The Galleys are Coming!

I just got word yesterday from my editor that she has galleys for Vodnik, and that I’ll be getting them today to go over. Now, some of you are no doubt wondering what in the world galleys are.

Wonder no more.

Basically, we’re at the point now where the text of the story has been typeset–arranged on the page, with all the bells and whistles. Chapter breaks, formatting, font changes–however the interior of the book is going to look. (The cover and the map still aren’t finished, but the words on the page are done.) Make sense?

So what does this mean?

It means that I have to look over the galleys and try to find any typos or mistakes that I can. After this point, correcting those typos becomes much more problematic. And yes, I’ve already gone over it multiple times, and my editor has gone over it multiple times, and the copy editor has gone over it, and the type setter has gone over it, and various friends of mine have read it–how many more times are we going to read this thing before it’s “done”?

A couple. 🙂

In any case, I’ll be doing this as fast as I can, since I need to get any changes back to my editor by the middle of next week. Remember, though–these aren’t big changes at this point. Little things like typos or formatting errors. Any time you’re dealing with a lot of text, there are going to be errors. The more we can fix now, the more it won’t annoy you when you buy thousands of copies and give them to all your friends.