Dailey Swan Publishing is a small house that is growing rather quickly. There are benefits to signing with a small house, in that your book will get a lot more attention because most small publishers are in it for the love of books. Although getting signed with a big house will pack a big punch, typically they leave the promotion up to the author, and if your book does not do well in a rather short window, you will be back-listed rather quickly to make room for newer titles.
The biggest problem I had with my publisher was all the false starts getting the book to press. It was delayed several times, but he finally got it out. The other big problem was with the copy editing. Even though I saw the final proof in PDF format, I missed a ton of errors because in my mind I see words that are not there, and miss my own mistakes. All told there were more than 90 typos, spelling errors, grammatical flaws and missing words in sentences. The majority of these should have been caught by my publisher’s editor before the manuscript came to me, but, ultimately it was my responsibility to make sure the manuscript was clean.
What I should have done was given it to a good copy editor to go over it with a fine-tooth comb, but I trusted my own editing skills, only to realize I cannot edit my own work very well. I am a damn good editor when it comes to working with other people—just ask any of my clients. It’s just that my mind doesn’t catch my own mistakes, and I really got burned on my first print run, which, thankfully, was only a thousand copies.
I took a three-day weekend and went through my manuscript word-for-word twice, marked up the page numbers, the line numbers, the errors, the corrections and an explanation on an Excel spreadsheet. Then I highlighted the mistakes in a copy of my book. When I was done, I gave my work to a friend to go over it again. She found a few more errors, and those got marked up as well.
As I ride the train home from the city, I sometimes thumb through my book, just to see what I might have done better or differently. And would you believe that I spelled Ernest Hemingway’s name Hemmingway twice on the same page? I called my publisher and he told me to email the correction.
A facebook buddy who grew up in my area pointed out that I spelled Navesink wrong, which is the name for both a town and a river that goes through part of Monmouth County. I used Naversink, which he said irked him a bit. That will be corrected as well. All these errors are a bit of an embarrassment, but there is nothing I can do about them until the next print run comes out.
It’s never ending!
You can buy the book directly from Amazon.com.
Love to all!
James M. Weil
No comments:
Post a Comment