Galleys and Typos

So, I was going through the galley proofs and entering the changes I’d written on the page into my MS Word manuscript — 65 of the pages needed changes.

Some of the changes were dates and numbers. One of the things I realized (after copy-editing) was that a secondary character’s age needed to be reduced by about two years in some of the references, or it made a huge error/continuity problem. A few places, I made word-choice changes. There were typos and missing words. And the sad fact is: Most of them are mine. A few were introduced by the typesetter, but the majority I was also fixing in my original manuscript. Cringeing as I did it — because, yeah, the copy-editor didn’t catch them either…but she/he probably only read the manuscript once or twice.

I can quote passages from DEMON ANGEL; I’ve read the story sooooo many times. In some sections, at least 30 times? 50? 70? I lost count. But I never caught the errors. Perhaps it was reading it so many times; after a while, I’m not really seeing it. I know what’s there, so I just assume that it’s exactly what I think it is. And now, reading it again months after I’ve written it, in a book format that says “reading” more than “writing”, I think I notice it more. (As an aside, this is one of the ways I trick myself while writing if I’m feeling stuck — I change the font size, the formatting, the font itself to look more like a printed book page, and I see it differently…see it a little better how it is laid out on the page, the movement of the dialogue and scene. It helps, sometimes, to unstick me. But not always.)

I doubt I caught them all. The book does go through a couple of more passes (I’ve already received a question from Production about an inconsistency in the place/time headings (two of my short scenes showing some of Lilith/Hugh’s history didn’t have a month appended to the year, though all of the others did)) and so, with luck, all of the other typos will be fixed before it goes to print…but there will likely be some.

Sigh. I took pictures of a couple of the pages, because I always like to see what this stuff looks like and the steps to publication, but they’re blurry (I think my camera battery is mostly dead. Mostly dead, is slightly alive.) But, anyway, after the cut are a couple of blurry pics, if you’re interested. Click to enlarge.

These pages are two book pages per 8 1/2 x 11 page. I just end up writing my corrections directly on the page, and then send the corrected pages back to the publisher (I mailed them; these are pics of the copies I made before sending them out. For HOT SPELL, I faxed the corrections — but 65 pages is really too much to fax.) For the trade sized book, like HOT SPELL, it’s one book page per 8 1/2 x 11 page, with a lot of space around the edges. I get everything from the copyright pages to the teaser for DEMON MOON at the end (which is about half of chapter four). I imagine they’ll likely have ads after that, but I don’t see those in advance.