Cairns: I turn my book galleys in

Golly ned, I turned in the galleys of my new book yesterday. For those of you not familiar with galleys, this is the first round of seeing a book look like a book with titles page, table of contents, illustrations, etc. It is also the last chance I have to make major changes.

I am quite happy with the look of the new book. The title font, which is used throughout for chapter titles and the first few words of each chapter is rather handsome and somewhat old fashioned and dignified. My wife thinks it looks a bit like an old typewriter face. Another friend thought it looked like a font used on tombstones, elegant and permanent. I agree!

Fortunately, I didn’t have any major changes to make in the text. I did pick up a few extraneous words, a June/July dating issue, a misplaced epigraph, some places where there should have been italics and some places where there shouldn’t, and an extra footnote, which could have been ugly. The major changes had to do with a complicated section on carbon dating, where I had omitted a crucial fact, and a sentence on lichen thalli, which you can imagine can be a troubling enterprise to address. I like to think that I worked out a solution that will please even the most opinionated lichenologist.

[nggallery id=24]Right now I feel pretty good about the writing. I don’t mean this to sound like bragging but it is easy to get tired one’s own work in these final stages. I cannot count the number of times I have read the entire book. I usually do this two times: silently with an eye and pencil for editing and out loud, usually without a pencil for editing. I have found that I need to do it this way to pick up words I use too many times and sentence structures that sound odd together.

It is also strange how much the book changes from screen to hard copy to galleys. Each edition reveals something new. I am very happy, too, that I had a diligent copyeditor and am also having a proofreader for I know that I see what isn’t there and don’t see what I should. Plus, I know that I am not very good at punctuation.

So now the publisher will work their magic and incorporate my changes and the ones from the proofreader. They will then send back my final page proofs, with I hope no mistakes. Publication date is mid September.

 

 

5 thoughts on “Cairns: I turn my book galleys in”

  1. Great news. Looking forward to reading, and being inspired by, your new book. Your last book, Stories in Stone, occupies a prominent place in my library. Cheers!

    1. Tony
      Thanks kindly for your note. I am pretty excited that I was able to write about rocks again. Life is good.
      David

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