I ran into a friend a little while ago, and she mentioned she's putting together a manuscript. She wanted to pick my brain about getting a book published, and I figured it'd be about time to make a blog post about this, since I get a lot of requests from would-be authors. Keep in mind, this is going to be about general nonfiction; I have no idea what the market for fiction or academic books look like. If you want a specific timeline, check out this post I wrote two years ago.
The first step is to write something really, really good and finish it. Be willing to self-reflect, get feedback and cut things that don't work or serve the larger purpose of the book. (I actually ended up cutting my favorite chapter, which involved the Army being deployed to the streets of Denver to stop a streetcar strike.) Once your manuscript has been polished, then the publishing process starts.
SELF-PUBLISHING VS. TRADITIONAL
The first decision you make once your manuscript is done is to figure out whether you want to publish traditionally, i.e., through a press, or by self-publishing. (There's also something these days called "hybrid publishing," which is somewhere in between.)
I think most authors should at least consider self-publishing, even if they don't end up going that route. Self-publishing is faster, gives you more control over the end product, and if it sells, you make more money, usually between 50% and 70% of the gross. The tradeoff is, you assume 100% of the risk if it doesn't sell, self-publishing still carries a stigma, and managing your book project is all on you. And I mean everything, from editing to layout to cover design. At worst, you may be out tens of thousands of dollars, and be stuck with a garage full of unsold books. You also run the risk of being taken for a ride by your vendors - since you're paying out of pocket, you ARE the product.
Traditional publishing takes a lot longer. I submitted my proposal to University of Chicago Press in October 2021, signed the contract in April 2022, finalized the manuscript after editing in March 2023, and the book was released to the public in November 2023. You make less royalty money, as well. 10% of MSRP per copy is more-or-less standard. The MSRP price of Lost Subways is $35, so I make $3.50 for every copy sold.
Traditional publishing takes a lot longer. I submitted my proposal to University of Chicago Press in October 2021, signed the contract in April 2022, finalized the manuscript after editing in March 2023, and the book was released to the public in November 2023. You make less royalty money, as well. 10% of MSRP per copy is more-or-less standard. The MSRP price of Lost Subways is $35, so I make $3.50 for every copy sold.
The good part about traditional publishing is, the financial risk to the author is zero. it costs the author nothing but their time, and the publisher absorbs the cost of editing, distribution, book design and inside marketing. (Note: when I say "inside marketing," I'm talking about the inside baseball of book marketing - getting reviews from the trade press, selling it to libraries, getting it on shelves and managing inventory.)
WHY I PUBLISHED TRADITIONALLY
I chose to go the traditional publishing route for three reasons. First, I was making serious points about transport and housing, but I'm a lawyer by trade, not a planner or an academic. Publishing the book traditionally gave me credibility within the urban planning space. When talking to the media, I was able to name-drop the University of Chicago Press, so reporters knew that I wasn't just some crank. Second, my publisher was able to draw on tons of subject matter experts to edit and review the book. Third, because The Lost Subways is a coffee table book - albeit one that required a dissertation's worth of research - printing it is expensive. It would have cost me $20,000 of my own money to print 1000 full-color paperbacks. It cost $0 of my own money to print The Lost Subways in hardcover. (Caveat: this is not the case for most authors; text-only books are much cheaper to print, and your marginal distribution cost of an e-book is zero.)
HOW TO GET A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER
The usual first step in finding a traditional publishers is to find a literary agent. Ideally, your agent is one who represents authors in your field. If you don't know anyone with an agent, a good place to start is to find books that are comparable to yours, and check the acknowledgments. Authors usually thank their agents there. Major publishers generally won't accept un-agented manuscripts because there's just so much junk out there. There's also a standard format for contacting agents called the "query letter" - the agent Jane Friedman has a great guide to this. (She also wrote a corresponding one for fiction.)
The industry standard is that your agent takes 15% of your royalties. Trustworthy agents don't charge up front. If a prospective agent is asking for money, assume they're a scammer and move on.
Once you've got an agent, the agent will shop it around to publishers. A good agent will keep you posted on where they're at, but the publishing business is conservative and slow when it comes to these things, especially if you're a first-time author.
Expect a lot of rejection, both when pitching agents and then when pitching publishers. The rule of thumb I've heard is that one in 50 submitted manuscripts gets an agent. Of agented manuscripts, half are published. A word to the wise: if an agent gives you substantive comments on your manuscript, but declines to represent you, you should seriously consider incorporating their feedback. They've seen more manuscripts than you can count, and more importantly, they know what sells.
Once you've got an agent, the agent will shop it around to publishers. A good agent will keep you posted on where they're at, but the publishing business is conservative and slow when it comes to these things, especially if you're a first-time author.
Expect a lot of rejection, both when pitching agents and then when pitching publishers. The rule of thumb I've heard is that one in 50 submitted manuscripts gets an agent. Of agented manuscripts, half are published. A word to the wise: if an agent gives you substantive comments on your manuscript, but declines to represent you, you should seriously consider incorporating their feedback. They've seen more manuscripts than you can count, and more importantly, they know what sells.
I was lucky, because a family member knew a reputable agent who was interested. All the same, my agent had no luck pitching The Lost Subways to publishers. On my initial go-around, I got rejected by 25 different publishers, after which my agent and I went our separate ways. (The original book was meant to be a simple coffee table book, rather than a coffee table book with bunch of #longreads about cities and full citations.) After this initial round of failure, I junked the first manuscript entirely and started again from scratch.
