  Joel: Welcome, everybody.
• 0:20
  Joel: And today we're going to be talking about a really interesting and somewhat abstract topic, which is time.
• 0:26
  Joel: When you're thinking about the publishing, launching process or even the writing process, how a lot of us get impatient and have unrealistic expectations around how long things should take.
• 0:37
  Joel: And through hundreds of bites at the apple, we are here to tell you that time is a very misunderstood concept.
• 0:48
  Joel: And you are probably going to think it's going to take everything should go faster than it actually will.
• 0:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Sayde: And I would say probably it's the first question people ask, right?
• 0:59
  Sayde: When they're getting ready to self-publish, when they're getting ready to work with us, is how long is it going to take?
• 1:04
  Sayde: And what do we tell them, Joel?
• 1:06
  Sayde: How long does it take to self-publish a book?
• 1:08
  Joel: Longer than you think.
• 1:09
  Sayde: Longer than you think.
• 1:10
  Joel: It can take and and this is so this this time, this applies to everybody, right?
• 1:15
  Joel: It's this if you're working with a traditional publisher, if you're working with a company that's going to self-publish your book, if you are self-publishing your book yourself and designing your own cover and hiring someone to do your interior, all that kind of stuff, regardless of your publishing pathway, everything is most likely going to take longer than you think it should.
• 1:32
  Sayde: By a significant amount.
• 1:34
  Joel: Yep.
• 1:34
  Joel: And that goes all the way back to the writing process, right?
• 1:37
  Joel: You might have this big ambitious goal that you're going to write this book in in six months, right?
• 1:43
  Joel: Or in a year.
• 1:44
  Joel: And I think the second that you create a uh you create a concrete timeline, especially an ambitious one for any aspect of the writing, publishing, or promoting process, there's something about, there's some dynamic in the universe.
• 2:04
  Joel: You know, call me superstitious, but it's almost like the universe goes, ha ha ha ha ha ha.
• 2:10
  Joel: I'll show your plan.
• 2:12
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 2:13
  Sayde: And, you know, we've just we've been doing this long enough that we've seen enough hiccups in the process to know that you have to plan for the worst.
• 2:22
  Sayde: You have to plan, plan for the chaos, right?
• 2:25
  Sayde: And so we we tell people coming into this that it's gonna take, it's gonna take a long time.
• 2:30
  Sayde: And I think that sometimes authors are under the assumption that writing the book was the hard part, and writing the book was the part that took them the longest.
• 2:40
  Sayde: And then once they're finished, they're like, oh my God, I want to get this out into the world as quickly as possible.
• 2:45
  Sayde: And and that could be for a variety of reasons.
• 2:48
  Sayde: Maybe there's messaging in the book that feels pertinent to the moment and you just want to get it out.
• 2:53
  Sayde: Maybe you're trying to beat the holiday traffic, or you're hoping that, you know, your book will sell during the holidays.
• 2:59
  Sayde: And so you know you got to get it out before the holidays.
• 3:01
  Sayde: You know, a bunch of different reasons why you might be thinking, I want to get this out as quickly as possible.
• 3:07
  Sayde: And we really push back on that and we let people know that the process of publishing a book takes a long time because it's skilled and it's highly skilled, and we want to make sure that we're doing the very best work that we can.
• 3:20
  Sayde: And so we're not gonna rush it.
• 3:22
  Sayde: We're just not.
• 3:23
  Sayde: And that doesn't even speak to some of the technical difficulties, which we'll get into later, around actually launching and promoting a book.
• 3:31
  Joel: So, um, so what we're gonna do, so we kind of, you know, this is an admittedly very simple podcast because we kind of have one message, which is it's gonna take longer.
• 3:39
  Joel: Everything you is gonna take, you know, at least 50% longer, if not more, than you kind of anticipate.
• 3:45
  Joel: Um and we're gonna kind of explore that topic through a variety of mediums, but we're gonna get into specifics.
• 3:52
  Joel: We're gonna talk about, okay, these are some of the reasons why it takes so much longer.
• 3:56
  Joel: And then, and then we're also gonna talk about, well, what can you do about it?
• 4:00
  Joel: So, um, and just one more quick story before we dive into the details.
• 4:06
  Joel: I recently spoke to someone who uh reached out to me and said, Hey, you know, I really want to get this book out by Christmas, right?
• 4:13
  Joel: Which is two and a half months from now.
• 4:15
  Sayde: Mm-hmm.
• 4:17
  Joel: And, you know, from their perspective, they're like, well, why on earth wouldn't couldn't we do it?
• 4:21
  Joel: If you think about, you know, like how long does it take to edit a book and how long does it take to design a book, and how long does it take to do the cover?
• 4:27
  Joel: And all you have to do is upload it to all the different platforms.
• 4:30
  Joel: How and if you do the math in your head, each one of those tasks feels like you could hit that Christmas deadline.
• 4:37
  Joel: And I don't even want to go into why Christmas doesn't really matter, but a lot of people, you know, but I I respectfully told them it's impossible to do a good job in two and a half months.
• 4:48
  Joel: It's impossible, even if you do the math.
• 4:49
  Joel: Um, and you know, they respectfully said, okay, cool, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
• 4:54
  Joel: It's great.
• 4:55
  Joel: We're gonna see how that goes.
• 4:57
  Joel: Um but I think there's this is like one of these the time required is greater than the sum of its parts.
• 5:04
  Joel: And I think that's sort of the big reason why this takes time, because uh the book development publishing process has many moving parts.
• 5:15
  Joel: It has a writer, which is you, it has an editor, probably two or three different editors, it has uh a designer who does your cover, it has a designer who does your interior, it has technological platforms like Amazon and Ingram.
• 5:31
  Joel: There are so many layers to this that uh and very seldomly, even if you're working within a a vertically integrated publishing system, like with a traditional publisher or a self-publisher, very seldomly are all those pieces gonna work like a well-oiled machine.
• 5:50
  Joel: Right.
• 5:50
  Joel: Because every single one of those people and every single one of those processes is gonna have uh a margin for error.
• 5:57
  Joel: And if one thing goes wrong, the chain of dependencies after that will be affected.
