Here, we talk about a few of the most important parts of writing a book. Readers should know that this is just an introduction to the process. Doing the whole thing is much harder and has many more details that aren't covered here.
As a writer, it takes me a whole year to write a good book, if everything goes pretty well. Some authors are so slow that it takes them two years of traveling and research before they can even start writing.
People do sometimes write good stories in just a few months or weeks when they get crazy ideas. Even for the artist, these things happen by chance, and I've seen at least one case where the artist had a good story, but it needed at least one more round of very thorough editing, which she never did. Readers may have heard that the whole rough draft was written at a writer's retreat that lasted three weeks. People can get a lot more done when they work in groups.
Kinds of Books
The most important part of the project is this. Will you write a nonfiction book or a work of fiction? If the book is nonfiction, there is more than one way to choose what kind of book to write. One can look at the market to see what people need the most. You can look at yourself to figure out what you want to write about most. Each path leads to a smart choice, but not the same kind of smart choice.
If the book is going to be nonfiction, one needs to decide what kind it will be. Also, if you want to write fiction, it helps to know the genre before you start.
The purpose of the finished product is also important. If someone is just doing the work for fun and not trying to make money, they can be more driven by their own preferences and maybe take more risks. There can be risks when trying to make money, but on
Planning
You may only have a simple idea of what you want to do.
Pitch
You need to know yourself well enough to decide if you want to pitch your idea to the publishing industry now after you've made an outline, or after you've written the book. You could also put together enough information for a book proposal and try to sell that.
When you pitch an idea, you meet with, call, or email business leaders to see if any of them are interested. Some people find this part easy, but for others, it's harder than going on a private trip to the Moon.
The plan and the first draft
In that case, you can start by making an outline. In the case of fiction, some writers like to plan out the plot and structure of the story before they start writing. Some people start by just writing and seeing where it takes them. After making the first draft, people like that often have to make a lot more changes.
Depending on what else is going on in your life and how your personality is in general, you may also need to set a production schedule. This could be anything from "for an hour in the morning before the kids wake up" to "from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday."
Editing & Book Proposals
Once you have a draft, you can make changes to the whole piece. At about the same time, you can also start to query and work on your book proposals. If you pitched and it worked, you now know who to send your questions to or where to send your book proposal. If you've had a lot of luck, you might already have a deal with a publisher for your book. Then you know where to send the book after it has been changed.
Editing tips: You can do a lot of editing right after you finish the work, but the more emotionally invested you are or the more tired you are from writing the first draft, the longer you should wait to edit it. It can sit there for anywhere from 2 weeks to 13 years before you do anything with it. Most of the time, you'll be able to edit something better after 2 weeks to 2 months have passed. Even if you don't think your book project is making you feel anything, you should wait. Once you forget the exact details of what you wanted to write, it will be easier to see what you actually wrote. It will be easier to spot typos and other mistakes.
Hire a second person to edit your work at least once if you have the money and the connections to do so. Criticism that helps you improve is called "constructive criticism." Editors from the outside often see things that you as the author miss. Sometimes, your editor will show you how well you wrote your book or story, which will make you happy.
Once the work has been edited, you can put together your query letter and any other information the publishers might want. This could include an overview of the market for the type of book you've written, the first three chapters of the manuscript, and a direct sales pitch letter to the publishing company to convince them how great your book is. They usually want a short bio, but it doesn't have to be long. Just tell them how or where your work has been published, how much you were paid, or if you weren't paid at all.
Submission
You might need to choose where to send your book. You can look for a literary agent or a publisher. The Writer's Market is an example of a resource that tells you which publishing companies need literary agents and which ones don't.
You also need to find out if multiple submissions simultaneously are okay. Simultaneous submissions are like dating more than one person simultaneously without having to get sexually involved with any of them to find a husband or wife. Some people find it offensive, while others are fine with it. Check with the local book publishers or agents.
You can sometimes send an email to a publisher or literary agent these days. Some people like it this way, while others still like it the way it was done in the past. Find out this so you can send them what they want.
Response
After submitting, there is nothing left to do but wait. Most of the time, when you wait a long time for something, it turns out that you don't want to marry each other and you'll never have sex. In the case of a literary agency, they won't represent your book, and a publisher won't accept it for investment and publication.
From time to time, you'll be lucky and get a good answer. Sometimes a "yes" means, "We can't use this one, but if you write another book, send it to us so we can look at it."
Be careful, but also honest. Many early positive responses aren't just lucky. They should set off alarms. It is probably a company that will publish your book if you pay them to do so. Self-publishing can be a good idea sometimes, but for most writers who don't know much about the publishing industry, having only self-publishers interested in their work after all their hard work can be devastating or, for the tough-minded, just a little disappointing.
Seriously, it is possible for an author to "win the lottery" and get a big publishing company to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, even as an advance on sales of their book. Not only that, but sometimes the editors won't even change it enough to make you feel like it's not the book you sent them, even though your name is still on it as the author.
That's probably not what will happen. Most likely, if you've written a really good book, you'll be able to find a small publishing company that will support your work by giving you a small advance or nothing at all but still putting out a good book. In other situations, you can do it yourself. I'm not sure what the percentage is on this.
After all their hard work, a large number of writers will find that nothing else will ever come of the project. After a while, the author will get over the shock and numbness and move on with his or her life.
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