On my second try, I decided to go it alone. In this go-around, I ignored the major publishers entirely and focused on niche publishers: academic and architectural presses. There, an agent isn't necessarily required, and there's more willingness to look at specialty products. University of Chicago Press is where I hit paydirt.
OKAY, SO WHAT ARE PRESSES LOOKING FOR?
Simple. Publishers want to know that your book will sell. This is a business, after all. You need to submit a proposal with your manuscript showing how you plan to sell books. The traditional sales target for a new author is 10,000 copies, though your mileage may vary. (For example, with academic books where the target audience is other academics, the target number is usually smaller.) Your job is to show that you have a platform - i.e., that you're someone influential enough to be worth listening to. Being prominent in your field or having a huge social media following are obvious ways to do it, but this category is notoriously squishy. Personally, I showed that with a combination of traditional media exposure, a lot of viral Reddit content, and a profitable subway map business that I had built from scratch. After some discussions with University of Chicago, we got down to brass tacks.
COOL. WHAT THEN?
If they make you an offer, you start the contracting process, which is where a good agent will help negotiate; there are good guides to this online as well. If you're a first time author you generally don't hire a lawyer because lawyers are so damn expensive and publishing contracts are relatively standardized. You probably won't have much leverage to negotiate in this stage, because it's rare to get more than one offer at a time.
At this point, publishers usually offer you an advance against royalties, which is a lump sum paid half up front and half on delivery. For new authors, it's usually not a big chunk of change given how much work goes into it. (You see million dollar advances for celebrity memoirs, politicians' books and other stuff with a guaranteed audience, but for new authors it's often less than $10,000.) I'll give a worked example to show how this operates.
Let's say that I sign a book deal for a $10,000 advance with a 10% royalty rate. The cover price is $35, so I make $3.50 in royalties per book. This means that I get no royalties for the first 2857 copies of the book sold, because the publisher already paid out that amount as an advance. After the contract is inked, you send the manuscript to the publisher.
Then the editing process begins. My editors at UChicago did a ton of smart, thoughtful editing, and even the copy-editor they brought in was an urban planner. They also sent out my book for peer review by experts in the field. (This happens at academic publishers, but not with commercial ones.) Once all of that editing and back-and-forth was done, THEN we finally went to production.
Notably, most publishing contracts give the publisher the right to design the cover and name the book. University of Chicago gave me a lot of input into the cover design, and they liked my suggested title, but strictly speaking, they could've named the thing Revenge of the Zucchini People if they wanted to.
After all of this saga, the book has its release, and the marketing begins. This is a huge adjustment to go through as an author. Writing is such a lonely thing - and then you're expected to promote the book on social media, talk to the media, arrange events and so forth. (UChicago Press did assign me a staff publicist, who was great, but this is not the norm in academic publishing.)
SO... YOU'RE EXPECTED TO DIY ALL YOUR MARKETING?
Kind of. In my particular case, about 1/3 of the media appearances came through my publicist, as well as a handful of major institutions that wanted me to give a talk, like the 92nd Street Y in NYC and the Cleveland Public Library. In addition, University of Chicago Press did the yeoman's work of getting the publishing industry press (Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus etc) to review the book. Libraries bought up a lot of the initial print run because of an excellent review in Booklist.
The rest was all me. The days of a publisher scheduling book tours are long-gone unless you're a celebrity, and if you're a celebrity, you're probably not reading this post looking for advice. Instead, my book tour was basically made up of me emailing bookstores, museums, libraries, and advocacy groups in places I was already going to be. I specifically scheduled my stops in LA, Boston, DC, Sacramento, and SF to coincide with my holiday travel plans. A few places gave me an honorarium, but for the most part, all of this travel was out of my own pocket. I'm thankful that my day job was fully remote at the time, and that I had friends and relatives willing to host me.
One thing I highly recommend when marketing your book is to not be stingy with review copies. Sending free copies to influential people in the transit and housing fields often has resulted in me making all of my investment back and more. It pays to be generous.
COOL. SO, NOW YOU'RE ROLLING IN THE BIG BUCKS, RIGHT?
In a word, no. The Lost Subways of North America has sold 10,000 copies, which is the benchmark for whether a book has long-term staying power, but less than 10% of traditionally published books ever get this far - the majority of books sell less than 1,000 copies. (A few mega-hits keep publishers afloat, the top 10% of books turn a profit, the next 15% break even, and the rest lose money.) I'm incredibly fortunate to have hit that milestone. But in real money terms, we're talking about $35,000 in royalties, before taxes, for a book that took over a decade to write. There's no use sugarcoating it: getting a book published at all is a huge achievement, but don't expect to get rich doing it.
In financial terms, however, the book has gotten me a whole lot more paid writing and design gigs. It's surprisingly common to use books to open doors like this. Many business books, for example, are basically treated as a business development expense. Or, if you're an academic, you often have to publish a book to get tenure.
But for me, it really was because I felt that I had something to say. When my release date hit a year and a half ago, I said to myself that I would be happy with the result even if it flopped - even if it didn't vibe with the public, I created something I could point to and be proud of. Writing and researching the book has given me the opportunity to travel the continent, talk to people who care about transport and housing, and learn about the way other people live.
In the end, when I look in the mirror, was it worth it? Absolutely. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't think so. But there was a lot that I wish I knew when I was starting out.