Musings of Two Creative Minds

That's right folks, the proof copies of "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" arrived last night at our front door, and we couldn't be more excited. For those who don't know what a "Proof" copy is,  they are a printed version of how the book currently looks, before an author gives the final OK, on a book to be sent for publishing.  This is the author(s) last chance to make sure the paragraphs are aligned correctly, the page breaks are clean, no words are being cut off, and to look for any final grammar issues in the text. It also give the author a good idea of how the front and back covers look, and that the image or words are not being cut off.  In this case, we saw right away that there is an issue with the cover.  The image is supposed to be framed by a red border on all sides, but as you can see in this photo the image is touching the edge.  Naturally, we'll need to move it over to the left slightly. As for the interior, ...

What is a Proof Copy? On the surface it seems to simply be a regular printed copy of your book.  Nothing more, nothing less.  But when you look at the final page... Okay?  So it has "PROOF" printed on the very last page, so what? That one word let's you know that you are holding an uncorrected, unedited version of a book. These are what come before even a 1st Edition of a book is created.  Before electronic books, Proof Copies (also known as Galley Copies) were what publishers would create and send out to the editing staff for corrections and proofreading.   These copies were also referred to as "Advanced Copies" and would be sent out to critics and advertisers in advance to get them fired up about the upcoming final version of a book.  The critics and company would build hype for the novel before it was released thus getting the readers anxious for the release date. However, with Indie Publishers like Smashwords, Createspace and...

Yesterday I finished the 1st draft of my second novel "The Ship".  The word count came in at 139, 345.  A bit high I admit, but a damn sight better than what my first novel "The Bridge" came in at.  That sucker wound up in 195,000 words.  Man did that puppy need some serious editing and rewriting.  I finally got it down to 102,000 words before I finally released it.  Yeah, I practically took a chainsaw to that sucker.  So what's my next step?   First up is PROOFREADING!  I've been lucky enough to have a trusted beta-reader who has been checking my spelling, punctuation, etc. the entire time that I've been writing "The Ship".  I kept all the corrected pages she sent back and am going through them and making the corrections already.   So far, 166 of the 525 pages have been fixed on that front.  It's been going pretty fast, but she told me a while back that she was finding a lot fewer mistakes in my writing this time around...