This is my recent book in my New Netherland series focusing on 17th century settlers in what is now New York.
It's the 3rd edition of my most popular book - the story of the Dutchman Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyke who married a French-Mohawk woman named Ots-Toch.
I revised this book from my first two editions, added new genealogy data I found, and edited several drafts. I believed it was ready for public view.
So I published it and had a proof copy sent to me. The purple and white papers sticking out of this 366 page book show the typos and small errors that my proof-reader found in the proof copy.
That's right - I used a proof-reader to go over this copy. It's almost impossible to do your own fine-tuning as you tend to read what you know should be there. Thus the author tends to miss those tiny typos.
Today will be spent cleaning up those typos (such things as no space where they should be one, words needing to be in bold) then it should go live this week.
As anxious as I was to get this edition out for the public, I am glad I took the extra time to have my proof-reader go through this copy. It took him one month and I was quietly impatient for him to finish, but a thorough job takes time! I hope descendants will be pleased. And I hope other authors will listen to my advice - always get a proof copy and have someone else go over it for errors you've missed!
3 comments:
Absolutely essential to order proof copies. Typos and other little things distract readers from the valuable content and detract from the professionalism and polish of the finished product. Congrats on this new edition.
Proof copies are important! The publisher I have used only gives a week with the proof copy. Next time I will have to change that because I have found errors after the final copies were printed.
I hate to see an worthwhile book spoiled by errors that a proof reader would have caught. Good for you!
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