You’ve completed your manuscript. Congratulations. Do you know what the next step is? Let’s break down the book publishing process step by step.

Before you hire an editor, send the manuscript to some beta readers. Pursue beta readers who are interested in the same genre as your manuscript. Also consider beta readers who match your ideal reader in terms of age, gender, or interests related to your book’s topic.

You can search for beta readers on social media, in writing groups, on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork, and in communities such as Goodreads or Reddit. lose family and friends are often discouraged as beta readers because they may lack objectivity, may not be familiar with the book’s genre, and the feedback process can strain personal relationships.

Unlike a professional editor or a stranger beta reader, loved ones are more likely to offer biased or sugar-coated comments. This can result in praise that isn’t constructive and doesn’t help the author improve the manuscript.

Understanding how beta readers fit into the overall book publishing process will help you move confidently into the next stage.

Qualities to Look for in a Beta Reader

Some qualities to look for when choosing a beta reader include being a(n):

• Constructive Criticizer: Identify both strengths and weaknesses in your writing and offer suggestions for improvement.
• Effective Communicator: Articulate thoughts clearly and coherently, thoughtfully and respectfully.
• Detail-Oriented: Identify inconsistencies, plot holes, or issues with characterization, pacing, and world-building.
• Dedicated: Invest time in reading your entire manuscript and provide timely feedback.
• Trustworthy: Understands the importance of confidentiality and won’t share your manuscript without your permission.

These qualities ensure you receive feedback that genuinely supports your progress throughout the book publishing process.

Once you’ve found potential beta readers, reach out to them via direct message or email to ask whether they’re willing to provide constructive criticism.

Can a Beta Reader Steal Your Manuscript or Ideas?

It’s understandable to have concerns about sharing your work with beta readers. But, typically, they aren’t interested in stealing manuscripts because there are usually writers or devoted readers who want to help improve your work. However, there are some ways to safeguard your manuscript, including:

Nondisclosure Agreements (NDAs): These legally bind the beta reader not to share or use your work without your permission.

Selective Sharing: Choose beta readers you trust or who are recommended by trusted sources.

Watermarks: Digitally watermarking your manuscript with your name or other identifying information won’t prevent theft, but it can discourage potential thieves.

Limited Distribution: Keep the circle of beta readers small and manageable.

Copyright Registration: Consider registering your work with the Copyright Office before sharing it. This can provide legal recourse if someone steals your manuscript.

Feedback Platform. Use a reputable platform designed for sharing work with beta readers. These often have built-in protections and terms of service that can help safeguard your work.

Protecting your work matters, but so does finding a healthy balance between receiving feedback and improving your writing. Remember, most beta readers generally want to help authors succeed. Once you feel confident about sharing your manuscript safely, you can focus on how to approach beta readers and set expectations.

How to Approach Beta Readers

There are two ways you can approach acquiring beta readers:

1. Pay someone (EFA suggests $0.008 to $0.012 per word)
2. Request an exchange (Beta-read someone else’s manuscript, and they read yours.)

After deciding how you’ll work with beta readers, make sure you provide the information they need to give useful feedback. When searching for a beta reader, remember to include the book genre and word count.

Give the beta reader a deadline for finishing your book. Up to one or two months is reasonable. Depending on the manuscript’s length.

Next, send a digital copy of the manuscript to the beta reader after an agreement has been made. It is also helpful to send a list of questions you’d like answered, for example:

• Did you get bored anywhere?
• Did you like the pacing of the book?
• Was there anything that didn’t make sense to you?
• Did you like the main character?
• Could you tell the characters apart?
• Did you find any errors or inconsistencies?
• Did you like the ending?

Once your beta readers have finished reviewing your manuscript, you’ll begin receiving feedback that can guide your next round of revisions.

Beta Reader Feedback You May Receive

Some examples of feedback that you may receive from beta readers include:

Character Development: There may be a suggestion to flesh out a secondary character who initially seemed one-dimensional. By providing more backstory or adding depth to their motivations, the character becomes more compelling and adds richness to the narrative.

Plot Tighening: Plot holes or moments where the story dragged may be identified. You can streamline the plot by removing unnecessary scenes or adding clarity where there is confusion.

