Friday, September 09, 2011

Getting It Published, Part 5

When last we left our heroine, she had sent her book manuscript out to a publisher, gotten a somewhat ambivalent outside review, and was asked to revise and resubmit. She revised, she resubmitted, and they sent it back out for review. (Previous installments here, here, here, and here. At the rate things are going, this enthralling series will run to 27 parts. Cancel your subscription while you still can.)

Earlier this week I heard from the editor, who told me they'd sent the revised manuscript back to the original reviewer, who gave it a positive report--and they would now proceed to send it to a second reviewer.

So, yay! Or I think yay. On the one hand, I'm surprised and maybe a little embarrassed that it's been this easy: that one of my fantasy, top-choice publishers was interested enough to want to see the full manuscript, that they remained interested after it got a good-but-not-ready-for-prime-time review, and especially that the original reviewer wound up liking my revisions enough to recommend publication. (For various reasons, I did not think they were sending it back to that reviewer, and if I had known I would have spent the past three months with a deadly knot of anxiety in my innards.)

On the other hand, this process is looking to drag on a good while, and half of me wonders whether this isn't just a postponement of the inevitable: maybe the second reviewer will be lukewarm, and maybe then they'll send it to a third, and around the time of oh, say, my 40th birthday, the press will reject it definitively and I'll have to start over somewhere else.

So if there's a take-away lesson here for those who have yet to try to get a book published--which I think was why I originally began this series?--it's that academic publishing is super-duper slow, even when it's not actually that slow (the turnaround time for my reader was 4 months the first time and less than 3 months the second time), and even when all the news is basically good and even when you have a product you're confident about.

Because to recap: I first developed the germ of the idea for this book ten years ago (almost to the day: my orals were on September 7th, 2001, and we had to open our orals with a 60-second bullshitty account of what we might write a dissertation about). Five years ago I finished the dissertation. A year and a half ago I sent out book proposals to a few presses--and even if I get the best news in the world in December, it'll probably still be another two years before my book is in print.

I don't need an inked contract for tenure. But right now I feel like a parent whose moody late-adolescent kid is still living at home: I love the kid and all, but I'm ready for him to get the hell out of my basement.

9 comments:

Withywindle said...

Just wait until you get to indexing.

Renaissance Girl said...

You got a problem with finishing this process at 40? ;)

Flavia said...

Withy: I've lived with someone writing his index, so I know exactly what's in store. (And to be honest, I think it's the kind of task that I'd enjoy.)

RG: Not at all! It's the idea of being stuck with this book for another 4+ years that I can't bear.

Susan said...

The good thing is that for long stretches you can forget about that late adolescent, and pay attention to the baby.

Flavia said...

Susan: if I could "like" your comment on Blogger, I would.

ntbw said...

Congratulations on your progress in this process! I am confident your book will be accepted, and I look forward to reading it. What you describe though is a good part of why I think second and subsequent books are so much easier than first books. First books almost always are connected in some way to the dissertation, even if they are hugely revised and expanded. So one ends up living with that project for a long damned time! Once you start to write a book that actually is conceived as a book, rather than a dissertation, there's a whole different, and in my experience easier, trajectory to follow.

Historiann said...

"[R]ight now I feel like a parent whose moody late-adolescent kid is still living at home: I love the kid and all, but I'm ready for him to get the hell out of my basement."

This is as good a description of what it feels like to finish a book as I've ever read. If this is your emotional state now, you're clearly ready to get 'er done and get it off of your desk.

(And if ntbw says you'll get a contract, you'll get a contract.)

CattyinQueens said...

Congrats--this has to be excellent news!

I will now never be able to think of my book as anything but a kid living in the basement. He's not really a late adolescent so much as, I dunno, Hamlet...perhaps I can send him to England and have him offed, but no, not before he returns and kills me and everything i love...

gah!

but I'm revising my proposal this very day, so if I can finish up those last bits, well, then I too will look forward to the last couple years in the long process...

Flavia said...

Catty:

Jesus, it was just this second--after I don't know how long of your commenting on my blog--that I realized who you are In Actual Real Life.

But thanks! And congrats yourself! Where's a non-suicidal bottle of wine when you need it?