• 6:05
  Joel: So if your cover designer gets sick and isn't able to get your corrections to you for two weeks, and that is gonna that means that you won't be able to upload and get your print proof done by a certain time, which means you can't get your book to your printer in time.
• 6:23
  Joel: There's so many things that could go wrong and they always compound.
• 6:25
  Joel: So when we're building timelines, we always we always uh add, we always plan for the worst at every stage.
• 6:32
  Joel: We assume that we assume that every single layer in person is gonna mess up.
• 6:37
  Joel: Someone's gonna get sick, and then or someone's gonna go on vacation, or someone's, or, or you're gonna change your mind, and when they all add up, it's gonna take a certain amount of time, which is probably gonna be twice as long as the actual amount of work required at each stage.
• 6:55
  Sayde: And we do that because we've never had a book go perfectly from start to finish.
• 7:01
  Sayde: Just never.
• 7:02
  Sayde: There's no such thing as perfect, obviously.
• 7:04
  Sayde: And we've seen, I don't want to say we've seen everything go wrong that could go wrong, but probably pretty close.
• 7:10
  Sayde: And some of those with a single book.
• 7:14
  Sayde: You know, we've had single books that have had all kinds of technical difficulties and delays due to people's schedules, delays due to the author's schedule or wanting to add more content, or realizing after, you know, testing the book with some beta readers that they need to, they need to change things before they publish.
• 7:30
  Sayde: There's, you know, it's on the production side of the house, but it's also on the author side of the house that these that these delays can happen.
• 7:36
  Sayde: And so you have to be you have to be prepared for it.
• 7:41
  Joel: Absolutely.
• 7:42
  Joel: So let's kind of go through some of these pieces um step by step and talk a little bit about how long so how long you should expect, probably, and what can go wrong.
• 7:52
  Joel: So let's start off with the writing process, right?
• 7:54
  Joel: Writing this is the most unpredictable of all of them, right?
• 7:57
  Joel: And we've talked a lot about this.
• 7:58
  Joel: There was a we didn't, we didn't a podcast episode on being a productive writer.
• 8:02
  Joel: We talked a little bit about how do you get your book done.
• 8:05
  Joel: And sometimes that last 2% can take you as long as the first 98%, right?
• 8:12
  Joel: So it's very difficult to predict how long it's gonna take you to finish your book, right?
• 8:17
  Joel: And so you want to make sure you have to balance giving yourself a good timeline.
• 8:21
  Joel: You know, giving yourself a deadline can be a great motivator to finish your book, but also you don't want to be unrealistic and you have to, you don't want to get a bunch of things lined up based on a super ambitious timeline that you gave yourself to finish this thing.
• 8:34
  Joel: So when you're when you're setting your goal, when you're setting timelines for the next step in the process, the company that's gonna, or you know, the editor who's gonna take over, the company that's gonna take over for you when the manuscript's done, don't use an ambitious deadline to determine when that's gonna happen.
• 8:53
  Sayde: Yeah, we, I mean, we we're working with an author right now who is uh planning uh multiple books, a series of books, and her first one is up for pre-order right now and will go live, I think, at the beginning of the year.
• 9:05
  Sayde: She's planned things out two years in advance, and uh, which is fabulous, and we love that, right?
• 9:12
  Sayde: Because those are those are deadlines that are that feel um that feel attainable.
• 9:17
  Sayde: But one of the things that she's found as she's working on book two is she has a fabulous developmental editor, and her editor is booked out 18 months in advance.
• 9:27
  Sayde: And so getting on an editor schedule could even just getting your you know your foot in the door can take a while.
• 9:34
  Joel: Yep.
• 9:35
  Joel: That's that's huge.
• 9:36
  Joel: So that that gets us into the editing stage, right?
• 9:38
  Joel: So you're finishing the manuscript, you're handing it to a copy editor, right?
• 9:42
  Joel: Whether that's a copy editor that you brought in yourself or a copy editor that your publisher or publishing company has brought in, um how long should that take?
• 9:51
  Joel: Well, the answer to that is is massively dependent on how long the book is, right?
• 9:56
  Joel: An average 70,000-word book, a good copy editor is probably going to take about four to six weeks to do that.
• 10:04
  Joel: But if your book is ranging above 100,000 words and getting into, you know, 120, 130, 140,000 words, that kind of thing, uh, that timeline could double.
• 10:14
  Joel: And I think one thing that a lot of people get confused when they hear that, they're like, they kind of think about their job.
• 10:20
  Joel: They go to work and they and they're like, how long does it take to do a thing?
• 10:24
  Joel: That copy editor is is not solely going to be working on your book for four to six weeks.
• 10:31
  Joel: Right.
• 10:31
  Joel: Just think about, you know, that copy editors are usually freelancers.
• 10:35
  Joel: Most copy editors are.
• 10:36
  Joel: They're usually, you know, working with different clients or different publishing companies and they're taking projects piece by piece, and they're always going to have multiple projects going at once, right?
• 10:45
  Joel: Um, and so, and they're they're not always gonna be able to just sit down and exclusively focus on your book only.
• 10:51
  Joel: They're probably gonna have multiple projects at different stages.
• 10:54
  Joel: You know, maybe they're working actively on one book, but then they're doing revisions on another, that kind of thing.
• 10:59
  Joel: So you have to account for the fact that they're probably doing multiple things uh at different times.
• 11:05
  Joel: So, yeah, four to six weeks for an average length book.
• 11:09
  Joel: Some people can do it faster.
• 11:11
  Joel: But even if your copy editor is promising that they're gonna do it faster for you, which is awesome, don't build a plan based on that, right?
• 11:19
  Joel: Build a plan based on uh your copy editor not being able to move as fast as they think they're gonna be able to.
• 11:28
  Sayde: I would argue if you're in the copy editing stage of publishing a book, you shouldn't be building any plans.
• 11:34
  Sayde: Just sit and wait and really focus on that.
• 11:37
  Sayde: Because if it's your first book versus your third book, that can also determine how long that copy editor is gonna need.
• 11:42
  Sayde: You know, if you're a brand new writer, it it's possible that they're gonna need to take more time and and do, you know, some some really heavy lifting on the writing versus, you know, maybe book two, book three.
