• Venom cover art …

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    So look what showed up in my e-mail last week — the preliminary cover art for Venom.

    So cool! So shiny! So cool! So shiny! Okay, I’ll quit gushing now. 😉

    Seriously, though, I think this is another awesome cover. What really impresses me about it are the colors — I can just imagine how pretty they’re going to look when the book is finally printed. And the title should really pop since it’s done in that light, glowing blue. And how neat is it to have the spider rune in the title and showing on Gin’s hand again as well?

    As an author, you never know what you’re going to get when your editor sends you cover art. But I have to say that the folks at Pocket really keep impressing me. I’m already excited to see what they do for Elemental Assassin #4 and #5.

    And you know what the best part is? The cover actually fits the book. Those riverboats you see in the background? Well, Gin gets on board one of them during the course of Venom. So consider that a little teaser for the book, which comes out Sept. 28. 😉

  • The bookmarks are here …

    Guess what I got in the mail? The bookmarks for Web of Lies. Huzzah!

    And believe me when I say that these are some pretty nice bookmarks. They’re 2-by-8 inches on thick, sturdy, glossy paper. Kudos go out once again to Kelley and the other folks at Iconix, the company that prints my bookmarks. They really do put out a quality product.

    As always, the bookmarks are free to readers, librarians, bookstores, or whomever wants a couple. However, I do ask folks to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to get the bookmarks. This helps me out with postage costs.

    So if you want to get some bookmarks, send me an e-mail at jennifer@jenniferestep.com, and I’ll tell you where to send your SASE. I’ll also be getting bookmarks made for Venom later on during the summer when the cover art is finalized.

    In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the boomark goodness! 😉

  • ·

    Timelines …

    So I’ve talked about copy edits and page proofs, and now, I thought I would share a rough timeline of when I get them in regards to when the book is published. So here’s an example of a rough timeline of a book based on Web of Lies, which comes out on May 25.

    When I turned the book in: Winter/spring 2009, or about one year before the publication date.

    Revisions from editor: These arrived about two months after I turned the book in.

    Copy edits: Arrived about six months before the publication date.

    Page proofs: About four months before the publication date.

    Confirmation pages: About two months before the publication date. Note: Not all publishers send confirmation pages to authors. A lot of publishers just send the page proofs, and that’s the last time the author sees the book before it goes to press.

    Final book: Usually, the finished book goes to press about a month or so before the actual on-sale date, so my publisher will actually start printing copies of Web of Lies around the last week of April. Books will start shipping out to store usually about two weeks before the on-sale date.

    The publication date: This is when I’ll see the finished book for the first time, either by going to the local bookstore and finding it on the shelves or getting my author copies in the mail. I don’t usually get any early copies.

    People often wonder why it takes so long for books to be published. Well, this is part of the reason why. Each one of these steps takes about two months, which includes giving me time to do my part of the process and mail the book back before my editor sends it on to the next step. So even if I don’t have a book hitting shelves, I’m working on something all the time, even if it is all this behind-the-scenes stuff.

    So there you have it. A little bit about publishing timelines. Got questions? I’ll answer what I can in the comments.

  • Page proofs …

    In addition to working on copy edits for Venom, I also finished up page proofs for Web of Lies this past weekend. So here’s a little bit about what page proofs are:

    So after I sent my copy edits back, a few weeks later I’ll get what are known as page proofs — or the typeset version of the manuscript. The pages are what the book will actually look like when it is bound and put on the shelf.

    Basically, during the page proof stage, I’m just reading through the book looking for typos and punctuation errors. At this point, I can only make relatively small, minor changes to the book — no adding big chunks of text or anything like that. You don’t want the publisher to have to typeset your book again because you added 20 pages to it — that’s a big no-no.

    After I’m done with the page proofs, I mail them back to my editor. A few weeks later, some publishers will then send out what are called confirmation pages — or one final proof of the book before it goes to press. The point of the confirmation pages is to make sure that all the page proof changes made it into the book. For example, I got confirmation pages for Web of Lies and discovered that a couple of commas hadn’t made it in where they were supposed to go and a word had been misspelled. So they really are handy.

    I don’t mind doing page proofs so much because they go a lot quicker than the copy edits — and it’s exciting to see the book typeset for the first time. Getting page proofs always means that the book is getting close to hitting stores and that you guys will be able to read it soon. 😉

    Got questions? I’ll answer what I can in the comments.

  • The copy edits are here, the copy edits are here …

    Since I just finished up the copy edits for Venom, I thought that I would talk a little bit about what the heck copy edits are in the first place. Here goes:

    Basically, a manuscript goes through a couple of different stages as it is turned into a book. First, I turn my manuscript in, and my editor reads it and sends me a letter with revision requests. I do the revisions and send it back to her.

    Then, if the revisions are kosher, a couple of months later I get what’s known as copy edits — or my manuscript pages that have been marked up in red ink by a copy editor. The copy editor includes notes about everything from typos to what words should be italicized to where the chapter heads and scene breaks go. The copy editor’s job is basically to get the manuscript ready to be typeset (which is the next step in the process).

    My job is to go through the manuscript page by page and answer any questions that the copy editor has. For example, if she doesn’t understand how part of the magic system works, then I go in and add a couple of paragraphs to explain it better. I don’t have to make every change that the copy editor suggests, but I usually follow her advice the majority of the time.

    I usually get about three weeks to do the copy edits and send them back to my editor. I won’t lie to you — it’s not my favorite thing to do. It’s a long, painstaking process made even more so by my obsessive tendencies. The copy edit stage is the last chance that I have to make substantial changes to the book, and I tend to really agonize over every little thing at this point in the process just because I want to make sure that the book is perfect as it can be. Alas, I know that it will not be perfect, but I do the best that I can.

    So there you have it — a little bit about copy edits. Up next, I’ll talk about the next stage in the process — page proofs.

    Got questions? I’ll answer what I can in the comments.