Page Proofs: The Last Step

So the page proofs are *almost* out the door (one more day…)  and as usual a small number of errors have shown up.   Sometimes things that are changed in the copy-edits stage don’t make it into the final version that’s typeset and that’s WHY page proofs are important.  Sometimes something slips by all the previous editorial and writerly rewrites and revisions and re-lookings.   For example:  not until the page proofs did I realize (or did anyone else mention) that the exact same sentence from the POV of the exact same person was spoken in two different places.  And it wasn’t a simple nondescript sentence like ‘He sat down at his desk,” which could reasonably appear more than once in a book this long.   It was one that should not have appeared but once–far too distinctive to be let stand.   So I’m rewriting one of the two.  I know the other one is in there but hadn’t marked it by a turned page, so I’ll change the one on the turned page.   I’m also supposed to supply both a typed corrected page, and an emailed digital file of the correction, but page-named to the proof page number, not the ms. page number.    (Doesn’t this sound like fun?)  I have Production’s page of directions out, and that part marked to remind me.

I’ve been working on the page proofs since last Wednesday, when they arrived, except for the time from driving down to World Fantasy and through the weekend.

After this come the bound galleys, but I don’t see the second pass pages that go to the printer for the actual book.   They should contain all the corrections from me and the two other proofreaders.  Even with the sentence that needs to be changed (or just deleted…still debating with myself on that)  and assuming I found only half the things that needed to be changed, the error rate is only about 2 thousandths of a percent.   We’re closing in on the end of this thing.

5 thoughts on “Page Proofs: The Last Step

  1. Writing is agonizing at times. Hold on to the sure and certain belief that it is worth it when you are communicating clearly with the reader and drawing him/her into your world.

  2. Wow, it almost seems that writing the story is the easy part. I just hope the remuneration does not work out to 75 cents an hour. I really don’t want any numbers but sometimes it seems that you work really hard birthing a book.

    Have a nice Armistice Day.

    Jonathan up in cold NH.

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