So, the book is finally in and on the presses. Our last task, following several rounds of proof-reading, correcting, re-checking, re-correcting and so on, was to compile an index. For some reason (I forget now what it was) I volunteered for this task myself, despite having no particular expertise or experience in the area, but simply figuring that I knew the book better than anyone else. I may have been influenced by Douglas Hofstadter's similar machismo.
It was in the end a fairly tedious process. Interested readers, assuming they have nothing better to do, may care to study it and see if they can identify the moment at which boredom got the better of me and I started putting in silly jokes.
It was also a process completed very much at the eleventh hour, and I would have liked the chance to go back over it carefully having set it aside for a week, as I think there are probably some discrepencies and other little infelicitudes. That said, I don't remember ever poring over anyone else's index for those kinds of things, so I imagine I'm safe.
What it certainly is is comprehensive. Nearly 600 headwords and around 1500 page citations for a 420 page book. If it isn't in the index, it isn't there.
A final wrangle between me and Deborah over our treatment of the Chicago book Truth in Comedy and it was all done. Publication date is now early June in the States, July here. How exciting!
Friday, 9 May 2008
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Proofs
The Proofs of our book have been sent to us - yet another reminder that somebody actually wants this to be published! Still a very strange idea. It is a comfort that at least one person has read and thought about every single word before copies start running off the presses. But now we have to plough through all the proposed changes and accept or reject them all. It's a long job, which I intend to do my share of over the weekend with a large glass of red wine to hand.
One curious point which we will have to raise with our editor is that the proofreader has Americanised the entire text. I can quite see why it would make sense for the American edition to refer to "college" instead of university and not refer to "cock-ups" and to have z's instead of s's but it does seem very peculiar for a British edition of a book written by two Britons to include these trans-Atlantic oddities.
More to follow...
One curious point which we will have to raise with our editor is that the proofreader has Americanised the entire text. I can quite see why it would make sense for the American edition to refer to "college" instead of university and not refer to "cock-ups" and to have z's instead of s's but it does seem very peculiar for a British edition of a book written by two Britons to include these trans-Atlantic oddities.
More to follow...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)