• 11:54
  Sayde: You've gotten better at writing, you're honing your craft, you're used to working with a copy editor.
• 11:59
  Sayde: So that can also really impact the timeline.
• 12:02
  Joel: Absolutely.
• 12:03
  Joel: So, all right, you get your copy edit done, right?
• 12:06
  Joel: Now, what are the other components you're gonna have to take care of in the in the process?
• 12:10
  Sayde: You're gonna have to do interior design, which is when you take that Word document and you take all of your words and you format them into a book.
• 12:19
  Sayde: And that is a, you know, that's a whole process.
• 12:22
  Sayde: That's picking fonts.
• 12:23
  Sayde: That's, you know, that usually happens in a software like InDesign.
• 12:27
  Sayde: Um, it's not automated.
• 12:28
  Sayde: It's human beings working through every single page and setting up, you know, page numbers and fonts and chapter title treatments and all of that.
• 12:37
  Sayde: And that all that work, you know, it depends on how complex your book is.
• 12:42
  Sayde: How many, how many headers are we talking about?
• 12:44
  Sayde: How many subheaders?
• 12:45
  Sayde: Do we have pull quotes?
• 12:46
  Sayde: Do we have text boxes?
• 12:47
  Sayde: Do we have pictures?
• 12:48
  Sayde: You know, there could there can be lots of formatting or for fiction for fiction titles that are mostly words, it can be a little bit less.
• 12:55
  Sayde: But so there's your interior design, which is one of my favorite parts of the entire process, which is where those words on the page really start to look like a book.
• 13:05
  Joel: And this is this is one of the areas where I think there's the the most confusion about how long it should take.
• 13:11
  Joel: And I think this is because it um it seems like this should just be an easy process.
• 13:17
  Joel: It should be automated, right?
• 13:18
  Joel: Once you've picked your fonts and your styles, which can take some time, some back and forth.
• 13:23
  Joel: And you know, the way we all do it with our designers, not everybody works differently, but the way we do it is that we we develop a little sample so we can figure out the style guide.
• 13:31
  Joel: So we'll give you a few pages of your work that have have the chapter headers in the fonts and all those things Sayde mentioned.
• 13:37
  Joel: And then once you've locked that in, then we will, and then we have a final edited manuscript, we'll lay the whole thing out.
• 13:44
  Joel: But a lot of people think that once you've locked in the style guides, can't you just use some kind of a program?
• 13:49
  Joel: Can't you have AI do it?
• 13:51
  Joel: Or and and I get that.
• 13:54
  Joel: I get why people feel that way.
• 13:55
  Joel: I feel that way too.
• 13:56
  Joel: I'm always like, well, how long could it actually take?
• 13:59
  Joel: And a lot of people are really trying to automate this process.
• 14:02
  Joel: They're trying to use AI, AI technology to um to speed this up.
• 14:08
  Joel: But as anybody who's had a lot of experience doing anything with creative, uh, anything creative with AI can attest or anything automated, you can use the technology to get yourself like 80% of the way there quickly.
• 14:21
  Joel: But then the last 20% takes forever.
• 14:24
  Joel: It's the devil's in the deep the devil is in the details.
• 14:26
  Joel: Um and with book publishing, at least up until right now, we still are in a place where typesetting, where you're literally putting the words on the page and exactly where they're gonna be, is not a quick and easy process.
• 14:40
  Joel: When you make one little change over here, it can affect every single page for the rest of the book.
• 14:45
  Joel: And so um a good typesetter, a good interior designer is gonna take time.
• 14:52
  Joel: Again, and also interior designers, just like uh copy editors, right?
• 14:58
  Joel: If you're working with a company or with a uh or with an independent contractor, uh they're gonna have other projects also.
• 15:04
  Joel: You know, very few, you know, it's gonna be very difficult.
• 15:08
  Joel: You'd have to pay an extraordinary amount of money to get a subcontractor to only work for you and have no other work.
• 15:15
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 15:16
  Joel: Right.
• 15:16
  Joel: So you're always gonna be in someone's queue.
• 15:20
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 15:20
  Sayde: And, you know, uh, as Joel mentioned, kind of we like to, we like to try to set the style as much as we can up front before we design the whole book.
• 15:29
  Sayde: But I have yet to work on a book where something within that style didn't change.
• 15:34
  Sayde: The author changed their mind about something.
• 15:36
  Sayde: Maybe once we got to the point of ordering a printed proof, we found something we didn't actually like because you're usually approving that sample digitally.
• 15:45
  Sayde: You know, you're looking at it on your computer and doing the best that you can to kind of visualize what that book will look like in print.
• 15:51
  Sayde: But there, you know, there might be something that you didn't like or that didn't print well.
• 15:56
  Sayde: And so, yeah, so it just, you know, every time we have to go back into that file and update things or make changes or add content, that takes that takes time.
• 16:06
  Sayde: And so you have to account for that.
• 16:08
  Sayde: And even if you think, oh, this is a quick change, I'm just swapping this word for that word, how long can that really take?
• 16:14
  Sayde: Of course, the actual swapping of the words isn't necessarily going to take long.
• 16:17
  Sayde: But like you said, you're in someone's queue, they're working on other projects, and just recognizing that when you're hiring uh people who have these skill sets, you know, that that you you were working on their timeline as well.
• 16:32
  unknown: Yep.
• 16:32
  Sayde: And it might not line up perfectly with your with your perfect timeline.
• 16:36
  Joel: So how do you so you know, one of one tip that we that we to speed things up, there's a couple tips.
• 16:43
  Joel: How do you speed up that part of the process?
• 16:45
  Joel: Well, there's a couple things you can do.
• 16:46
  Joel: The first thing is make sure that you're that what you that that final manuscript, that word document that's been copy edited and then you you're you're moving into design, make sure it's final.
• 16:57
  Joel: Because the more changes, the tiny little tweaks that you make after it's been laid out will take forever.
• 17:04
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 17:04
  Joel: They will and they will frustrate you, they will frustrate everyone.
• 17:07
  Joel: They will take a long time, they'll probably add money to the process.
• 17:10
  Joel: So get that thing final.
• 17:11
  Joel: Get it as final as you can and be willing to walk away and not make substantial changes or even insignific seemingly insignificant changes, like adding a sentence here.
