Hello friends, and welcome to my very first blog post!
It’s been almost a year since my second book, my debut graphic novel CAT & CAT ADVENTURES: THE QUEST FOR SNACKS was published by HarperCollins and released into the world, and in a couple of months, my second graphic novel in the series will be out! And I’m currently working on PAPER GIRL, a middle-grade graphic novel published by Macmillan.
It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, I was sitting in an office working at my 9-to-5 tech job. Now, I have the privilege and honor of working on creating stories full time through traditional publishing.
When I first decided to work on graphic novels, there weren’t many up-to-date resources on how to navigate the process, especially because it can vary from person to person. But the resources I did find, such as the graphic novel podcast or interviews by editors, were all so useful. With a few years under my belt working on one comic collection and five graphic novels signed, I hope my experience can be helpful to someone starting out as well!
Today, I’ll go through a step-by-step process on the overarching, general steps to publishing a book, and in future blog posts, do a deep dive in each of them.
Step 1: Have an Idea for a Book
Coming up with a concept for a book is not a one-size-fits-all process.
When I worked on the ideas for CAT & CAT ADVENTURES, I knew that I wanted to create a story based around my existing characters from my webcomic, Cat & Cat Comics. Having drawn this webcomic for many months already, I was intimately familiar with the personalities and backgrounds of my characters. To create the story, I started out by answering two questions:
Who am I writing for?
What is the theme/message I want to convey?
Of course, you don’t have to decide right away whether your story is early reader (ER), middle grade (MG), young adult (YA), or adult. But it helps to have a general idea of how old your audience is going to be, since your story will have levels of complexity and themes based on this.
I knew that I wanted to target a younger audience, as my art style for Cat & Cat Comics is more cartoonish in nature. I wasn’t sure if it would be ER or MG just yet.
For the theme or message, I decided to explore ideas of kindness and sacrifice, but also friendship and figuring out creative solutions through different personalities and avenues.
In PAPER GIRL, however, the answer to question 1 was initially just “my family.” I wrote PAPER GIRL as a tribute to my grandmother and umma, and the story flowed out naturally without me thinking too hard about the plot points. In my second round of edits, I cleaned up the story by bringing out the unifying themes of family, belonging, and coming-of-age.
Step 2: Getting an Agent
In my experience, I actually already had an agent before I wrote my books because I had published my first book, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CATS already. For some, this step is optional, but to break into traditional publishing, it is highly recommended.
Some reasons why:
An agent will be pitching your book proposal to editors and publishing houses. Some publishers actually only accept proposals from agents, not from authors directly! A good agent has relationships with editors and art directors, ensuring that your manuscript is actually seen by the editor but also pitched to editors who might be looking for works like yours.
You will most likely get paid more. I could go into this in another post if you all like, but authors get what's called an advance, which basically is a payment up front by the publisher to invest in your work. You have to earn it back through royalties afterwards before you earn actual royalties yourself, but it's not something you have to pay back if the book does not sell. Having an agent who can protect your rights in the contract stage and also ensure you get a fair advance could be the difference of literally thousands of dollars.
A good agent is with you for your career, and she/he will care about your vision. You want to work on a graphic novel? OK! The agent will let you know what the market looks like right now for graphic novels. It's like having an insider scoop on the industry.
Sometimes, you get to know other people under that agency! For example, in my literary agency, amazing authors such as Liz Climo, Catana Comics, Chibird, 4amShower, and even the creator of the Divergent series are represented! I've gotten to know the creators of Chibird and 4amShower well, and in return, create a community of like-minded authors in similar fields.
There are many other pros, but I also wanted to let you know about WARNING signs to avoid getting signed with a ill-intentioned "agent".
Always sign a contract with the literary agent. If they aren't asking you to sign a contract, then they are probably not a legitimate literary agency.
The typical commission rate for agents is 15%. If it's higher, ask them why it is higher than the industry standard!
You should never, ever have to pay your agent anything. If they are asking you to pay for their services, this is not a legitimate agency.
So how do you find and sign with a literary agent? This is something I can go into another post, but there are also some articles out there for preparing a query to agents.
Step 3: Submitting your Book Proposal
A book proposal is something you work on with your agent that tells prospective editors what your book is about, comparable books in the market right now, and prospective marketing/sales. For graphic novels, the contents of the book proposal are different from a typical prose novel or picture book.
Typically, a graphic novel book proposal contains:
A written script — this can be the full script, a sample of the script, or even just the outline/concept. Typically, a full script gives editors a better chance to hear your writing voice and feel more confident committing to your book, but if you are well-known already or have worked with the editor before, then a sample or just an outline can suffice. Even if you are a debut author, some editors are willing to work with the concept/outline version, but it’s really up to each editor.
Sample art — this can be a few pages, depending on what your agent recommends.
Marketing/Comparables — typically this is what is already out in the market, so that editors and their sales/marketing teams can see how books in your category perform in terms of sales numbers.
Other materials, depending on your agent’s recommendation — some people like to submit character turnarounds or a short author introduction as to why the story was written.
Step 4: Waiting
Whether you submit it yourself or your agent goes to submission, you now wait for the publishers to get back to you. It can take weeks or even months sometimes, and in rare instances, it can be within a few days.
Don’t be discouraged if it takes time, though. Teams in publishing houses don’t meet every day to go through pitched books, so even if the editor loves your book proposal, it can take some time to discuss with the rest of the editorial team.
Step 5: Negotiating the Terms
There are multiple ways that offers can come in. You typically do a phone call with the editor before the actual offer comes in, because you will be working with the editor for many, many months (even years), so they want to make sure you are a good professional fit. After all of that is done, you might get that offer!
If you have multiple offers, your book can be up for auction. This is if multiple publishers put in offers. Sometimes, a book might be pre-empted, which means that before a book goes up for auction or gets multiple offers, a single publisher offers a deal to take the book off the market.
But usually, a book does not go to auction nor does it get offered a pre-empt. These are rare cases, and typically and unfortunately, a book is either rejected by all the publishers (like Harry Potter was multiple times initially!) or accepted by one. And that's OK! Remember, it only takes one to publish. And if you don't get accepted immediately, you can re-submit in a few months, with changes made to your proposal.
Step 6: Creating the Book
After your initial book proposal, there are many, many rounds of edits to work on, and even something as small as a single word, or the placement of characters, can be changed! The team works with you on the page layout, the cover, the other pages in the book, and modifying all of the scripts and art for months and months.
For example, I had to go through edits for the text, then the sketches, then the line art, then the colors, and finally the layout. Each step here can be multiple rounds of edits!
There are also deadlines to meet, as well. It takes a while to get the book printed, and the publisher wants to leave time for you to market the book, so you'll want to get done with the book many months in advance.
Step 7: Marketing the Book
Woohoo, the book is now done! Now what? Leading up to the publication date of the book, around a few months or so before, your publisher will start marketing your book. This can be great to do in tandem with your own marketing, if you’d like. When you announce the book to the world, you might go do local bookstore interviews and signings, events, online giveaways, and more!
Getting pre-orders is very important for authors. The number of pre-orders you get helps publishers know that you have a place in the market, and it also helps bump you up in rankings on sites such as Amazon, which can be a HUGE boost on launch day. Pre-orders also allow authors to have a chance on the best-seller list. So that's why you may see lots of authors asking people to pre-order!
Step 8: Launching the Book
The book launch is when your book is published! Hooray! Sometimes your publisher will arrange an event, and maybe other times, they will do giveaways. After you launch your book, if you've published traditionally, your book can often be found in retailers like Barnes & Nobles and other bookstores.
My books are found both online and in book retailers around the world, and I never tire of seeing it on the shelves or through pictures that people send me.
Additional Notes
I've left out a LOT of details here because it’s simply too difficult to go into so much detail and keep this blog post at a reasonable length. But I hope that this was helpful! There are things that people do after the book has been published, and each step here could have an entire blog post all on its own.
There are other articles and videos talking more about traditional publishing, but I hope showing it to you through a comic artist and graphic novel writer's perspective helps a lot, too.
If you've made it this far to the end, here's an internet cookie for you: 🍪
Happy writing/drawing!