So I’ve talked about copy edits and page proofs, and now, I thought I would share a rough time­line of when I get them in regards to when the book is pub­lished. So here’s an exam­ple of a rough time­line of a book based on Web of Lies, which comes out on May 25.

When I turned the book in: Winter/spring 2009, or about one year before the pub­li­ca­tion date.

Revi­sions from edi­tor: These arrived about two months after I turned the book in.

Copy edits: Arrived about six months before the pub­li­ca­tion date.

Page proofs: About four months before the pub­li­ca­tion date.

Con­fir­ma­tion pages: About two months before the pub­li­ca­tion date. Note: Not all pub­lish­ers send con­fir­ma­tion pages to authors. A lot of pub­lish­ers just send the page proofs, and that’s the last time the author sees the book before it goes to press.

Final book: Usu­ally, the fin­ished book goes to press about a month or so before the actual on-sale date, so my pub­lisher will actu­ally start print­ing copies of Web of Lies around the last week of April. Books will start ship­ping out to store usu­ally about two weeks before the on-sale date.

The pub­li­ca­tion date: This is when I’ll see the fin­ished book for the first time, either by going to the local book­store and find­ing it on the shelves or get­ting my author copies in the mail. I don’t usu­ally get any early copies.

Peo­ple often won­der why it takes so long for books to be pub­lished. Well, this is part of the rea­son why. Each one of these steps takes about two months, which includes giv­ing me time to do my part of the process and mail the book back before my edi­tor sends it on to the next step. So even if I don’t have a book hit­ting shelves, I’m work­ing on some­thing all the time, even if it is all this behind-the-scenes stuff.

So there you have it. A lit­tle bit about pub­lish­ing time­lines. Got ques­tions? I’ll answer what I can in the comments.