Every day in the week leading up to the release of my brand-new book The Lost English Girl on March 7, I’m revealing a story, fun fact, or other tidbit about the book. Follow along each day to learn more about the book!
Why it really does take a village to publish a book.
Writing can be a lonely pursuit. I don’t have co-workers (unless you count the neighbor’s cat who sometimes sits on my study’s window ledge and meows at me). When I’m drafting a book, I’m doing work that quite literally cannot be done by anyone else. I’m essentially a small business of one.
However, one of the things that’s undeniable about publishing is that it’s impossible to publish a book with a New York publisher alone. And thank goodness for that!
The Lost English Girl was a wonderful reminder that even if the day-to-day process of being an author is very solitary, the overall process of publishing a book is not. When I finished the first draft, I knew two things with utter certainty:
Coming in at over 150,000 words, it was too long and filled with story bloat.
I did not know what to cut.
Fortunately, I have the benefit of working with a fantastic editor in Hannah Braaten. The combination of her notes and me taking a step back from the narrative for a few months meant that when it came time to edit the book, I knew what I had to do. The second and third acts of the book weren’t working, so we agreed that I would scrap them and start again. I also cut B-plots right and left, dramatically slimming down the narrative to focus more tightly on the story. As much work as that was, the book is infinitely better for both of those changes.
However, the collaborative work didn’t stop there. I’m often asked about how I choose the titles and covers of my books, and the truth is that I often don’t. I will have a working title, but everyone from editorial to marketing to sales gets a crack and making sure that it’s the best title for the market, which means what I suggest often (always?) changes. In this case, the book went from being called Return to Me, My Love—a reference to a storyline involving a song lyric that I later cut—to The Lost English Girl. (The Lost English Girl is undeniably better if only because it focuses on the main story which is the separation and possibly reunification of a family during World War 2.)
When it comes to covers…well, let’s just say that I stay well out of the art department’s way because they knock it out of the park every single time.
Then there are all of the behind-the-scenes elements that readers never see from the production team who turns a Word document into a fully type-set, copy edited, and proofread book; to the sales team who works with booksellers accounts; to operations who deals with distribution; to publicity and marketing that works to get the books into the hands of my readers. All of these people are integral to making sure that a book like The Lost English Girl makes it to the printers and onto physical and digital bookstore shelves.
All of this work—and all of these people—are why you will often see me thanking not just my agent, editor, and publisher in the Acknowledgements at the back of my books. These people are the unsung heroes of the publishing world, and I always want to do my best to make sure they’re properly thanked for all of their hard work.
Want to learn more about The Lost English Girl? Check back tomorrow or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and don’t forget that there is still time to preorder your copy of The Lost English Girl in print, ebook, or audiobook!