Well, the WONDERFUL bound proofs of Every Vow You Break came through, and, as you can see, like me, AgentSimon thinks they’re fab.
But, really, publishers. Let a writer loose on her book before it’s published? When it looks like a real book? ‘Dear Lovely Editor. I’ve got just a few teeny weeny amendments to that bound proof.’
Is there a florist on the Euston Road that does deliveries, I wonder?
Still, it’s worth it if the final result is a DLP (Dead Letter Perfect) published hardback version on 29 March. Does that ever happen though? When you’re dealing with 125,000 words, is it possible to catch absolutely every little typo, glitch, lumpy sentence and slight factual inaccuracy?
At each editing stage I think I’ve got them all. But this final one (yes, final one, Julia) still turned up some chestnuts. For example, OldMan helpfully pointed out that there are neither FA football matches nor a Glastonbury Festival in August, and BigSon informed me that given the other musical preferences I have given Olly, (my sixteen year old boy character) he would most certainly not be listening to Dub Step on his i-Pod. (‘and it’s Dubstep, Mother, just the one word, and anyway you’re trying to be down with the kids and it’s not pretty.’). I managed to spot for myself that I had changed the make of a major character’s car from a Nissan to a Toyota, though.
The paperback comes out in August. I wonder if there’ll be any tiny little changes to be done before that?
Good luck with those last chestnuts! Friends can’t understand why the editing took soooo long but it’s true isn’t it? I don’t know how many versions we did of my novel and every time I was convinced it was pitch-perfect. Then something odd, or something noticed. It was really quite horrifying to see what had slipped through! I am waiting for my final proof copy now and already panicking!
best wishes and will be ordering your book.