So how does the book publishing process go about? Well, the process is different depending on the kind of company doing the publishing like whether they are a traditional publisher or a self-publishing services provider; and the genre, but to give you an idea, below are some of the general steps.


1. The author has first to submit a query letter or book proposal to the publishing company. If the house does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, then, it has got to be coursed through a literary agent who will do the submission on the author's behalf to the house's editorial department for consideration.


2. Some, if not most manuscripts are then rejected, but once a manuscript has been considered, the commissioning editors will have a talk with the author and/or the literary agent about buying the rights to the book, the book advance, royalty payments (rates and percentage), book format/s, the release date and the first print run.


3. Editing of the work is then made to improve the quality of the material. The house may ask the author to make some changes to the work or will have their own copy or content editors to do the polishing according the house's style and target market. Editing may be, but not limited to rewriting, checking for grammatical errors, sentence or paragraph structuring, etc.


4. Once the editing phase has been completed, the manuscript will now undergo the design stage. The house will provide a design team to do the cover art, book layout, interior layout, illustrations, etc.


5. Part of a company's strategy to promote a book is to build early interest about the book with their target market. To do this, the sales/marketing team will work closely with the design team. Once the final artwork has been established by the design team, the sales/marketing team will use this when creating an Advance Information Sheet (AI or AIS) that gives basic information about the book. The AIS contains the book title, cover design, the book's ISBN, author's brief details, some promotional text or blurbs, book format availability and release date.


6. After this, the book is then sent for printing. In the printing stage, before the book is finalized, the proof or a galley is sent for review and approval from the publisher. The galley or proof is basically how the book will look like once printed. It is sent to the publisher for checking everything is the way they want it to look like and to make sure that there are no errors. There are two kinds of galleys; the electronic galley and the paper galley. It will just depend with the printer or the publisher which of these two they'd prefer.


7. Once the galley has been reviewed and approved, this will be considered as the final version. The final version is then sent for printing. The number of copies will depend on the agreed first print run. Some companies use the print-on demand technology. The difference with offset printing is that, with POD, copies of the book will only be printed when there are orders placed on the book title.


8. Distribution stage comes in after the publication stage. During the distribution process, books are distributed and sold through brick and mortar stores, online retailers and different booksellers.


9. An author interview is then done to further promote the book and further increase sales.