So, your novel’s been accepted for publication - what happens next?
© Evgeniy Lukyanov
Author Christine Coleman tells us what happened when her debut novel The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society was accepted by publishing house Transita.
While anyone nearing the end of writing a novel daydreams about holding the first copy of their newly published book, complete with eye-catching front cover and enticing ‘blurb’ on the back, few of us have much of a clue as to what happens between acceptance and publication.
Making sense of the contract
The phone-call from the publisher, Transita, saying: “We want to publish your book” came on a wet February afternoon in 2005. Just over a week later, I received the Publishing Agreement. If I’d had an agent, this would have been sent to her or him first, but as I didn’t have that luxury, I rang my friend, an ex-barrister and many-times published writer, to check that I wouldn’t be signing my life away. As I’d expected from my own reading of the eight-page document, it was all pretty standard stuff.
I’d heard from established writers that a two-year gap was not uncommon between this point and The Book arriving on shop shelves, so I was pleased to find that the Scheduled Publication Date was set for October that same year.
Earning royalties
I have to admit to a twinge of disappointment when I read the Royalties and Advance sections: once the advance of £1,000 had been paid off by the sales from the first print-run of 3,000 paperbacks, I would receive 60p for each book sold at the full price of £7.99.
I hadn’t seriously expected to be able to give up my day job, but it did cross my mind that an agent might have been able to negotiate a slightly more lucrative deal for me. On the other hand, it helped to explain why it’s so fiendishly hard to get an agent in the first place: fifteen or even twenty per cent of a handful of peanuts will barely amount to a monkey’s breakfast.
But I wasn’t going to complain about having my book published at no cost or effort to myself. Any money that I earned would be a bonus - the main thing was that my book would be ‘out there’ making its own way in the public domain
The next few months passed very quickly and my main task during that time was to inform all my friends, relations, acquaintances and colleagues about my forthcoming book. Transita were taking care of all the production and distribution arrangements, and had a sales and marketing team themselves, but they were also encouraging their authors to be as pro-active as possible.
The editing process
Apart from Transita’s office staff, my main contact for a while was their editor, Marina Oliver. The relationship between authors and editors varies enormously - from grammatical changes to losing entire characters and revising huge sections of the text. In my case Marina made only a very few suggestions, mainly for minor amendments, such as replacing a ‘dash’ with ‘…’ at the end of a passage of direct speech (or vice versa) or changing the amount of space I’d used to denote a passage of time within a chapter.
The all-important book cover
I loved the draft of the front cover they sent me, which was fortunate because although Publishing Agreements usually state that the author will be consulted, the publisher generally makes the final decision over this.
My main contribution to this process was to write the ‘blurb’ for the back cover, the ‘About the Author’ page for the front of the book, and the acknowledgements and dedication.
Seeking endorsements
At this point it’s also considering getting in touch with any writers you know who might be willing to provide a nice comment about your book that can be published on the cover as an endorsement. I contacted Sara Maitland, a reader for The Literary Consultancy who had given me good feedback, and she gave me permission to use her ‘puff’ for the front cover.
The book launch – and the start of your life as a published author
Formal book launches are less common these days, and some of the other Transita authors paid for their own out of the proceeds of their book sales. However, I had my sights set on The Orange Studio, a prestigious literary venue in the centre of Birmingham, and when I told the organiser that I had a celebrity friend who’d be happy to interview me at the launch, he was eager to offer me a slot during the Birmingham Book Festival.
The publishers were delighted at this potential for more publicity, and agreed to pay for the wine. With an enthusiastic audience of over one hundred, it was a wonderful start to my life as a published author.
For more on Christine please visit www.christinecoleman.net
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