• 17:20
  Joel: Because if you had a sentence here, it could basically shift the text from every page thereafter in your book.
• 17:25
  Joel: So deal with all that when it's in Microsoft Word and things are fluid.
• 17:30
  Joel: So that's one speed tip.
• 17:32
  Joel: Another speed tip is if you can, and this is this depends on who you're working with, try to establish your style early.
• 17:39
  Joel: So while someone's copy editing your manuscript, see if you can figure out what that style is going to be.
• 17:45
  Joel: And you, if you're working with a company or a contractor and they don't offer this, ask for it.
• 17:49
  Joel: Say, hey, is there any way that we could develop a style guide?
• 17:52
  Joel: Could you mock up a sample for me of the interior so I could look at all these style elements and we could decide, make these big aesthetic decisions while the book's being copy edited, so that by the time it's ready to go, you know exactly what your style choices are going to be.
• 18:07
  Sayde: Yeah, and I would say take it seriously.
• 18:09
  Sayde: You know, when you're when you're making those decisions, when you're going through other books and you're looking at interiors and you're coming up with ideas that you like and you're working with your designer and they're sending you samples and you're, you know, looking at all the different elements, just take it seriously and and make make decisions and understand that, you know, of course you can change your mind.
• 18:29
  Sayde: Of course, we all change our minds, but it's going to add time and it's going to add money to the process.
• 18:34
  Sayde: And so the more you can final those items, the more the the better off, the the quicker the process will go.
• 18:41
  Sayde: It still won't be quick, but it will be quicker.
• 18:44
  Joel: So, Sayde, in your estimation, what do you think the average the average time people should expect and plan for for an in the interior design process?
• 18:54
  Sayde: I I like to plan for no less than two months.
• 18:57
  unknown: Okay.
• 18:58
  Joel: And sometimes And that's not two months of work, right?
• 19:01
  Sayde: Right.
• 19:01
  Sayde: And sometimes, you know, that's that's what we're way ahead of that schedule.
• 19:05
  Sayde: You know, you could you could have you could have samples in a week or two and you approve your sample, and a couple more weeks you have a book and and then it goes to the proofreader.
• 19:14
  Sayde: And, you know, the sometimes that two months feels like we can hit those deadlines really quickly, and other times we just can't.
• 19:22
  Sayde: And, you know, we have a book right now that we've been working on for almost two years.
• 19:27
  Sayde: So lots can happen uh once you move into design.
• 19:32
  Sayde: And um, but I I would say a minimum of two months, figure that for an average length book.
• 19:37
  Sayde: For an average length book, figure just just set yourself up for that.
• 19:40
  Sayde: This is gonna take two months.
• 19:42
  Sayde: And even if it happens earlier and you get a fully designed PDF and you look at it and you're like, yes, this is awesome, and you go, oh shoot, I forgot to add uh an uh acknowledgments page, and then you write that quickly.
• 19:57
  Sayde: Everybody you want to acknowledge, and you're like, can you slip this in?
• 20:00
  Sayde: And you're thinking you're way ahead of schedule.
• 20:03
  Sayde: Now you might not be.
• 20:05
  Sayde: You know, it might take two weeks for your designer to get back to you with that acknowledgments page, and then you have to approve it again, and then you have to upload it and order a proof.
• 20:13
  Sayde: So, really, if you start to feel like you're getting ahead of that two-month deadline, um, you're not.
• 20:20
  Sayde: Just plan for plan for about two months to do an interior.
• 20:24
  Joel: Yep.
• 20:25
  Joel: Uh, so we're gonna jump into the the next component here, but before we do, I just want to remind everybody if you're enjoying this and you like our show, please uh follow us, subscribe to us on whatever platform, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, whatever it is you're on.
• 20:39
  Joel: Um it helps us reach more people.
• 20:41
  Joel: All right.
• 20:42
  Joel: So um, next step in the process.
• 20:44
  Joel: So this is this is, you know, again, none of this is linear.
• 20:48
  Joel: So um a book, the other, the next design piece, right?
• 20:53
  Joel: We've got our edit, we have our writing, we have our editing, we have our interior design, but then there's also the cover design.
• 20:59
  Sayde: Mm-hmm.
• 20:59
  Sayde: Yeah, and I mean cover design, same thing.
• 21:02
  Sayde: I would say, you know, this is definitely something you can get started on with your designer right away.
• 21:07
  Sayde: Your cover designer is likely not going to be your interior designer.
• 21:11
  Sayde: It's a different skill set.
• 21:12
  Sayde: You want someone who knows how to, how to create beautiful book covers that meet industry standards, that speak to your genre, that can be read in a thumbnail form, you know, that the text is readable.
• 21:23
  Sayde: There's all kinds of all kinds of things to think about.
• 21:25
  Sayde: And and that process can take, can take months because it's very creative.
• 21:31
  Sayde: It's a lot of back and forth, and you have to be prepared to give really concrete feedback about what you like and what you don't like.
• 21:38
  Joel: Right.
• 21:39
  Joel: And this is, I think one thing about cover design, this is, you know, as you're figuring out how long how long this is going to take, this is where some self knowledge is really important.
• 21:47
  Joel: You need to kind of know, well, what kind of aesthetic person are you?
• 21:50
  Joel: Right?
• 21:50
  Joel: Are you the kind of person that that uh has a lot of creative opinions?
• 21:55
  Joel: Um, are you easy to please?
• 21:57
  Joel: Or are you really nitpicky?
• 21:59
  Joel: And that and All of those are great approaches to life.
• 22:02
  Joel: It's totally fine.
• 22:03
  Joel: Everybody's a little bit different.
• 22:04
  Joel: On there, ever they're a different place on that spectrum.
• 22:06
  Joel: But it's important to know that.
• 22:07
  Joel: If you're the kind of person who's just, you know, you don't it it doesn't necessarily mean you have low standards, but you know, if you're working with a good cover designer and you're like, and you trust them, you'd be like, well, I really like that.
• 22:18
  Joel: That's great.
• 22:19
  Joel: Right?
• 22:19
  Joel: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Joel: No notes or very few notes.
