It's been a while since I've posted in my series on book publishing, but the closer I get to the end of the process, the more I'm reminded of just how different the process is from the journal publishing process--so I figured it might be a good idea to finally start completing the series. I hope readers find the series helpful.
My previous post in this series was on contracts: on what they involve, issues one should think about or negotiate prior to signing, and so on. Today's post will be on the "post-contract" stage: the stage during which one revises the manuscript for final submission, selects a cover image, etc. In some ways, I found this the most "normal"--or expected--stage of the process, as it mostly involves nuts-and-bolts type stuff (revising, formatting the manuscript, etc.). But still, as I will now explain, even these basic nuts-and-bolts issues can be more complex, and stressful, than one might naively expect.
House style
The first thing my publisher (Palgrave) sent me post-contract was a 28-page "house style" guide laying out their expectations about how the manuscript must be presented and formatted.
Formatting might seem really boring and easy (viz. "just do whatever they ask!"). But it actually took me a lot of time to get everything right. For instance, the publisher's style guide only gave me two options for reference-style: (A) the Harvard reference style, where one places references in text, as in (Harvard 2015, p.X); and (B) and Vancouver style, a style I had never heard of before in which one numbers endnotes sequentially in each chapter, assigning each numbered endnote to one book or article only, and then referring to that number throughout the chapter, as in1-10,15,18,20-25; and then doing the same in each chapter, starting over, citing each full source again and starting our list at number '1' again.
Yes, you got that right, in Vancouver, you have to keep track of which reference goes with which book or article, and then cite the same number every time; and the repeat the entire process for each chapter. It's very difficult to keep track, and makes one's endnotes very repetitive across chapters.
Anyway, I found deciding between the two reference formats surprisingly difficult. On the one hand, I really didn't want to use Harvard. Its in-text citation format seemed to me far more appropriate for scientific articles, and frankly, just looked bad to me, breaking up the book's narrative flow (especially given how many citations I used, all of which I would have had to list in the body-text). So, I wanted to use Vancouver. But this gave rise to all kinds of issues, and stresses. First, I had no experience using Vancouver before. It was surprisingly difficult to learn, and to keep all the references straight. Second, it gave rise to serious problems with my contractual word limit. Since in Vancouver one has to each full journal or book reference in each chapter, the Vancouver format dramatically multiplied the number of words I used, sending me far over my word limit (which my contract stated to be a "hard"/unchangeable limit). This was stressful, as at a fairly late stage I thought I would have to go back and change all of the references (in a 290-page manuscript) from Vancouver to Harvard--which would have been a total nightmare.
Fortunately, I got everything ironed out, getting permission to use a slightly altered form of Vancouver which got me (just barely) under the word limit. The point, though, is that this is just one of the things about the book process that I found surprisingly difficult--and I imagine I'm not alone.
The word limit
This brings me to a second difficult issue: one's word limit. Different journals have different word limits: some relatively short, some much longer (and some have no word limits at all). Your book contract, however, will most likely have a stated word limit--one you agree to at the contract stage, prior to revising your final manuscript. As I mentioned in my post on contracts, it's really important to try to ensure that you have a high-enough limit to begin with (as I understand it, most book publishers have an upper limit of 115-125K words; my contract stated a 105K limit). It's important because (A) the limit that is contractually agreed to may be hard, if not impossible, not change, and (B) at least in my experience, it is very easy for a book's length to expand at the final revision stage (as it is may be only during final revisions that one becomes aware of certain concerns about one's argument that one really needs to address).
I struggled with my word limit all throughout the revisions stage. On the one hand, I found it very helpful to have a limit--as the limit incentivized making the manuscript as crisp and concise as possible. On the other hand, much more so than in journal articles, it forced me to have to make difficult choices on what to include in and exclude from the manuscript. There are some issues I really would have liked to address in the manuscript--issues that I would not be surprised to see book reviewers raise concerns about--that simply weren't possible to fully address. And the book's final chapter probably could have been about three times as long as it is, to really systematically wrap everything up--but I found myself having to make it much more compact to make my limit (in some respects, I actually like how concise the final chapter is--but I'll be curious to see how readers respond).
Anyway, my overall experience with the book publishing process is that word limits loom much larger--and require many more difficult choices--when it comes to books as opposed to articles. Because journal articles are typically very self-contained--raising and examining a few very targeted issues--my experience is that choices on what to include/exclude are much easier with articles than with a book.
Revising the manuscript
This brings me to the general issue of revising one's manuscript. In some respects, revising a book manuscript is not all that different than revising an article (books are simply much longer). I found, however, that there were elements of it that were incredibly different. In my experience, when it comes to revising a journal article (e.g. for a revise-and-resubmit or conditional acceptance), it is relatively rare for one to "go back to the drawing board", scrapping entire arguments. I think I've only done something like this once with a journal article at an R&R stage. Books are a different beast, however, at least in my experience. Writing a book was, for me, much more of a process of discovery than writing a journal article. I had arguments in mind, worked them out, got a contract--and then discovered, only after signing the contract, that the main line of argument I worked out in the first part of the book was inadequate. Thus, unlike a journal R&R--which is mainly just revising arguments one already has--my experience was that writing and revising a book is a much more organic, haphazard, unexpected process, one that can require one to "go back to the drawing board" relatively late in the process. For what it is worth, I found this one of the coolest things about writing a book--but it was also unsettling, as I realized it might just be possible that the new arguments would be terrible and lose me my contract (at the final review stage-see below).
The cover image
Before I turn to the final part of the post-contract process--the final clearance review--one further thing one has to do during the revising stage is select a cover image for the book. This can be really easy, or difficult, depending on what one wants. My publisher gave two options: (a) select a stock photo from an online repository, or (b) commission an original artwork (photograph or drawing) for approval. The former option is quite easy, of course--but I expect many authors would like an original cover to both make the book stand out and artistically represent the book's content. Anyway, that's what I wanted to do, and I had an idea of what I wanted the image to look like--so I had to hunt down photographers and illustrators to see if anyone was willing and able to do one for a reasonable fee. Fortunately, I found a great illustrator, who came up with a cover image I really like. This was a lot of fun, actually, but it also involved a lot of shooting in the dark, contacting photographers and illustrators out of the blue, running ideas by them, negotiating costs and deadlines, etc.
The final clearance review
This brings me to the final stage of the post-contract process prior to acceptance of the final manuscript: the clearance review. Basically, the clearance review is a final round of peer-review where the final manuscript one submits is sent out to some reviewer(s) for a final verdict. From what I understand, the clearance review is no sure thing--you can be tasked with further revisions, or even have your contract cancelled if the reviewer(s) recommend rejection--and, at least in my case, it was by far the worst part of the entire book publishing process. When I submitted my manuscript, I was told it would take a couple of weeks--yet well over a month went by without a word, and I don't think I had a good night's sleep the whole time (this might seem an obviously unhealthy reaction, but I suppose I'll just say that after spending 3+ years on a book project, the sheer amount of time and emotional investment one has in a project can be a bit overwhelming, especially when confronted with the fact that one's project lays in the hands of only one or two reviewers!). Anyway, everything turned out okay in the end--but I think I told myself daily, "I will never write another book again", during that month.
All in all, I found the entire post-contract process challenging, but well worth it. Still, acceptance of the final manuscript is far from the end of the story. The book production process comes next--and, as I will explain in my next post, an entirely new host of issues arises...
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