The First Email From My Publisher: Inside the Pre-Production Queries
The Patience of Publishing Series, Post 2
When I clicked “submit” on my manuscript, I expected the quiet. The long, anticlimactic pause every author warns you about, and the gap I coach anxious authors through.
Instead, within the week, an email arrived — friendly, organized, and a little bit thrilling — from the editorial assistant at Routledge who will help shepherd my book toward production. “Your submission was quite clean and straightforward,” she wrote. And then, gently: a list.
If you’re working toward a book of your own, I want you to see that list. Because this is the part no one shows you, and it’s far less frightening than the silence you imagine.
Even a clean submission gets queries
Here’s the first thing I’d tell any anxious author: a query list is a good thing! It’s the process working exactly as it should. I have helped several authors through Routledge’s process, and I’m even on their approved copyeditor list — and I still got a list. That’s normal. The queries are how a manuscript becomes a book.
Here’s what mine actually asked.
1. Confirm your name and title — I changed the title
The first queries were simple confirmations: my name, and the title on file. And in that small moment, I made a change I’d been turning over for a while. The book went from Grief and Synchronicity to Synchronicity in Grief: Reconstructing Meaning After Loss.
It looks tiny on the page. But word order is emphasis, and emphasis is meaning. Synchronicity in Grief puts the lived experience first — grief as the ground, synchronicity as what moves through it. The confirmation step gave me one last, low-stakes moment to get it right. Take that moment when it comes.
2. Confirm the counts — and do your own
The publisher’s opening note listed my book as 9 chapters, 10 figures, and 17 tables. I sat down and counted myself: 16 tables, 10 figures. A small discrepancy, easily reconciled — but reconciled because I checked rather than nodding along.
Lesson: always do your own count. You know your manuscript better than any handoff document does.
3. Make your tables print-ready
Across the chapters, some of my tables were in color and some weren’t. The query, kindly: was that intentional? It wasn’t — so I went back through and standardized every table to greyscale.
Why greyscale? Because the printed book is black and white (the eBook keeps the color). Designing your tables for the medium they’ll actually live in saves everyone a step later. It’s a tiny act of consideration for your editors at the publishing house.
4. A table that was really a figure
In Chapter 4, what I’d labeled Table 4.1 needed to become Figure 4.1 — and I was asked to keep a separate copy of it. The table-versus-figure distinction feels like hair-splitting until you’re here; then you realize it’s a real editorial judgment about how information is meant to be read.
5. Where did Figure 4.2 go?
A small one: my editor couldn’t locate Figure 4.2 where it was expected. A quick fix to the chapter file, but a good reminder that file hygiene at handover matters — placement, labels, and naming all carry meaning once your manuscript leaves your hands. Even though I had checked each file many times, I still missed this one error, which is why it’s better to hire an outside editor to help serve as a second set of eyes on your work.
6. The cover surprise
Last, the one I didn’t see coming. I’d happily chosen a cover template — only to learn that a monograph uses a different set of templates than the one I’d picked. So I’m waiting on guidance before I choose again. Your format shapes your options in ways you won’t always anticipate, and that’s okay. You’re allowed to not know; that’s what your publisher’s in-house editor is for.
The patience of publishing
What struck me most wasn’t any single query. It was the tone — collaborative, warm, iterative. “Let’s navigate this together.” Even though my knowledge of the publishing standards didn’t exempt me from the list; it just let me meet it as a partner rather than a petitioner.
That’s the patience of publishing. Not waiting passively, but moving carefully, one small considered decision at a time, alongside people who want your book to be its best. The cover, the counts, the greyscale tables — none of it is glamorous. All of it is the quiet craft of turning your years of work into something a reader can hold.
I’ll keep showing you each stage as it comes. Next, I expect, the cover decision and the first copyedits.
Following along as I take my own book through Routledge? Join the newsletter and I’ll bring you behind the scenes at every step.
Warmly,
~Jennifer
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