• 22:22
  Joel: Or if you're the kind of person who's like, this is great, but I want to see three or four more examples because I want it, I just want to make sure.
• 22:29
  Joel: Right.
• 22:30
  Sayde: Or if you're the kind of person that needs external validation, you've gone through the process, you've worked and tweaked and you really love this cover, and then you show it to a few people and it doesn't resonate with them, and they're going, I don't know, I would have done something different.
• 22:42
  Sayde: And then, you know, you might find yourself starting over at square one and going, okay, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater and we need to start over.
• 22:50
  Sayde: And uh, and that, you know, again, and if you're starting over, now, you know, you're back at square one.
• 22:56
  Sayde: So however long it took you to get to the point that you had covers that you were showing people, that's how long it's going to take the second time.
• 23:02
  Sayde: Because we're we're we really are starting over.
• 23:04
  Sayde: And it happens, you know, it happens all the time.
• 23:06
  Sayde: Um, but just just knowing that that process, get it started early because it has the potential to take the longest out of everything.
• 23:15
  Joel: Yep.
• 23:15
  Joel: Yep.
• 23:15
  Joel: Because it's very important getting the cover right, not only in a way that looks beautiful and meets industry standards, but also that makes you feel good because that cover design should make you proud.
• 23:25
  Joel: It should give you warm feelings.
• 23:26
  Joel: It should not feel like an aesthetic compromise.
• 23:28
  Joel: Um so one thing that Sayde brought up a point about external people, and it got me thinking about well, what are the ways that we can speed up this process, right?
• 23:36
  Joel: So one of them, like we said earlier, is making sure that you're getting things finished and finalized earlier, right?
• 23:42
  Joel: So not making changes to the text or the narrative once the book's been typeset, that kind of thing, or making changes to the cover after you've already agreed and uploaded it and all that kind of stuff, right?
• 23:52
  Joel: So making your decisions early is good.
• 23:54
  Joel: But then another one is if you're gonna have outside opinions, they need to be engaged early.
• 24:01
  Joel: And we've seen this just completely throw projects off the rails too many times to count, where someone will be engaged with their team, you know, their cover designer, their editor, their interior designer, and be making a lot of creative choices and in a process, a dynamic process of collaboration, and come up with a product that both the the artist and the author are really happy with, right?
• 24:28
  Joel: And there's a lot of decisions that have gone through, and there's a lot of factors that have been created, and and everybody's happy, and then they will give up the book.
• 24:39
  Joel: Maybe, maybe it's maybe you've already gotten to the point where you've printed out a proof, or you've shown a digital cover, or you've shown a sample of the interior, right?
• 24:49
  Joel: They'll then bring someone in from the outside who hasn't been involved in the process.
• 24:54
  Joel: That people and it you never know what that person's gonna be like.
• 24:59
  Joel: A lot of people have opinions, and some people have really strong opinions, and sometimes those opinions are extremely subjective and arbitrary.
• 25:04
  Joel: Sometimes they're objective and authoritative, you don't you don't know.
• 25:08
  Joel: But if you bring someone into the process who hasn't been involved up until that point, you are introducing a massive agent of chaos.
• 25:16
  Sayde: Right.
• 25:17
  Joel: You are inviting Murphy's Law, right?
• 25:19
  Joel: You are probably going to get feedback that is gonna cast doubt in you on the process.
• 25:29
  Joel: And so you have to do that very carefully.
• 25:32
  Joel: So if you're gonna do that external feedback process, work with your team and make sure that that feedback process is coming early in the process, early, early, early, early, so that they they understand and they're bought in too.
• 25:49
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Joel: Great.
• 25:52
  Joel: So cover design.
• 25:53
  Joel: We were just talking about cover design.
• 25:54
  Joel: And how long do you think you should expect for the cover design process?
• 25:59
  Sayde: I mean, uh you know, uh three to four months.
• 26:04
  Joel: Wow, that's long.
• 26:05
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 26:05
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 26:05
  Sayde: Why so long?
• 26:06
  Sayde: I would say three to four months.
• 26:08
  Sayde: You know, just so that you have plenty of time for the back and forth.
• 26:11
  Sayde: Uh when you go to print a printed proof, you might need to do some adjustments to the color.
• 26:16
  Sayde: You might need to do some adjustments to the to the type and the font.
• 26:20
  Sayde: Um, you know, uh covers tend to be overlooked when it comes to like proofing the actual text on the back.
• 26:27
  Sayde: And so, you know, you might find some typos even after you've uploaded it.
• 26:30
  Sayde: And you need to, you need to, you also need to make sure that you're setting your cover to the correct templates.
• 26:36
  Sayde: Um, there can be some variation there, and maybe you don't um maybe, you know, maybe you have to get back with your cover designer to say, hey, I need you to tweak this a little bit because it's not quite fitting on the page, all kinds of things like that.
• 26:49
  Sayde: And so, so from start to finish, from like concept to actually uploading a cover that's ready to go, I would say, I would say three to four months.
• 26:57
  Joel: Wow.
• 26:57
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Joel: That's long.
• 26:58
  Joel: And by the way, if if people are trying to take notes and this is overwhelming, like we we will we will publish, uh, we have a self-publishing timeline that Sayde designed and developed, uh, which is really cool.
• 27:09
  Joel: It lays out broad strokes for how long everything should take and and in what order you can do things.
• 27:14
  Joel: And that we'll we'll include that with this episode so you'll be able to take a look.
• 27:18
  Joel: Um, and and again, when you're thinking about uh any of these items, when you hear three to four months, don't think that that's the actual amount of time it takes to do that 80% first draft, right?
• 27:30
  Joel: Right.
• 27:30
  Joel: A lot of the work for finalizing your cover is going to be done much faster than three or four months.
• 27:35
  Joel: It's the tweak, it's the reviewing, it's the refining that takes a long time.
• 27:38
  Sayde: Yes, thank you for bringing that up because I do think that that is the point that catches people so off guard in this entire process is you can be five, you have five percent left.
• 27:49
  Sayde: It's just a few tweaks.
• 27:50
  Sayde: And this is the entire process, the cover, the interior, even you know, set like you might think you're so close to the finish line because 95% of the work has been done, and that last 5% can actually take a very long time.
