My Publishing Journey - Part 3: After the Book Deal
Edits and copy edits and more edits and some book recs!
Hi everyone!
I hope your summer is wrapping up nicely (but oh my gosh, it’s already the end of summer?!) I’m here with the last installment in my “Publishing Journey” series, where I’ll talk a bit about what my experience has been like since signing a 2 book deal with St. Martin’s Griffin for my debut novel, Most Eligible!
There is a lot I could talk about for an “after the book deal” post, but what I’ll mainly focus on is the overall process and timeline, plus a bit about the edits I worked on with my editor.
Disclaimer: Everyone’s experience is WILDLY different in publishing! The below timeline is how things unfolded for me over the last year, but is not, by any means, indicative of what the process looks like for others.
Before I get into it, I also want to shout out a great opportunity for un-agented romance writers! The SmoochPit mentorship program. I was a mentee in 2023 and a mentor this past year in 2024. I had a wonderful experience and highly recommend this program to romance writers interested in traditional publishing! I will be mentoring again this year — for more info about what I’m looking for, you can check out my profile!
My Approximate Publishing Timeline:
June 2024: First call with my editor at St. Martin’s Griffin.
July 2024: Book deal announced on Publisher’s Marketplace! It’s all starting to feel real…
August 2024: Receive round 1 of edits from editor! The main things we focused on were: clarifying the ending of the book, developing side characters more, and amping up certain sequences in terms of pacing and action. I was really excited about all of these edits, especially with the side characters because they are some of my favorite parts of the book! And the action sequences were especially fun to work on. Taking a previously sedentary sequence of scenes and shoving it into a paintball sequence? Sign me up!
September 2024: At the end of September, after many bleary early morning writing sessions, I sent the revised manuscript off to my editor, Kelly.
October 2024: Receive round 2 of edits! This time around, the edits were less extensive, but there was still work to be done! I worked on clarifying certain character arcs, differentiating more between when Georgia is acting for the evil reality TV cameras and when she’s being genuine, and digging a little deeper into her relationship to her parents.
Also in October/November: Book re-titled! I’ll probably do a separate newsletter post on all the titles this book has had over the process, but I’m so, so happy with Most Eligible and where we landed.
Beginning of December 2024: Turned in nearly-final edits!
January 2025: Receive sensitivity reader feedback. I was so happy to have the opportunity to work with a sensitivity reader on Most Eligible, specifically for the side character Brooklyn, who uses a wheelchair. It was really important to me to have accurate and well-rounded representation, and the sensitivity reader was instrumental in helping make that happen! I made a few small changes based on the sensitivity reader’s feedback before the book went to copy edits.
In the meantime: I worked with my editor on a list of authors to contact for blurbs and filled out the publisher’s author questionnaire, listing everything from my social media profiles to interests to inspiration for the book to potential family members who could help promote it. I also had a conversation with my editor about my pitches for book 2!
March 2025: Receive copy edits.
What this looks like: Getting a big ol’ word doc with hundreds of changes that promptly makes my computer crash. Also, learning that I do not know how to use commas. I went in and reviewed each note made by the fabulous copy editors, ranging from comma usage to continuity questions.
I also received my “Style Sheet” — a document detailing all of the unique language and writing things in the book that we had to make sure were formatted the same each time, for example:
The document was also marked with some very fancy Word formatting, which lets the publishing team know about formatting needs of certain words/sections.
April 2025: Worked on writing an author letter for the marketing team. This was hugely intimidating to me for some reason and I put it off for a long time. Why was writing 400 words about why I wrote the book harder than writing the entire 90k word novel? I’m really proud of the author letter I ultimately wrote though, because I got to highlight a number of aspects about the book that are important to me: for example, the strong friendships among the women being pitted against each other by reality TV producers.
May 2025: First pass for review. This is the formatted version of the book — I read through it and noted typos, etc., as well as formatting questions. This was done in Adobe. It was SO cool to see the book in such pretty fonts and all formatted — tiny sneak peak below!
After this, there were occasional other queries that came up from proof readers, which we dealt with on a case by case basis. The biggest of which involved keeping better track of the heroine’s undergarments in one scene in the middle of the book.
July 2025: Most Eligible went up on NetGalley, which is a site where reviewers for books can read it early and post feedback. The version up on NetGalley is pre-proof reading, so if you come across a typo or formatting error, this is totally normal. This was something that surprised me to learn when I started reading books on NetGalley!
August 2025: This month, I turned in a first draft of my second book for St. Martin’s! It was very overwhelming to draft this on top of the above schedule (and my day job), but I’m really proud of the book I ended up writing. It is still hugely messy and needs a ton of work, but turning it in felt like such a big weight off my shoulders.
So there you have it! A very abbreviated timeline of the last year and change in my publishing journey. Not pictured: me being cranky at having to wake up early to work on edits, tears over book 2 when it wasn’t working, the euphoria over seeing the physical advanced copies!!!!, accidentally seeing ratings on Goodreads and promptly locking myself out… and more…
And as a reminder, Most Eligible is available to preorder wherever you get your books! If you do preorder, make sure to save your receipt :) — I’ll have some more details soon!
If you’ve made it this far in this rambling newsletter, thank you! Here are some book recommendations to brighten your day:
Swept Away by Beth O’Leary — I was SWEPT AWAY by this book! It is overwhelmingly romantic and the stakes are so high that my heart was pounding the entire time.
Love is a War Song by Danica Nava — so sweet and cute — the cowboy romance you NEED to be reading.
The Truth is in the Detours by Mara Williams — sad summer is ending and wish you could hop on a gorgeous road trip? Why not read this book instead?
The Summers Between Us by Noreen Nanja — literally the perfect summer beach read.
As a complete left turn from these romance recs, I just started watching the original Walking Dead show and have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of romance and interpersonal drama! Highly recommend if you are not bothered by entrails (which I am, so that’s been a bit tough).
Until next time!
Isabelle <3
LOVE
PHEW! I'm just tired reading this!! Had no idea allllllll the extra work that goes into the post-book deal world!