After you have submitted your manuscript per the Submission Guideline requirements and your author-participation investment is satisfied, your book will be scheduled for production. Upon receipt of your formatted manuscript we will provide you a production start date. Production will typically begin six to eight weeks from the time the manuscript has been received.

1. Copyediting. When production begins, your first contact will be from the copyediting department. You will not be in contact with an actual copy editor during this time, but your manuscript will spend a month undergoing scrutiny to catch and fix typos, misspellings, grammatical issues, formatting issues, and other errors.

2. Conceptual Editing. After copyediting is complete, your conceptual editor will contact you. Your editor will give the manuscript a thorough review, looking for story flow, clarity, internal consistency, continued spelling errors, and continued incorrect grammar usage. Your editor will also be a fresh pair of eyes to your manuscript and may have additional recommendations based on his or her professional experience. However, our editors will not make dramatic changes to your manuscript. Any recommendations they make will be suggestions only and will ultimately be your decision and your responsibility to integrate in your manuscript.

• Editing versus ghostwriting. It’s important for you to understand what will and what won’t happen during the editing process. The editor’s responsibility is only to bring problem areas to your attention. The ultimate responsibility to fix or rewrite the manuscript belongs to the author, not the editor. The moment an editor rewrites a manuscript, they have become a ghostwriter, which is not a service we provide. Any and all writing is always the author’s responsibility. Our editors cannot ethically write any portion of the book for you and still be considered editors. If your manuscript requires rewriting that you are unable to do, consider hiring a professional ghostwriter.

3. Once your conceptual editor is finished reviewing your manuscript (this is also a one-month process), he or she will e-mail you the reviewed electronic file. Your editor will recommend changes and mark errors in the Word file. This will be your first chance to see the progress of your project. When you receive this file, take the time to thoroughly look over the file. Make any modifications your editor has recommended to this file. Please take your time and use the full allotment (usually two weeks) that your editor provides you for revision. E-mail the manuscript back to your editor on the deadline he/she provides.

4. Your manuscript will undergo a second review by your editor, during which the editor will review and incorporate the changes and revisions you have made. This will be a month-long process as well.  Conceptual editing generally lasts for 3 months total. You will be required to sign a content approval form before the manuscript can be sent to our layout department. The members of the layout department are not editors. They will not read the manuscript, nor are they able to make conceptual-editing changes to the manuscript, so it is crucial to make sure the manuscript is in final form before it goes to the layout department. Any images, photographs, and/or tables also need to be edited for content, in editing, prior to the layout stage of production. Review of these items for possible publication will not be available after editing. Return the final draft and the signed content approval form to your editor by the deadline in the third month. After this editing stage is complete, only blatant mistakes and errors will be fixed, and they will require the approval of the editing department. Minor changes or changes to content will not be corrected after the manuscript leaves the editing process.

5. Cover Design. About two months after your conceptual editor contacts you, you will receive a phone call from one of our graphic designers. With your input and cooperation, the designer will create a book cover that is both marketable and professional. The cover design stage lasts for one month each and could overlap one month of editing.

If you have written a children’s book, an illustrator will be in contact with you following the completion of the editing process. You will be able to discuss ideas directly with the illustrator as he or she begins the illustration process. Illustration lasts one month.

6. Layout Design. With your signed content approval form from editing and an e-mailed or verbal approval of your cover, the interior design of the book, or layout process, can begin. It is at this stage that your manuscript starts to look like a book! You will receive a PDF proof via e-mail, which will show you exactly how your book will look when it’s printed including font sizes, page size, and other formatting issues. Any requested changes in regard to the presentation of the content should be communicated with your layout designer at that time. The layout design process is one month.

7. Final Proof. After any necessary visual changes are implemented into your layout, we’ll mail you a perfect bound book proof including the front cover, back cover, and approval forms. We ask that you thoroughly review your book, marking any final changes directly on the final proof itself or marked on a proof corrections form. (Any text changes must be approved by the editor.) A final approval form must be signed and mailed back with your final proof to our office before your manuscript can be printed. You will have one month to review the proof and return it.

8. Marketing. Once we have received your final proof back, and everything is approved, Marketing will contact you. Their first conversation with you will be in regards to initializing your first book printing and developing a list of contacts for your book signings. For your first order, and all subsequent orders, plan on a minimum of 15 work days for your books to be produced and shipped. At this time, your book is also registered with our distributor, and a release date is set. The release date is set for 90 days from when we send the book to print for the first time. It takes this amount of time to get the book through all the right hoops and in all the right places so it’s available to all major bookstores and online Web sites by the release date.   You are free to sell your personal books prior to the release date. We actually encourage that to create demand—but your book will not be available through distribution channels until your release date.