• 28:05
  Sayde: And uh, and if you're comparing it to all the work that's already been done, you're going, no, this is just gonna take, this is gonna take someone two minutes to do, and and that that's just not realistic.
• 28:14
  Joel: And so that's right.
• 28:16
  Joel: So again, I mean, this is this is why we're we wanted to do this episode.
• 28:20
  Joel: These are important principles, right?
• 28:22
  Joel: So plan, always plan for that review.
• 28:24
  Joel: Plan for don't plan for how long it's gonna take to get yourself most of the way there.
• 28:29
  Joel: You should assume that that last five percent is gonna take just as long as the first 95%, right?
• 28:34
  Sayde: Yes.
• 28:35
  Joel: Do your planning early.
• 28:36
  Sayde: Yes, right?
• 28:36
  Joel: Do that planning early, do that planning early, find make as many creative decisions early in the process as you can and try to exercise restraint when you want to keep tweaking later on.
• 28:46
  Joel: Make those decisions.
• 28:47
  Joel: Hey, is this really that important?
• 28:48
  Joel: Do I really need to change to get rid of this and and put a comma in there?
• 28:54
  Joel: If it's gonna add three weeks to the process.
• 28:57
  Joel: Because in your mind you think, oh, well, it'll take five minutes for someone to make that change, but it doesn't, right?
• 29:01
  Joel: And then be and be very wary of getting outside people involved.
• 29:05
  Joel: So these are these are some of these principles of of of the timeline that we're sort of discovering as we talk about this.
• 29:13
  Joel: Okay, so we talked about writing, we talked about editing, we talked about designing the interior and the cover.
• 29:19
  Joel: So, all right, you've got all your final files, right?
• 29:21
  Joel: So then it should be immediate, right?
• 29:23
  Joel: Like from here on out?
• 29:25
  Sayde: No.
• 29:25
  Joel: So it'd be like once you're done, we're we're gonna publish.
• 29:28
  Joel: It should take maybe days.
• 29:29
  Joel: What do you think?
• 29:30
  Sayde: No.
• 29:30
  Sayde: I mean, at that point, you are you are moving into a system that you have no control over, right?
• 29:36
  Joel: Okay, so let's so what is that?
• 29:38
  Joel: So, right, so we're in the publishing process.
• 29:40
  Sayde: We're in the publishing process.
• 29:41
  Sayde: So you're uploading your files now, the files that you've designed, approved, everything looks great.
• 29:45
  Sayde: You're uploading them to Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark, and now you are at the mercy of those systems.
• 29:51
  Sayde: You don't own them, you have a free account to them, you're uploading your files, and you're, you know, fingers crossed that everything is moving through the system correctly.
• 30:01
  Sayde: You order a printed proof, your proof comes, everything looks great, you're super excited.
• 30:06
  Sayde: Uh, you decide to hit publish on your book, and you get an email from KDP that says, Oh, your margins aren't correct.
• 30:12
  Sayde: And you're going, oh, well, wait a second, you printed the proof.
• 30:16
  Sayde: You didn't tell me at the proof stage that there was anything wrong with my margins, but now you're telling me my margins are incorrect.
• 30:21
  Sayde: And you probably have to go back to your designer and get that fixed, right?
• 30:26
  Sayde: Um, there are a multitude of technical things that can happen at the upload stage, including maybe everything goes smoothly.
• 30:35
  Sayde: You hit publish, you get the little email that says, great, it'll take 72 hours, and now it's been two weeks and the book is still sitting in review.
• 30:44
  Sayde: You have no control over that.
• 30:46
  Sayde: You have, you know, you can you can reach out to customer service, you can ping people, you can try to get a real person to talk to you, but now you're you're at the mercy of the print on demand technology and it's very glitchy and uh and it and it doesn't care at all about what day you've told people that your book will be available for sale.
• 31:07
  Joel: And this is this, by the way, is still going to be the case, even if you're working with a company, right?
• 31:13
  Sayde: Yes.
• 31:13
  Joel: Because uh traditional publishers, if you're working with a traditional publisher, they have a little more control over this.
• 31:19
  Joel: Um, but any other company, a hybrid company, a self-publishing company, they're basically using the same platforms.
• 31:26
  Joel: And they're they're still also at the mercy of Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark.
• 31:31
  Sayde: And like Sayde said, You have never experienced anything as frustrating as you've done everything right and you've taken all of this time and you've you've crossed your T's and you've dotted your I's, and then you go to upload and your book gets stuck.
• 31:46
  Joel: Yep.
• 31:46
  Joel: And it happens all the time.
• 31:48
  Joel: And sometimes it's your fault or your team's fault.
• 31:51
  Joel: Sometimes your designer may have overlooked uh one little detail on the they shouldn't, but it, you know, mistakes happen.
• 31:59
  Joel: Um but a lot of times it's the technology's fault.
• 32:03
  Joel: We've we've had experiences where we'll have a file rejected by Amazon or Ingram Spark, and then we'll just re-upload the same file in response and they'll approve it.
• 32:12
  Sayde: Right.
• 32:12
  Sayde: Change the file name a little bit, send it through, approve it.
• 32:16
  Sayde: Sometimes you have something incorrect in your metadata that maybe when you started the process of creating your title, you thought your book was going to be six by nine, but the file that you uploaded is a f is five and a half by eight and a half, and it all gets rejected.
• 32:30
  Sayde: And and it, they're not the communication is not very clear as to why these things happen.
• 32:36
  Sayde: You sort of have to sleuth it out yourself.
• 32:38
  Sayde: Um, and sometimes it's really simple and it's like a click of a button that's like, oh no, actually, I don't have a duplex cover.
• 32:44
  Sayde: That was a mistake.
• 32:45
  Sayde: You toggle that off, and then everything works fine.
• 32:47
  Sayde: And then other times uh it's their fault, and they actually have to go in and and dig through the systems and do a technical review and figure out why the book isn't publishing.
• 32:57
  Sayde: Um, and and I am not kidding when I say that I have seen that take months.
• 33:04
  Joel: Yep.
• 33:04
  Joel: We had a we had an author who the there were some errors around her account, and we could we were we got in an endless feedback loop with with uh one of the with one of the self-publishing platforms.
