Getting your book to market in a timely fashion can be critical and dramatically influence its chances for success. Every day your book is not out in the world is a day that your message is not finding its readers, and a day of lost sales opportunities.
Now before we get into the advances in technology that allow us to publish quicker than ever before, the efficiency of self-publishing, and the proprietary steps that Let’s Write Books has developed to accelerate the publishing process it is helpful take a look at the traditional publishing process.
First there is finding an agent – which can easily take six months or more on its own, and once you find an agent, they will need to pitch your book to a publisher which can take several more months. Assuming your agent has found you a publisher, the next step will be editing. This again can take several months depending the publisher and their workload. Next comes the design process that often takes several months. Once this is completed, they will move into the printing and distribution process which can take anywhere from one to three months more. So, to traditionally publish a book it can easily take one to two years or longer.
When a book is self-published it automatically cuts out the first two steps – finding an agent and a traditional publisher. This alone can speed up publishing process anywhere from six months to one year. And yes, you will still need a publisher, but those that specialize in working with independent authors generally run leaner and more efficiently than the big publishing companies do. They don’t have the big overhead and corporate structure of big publishing companies. What’s more, publishers that specialize in working with independent authors are providing a paid for service – the author is a customer and gets treated as such. This is a much different arrangement than the traditional author-publisher relationship where the author has little control of time and other aspects of publishing.
The digital platform has allowed all publishers to create and print books quicker and more efficiently than ever before. Print on demand printing (POD) means books can be printed in short runs, as little as one at time and very quickly – in a day or two. Once formatted, eBooks can be uploaded to Amazon and appear live within 24hrs. And audiobooks have become simple and convenient downloads—DVD’s are no longer needed, saving the time and money associated with producing this type of physical product.
At Let’s Write Books, Inc, one of the first questions we ask authors when we meet them is when they would like to have their book. Some authors don’t have a specific time frame while others have a more immediate need. We had an author who had some notes, very rough writing, and wanted a book in five weeks for a tradeshow. We were able to finish writing the book for the author, edit, design and get it printed for her, meeting her deadline—all within five weeks!
Our normal time frames for publishing a book are usually six to eight weeks from the time we received a proofread manuscript. If a book needs editing, then it will add another three to four weeks on average, depending on the size of the book and what it may need. When time is of essence our acceleration program can publish books even quicker. In this program your book becomes top priority as we simultaneously create various components, working overtime if needed, and communicate closely with select partners like printers and formatters.
If you would like to know more about our publishing processes and how quickly we can get your book to market send us a note via our contact page.