catching up

Good morning,

I know it’s been a few days and believe me there is a very good reason that you haven’t heard from me. The first has to do with my own impatience. Yes, I'm one of the few people still using dial up and sometimes to make the connections take so long that I stop it in annoyance.

There’s a very good reason for that also. I’m doing galleys or proofing the mss before it’s printed and comes out. This is the last chance I will get to make sure things are correct.

Now just might be a good time to warn you that this will be a very long post. Okay back to the original subject. I just figured out myself why books have so many mistakes, too many cooks stirring the pot.

I’m going to take you quickly from the conception to the delivery. First the book goes from the author to the content editor. This will be where the majority of work will be done. The content editor will make suggestions on what isn’t flowing and things that have been left out. They will ask the hard questions the ones the readers will ask about why is he doing that, things like that. The manuscript then goes back to the author. This will be where the author will look over the comments and suggestion of the content editor, agree or disagree and will add scenes, or cut some and corrections made. It then goes back to the editor and a basic clean up take place word choice, punctuations, and things like that. It goes again to the author and hopefully very few new scenes are added because those will also have to be corrected.

Here things may vary and I’m not altogether sure of what I’m about to tell you now because as many times as I’ve been told I’m still not clear of the job description of these other editors. The book then goes to a line editor who I assume check each line for mistakes. Then it goes to a copy editor. Don’t ask. Then it goes to the typesetter who put the manuscript in book form. Next we have the proofer whose job it is to primarily look for mistakes, missing words, places where the typesetter has fused two different paragraphs, that sort of thing. Then it goes back to the author one last time.

Here is were the problem comes in. At least for me this is where the problem came in. Somewhere along the line things were taken out or added given what I’d written an entirely different meaning. A misplaced comma can do a world of damage but changing my words…..lets say ahhhh—Especially when the meaning is changed.

So what does that mean? I have to go over my book with a fine tooth comb checking with my original sometimes even finding that there was a mistake in there on my part. I’m not perfect. This part is a lot of work. I tell you it is a lot of work. And I’m not done.

This is the kicker. This is the last time I will see this book before it’s in print. When I’m done checking it it has to go back to the typesetter and I pray that everything is not only put in as I’ve asked but I have to pray that the changes won’t do crazy things to the typesetting.
Let’s throw in the fact that we’re doing this electronically and something just might get missed. I’m old school and don’t believe you can catch as many things sitting in front of the computer as you can catch with a hard copy in your hand. Also consider this fact. As the author I might also see it as I wrote it in my mind and not what’s on the paper, therefore missing something because since I believe it should be there I see it there when it’s not.

I know self-published or epubbed authors have been taking hits because of the many errors in their work. Know this, no author regardless of how they’re published wants to put out a bad product. I think they just don’t have enough eyes helping with the checking. Where I on the other hand think I have too many. LOL. Either way I hope you have a better idea of how the publishing industry works and how hard we all try to make sure your books are as error free as possible.

To that end it leaves me with very little time to wait to be connected on AOL and to post. Plus add this to the mix. Sometimes I write something long like this and Amazon makes it disappear. Deatri told me that she now writes in word and paste it on and that’s what I’m doing this morning. Besides this has spell check and Amazon doesn’t or if it has I haven’t seen it.

Like I said this is a very long post and I know it. LOL. I am going to try and come back and say Happy New Year but just in case I don’t make it, Happy New year. I had wanted to tell you about my Christmas. Oh well


Happy Holiday from my family to yours

Bill, Billy and Dyanne Davis

P.S. If this had gone through the editorial process you would have found some punctuation in there instead of my long run-on sentences. LOL