The writer’s road from initial idea to book-in-hand-of-reader is long and arduous. But we have come to the end of the beginning of the ‘Inside Publishing’ mini-series on How One Gets Published.

If you’ve been following dutifully, you’ve had an idea, you’ve written your book, honed your agency submission, researched agents and waited patiently to hear back from them. You have worked hard at appearing not too crazy. The hard work has all paid off, and an agent has taken you on as a client. Hurrah! Now, to get a publisher.

Your agent will go through a similar process that you did when you were looking for an agent, but more professionally. This is not to say that you were embarrassingly unprofessional, but you’re (probably) not already working in the book trade, so you’re not a professional. Your lovely agent (I say ‘lovely’ – you want them to be lovely to you and think you’re the best writer in the world since anyone EVER, and tell you so all the time, but when it comes to negotiating a contract, you want to know they have a heart made of cold, hard steel so they can be tough with publishers and get you a nice big fat advance) will already know editors in key publishing houses, what their lists are like, what their personal preferences are, and what they’re looking for at the moment.

Editor A may have had huge success with crime fiction, and be looking for the next Stieg Larsson to strengthen their list. Editor B may have had a huge success with crime fiction, but now be looking for something completely different, the next Khaled Hosseini, to broaden their list. Agents network (which is really just professional gossiping) constantly to find out all this inside info and on this basis will submit your manuscript to likely editors at likely publishing houses. And then, you both wait.

The editor’s assistant will probably be the first person to read your submission. It’s a narrowed version of what happens in the slush pile at a literary agent, but this time your agent will have written the covering letter, about how much they love the book. Editors can receive 20 manuscripts a week, and aim to buy about one book a month. That’s 100 books to read for every one they might actually publish. That’s 100 books that have already been selected and screened by agents out of the slush pile and still 99% are rejected. Some books may even already have been published – submissions from US publishers trying to sell UK rights in the work, for example – and still not be deemed right for our market or that editor’s list. And the editor’s assistant, let alone the editor, have to read and assess all these manuscripts on top of a full day of editing existing books, managing schedules, writing blurbs and copy, as well as attending endless meetings and all the other time-consuming activities of modern office life, so you might be waiting a while to hear back…

But eventually (optimistically), you will find an editor who loves your book and wants to publish it (in the meantime, your agent will have had you starting on your second book – no time like the present!). Your potential editor will take the book to a publishing meeting with representatives from Sales, Marketing, Publicity and Rights to pitch it to them and win their support. They will have to make a case for the sales potential and marketability of the book, so it helps if you’ve written something that sounds like people will want to buy it. If you’re an attractive and charming person who’s willing to promote your book at endless events, you’ll win the Publicist’s favour, for sure.

Then again, they might just not get it, and turn down your book, no matter how much the editor loves it. Orphan boy at a wizards’ boarding school? Rubbish idea, it’ll never catch on. Teenage girls swooning over prudish vampires? No one wants to read about that…

Hopefully, though, Sales et al all say aye and now begins the process of bidding for your book. The publishing house will have a template offer and contract that they begin to negotiate with your agent (you no longer have to worry your pretty little authorial head about business details – your fabulous agent will do it all for you, earning their 10%). The editor will work out how many copies of the book they think will sell in the first 3 years, how much the subsequent royalty (maybe 10% profits, or ‘net receipts’) you would receive in that time and offer a third of the total to you as an ‘advance’ against royalties. You’ll get this advance in three instalments: signature of contract, delivery of manuscript (after re-drafting to the editor’s liking) and on publication. In an ideal world, you’ll sell millions and your advance will ‘earn out’ super quickly and you’ll start receiving hundreds of thousands in royalties after the first six months. You’ll be rich, rich! Rich beyond your wildest dreams…

In reality, for a small publishing house, for a debut author, your advance would probably be no higher than £2,000 (in three instalments). And it probably won’t earn out, ever. So, really, let’s not give up the day job yet, hmm?

So I’ve taken you from writing to publishing contract in this mini-series, and I’ll resume the inside story on the life of a book in the not too distant future, but next time, I want to deal with some ‘issues’. I’ve got a rant brewing…