• The New York Times Book Review, Monday, February 4, 2008 11:15 AM

Although publishers can turn an electronic file into a printed book in a matter of weeks--as they often do for hot political titles, name-brand authors or embargoed celebrity biographies likely to be leaked to the press--they usually take a year before releasing a book. Why so long? In a word, marketing.

Publishing still relies on a time-honored, time-consuming sales strategy: word of mouth. With the Internet and blogs, word of mouth travels more quickly today, but there's a glut of information. To help a book break through the static, publishers have to plan months in advance. "If it's a book by someone who people aren't familiar with, on a subject that people don't necessarily need to have, it will take nine months to a year for people to figure it out," says Jonathan Karp, the publisher of "Twelve."

Some stores like Target and Wal-Mart reserve room for mass-market paperbacks by authors like Janet Evanovich or Nora Roberts. If an author is late and misses the target publication date, the stores won't have room on the shelf, since they're expecting next month's crop of projected best sellers. "Unless you have a major author, you probably have to wait another four to six months to publish that book," says Matthew Shear, the publisher of St. Martin's Press.

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