What to Expect When You're Expecting a Book

Metaphors

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

-Sylvia Plath

 
With both of my kids, I read the pregnancy manifesto What to Expect When You’re Expecting religiously. Like every day. It didn’t matter that I’d already read the book from cover to cover. I still had to re-read the part about what happens at 16 weeks when I was 16 weeks along. I still had to re-read about labor a dozen and a half times before I’d even hit my third trimester.  You would have thought I was preparing for a final exam the way I memorized that book.
Having a book published is a lot like having a baby. Especially the waiting part. And the delivery of something-precious-that-you’ve-created part. Not to mention the I-get-to-have-a-party-and-eat-cake part. I’ve been scouring the web to find hints about the publication process, and I’ve found some great articles to study obsessively.  Stacia Kane even calls her series “How babies are made”.  :)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

                                                                                                                           

Denise Little, a new agent with the Ethan Ellenberg Agency, has a few articles on her blog about the process too:
http://deniselittle.wordpress.com/from-idea-to-keeper-how-a-book-becomes-a-book/ten-to-eighteen-months-before-publication-the-editor-at-work/
http://deniselittle.wordpress.com/from-idea-to-keeper-how-a-book-becomes-a-book/six-to-nine-months-before-publication/
http://deniselittle.wordpress.com/from-idea-to-keeper-how-a-book-becomes-a-book/six-months-out-until-pub-date-everybody-gets-to-play/
http://deniselittle.wordpress.com/from-idea-to-keeper-how-a-book-becomes-a-book/the-final-push/
I’ve read and re-read and re-read these articles so many times, I’m beginning to crave butter cream frosting.