Re: Publishing a Book
The normal procedure is this: you submit the manuscript to your commissioning editor, they read it and if it requires any serious rewriting or changes they will come back to you and discuss this.
If they are happy with it it is passed to a copyeditor who will check the spelling, consistency, etc and put it into the house style. After this it goes for typesetting.
Once it's set you should be sent a full set of proofs. This will be a hardcopy. You will be asked to check these for anything that you might wish to change. It's usually your last chance to make any changes and these should be kept to a minimum. While you are doing this a proofreader will also be checking proofs for any errors that might have crept in. That person will merge your corections with theirs and the proofs will be sent back to the typesetter so that they can implement the necessary changes.
The publisher will then recive a second set of proofs which they will compare to the corrected set to make sure the typesetter hasn't missed anything.
If it requires an index it will go for indexing. The index will be typeset and then checked by the publisher.
In the meantime the marketing dept or commissioning ed should be working with a designer on the cover. You will probably be consulted on this but it depends on your contract. The comm ed will write the blurb for the back and they may ask you to read over this and supply a short bio.
Closer to publication the publicity and marketing people will probably want to meet you to discuss their plans.
That's really it. On publication you'll probably do some publicity. The rest is up to your publisher. If you've any questions you should speak to your commissioning editor.
Good luck with it!