Thread: Tell me about publishing a novel.

No, not Times New Roman, Courier. Publishers want a monospaced font when reading it.

The procedure is to write it first
Then send them the first three chapters (or 50 pages, whichever is smaller) with a cover letter.
Then wait for a response. Unless they tell you otherwise, they will respond. I believe that I got a letter back about 6 weeks after I sent in the first three chapters. They will either reject the project, or request the rest of the novel be sent for editing.

When you send them the final novel they will get back to you again within about 6 weeks. They will more than likely ask for changes, and lots of them. Make the changes and then send it back to them.

Then they will publish a prerelease copy for you. Depending on the publisher, you may have to pay for that. Most publishers own their own printers so it will just be the cost of the book ($20 at the most)

Read it carefully, looking for all possible errors. Also check for formatting errors. Occasionally the printer will hyphenate something oddly. Send back all changes that you want and they will publish your novel and give you an ISBN number and all that stuff.

As for page count, the final page count of the novel will be very close to the page count of a properly formatted book. Double spaced, courier font at 12 point. I believe that my book was about 425 pages on the computer and ended up being about 375 pages in print. Remember, novels are 6x9 while Word pages are 8x11.

Would you recommend then changing the margins on Word to match that of the novel? (6x9)

No, not for sending it to a publisher, they want it in regular 8x11 format with standard margins. You may opt to make the margins slightly larger than normal. Often editors will make notes in those margins that don't fit in between lines.