I’m glad that it’s Friday. Come to think of it, I’m always glad when it’s Friday. 😉
I’m hoping to finish up my final polish on Elemental Assassin #5 this weekend so I can send that off to my agent next week. If nothing else, I’d at least like to have read through the manuscript and marked my changes on it. We’ll see how much I actually get done on it.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
So I’m sending out e-ARCs of Web of Lies and starting to book some guest blogs/giveaways. Today, I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to all the book bloggers out there.
I’m always surprised and humbled when folks want to read my books or when they ask me to do a guest post for their blog. It really is an honor to be asked to guest on someone’s site, and I always try to bring my A-game to any post that I write or interview that I do.
Most of the book bloggers that I know don’t get paid for their sites or all the hard work and long hours that they put into them. They read and review books, as well as work day jobs, take care of their families, and a dozen other things — all at the same time. For them, book blogging is a labor of love, just like it is for me here on my own blog.
So I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s had me on their site, or linked to my posts, or mentioned my cover art, or whatever. I really do appreciate it, both as a writer and a reader. I can’t tell you the number of great books that I’ve discovered by surfing various book blogs, and I hope some folks have thought the same about my books after reading about them somewhere.
Cheers to all the book lovers and bloggers out there. Keep on keeping on, and letting the rest of know about all the great books out there just waiting to be discovered. 😉
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.
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.
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.
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