What's Taking So Long?

[Austin S. Camacho]

Today I explain why it takes Intrigue Publishing a year to get a book published on my blog, Another Writer’s Life. http://ascamacho.blogspot.com

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

All of that would explain why it would take two months to publish a book, not two years.

Acutally, I heard the real set-up explained in pretty beleivable terms by a senior dude at a big NYC press. talking to three of us about our book "Mayan Calendar Girls" and why it wasn't going to get into print in time for the end of time.  :-)

It's not workload, it's not technology and stuff to get done.   It's money.  It takes money to print books and these big houses have very tight scheduling of their resources, much of their budget being laid down a year or so in advance.  Just because they see something they really like and would like to move on quicker doesn't mean there is money (pronounced "bank credit") to do it.  So it goes into a queue for when the next title drops into a moving slot of paid-for niches.  If that makes any sense.  He expressed it much more elegantly.

The big thing about ebooks and POD books isn't so much that they get around work, it's that they get around capitalization.  

You can have your book out and for sale before they can even have a meeting to decide if it can be referred to be discussed for possible inclusion in a report to be presented at a conference to think about what might be a good idea to provisionally slate for short list to shake down into proposals for the next fiscal year.

That little riff, by the way, is very, very close to exactly what he said.

By "big press" here, I mean Kensington.   Actually, they move quicker than most companies, are known to be nimble and trashy and all.   That's why we were talking to them.

So we took it to a small press and had copies in a month.