Welcome to the next episode of Peek Behind the Publishing Curtain, the series I’ve written to give people an idea of the steps an author takes to bring a new book to readers.
Check out the previous posts if you need to get caught up:
In the first episode, I share how I came up with the idea for a potential new book.
In the second, I share how I investigate whether my idea is marketable.
The third episode covers researching the topic and, pending the success of that effort, pitching the project idea to my agent, Kelly Sonnack. I provide the actual pitch in the post.
In episode four, I give a high-level look at drafting, feedback, more research, and drafting, and (finally) being on submission. We get an answer we love, but not quite what we expected.
Now for the penultimate episode, #5. Let’s get into it. (I feel like a podcaster when I write that.)
In April 2023, Carol Hinz, associate publisher of Millbrook Press and Carolrhoda Books, imprints of Lerner Publishing Group, reached out to say her team was interested in The Womb Where It Happens (working title) but felt it fit best within their middle-grade science space. Would I be interested in reworking the project for that age group? Would I like to talk about it? My answer to the second question was an emphatic yes. I’ve been a fan of Carol and Lerner for many years and have enjoyed watching how they champion the books they make. The educational market (versus commercial or trade, the markets my other authored books live in) would be new to me. Middle grade would be new to me. But I was up for the challenge, and after speaking with Carol, I knew I’d have good support. This would be a photo-driven book with some graphics that they would contract out.
I dove into the scientific research with the end goal of finding gestational information about 12 animals. Not only did the research need to be the most current, as scientific understandings can evolve rapidly, but it also needed to be physically available to those outside of the science community (us!), AND include gestation-related photos that we might be able to secure. Plus, we had some thematic buckets to fill: gestation of body parts designed for moving, for sensing, for ingesting, and gestational outliers. It was a needle-in-a-haystack situation. I kept digging. When the science was over my head, I asked my husband, a physician, to interpret. This made for some interesting dinner conversations.
Meanwhile the clock was ticking on getting everything written, turned in, edited, and vetted on time. The Millbrook Press team wanted the book to launch during their 2025 fall season which seemed fairly impossible and was made even more so because of a wrinkle that surfaced toward the very end…
You knew this was coming, right? Stay tuned for the final episode. But you won’t have to wait long because it drops Tuesday, September 9th, 2025.