Pacing Adjustments: If a manuscript feels rushed in some areas and slow in others, you’ll need to improve the story’s pacing. This might involve restructuring chapters, balancing action scenes with quieter moments, or cutting unnecessary parts to keep the story moving.

Dialogue Enhancement:  Improve dialogue by making it more natural, revealing character personalities, and advancing the plot. Adjustments might involve removing unnatural language, adding subtext, or ensuring each character has a distinct voice.

Theme Clarification:  Sometimes, the central themes of a manuscript may not come across as clearly as intended. Beta readers can let you know how well the themes are conveyed and offer suggestions for strengthening them through symbolism, imagery, or character arcs.

World-Building: For genres like fantasy or science fiction, beta readers can help you refine your world-building elements. This might involve clarifying rules of magic or technology, ensuring consistency in the setting, or deepening the cultural or historical context of the world.

After reviewing feedback, remember to thank your beta readers for their help and support. Then revise the manuscript again. You don’t have to apply every suggestion, but take note of why the readers sent the feedback. This gives you an idea of how future readers may think of your book if it were published as is.

When you’ve finished revising the manuscript using the beta reader’s feedback, go through it from beginning to end and focus on grammar, typos, and formatting. Look for extra spaces, font changes, line-spacing inconsistencies, and run a final spell check.

These revisions prepare your manuscript for the next major step in the book publishing process: hiring an editor.

How to Search for an Editor

Next, search for book editors who work in your manuscript’s genre and see which editing services they provide. There are four types of editing:

1. Developmental (Substantive and Content) Editing: Focuses on the overall structure, content, and organization of a manuscript to enhance its clarity, coherence, and effectiveness. It looks at the fundamental elements, such as plot, character development, pacing, and overall readability.
2. Line Editing: Examines the structure of sentences, ensuring they are clear, concise, and grammatically correct. It involves polishing the language, enhancing the flow of the narrative, and ensuring consistency in style and tone throughout the manuscript.
3. Copyediting: Checks for grammatical errors, ensures the text follows a specific style guide (AP, APA, MLA, or Chicago), and applies consistent formatting for headings, lists, citations, and other elements, fact checks, and reviews language usage.
4. Proofreading: Scans the document for typos, spelling and punctuation mark errors, inconsistent formatting, layout, and design issues, and reviews tables, figures, and captions. This is the final step in the editing process before publication.

Understanding these editing types helps you determine what your manuscript needs at this stage of the book publishing process.

Once you’ve determined the type of editor your manuscript needs, you need to format the manuscript per the perspective editor’s guidelines. You also need to obtain all permissions to reproduce any copyrighted materials, like images or excerpts from other works. You also need to credit all sources for any materials used under fair use or public domain exemptions.

You may also want to conduct a final read-through to catch any remaining errors or typos and save a backup copy before sending it to the editor.

After preparing your manuscript for professional editing, the next decision is how you want to publish your book.

Decide How to Publish Your Book

After having an editor review your manuscript, you need to determine if you’re going to have your book traditionally published or self-publish it.

Traditional Publishing in the Book Publishing Process

In most cases, traditional publishing companies control how much the author is paid and the publishing process, and own the copyrights. It is important to review the pros and cons of this publishing option.

Some pros include: the author gets an advance on royalties, the publisher pays for the book publishing elements and marketing, and it provides the highest chance for bookstore distribution.

On the other hand, the cons of traditional publishing include: it is hard to get a publishing deal, authors receive low royalty rates, and it can take over two years to market the book.

Other key players in traditional publishing include literary agents. Agents pitch books to editors and publishers and negotiate offers on behalf of the author. The agent gets paid when they sell an author’s work and typically receives about 15% commission on everything the author is paid, including the advance payment and royalties. It’s best to avoid anyone who charges more than the commission amount.

Like editors, most agents specialize in certain genres and either work for an agency or are freelancers. They also have industry expertise, know the market, and can provide valuable guidance in developing an author’s writing career.

If you decide traditional publishing is the right path, the next step is finding a literary agent who can represent your work.

Finding and Getting a Literary Agent

Research agents who represent the type of work that was written. You can use resources such as Query Tracker, Manuscript Wish List, and Writer’s Digest.

Often, authors will list their agent under the acknowledgment section of their book. Some literary agents have their listing information on Publishers Marketplace. Once you’ve created an account and become a member. You can examine agents and agencies by viewing their book deal history and performance.

