Doing the Book Nook this weekend.

Tickled by the article in the Studio Fair that introduces me as another "notable author" who'll be featured. Don't feel very "notable" today. Home sick with a bad cold or early flu and slept until noon. But it was a high, yesterday, to discover I could not buy up the 20 books I wanted to take to the Book Nook at Studio Fair because they had sold! Books and Company only had about six of the 20 they got in. Mosquito Books was sold out. Even the University Book Store was down to seven of Sandra Wray's last order of 20. This may not be the sort of sales figures that rock the nation, but I get a thrill out of every book sold, so for me it was a concentrated dose of "wow".

I suspect I was glowing when I came across Derryl Murphy (OnSpec editor and fellow P.G. Sci Fi aficionado) in the parking lot.


Taking copies of ORU novella,Mekan'stan, to Book Nook to sell at cost plus a dollar: one of those things that is probably one more than I should have shot for, as it turns out, but it was exciting when I realized how easy it would be to lay it out in two columns in PageMaker and I enjoyed doing the cover with a bit of clip art from a site I subscribe to and Yukari's "Impression of Amel" which she sketched for us earlier this year. (Yukari's Amel, Luthan and Nersallian Dragon, appeared in the slide show she did for the Prince George book launch.)

In my eagerness and haste, however, I failed to check through the version of the RTF file I began with for the copy. I knew I had one I had edited many times. I suspect I found an earlier version. Assuming at a glance that I had the right RTF file, I rushed the print out to the copiers in time to get them into the Book Nook inventory and only afterwards sat down to read through the finished product. To my dismay I found many bugs!

The duplicate quotes, comma foul ups, and inconsistencies in font for Gelack words or formatting to indicate thought were bad enough. I found myself flinching over every one. But there are at least six substantive errors in the text of the "extra word", "missing word" or "wrong word typo" variety. Ouch. I toyed with withdrawing them all, but couldn't face the loss of investment with the Visa still gently smoking from the print run, so I struggled with the embarrassment of selling something with those sorts of jarring bloopers in it and got miserable.

I know the answer is to proof read, proof read, get someone else to proof read, and then proof read again, but somehow it always winds up getting down to the wire. I opted for sulking. After about half an hour of that I got fed up, went through the master print out with a pen and marked the jarring problems with a big star. My goal is to hand correct the starred problems with a thin, black pen, on each of the 20 copies I made. That clunks a little but most of them can be fixed with a discrete line or over-written letter, so at least it won't throw the reader off by virtue of stumbling over a sentence that just doesn't work.

Makes me want to scream or cry or rant when I do things like this. I seem to oscillate between poles of wreckless enthusiasm and the conviction I should publish post humously. Sensibly planning ahead and getting everything properly proof read just doesn't seem to be in the behavioral repetoire. :-(

Mekan'stan still looks very nice, IMHO.

posted by Lynda at 14:18   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments