What really happens when a knitwear designer decides to write a book? In her second guest blog post, Chantal Miyagishima of Knitatude shares what she learned from saying yes to her first publishing deal and navigating the process from idea to finished copy. Click here to read part one about her journey to publish, “Sweater Success: From Cast On To Closet, Learn How To Fearlessly Knit Pullovers and Cardigans.”
Did you know that the process of publishing a book can take anywhere from 1-3+ YEARS?
Hi, my name is Chantal Miyagishima of Knitatude, and my new book, “Sweater Success: From Cast On to Closet, How to Fearlessly Knit Cardigans and Pullovers,” came out on November 4th. However, the entire process actually began in May 2024. In this blog post, I’ll run you through all the stages of how a book actually gets made from start to finish.
THE PITCH
Whether you’re pitching to a publishing house or they are reaching out to you, everything starts with an idea. Sometimes, acquiring editors will have an idea in mind for a book that they think will be successful and then pitch an author who might match it, or a potential author will put together an idea with a proposal for a publishing house. Either way, a generic idea is formed!
In my case, my editor reached out to me with the idea of “Beginner-friendly knits that fit”. In a two-week back-and-forth, this morphed into a “101 knit your own sweater” type book. To create a formal pitch, we broke down the chapters and what would be included. From there, she pitched it to her team. This initial pitch goes through the sales team, and if it meets the criteria of “Oh yeah, we can sell that”, it works its way up to the CEO. If an idea is greenlit, it moves into negotiations.
NEGOTIATIONS
Advances, royalties, money – oh my! After your editor has pitched your book and it’s a go, it now goes through a “P&L” phase. This is a profit and loss evaluation, and it’s the determining factor on how much the author will get paid. Most publishers want to give an advance that will be fulfilled/paid back by the first print of the book. (This is mainly because authors don’t have to pay back advances, even if their book doesn’t sell enough copies). Let’s break down these terms:
- Advance: This is the amount of money that an author will get paid while writing the book itself. The advance is paid off by each book that sells, before the author can start getting any royalties.
- Royalties: This refers to the percentage of the book’s price that the author earns. Once the advance is “paid off”, authors will begin to get royalty cheques.
- Industry Numbers: Advances can come in ranges. I’ve seen anything from $1000 (which to me is brutal because of the workload of writing a book), all the way to 18K (that’s the most I’ve ever seen and NOT normal) for a crafting book. You can essentially estimate that from a medium-sized publication house, you will see an advance in the 5-10K range. For royalties, my publisher mentioned that it goes anywhere from 8-12%. But from other crafting book authors I spoke to, this seems to be around 10-12%.
BREAKING DOWN THE MONEY
Using easy numbers, let’s say that an author gets an advance of $1000 and a royalty rate of 10%. Now the royalty rate is on the net costs. Let’s say the book costs $20, but the net price is $10. That means that technically, the author makes $1 per book sold. They first have to sell 1000 books to pay off that $1000 advance. Everything past that means more money in the bank and the royalty cheques start rolling in. (Note: while that seems low, the other $9 of the book cost is helping cover about 5-10 other salaries, such as proofreaders, graphic designers, editors, tech editors, photographers, printing the actual book, etc.)
TIMELINE
Now that the money aspect has been decided, it’s time to write! The writing of the book is really author-dependent. It could be 6 months, it could be 3 months (if they wanna crush it out), or up to a year+. Since knitting is SO time-consuming, this usually means that it’ll be on the longer end, since most crafting books include patterns, and those take time to create. Essentially, it’s whatever timeline plus 12-18 months on the publisher’s side.
My writing timeline was broken down into 6 months, with 3 different deadlines. Each time I turned in a third of my manuscript, I was given ⅓ of my advance. My additional photography budget was given AFTER my final deadline.
EDITING
Once your manuscript is done, you are far from done in the process of making a book. Now it goes through so much more. Proofreaders, graphic designers, tech editors, art directors and the likes. This takes 5-6 months. This was when my publishers started to give me the layout of my “lazers” aka, my pages. We went through Every. Single. Little. Detail. From photo selection, color accents, fonts and schematics and everything else. The last day I could make edits to my book was June 3rd, and the launch is in November!
MARKETING
About nine months out from the book launch, publishing houses will assign you a marketing person. This essentially helps you determine when to announce your book, how often to post, what to include, and other details, such as book launches & tours (this is something my publishing house didn’t have the funds for, so it’s coming out of my pocket). Throughout this entire process, you are working on preorders and reaching out to local yarn shops to gauge their interest in selling your book. (While your publisher may reach out to more local and niche stores, they mainly focus on the big box stores like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Indigo, etc.) Fun fact: the more pre-orders you get on Amazon, the higher chance it’ll get a “Top Seller” badge, because every book order in the pre-order phase counts towards the number of books on the “day one” of your book being released.
Roughly 2 months before your book release, you’ll be sent a book of your own to market and hold. Warning: you will cry. So much of your time will be wrapped up in this book, and when you touch it for the first time… It’s unreal.
LAUNCH DAY AND AFTER
Once your book is launched, it’s launched! Huzzah! I would love to say “that’s it” and you can wipe your hands of it, but you’ll want to continually market it. I will say that while the publishing house does a lot of upfront work to determine where bookstores might stock your book, they don’t tend to do a lot of online marketing (at least not from what I’ve seen).
All in all, it’s a lengthy process, but one that’s truly rewarding. If you’re looking to pitch a publishing house, I definitely suggest knowing your topic inside and out, understanding your own branding and tone of voice so that those branding aspects of the book flow smoothly, and being aware of what makes you different from other authors who might want to write the same book. What makes your POV different? Use that to your advantage in a pitch.
Got any questions? Don’t be afraid to reach out to me at info@knitatude.ca. You can also catch an hour long chat with myself and my publisher Kerry herself on my Youtube Channel HERE.
Want to order my book?
Until next time,
Chantal
