Digital or Paperback? (And a bit of my editing process.)
This month is an exciting one for me. While many indie authors can manage to release a new book a month, I don't know how they do it. I struggle just in blogging consistently every month!
But I have a question for you that can sometimes be...well, controversial. Do you prefer paperbacks or digital books?
I must admit that I adore printed books, and we have probably over a thousand books in our home (yes, that's right). However, these days, and ever since having kids, I have gone over to reading mostly on my phone.
Now available for preorder at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Apple. And it will be available in paperback on release day!
As I have a completely new release out on August 31st, this is a big month for me! And making sure that everything is ready to go and no egregious typos get added into the final manuscript is a big job.
So I thought I'd share a snapshot of how I do final-final edits on my works.
I personally like to edit things in a different format than what I wrote or edited it in prior to final drafts. In other words, if I wrote something in Scrivener on the laptop, then I'll transfer it to a PDF or Word doc and read it on my iPad or print it out. In this case, I've got A Girl of Silver & Snow releasing on August 31st.
My deadline for file changes is on the 27th, and I recently received the paperback proof in the mail (only took two weeks to get it here, but whatever, Amazon, I'm not annoyed, nope.). This means I have a lot of work to do before then because I always do a couple of things once I get a paperback in my hands.
Once I receive the hard copy, I do two things: load the same PDF file I used for the paperback onto an app called "Voice Dream," and then read the hard copy of the book as the app reads the words to me.
There are a couple of reasons that I do it this way.
1. Our brains are so accustomed to reading what we *meant* to say and not what we *actually* wrote. Case in point: this morning I was listening to the story and following along in the book, and I read over "...I hasten on though the hoarseness." My eyes didn't catch "though" was supposed to be "through," but I heard "though" and thought "that's not right." These little mistakes are so easy to make for even an editor/proofreader but especially if you've written the sentence you're proofreading. So if I have the time, I always have a hard copy in front of me and have someone else read the book to me.
2. The mind also absorbs things differently from one form to another. When I'm sitting at my laptop with my word processing program open, I know that I've written this document and it's fluid and changeable. I'm more likely to skim over certain segments, and also if I've read a few paragraphs down, I'm less likely to scroll back up or find something that doesn't agree with what I'm reading now. For instance, say I made a mistake with a character's eye or hair color. While it's easy to search for the word on the computer, while reading a book, your mind will often remember where something was based on the location of the phrase on the page. I can't tell you how often I remember that a particular sentence was halfway down a page, or at the very end of a chapter, etc., but only when reading a physical copy.
3. Obviously, if I'm going to publish a paperback, I want to double-check printing errors and formatting issues. A PDF proof is nice and all, but it doesn't show me how the cover printed, whether the margins are perfectly in place, etc. Even if I print a PDF out, it's not got the same feel to it. And there's nothing compared to holding your own books in your hands!
Don't forget to drop me a comment below and tell me your reading preference. And if you'd like a free advance review copy for A Girl of Silver & Snow, leave me a comment below and say so!
Kelsie
