Last time I mentioned page proofs. This is the first pass at the print version, when the book really starts to look like a book, and the author looks for the mistakes she missed, as mentioned in an earlier post, the previous ten thousand times she—not to mention the copy editor and various other editors—went over it. No matter what, I always find mistakes in the page proofs that can't all be blamed on the printer. Somehow all those eagle eyes on the manuscript missed, say, missing end quotes. And then there are the sudden realizations, e.g., "What was I
thinking
?" or "Didn't anyone notice I used the same word three times in the same paragraph?" or "Wait a minute! Isn't that an anachronism?" (It usually is.)
I'm happy to report that the page proof phase is now behind me, too, and the next thing I'll see, somewhere down the road, are the Advanced Reading Copies.
Then, before we know it,
will actually be on bookstore shelves—while I'm watching Deadline-for-the-next book loom ever larger upon the horizon.
But in the meantime, here for your delectation is the brand-new cover, before even Amazon has it.