Update on Gerard’s book: the proof is on its way
I finally turned in the PDF of Gerard’s book to the printing company. I had long been formatting and fixing things and proof-reading and fiddling with this and that. There are a nearly infinite number of decisions to make when printing a book, and I have zero experience with any of them.
It’s interesting, though. Change the font and the margins – I finally made both bigger, the better for elderly eyes to take in – and BAM! You’ve added quite a few pages, and therefore quite a bit of expense, to the book. I reduced that by changing the distance between lines and making that a bit smaller. Voila! Back to fewer pages again. And on and on with that sort of thing.
But by far the biggest time-consumer, the largest generator of tooth-gnashing hair-pulling, is copy editing. That means paying attention to typos, commas, grammar, the form to use for quotes, and a host of other nit-picky details and errors that the eye and mind can easily miss. Our human brains like to fill in the blanks of a mistake, but that’s a no-no for copy editing. I found that, no matter how many times I’d gone through the book already, I could always find an error I’d missed.
So I finally had to just – as one might say – close the book on it and send the PDF out to be made into a physical book in the real world. They say I should be receiving the print proof copy on Monday. I’m somewhat nervous to see what it will look like. But whatever I see, I’m inclined to accept it unless there’s some egregious flaw. I’ve had it with copy editing that thing.
Once I do approve it, the books are printed, and after I tweak the website a bit I’ll announce that they’re for sale. That’s the plan, anyway.
Your copy editing experience reminds me of award nominations decades ago in the Air Force. No word processors yet, so they were typed on an electric typewriter, and with teeny-weeny margins so you could fit in more words. To overcome our brain’s tendency to correct mistakes mentally, we would read these things backwards; it helped to find spelling errors.
Good job getting as far as you have, and good luck with the rest of the way!
I have always admired your competence and work ethic. This book project is just another example of why.
Looking forward to the book.
I recall a saying that went along the lines of: “Authors don’t finish books, they just give up on them.”
A variation of that saying could apply to copy editing.
Brio:
Absolutely.
I note that the “Thanks” section of many books includes a class of “readers”, who apparently act as unpaid copy editors and quasi-editors. Details in some of these sections note help in both timeline, historical details, and typos. These books are mostly fiction, and it’s a bit late anyway, but the “next time” you might consider asking some of your more erudite commentators to read a draft (under NDA, of course) and suggest changes, under the principles that “many hand make easy work” and “nobody sees their own errors”.
At any rate, congratulations.
I’ve found I did much better catching typos if I read backward.
Nice – and kudos.
Thanks for the update, Neo. Looking forward to seeing it for sale. I appreciate your struggles with copy editing.
A suggestion: many of us will want to let our friends and contacts know about the book, with the hope some will buy. If you could give us one or two sentences which best summarize Gerald’s legacy as distilled into this book, that could help both the sales as well as set expectations for the readers. Might even help to gain higher ratings for the content from those not familiar with his work.
Good luck for us all.
Roll-aid:
I’m creating a website for the book, and there will be lots of information there. I’ll post the URL.
Dear Neo, I was a book editor for forty years. As I used to tell my authors, “A book is a long piece of writing that has something wrong with it.” We do our best, and we’re human.
Congratulations on getting the manuscript off to the publisher. Well done, what a job.
I do almost all my recreational reading on an iPad. It’s rare not to find typos in a kindle copy. Would an author/publisher like to hear about those? I would.
Two commenters have already written about reading backwards when looking for errors. I turn the page around and read it upside down. It takes a while, but then it pops into focus. The problem with reading one’s own words is that you know what you wrote and expect to find the text that way.
Congratulations on the labor of love. Now, can you give yourself a break? Take a short trip? I leave tomorrow to take my two granddaughters to Prague and Rome. Wanted to take them to Paris, but the Olympics are going to start soon, and I thought that was just too much. I’ve been to Rome at least twice, but this will be my first trip to Prague.
I’ll add my kudos, and once again, I’m really looking forward to the book. As a side note on editing: I made a run of flyers for a short film I’m showing in July. I proof read the daylights out of that text, had eighty copies printed, and distributed at several places, only to find, well… Take a guess. I had to retrieve them all. I’ll be back to the print shop tomorrow morning (sigh) This is fun, right?
JWM
Neo
I found that, no matter how many times I’d gone through the book already, I could always find an error I’d missed.
I downloaded several formats of a book on Latin America from the Web Archive. (Out of the Ashes: Life, Death & Transfiguration of Democracy in Chile, 1833-1988, by James R. Whelan.) Amazon doesn’t list an e-book version for sale. The EPUB and TXT versions are replete with typographical and readability errors.
I have worked for years on an EPUB version, but as it is a long book of over 1,000 pages and a similar number of footnotes, it takes time. There were many passages that were incomprehensible, due to poor scanning results. (Example: identifv A radio matter Thc’rf ‘^”.” ”” ‘=””‘° “^ ^^”-‘^^ But thtnaSe do) Such readability issues have been corrected, except for the index. Why bother correcting an index with page numbers when one can find a name electronically?)
Like Neo, every time I go over it I STILL find errors. At this stage, they are typographical errors, not readability issues. Though, I find fewer and fewer errors. Some day I will finish it. One issue is typographical errors that are in the printed version. Should they be corrected, or left as is? I have found only one factual error, but as the author died a decade ago…. (The author made an error regarding what Salvador Allende’s son-in-law, a Cuban DGI agent, did in Cuba.)
Spelling errors are easier to catch in EPUB edits than they are on paper. However, as an English language version will list Spanish language words as errors, one needs to check. And then by visual inspection, make sure that the Spanish language words are spelled correctly.
Congratulations!
Best of luck today when you receive the print proof copy.
Well done!!