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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Proofreading a book
Easily the worst job in the book cycle. I remember when the three of us finished our chapters, after several read-throughs, and typos fixes, etc. We were all satisfied that each chapter was proofed perfectly. I put them all together, type-set it, really made sure everything flowed right. And then we did one final proofread. We found one THOUSAND errors. I was extremely disappointed. So, I fixed every single one. Took a month I think. And we did one final-final proofread. Two HUNDRED more errors. After those were fixed, we did one final-final-final proofread. This time, it was under a hundred. Those were fixed, and we did no more proofreads. And after printing, we find one right in the foreword.
Basically, anyone who complains about typos in a book is being (unwittingly) a big jerk. Yes, I understand that you spend 15$ or 20$ for whatever book you bought, but the people who are doing the work are (almost likely) being meticulous and professional. Not to mention that in many cases (like ours), this is a hobby, where we had small goals. Being paid, essentially, at below the minimum wage means that you need to not be so tough on those producing the books.
Indeed, because of the enormous amount of time we spent on proofreading the book, I am so turned off in writing another one. It’s simply not worth it to spend an extra month or two to make something go from 95% the way I want it to 99%.
I don’t know who does the proofing for THT or BPro, but thank them for cleaning up almost all the mess. Don’t be so picky as to point out that there’s a piece of lint that’s lying in a corner somewhere.
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