The next step is to write a query letter and a synopsis for your book if you write fiction, or prepare a book proposal if you write nonfiction.

Note that each literary agent has specific submission requirements — follow their directions carefully to avoid rejection. The most common materials an agent will ask for include:

Query Letter: A one-page pitch that briefly describes the manuscript. Personalize each query letter to the agents you’re contacting.

Synopsis: A summary of the book, from the beginning to the end.

Nonfiction Book Proposal: A sales pitch for a book idea that argues why it is marketable.

Fiction Book Proposal:  May provide who the target audience is, a chapter-by-chapter outline, or a detailed summary of key plot points.

Sample Chapters: Start from the beginning of the book. The sample number varies depending on the agent’s guidelines.

Once you’ve submitted your materials, you’ll begin receiving responses that determine your next steps.

After submitting these documents to the agents, you’ll receive several responses, including:

• No response
• A request for a partial manuscript
• A request for a full manuscript

If you don’t hear back from any of the agents you sent queries to, there may be something wrong with the query, the manuscript, or the agent may not be a good fit for the book. However, if you have several acceptances from agents, you’ll need to decide which one you want to work with.

Choosing the right agent is an important decision, and it helps to know what qualities to look for.

Choosing a Literary Agent

Whether you’re looking for a seasoned professional or a newcomer with industry experience, the right literary agent will guide you through contract negotiations, pitch improvements, and navigate rejections from traditional publishers.

Review each literary agent’s correspondence and check to see what their sales track record is, if the agent’s working style is compatible with yours, and if the agent shares your vision for the book.

It may be easier to be represented by a new agent trying to build their client list. If you decide to take this route, take a look at the agent’s previous publishing industry experience.

A good agent will communicate which publishers were queried and any rejections they received. They will also help you improve your query, pitch, or proposal, and will know the ins and outs of a book contract.

Once you’ve chosen an agent, the next milestone is securing a book deal with a publisher.

Landing a Book Deal

When an author has landed a book deal, a publishing company has offered its interest, a contract has been drafted with the terms laid out in a memo, and the author should have received a portion of their advance payment. The remaining portion will be received once the book is published, and per the specifics of the contract, the agent will also receive their commission. If the author has any questions about the contract, they should discuss them with their agent.

The author’s royalties will be paid out after the book has sold more copies and the publisher thinks it will earn. An author’s royalty rate is usually around 10% of the cover price of the book. Royalty payment schedules may differ from publisher to publisher.

When receiving the publisher’s contract, make sure you understand how the copyright will be handled. It’s common for an author to grant full rights to the publisher. This means the author may need to seek permission from the publisher to make the work available on their website or to others. However, the publisher may grant the author limited rights. How long the agreement lasts can vary and would be outlined in the contract.

In most instances, to reclaim the copyright, authors must wait at least 35 years after transferring these rights and file a notice in advance, unless the contract’s terms state otherwise.

If traditional publishing doesn’t align with your goals, self‑publishing offers a more independent path.

Self-Publishing

When an author chooses to self-publish, they take on the entire book publishing process themselves — writing, editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design, printing, and marketing — or hire professionals to help, all without the support of a traditional publishing company.

As with traditional publishing, you need to weigh the pros and cons of self-publishing, which include: the author has full ownership of copyrights and royalties, the author has full creative control over the writing, cover design, and marketing, and they can choose platforms that offer print-on-demand copies of the book.

Some cons of self-publishing include: hiring professionals can be expensive, it can be difficult to handle all of the elements of a book by yourself, and authors must actively promote the book to gain visibility and sales.

There are several platforms and resources that provide authors with options to bring their works to readers worldwide. The most popular platform is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, aka KDP. Other prominent platforms include IngramSpark and Smashwords, which is now part of Draft2Digital, and they offer authors a comprehensive set of tools for publishing, distributing, and marketing eBooks and print-on-demand.

You can also leverage writing communities, forums, and social media groups to access valuable resources and support from fellow authors and industry professionals.

By harnessing these resources, self-publishing authors can navigate the complexities of the publishing industry, reach wider audiences, and fulfill their creative ambitions with greater independence and control.

If you have questions or need help with your book publishing process, contact NEK Editing.