• 33:16
  Joel: I'm not, I won't say which.
• 33:17
  Joel: They both are equally as glitchy, Amazon and English Spark.
• 33:20
  Joel: And uh we could not get out of it.
• 33:23
  Joel: We could not figure out what to do.
• 33:24
  Joel: So luckily, I had met an executive from that company at a writer's conference, and I decided to call in a favor.
• 33:33
  Joel: I wrote to her and I said, Hey, we don't know what to do.
• 33:35
  Joel: And so she she it was amazing.
• 33:38
  Joel: She was amazing.
• 33:39
  Joel: She uh actually, I will say it was Ingram Spark because they have incredible customer service.
• 33:43
  Joel: You get to meet their people um at these conferences.
• 33:48
  Joel: And the fact that an executive from Ingram Spark opened my email and then escalated, yes, uh escalated the contract gave me a lot of faith in that company.
• 33:57
  Sayde: And shout out to Ingram Spark.
• 33:58
  Sayde: You can, you know, you can book a call with a real person, you have to pay for it, but it is so valuable.
• 34:04
  Sayde: And oftentimes they can go in and tell you exactly what's wrong.
• 34:07
  Sayde: They can see stuff that we can't see.
• 34:09
  Sayde: Um, but I've also had that not work, you know, and so that just all of that like sleuthing and and figuring out what the problem is.
• 34:19
  Sayde: Um, it doesn't happen with every book, but you should assume it's gonna happen so that you know to plan for it, right?
• 34:25
  Sayde: And you're not you're not planning a big, a big promotion and an event and you're gonna have hundreds of people at your house on the exact day that you think your book is gonna go live in the system because you don't know, even if you, even if you've run your timelines and you've gone, oh, it's only gonna take, you know, 72 hours.
• 34:42
  Sayde: So if I push publish on this day, it'll be live on this day.
• 34:45
  Sayde: You don't know that that's actually gonna happen.
• 34:47
  Sayde: And, you know, we haven't even talked about once that book does go live and and it's front facing and it's showing up on retail pages, there could be errors that you have that you didn't, you're going, wait a second, that's not the book description that I put in.
• 35:01
  Sayde: Um, you know, my cover art is all funk, funky and looks weird.
• 35:05
  Sayde: And and uh there could so there could be errors on that end as well that you have to address and figure out and tweak.
• 35:12
  Sayde: And it's not always as simple as re-uploading a file.
• 35:16
  Joel: We found that roughly 10% of the books that we work on have some kind of printer side error that has could that's completely out of our control on the Amazon side.
• 35:25
  Sayde: And I think also just with how popular self-publishing has become and with the fact that there's thousands of books that go live every single day.
• 35:32
  Sayde: Um, there are certainly times of year where the systems get really bogged down and backed up, but we're seeing that happen more and more where there's just there, there's an influx of of new books and and you are in a queue, just like you have been this whole process, and you don't know when you're gonna get out of that queue.
• 35:51
  Joel: Yep.
• 35:52
  Joel: So, so two of our best practices for dealing with the launch process, right?
• 35:57
  Joel: Um, you know, once those files are all developed.
• 36:00
  Joel: So um the first thing is don't plan any, you know, give yourself at least two months, if not three months, after you're after those files are done to start doing any kind of launch parties or promotions or PR or the kind of things where you're where you need the book to be live for sale, right?
• 36:17
  Joel: Two to three months, right?
• 36:19
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 36:19
  Joel: Then the second thing is make sure you order a print proof.
• 36:22
  Joel: That is critical.
• 36:24
  Joel: Don't plan the process so that once the digital files are done, you just go live.
• 36:28
  Joel: If you haven't taken the time to order a print proof, which can take weeks.
• 36:32
  Joel: You know, we recently there was a paper shortage, and so it was taking a long time for print proofs to be printed and shipped.
• 36:40
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 36:41
  Joel: Right.
• 36:41
  Joel: So uh order a print proof and make sure that you've seen that.
• 36:45
  Joel: Then our second best practice for speeding things up is do a soft launch.
• 36:49
  Joel: So uh what a soft launch, how we define a soft launch is actually make your book live for sale.
• 36:57
  Joel: Just do it.
• 36:58
  Joel: Click live, but don't tell anyone.
• 37:01
  Joel: Don't promote it.
• 37:02
  Joel: Don't worry.
• 37:03
  Joel: The world is not gonna find out about it.
• 37:05
  Joel: You have not let a cat out of the bag, right?
• 37:07
  Joel: Once you click live, it's not gonna all of a sudden get populated all over the internet and everyone's gonna be able to find it, right?
• 37:13
  Joel: The only people are gonna find it are those people that you tell are gonna go there.
• 37:17
  Joel: So when you do a soft launch, you turn it on and make it live, but you don't tell anyone to go there.
• 37:22
  Joel: And then that allows you just to run some of this testing and tweaking.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 37:26
  Joel: You get to make sure that that Amazon listing looks right.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 37:30
  Joel: Sometimes you're gonna have multiple formats, the audio book, the ebook, paperback, the hardcover, if you've done all those formats, will be listed separately.
• 37:39
  Joel: I just recently discovered this with a traditionally published book where three different formats of the book were all listed separately.
• 37:45
  Joel: Those need to be combined into one account on Amazon.
• 37:47
  Joel: So that's a thing you can troubleshoot.
• 37:48
  Joel: Um, it also allows you to order a live version of your book.
• 37:53
  Joel: So instead of a print proof, print proof happens before the book's made live.
• 37:57
  Joel: And they actually use a different process and a dick different technology for that.
• 38:00
  Joel: So once you've made that book live and available for sale, you can buy a copy through the Amazon system and take a look at what the consumer is going to be.
• 38:10
  Sayde: The customer is going to get.
• 38:11
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 38:11
  Sayde: And when you purchase that copy, that will enact your sales data on Amazon.
• 38:15
  Sayde: Um, if this is your first book, you need to set up your author central account, your Goodreads Amazon or Goodreads author profile.
• 38:22
  Sayde: You know, there's there's some things that that you just can't do until that book is live in the system.
• 38:27
  Sayde: If you're also planning on publishing an audiobook, there needs to be a book live in the system before you can even start that process.
