Proof One

For full effect, add an expletive of your choosing every fifth word. Unfortunately, I’m unable to do so at this moment, because I’m trying to save up on curses for the next time I stub my toe or step on a Lego.

This is a bit of a good news, bad news situation. The good news being that the first proof copies arrived today, as you can see, and they’re awesome. The bad news is that my girlfriend dug right in. Wait for it, that’s not the bad part yet. It’s actually kinda cool that somebody is so eager to read my book. But she’s a very thorough reader and wouldn’t you know it: She found a metric assload of mistakes. 

These aren’t mistakes the printer made. Overall, the book looks really good, and it could pass for a professional job. The mistakes are in the text. I had to rush to get a proofread done because the artist was waiting for information to do the print cover. I’ve detailed this glorious saga in an earlier post. 

As you know, nothing good ever came of rushing things.
Take the Blitzkrieg, for example. Sure, it was effective, but we can all agree that the majority of humanity wasn’t that enthusiastic about it.
And back to the book, because sure, that’s just like war, whatever. Because of my lacking knowledge of the obtuse MS Word and my hurriedly chosen proofreader’s lacking grasp of context, a lot of corrections that weren’t necessary snuck into the manuscript. We caught a lot of them, and I actually thought, after two passes, that I caught them all.

I fuckin’ did not.

But now the mistakes are in the file that was sent to the formatter, and thusly, also in the finished file I got back from her. Granted, the problem at this point is still manageable. Or, it would be, if I wasn’t a neurotic asshat.
When I got the file back from the formatter, I already saw some things I would have preferred different, but because she was already doing me a favor and I couldn’t even figure out how to explain to her what I wanted, I figured I’d just let it go. The final file was basically ready for print, anything more would just be flourishes.
That would have been that if nothing else had gone wrong. But now that the manuscript needs yet more passes and consequently a reformatting, I’ve decided I might as well get those flourishes in. 
“Oh,” I hear you say. “You’re sending it back to the formatter. Good for you!”
Nay, my friend, I say. Nay!
She gave me a nice returning-customer-price, but it was still nothing to scoff at. And it was for work that I, considering my real job, should be able to do myself. I get paid for formatting text. Granted, titles don’t have a lot of lines, but what is a book, if not a large number of titles in a row?

I’m now in the process of reformatting the manuscript myself. Turns out I’m quite good at learning Adobe Indesign through Youtube videos.
I do feel a bit shitty toward Rocío. She did a great job, but this is something I should have done myself in the first place. I’m not looking forward to asking her for adjustments to the cover because the amount of pages has changed.

Guess I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it.

As it stands, though, I still expect to make the November 1st release date. Expect more expletives before that.
If you need me, I’ll be reading an awesome book. Again. Again.