My book from Blurb arrived!
It’s lovely. The paper is gorgeous and the printing is gorgeous and it’s exactly the way I laid it all out.
However, I have learned a very valuable lesson about book publishing, and that is that you should PROOFREAD. Twice. No, three times. Make that four.
I spent a lot of time checking and re-checking the layout, but I didn’t spend hardly any time reading the text. DUMB. There are at least, I would guesstimate, 30 typos in the book. GAH. Some of them are minor mispellings, but in two cases, a blog post title is missing; in several cases, Sir Monkeypants’ name is missing from the middle of sentence because when I ported my old posts over from LiveJournal, the custom code I used to use to link to his username didn’t show up in WordPress. In other cases I missed some font formatting.
On the plus side, I do find it a lot easier to edit the book on paper than on the computer. After it arrived and I started finding typos, I went back to fix up my Blurb file and found several problems, but I can find even more, and faster, just by flipping through the paper copy.
So you can think of it as a very expensive rough draft, I guess.
I’m not going to rush out to reprint because it’s not a trifling expense, but I think I will reprint it someday. After I’ve proofread it at least 10 more times. GAH.
The books are still awesome, though. I love seeing them, and the best part is how much the kids are loving them – Gal Smiley in particular loves reading the old stories about herself and her siblings.
Kind of wish I’d used fewer swear words now, though. DOH.
TurtleHead 
Awesome! My kids love the book I printed from my blog posts before I shut it down. I’d kind of like to print up another one, with more time put into arranging the layout and fixing typos, too. I through mine together in a bit of a hurry, but now the book’s imperfections bug me (though no one else in the family seems to care).
Happy holidays to you and your family, Lynn!
trust me , you will be the only one who notices the errors! (and i speak from experience!)
on the other hand, a funny story- about 5 years ago, after spending some time at my sister-in-law’s cabin in B.C., I decided to make her a lovely photo book and send it for Christmas. I put a photo of the cabin on the front cover and called the book “Our Cabin”. I proof-read it at least 10 x and had my husband do the same. When the book arrived, I was thrilled with it until my hubby looked at it and said “ummmmm…problem. that’s not their cabin”. I had put a photo of the (much bigger/nicer) cabin next door on the front cover. needless to say, I HAD to reprint it and I kept the orginal for us.. and a chuckle!!
Merry Christmas!
Sarah
Congrats on the book – it will be a lovely memory no matter what! The typos just make it that much more real. Now, when you do your REAL book and get as famous as the Bloggess and all that, I’d be happy to proofread your book for you. I have one title under my belt… 🙂 Ok – it was about Alberta politics and never really sold outside of Alberta. But still! It’s a real book that I edited!! And none of the reviews ever mentioned that there were too many spelling misteaks! Um. Oops…
i’d love to do this. i keep meaning to import my bolg and shut it down. maybe over the holidays. and then this could be a LONG term project. 🙂
You know the problem with reading one’s own writing is that when staring at it all day looking for something specific, you cease to see stuff. I KNOW bec I edit and proof-read technical material and I know this happens for a fact. Maybe give the rough draft to another adult, a neighbour, anyone with an outside perspective and say ‘read for spelling only please’.
But. Having said that. The book looks AWESOME! I wish I had the time and patience to do something like this…gonna keep Blurb in the back of my mind.
Congratulations. And Merry Christmas.
Does Blurb not have a spell checker for its text areas? That would be disappointing.
If it does, and you failed to use it, that’s disappointing, but on another level. 🙂
The next time you do a book, send it to me for proofreading – I LOVE finding typos / spelling errors. I can pick them out of credits scrolling on a TV screen…
I keep thinking I have to make one of these. Maybe my new year’s resolution will be that I actually find the time and do it. Sigh. Thanks for the tips.
Lynn! I can’t wait to see this! Make sure you bring it to the next meeting! So exciting. 🙂