Traditional publishers require an author to submit a manuscript six months in advance, and if pressed, no later than two or three.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Publishers give you deadlines for those last phases of production that are perfectly comfortable for them. So, to whatever extent I can, I like to push those to give me a little more time, and make it so that they're as uncomfortable as I am.
I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait.
Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.
It takes a long time to publish a book.
I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
Normally, it takes me about three years to write one of the big books. It is usually four years between releases because of the huge amount of travel and PR and just nuisance going on around them. I have a lot of pressure from publishers and agents.
Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.
Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.