Timetable: From Writing to Publishing

So you've got an idea to write a book...

So you write it. Maybe it takes you thirty days (yes, this IS possible!) Maybe it takes you three months. Or maybe even it takes you a year. There's great variables with the actual writing time of a book. For the sake of this post, we'll go with the average time: 6 months.

So now you've written an awesome book. Stellar, really. It's time to find your place in the world of publishing. You research. You query. You get kicked in the gut with rejections over and over and over again. You revise. You query some more. You cry. You query some more. Then it happens: that wonderful request. You get a rejection from it...and the story goes on and on.

Finally, one day you get your shot. Either with an agent or a publisher themselves. (I'll take a brief moment to mention that if you get an agent, you get to do some more revising and "querying" in the form a submitting to publishers) If you're lucky, contracts come, confetti explodes all around you and it's official: your going to be published author. 

You like the sound of that, don't you? Yeah, me too. :-)

So how long does it take from start to finish? Well, that depends on a lot of things. How fast you write. How quickly you edit. How good you are a querying. Rinse. Repeat. Like tons of variables here. Then there's the agent thing. Or straight to the publishing house thing.

It all depends on you. (And the market, of course.)

I've been writing for almost 4 years. Jeez, it doesn't really feel like that long. But this summer, I'll hit year 4. Which means I'm technically in year 3. *giggles*  In that time, I've written 7 books. I found a wonderful publisher, Omnific, and my debut came out last September. My debut, Recaptured Dreams, was the second book I'd ever written (one that only took me thirty days to write start to finish. Of course, it had some work done after that). I wrote that book my first year, so it took me two years to polish, query, and then find it's forever home. The third book I'd written, All-American Girl, took almost six months to write (taking me into my second year) and it's coming out in less than thirty days! Again, that's about a two year turn-a-round.

So for me, it's about two years.

In honor of my second books release, I'm hosting a contest where you can which an ARC of All-American Girl, a signed paperback of Recaptured Dreams, or one of three $15 Amazon gift certificates! You can enter the easy-peasy Rafflecopter below. Spread the word!

As for you dear writer peeps, what's your timetable from writing to publishing? If you aren't published yet, what's the timetable like thus far?

~JD

a Rafflecopter giveaway