101 TIWIK #79: Proofreading, The Final Edit

This is it. You’ve written your book, dragged it through countless revisions, edited it a million times, formatted the text into a slick interior design, and put an amazing cover on it. And now, today, your proof copy has arrived in the mail and you are holding the book in your hands for the first time, dazzled by that shiny cover–with your name on it! The angels are singing! The sun is shining down through the clouds! You are finished!!!!!

Ahem. Well. Actually, there’s still one more tiny step.

The copy in your hands is a proof copy, which means you must proofread it before you start distributing it, which means, oh yes, you have to read the damn thing ONE MORE TIME.

So, take a moment. Savor that deliciousness of seeing your name in print for the first time, of seeing your creation, your baby, as a real, physical object in your hands.

Because you’re going to hate that book shortly.

It’s not that proofreading is particularly difficult. It’s not that you wrote a bad book. It’s just that you’ve already read your book so many times that reading it one last time will probably make you physically ill. I mean, imagine your favorite movie. Now imagine that you were forced to watch your favorite movie a hundred times in a row. You’d start to hate it.

But it must be done. Why? Because even though you’ve been through that book a hundred million times, there are still errors. And when you formatted it, you introduced the possibility of even more errors.

For example, when I added the page headings and numbers to Dream of a City of Ruin, I was working off the template for Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern. The old title was still in the headings, and I forgot to change it when I formatted the second book. Every other page of DCR in my proof copy has Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern as the title header. And the worst thing was, I didn’t catch it until I was about fifty pages into the proof.

So, besides errant headings, what should you look at in a proofreading pass?

The short answer is everything. In addition to reading every word of text, you should also scan every single page, from cover to cover, as well as the actual cover.

In the text, you are looking for typos and very minor grammar or spelling errors that slipped through your copy-edit. You should also pay very close attention to any text in your front and back matter, as those have not been read through as many times as the text of your book. You also want to check for consistency in things like chapter titles–if you have a TOC, do the chapter titles there match the chapter titles heading the actual chapters?

In the formatting, you are looking for anything out of place; uneven spacing, inconsistencies in things like chapter headings, places where the text justification is off, page numbers and headings on first pages, and so forth.

The one thing you DON’T want to do during a proofread is any other kind of editing. It will be tempting, as you read through your book for what will most likely be the final time, to start tearing into it again. You will almost certainly see things you will want to change–no book is perfect, least of all in the author’s eyes. Resist the temptation. The book is not a draft anymore, it is now a book. If you start making sweeping changes now, you run the risk of introducing more errors, ones you won’t catch because you’ve already proofread.

If during this stage you realize there are actually larger-level revision and editing changes that still need to be made, don’t panic. Step back. Print off an unformatted draft, make your changes, insert them into the formatted manuscript, and order another proof copy. Then continue proofreading.

One thing I try to do when I’m proofreading the text is to ignore the story. I try to look at the sentences and words independently of their meaning and context. Shifting focus like this allows me to scan for details rather than expending energy and being distracted by thinking about the writing itself. It’s kind of like a magic picture–the kind where if you focus your eyes just right, a picture emerges.

Should you hire a professional proofreader? Not unless you are making enough money in sales to justify it, or you are independently wealthy, or proofreading is extremely challenging for you. Another exception might be if you hired someone to do your interior design and they include formatting proofing in their service. But you would still need to proof the text.

You might be concerned that you won’t be able to catch errors, because you’ve looked at your text too many times. That isn’t usually a problem in my experience. Looking at the text in a printed book format is much different from seeing it on the screen or in manuscript format. Errors will probably jump out at you much more easily than you expect.

If you’re really worried, I suggest enlisting a friend or family member to do a proofing pass, or swap the service with another author. But don’t rely on their eyes alone; you should still do your own pass.

In addition to proofing the print version of your book, you should also proof the eversions in as many formats as you can. I suggest owning at least one e-reader so you can test your ebook files in it. Amazon KDP has a pretty good browser-based previewer for the kindle version. You can also preview your ebook on your smartphone through the iTunes book store or Google Play books depending on what kind of phone you have. And most e-readers also have a free phone app, through which you can also preview your ebook.

When looking at the ebook, the main things you want to do are test the live table of contents, if your book has one (make sure the links actually link to the appropriate chapters), make sure any graphics are rendering correctly, and check that page breaks are working properly to give the right spacing to front and back material and first pages of chapters. You should scan every single page of the ebook as you do the print book, but you don’t have to actually read the text again. You are more likely to catch text errors in the print book, and then you can find and fix them in your ebook file.

Be thorough and precise when you proofread. This is the last set of eyes your book will have before it is presented to the world. It’s not a part of the process to take lightly. Books full of formatting errors and typos will give you, and independent publishers everywhere, a bad reputation.

But if you let something slip through and your initial readers see it, don’t panic. Since I’ve been proofing my own books, I’ve started (sadly) finding proof errors in many books produced by major publishers. If even billion dollar companies with professional proofreaders let a few typos slip through, so can you.

Besides, in indy publishing, everything is malleable. Your first print order will be small, and your files can be updated with fixes if your first readers find errors.

Now that you’ve proofread your book, you can finally share it with the world. Or rather, tear your hair out trying to navigate the world of indy publishing. 

I’m taking an extended break from 101 TIWIK. When I return, in 101 TIWIK #80: Why Are You Writing? I’ll start up again by discussing how the answer to this question can help guide your efforts post-publication. Stay tuned!