Waiting for the Book Proof
Today is Monday and it is nearing the end of the day. I was hoping to receive an email from my account representative at Lightning Source stating that my latest proof has been sent out. Hopefully it will be shipped tomorrow, which would mean that I may get it before the end of the week. If memory serves me correctly, and it usually doesn’t, it takes three days for the book to arrive here on the east coast of Canada.
This will be the third proof and hopefully the last for a while. I changed the book cover based on recommendations of family and friends, though it took a little effort on their part. My graphics designer at Lulu had used a stock photo of “some guy” holding up the laptop and everyone said that is should be my mug on the cover. I understood their point and my point was “I don’t want to be on the cover”. I lost. I ran up the road to Faber’s Photography and had Richard attempt to duplicate the pose of the original guy on the book cover. We had the idea of using physical books in my left hand to show that this book works for writing ebooks and physical books. I was fairly pleased with the final book cover, even through my hair is too thin and my belly too big, and my smile too goofy, and…
I relied on my wife and father for proofreading. Each are engineers and have proofread and edited extensively during their careers, including published works. I didn’t feel the need to outsource the editing to a professional company with this being a how-to book written as plainly as possible at about an eighth grade level. However, as it gets closer to launch I am questioning that decision. Yesterday I found a company on the Internet that provides five pages of editing for free. I decided to take them up on the offer and requested that they edit very strictly so that I could better determine my needs, if any. The website stated that it would take up to five days, so I was surprised to find the markups in my email first thing this morning. The markups were minor and often judgment calls so I will wait until the first update to incorporate any edits. It is a simple matter to upload a new file to Lightning Source, and that is one of the benefits of print-on-demand.
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