Writing Blog Number 2

20250905 Publisher Expectations Of Authors

Publisher Expectations Of Authors

This comes from Tobber: what is expected of us as authors when we are dealing with publishers?

Note: this is traditional publishing. Self-publishing comes with its own expectations.

This is fascinating, and there are quite a few expectations. And they start at the very beginning. Now, this only covers books; for short stories the first two apply, and the rest not so much unless you are a headline author (and, yes, I have been one of those).

The publisher will expect you to bow to them and submit by their rules. While that is usually Shunn standard formatting, they may want other things done. And, of course, you must ensure what you arte submitting is in the genre they want. If you don’t follow these rules, they will not want to work with you. Yes, it is a test; no, your “perfect writing” is not going to make them overlook this. You have proven yourself difficult to work with from the start.

Next, there will be an expectation of you looking at the edits critically, doing the rewrites, and negotiating with the publisher. Not arguing and demanding things be done your way. Some smaller publishers have let that go in the past, but things are tightening thanks to one book series, and the backlash that hit the publisher afterwards. So there is an expectation of working with, not in spite of.

Then comes the publication. While marketing is usually the responsibility of the publisher (although an increasing number demand the author do at least 50% of the marketing), the author needs to utilise its own resources to publicise their works. This was social media, but that is proving increasingly ineffectual as social media formats become echo chambers and not the world-wide equalisers they were originally. So, for me, it would be pushing my books here on WdC, on my Discord servers, which are all writing-based. And I would be expected to do this at least semi-regularly.

Then comes publicity. If you are in the USA, this means going on radio, podcasts, appearing at conventions, doing book-store signings, a lot of little things. They are all going to be expected, and your publisher will organise a few. For people like me in another country, it is 2am Zoom appearances, 4am phone calls, appearing at conventions virtually. But I also did a heap of radio interviews, some newspaper (student, all of them), and a bunch of blog interviews (which are now, sadly, a thing of the past).

The final expectation is that you will follow up. Short stories means you will have enough ideas for another story to be published. Books means you will be able to get a second book done. If you have one book published and it is more than 5 years before your second, the first might as well not exist. I found that out! But with five books under my belt, it means different publishers can actually use ‘from the author of Invasive Species’ in publicity.

The expectations are there because a traditional publisher has invested money in you. And, in my opinion, you do owe them for that.