Copy of Understanding Book Publishing Timelines

Anyone familiar with professional publishing knows this top industry talking point: "We can publish your book quickly." But what does "quickly" mean, and why did that become a valuable metric for potential author clients? Knowing more about the traditional publishing world can help contextualize the conversation and set expectations.

Why Does Traditional Publishing Take So Long?

Traditional publishing takes a long time, even by pre-internet standards. For the sake of narrowing focus, let's not discuss the years it usually takes to write a manuscript, find a literary agent, and begin the submission process to uninterested publishers. That is its own battlefield, one we can discuss in the future.

Skipping all that and jumping straight to the moment an acquisitions editor makes an offer on a manuscript, it can still take an average of 18 months (and often upwards of 2-3 years) to see that book on store shelves. There are a few reasons for this, primarily:

The Traditional Business Model

Traditional publishers do not charge authors to publish their books. In fact, they often pay authors advances against future royalties as part of their contract, in addition to taking on the full cost of the editing, design, production, and sales process. It costs publishers a lot of money to publish a book.

So where does their revenue come from? Selling books, lots of them. In order for a book to be profitable for a publisher, it needs to sell enough for the publisher's percentage of the royalties to make up for both the costs of production and the author advance.

This means they spend a lot of extra time focusing on the quality and marketability of the book. Sometimes the publisher will also buy things like translation rights and film rights from the author, which means the book needs to be good enough to sell to entertainment experts.

The Traditional Operational Model

Traditional publishers are both intellectual property (IP) traders and manufacturers. In other words, once they have bought and developed the intangible asset of an author's IP (aka their manuscript), they need to then produce and distribute the physical product created with that IP (aka the finished book) at scale.

Publishers work with huge facilities to produce large quantities of high-quality product in various formats, warehouse that product, and distribute it nationally (and often internationally) from one physical location to another. This manufacturing process also requires building strong, ongoing B2B relationships with third-party vendors who buy and sell said products to the public on the publisher's behalf, aka booksellers, libraries, universities, etc. This dual business model is highly sustainable in the long-term but also a lot more complex, a lot more dependent upon coordinating external partner schedules, and so a lot slower.

The Traditional(ist) Mindset

While there are many good reasons for traditional publishing timelines to be slow, it also needs to be said that many of the larger institutions are still using processes and technological solutions from a prior age. In 2012, the traditional publishing industry had an existential crisis when the market forced them to embrace ebooks. In 2015, leading publishing experts like John B. Thompson were suggesting that moving away from physical manuscripts and working primarily via email and word processors was a radical business decision.

These traditional publishing titans have existed for over a hundred years and employ hundreds if not thousands of people, so of course there is more to consider when adopting a new technology or implementing a new process. The same factors that gives traditional publishers their aura of legitimacy in the literary community are also the ones that keep them from being as agile as possible.

How Does Professional Publishing Address This?

Professional publishing (and to an extent its parent, hybrid publishing) have sped up the publishing timeline considerably. Over the last ten years, these quickly emerging sub-industries have gained a lot of traction with aspiring authors who are not interested in waiting years to see their book in print.

The average estimate from professional publishers is anywhere from 8-12 months from sign up to book launch. For potential author clients who don't know much about the traditional publishing industry, this may still seem like a long time. What is often overlooked in these conversations is that this 8-12 months often includes the process of writing the manuscript, and completely removes the need to wait around for an acceptance letter.

Professional publishing has been able to achieve this in a few ways:

The Professional Business Model

Unlike traditional publishers, professional publishers are not in the business of purchasing and selling IP. They do not make money directly from book sales, and do not collect royalties, meaning the author client will see up to 75% of sale revenue (depending on distribution platform) rather than the traditional 10-15%.

Professional publishing operates on a service-based model. They sell the service of publishing books (and sometimes ongoing book marketing services after launch). This means that their revenue is dependent upon how many author clients they work with, which encourages a focus on a positive and efficient client experience over imposing internal quality standards on the books produced.

The Professional Operational Model

Professional publishers do not manufacture their own books and are not usually directly involved in distribution or third-party vendor sales. By utilizing digital and print-on-demand (POD) platforms like IngramSpark and Kindle Direct Publishing, professional publishers save months if not years in print and distribution.

This is an acceptable operational model because, as explained above, professional publishers do not sustain themselves on book sales, and therefore can focus on producing what the author clients usually want most: a book that is easily accessible to a wide and predominantly online audience, at a relatively low cost and with the click of a button.

The Professional Publishing Mindset

Professional publishers are often early adopters, especially since the sub-industry attracts people who are interested in creating online, service-based startups. Their willingness to adopt new technological solutions and business structures mean they are more likely to implement time-saving strategies into their production process.

When used effectively, these strategies can result in almost zero timeline bloat and turnkey publishing operations that (within the context of traditional publishing) are lightning fast. The challenge for the professional publisher is to find ways to do this without compromising on the quality of the product. The challenge for the potential author client is to find the professional publishing partners that have perfected this.

Will Publishing A Book Get Even Faster?

The short answer is: yes. The speed at which books can be published is already getting faster, with some professional publishers now able to offer certain author clients publication dates only 4-5 months after signing up. Part of this is simply due to the standardization and accessibility of the professional publishing process as it becomes more established, but of course this discussion would be incomplete without acknowledging the role of AI.

As generative AI becomes more mainstream and cheaper to use, some professional publishers will no doubt begin offering turnaround times closer to weeks than months. AI platforms can write, edit, and proofread your book, design your cover and your illustrations, and generate launch campaign calendars, all with a few prompts.

What professional publishers and their author clients need to be asking themselves in this new environment is: "How fast is too fast?"

This is not a moral question, but a practical one. The professional publishing industry and its clients have been relying on the cultural value (real or perceived) of the book as something equated with quality, authority, and creativity. This is why having published a book is more impressive (and lucrative) than, say, writing a blog.

How much quality, authority, and creativity is required for a book to be a useful tool in building social capital today? What about in three years, when a professional-looking book can be generated automatically and by anyone? How much could professional publishers charge for clicking a button? How much would a reader pay for the result?