• 38:32
  Sayde: So having that soft launch period really helps you get your ducks in a row, make sure everything is linking, aligned properly before you start marketing and sending people to go buy your book.
• 38:45
  Sayde: And if that process takes, we say a minimum of two weeks, really, um, it's okay.
• 38:50
  Sayde: It's okay if your book sits there for two weeks with no sales.
• 38:53
  Sayde: It's okay.
• 38:54
  Joel: Yeah, and uh yeah, honestly, I like to have a month.
• 38:56
  Joel: I always I always say a month, but two weeks is, you know, two weeks maybe knows more than I do.
• 39:00
  Joel: But the for me, the um, there's a big fear around this.
• 39:04
  Joel: So there's a lot of a lot of people think, oh, if I make my book live and I'm not selling it, won't I be penalized?
• 39:12
  Joel: Right?
• 39:13
  Joel: Will will Amazon see that no sales are coming to this book and never show it up in searches?
• 39:21
  Joel: Right?
• 39:21
  Joel: Am I gonna is is the algorithm is the algorithm gonna work against me?
• 39:26
  Joel: For all, if you're not already a well-established author with a huge following and you've written multiple books with readers who are waiting for your next book, it doesn't matter.
• 39:38
  Joel: I've got a whole article on this.
• 39:40
  Joel: Uh it's specifically around pre-orders, but um, it talks about sort of like this this idea that the first week is gonna make or break your book.
• 39:49
  Joel: And we'll we'll link to it in the show notes.
• 39:52
  Joel: Um But in traditional publishing, this is kind of the mindset.
• 39:56
  Joel: It's like that first week, everything's gotta come, right?
• 39:58
  Joel: That's you're trying to get on the bestseller list that first week.
• 40:01
  Joel: Um, you're trying to hack Amazon's algorithm.
• 40:04
  Joel: So if you get lots of customer reviews and and and sales in that first week, they're gonna they're gonna start promoting your book.
• 40:09
  Joel: That's not gonna happen for most authors.
• 40:12
  Joel: They're just not you're it's just not gonna happen.
• 40:14
  Joel: Um and they're not, you definitely won't be penalized.
• 40:17
  Joel: You won't be, your discoverability will not go down.
• 40:20
  Joel: And for most authors, discoverability, especially in the beginning, is not a huge thing.
• 40:25
  Joel: Right.
• 40:25
  Joel: Right?
• 40:25
  Joel: Um, you're mostly gonna be finding your readers.
• 40:29
  Joel: You have to discover them and then send them to your book, as opposed to you know getting the right keywords and metadata, and they're just gonna automatically find you because you're competing against so many other books that are be published by big time authors with traditional publishers that already have a huge track record of sales.
• 40:43
  Joel: So your chances of hacking that algorithm in your favor are very small.
• 40:47
  Joel: So you shouldn't plan around that.
• 40:49
  Joel: And one of the big ways that you should not plan around that is to do a soft launch.
• 40:54
  Joel: Because the the real consequence, if you don't do a soft launch, you could have far worse consequences than if you don't have a lot of sales during those first few weeks.
• 41:05
  Sayde: And I think that's that's kind of you know, driving it home the whole entire point we're trying to make here is take your time, take your time, take your time.
• 41:12
  Sayde: Your book is important and it's worth it to take your time and make sure all of these things are are aligned and working and perfect, as perfect as they can be before you, before you launch.
• 41:24
  Joel: Yep.
• 41:24
  Joel: So so I mean, I think that probably covers the whole waterfront, but we should I'd like to do a quick summary before we conclude here.
• 41:31
  Joel: So um, some of the principles that we're talking about when you're planning your launch, and by the way, if you want all these timelines, check out the thing in the the our our little timeline we did.
• 41:40
  Joel: But um, so the first thing is plan, just just plan for more time, right?
• 41:46
  Joel: And and that includes uh planning for the review process at every single stage of the every single stage to take twice as long or as long as the development process, right?
• 41:59
  Joel: So at every stage, editing, design, you you should probably double everything.
• 42:05
  Joel: Give yourself all that room.
• 42:07
  Joel: Remember that everybody who's working on this has a cue.
• 42:11
  Sayde: Okay.
• 42:12
  Joel: And so if you're making tweaks, you're getting in line.
• 42:14
  Joel: You're not necessarily gonna have them just make your tweak for you.
• 42:17
  Joel: And that this is gonna be the case with subc independent contractors, publishing companies, and then traditional publishers.
• 42:22
  Joel: It's always the same.
• 42:23
  Joel: There's always a cue.
• 42:25
  Joel: Try to make your critical decisions early.
• 42:27
  Joel: The earlier you make the critical decisions and don't make big changes to the text or the aesthetics later in the process, the faster things will go.
• 42:35
  Joel: Um try to try to um sorry.
• 42:43
  Sayde: Well, and I and then I just think, you know, um getting your getting your creative feedback in early, uh being really articulate about what your creative feedback is when it comes to both the interior and the cover.
• 42:54
  Sayde: And then once you move into the actual publishing on those platforms, recognizing that you are not in control of those systems.
• 43:02
  Sayde: And so you have to you have to work within their constraints.
• 43:06
  Joel: Give so give yourself lots of time to test and tweak even what seem to be automated technologies.
• 43:15
  Joel: So again, check out the timeline.
• 43:19
  Joel: I mean, we usually say if you're copy editing, the the least amount of time that a book should take from copy edit through being made live and promoted, safely promoted after your soft launch, is a minimum of eight months.
• 43:34
  Sayde: Yep.
• 43:35
  Joel: But it can often be longer.
• 43:36
  Joel: So if you're if you're trying to do anything more aggressive than that, I'm not saying it's impossible, but what you're doing is you're introducing a tremendous amount of potential for error at every single step in the process.
• 43:49
  Joel: All right.
• 43:50
  Joel: Well, there you have it.
• 43:51
  Joel: If uh we would love to be contradicted here, if anybody has alternative experiences that they want to share with us or other tips and tricks for speeding things up, please leave a comment or email us, uh Joel or Sayde at launchmybook.com.
• 44:04
  Joel: Um, and yeah, thanks for listening.