So…

There’s been a snag in announcing the release date of the book. Namely, proofreading!

There is a very big difference between checking your work in MS Word and checking your work on an actual, physical piece of paper. I’ll admit it, I am incapable of spotting my own mistakes. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only writer that suffers from this, but, yeah, I cannot see my own errors.

I thought when I handed the physical copy of my book to my girlfriend, that she would breeze through it and only find minor errors. Instead, she had suggestions for improvements in word flow, punctuation errors, and POV [Point of View] confusion.

When I saw the book marked up in pencil with circles, proofreading marks, and notes. I basically said aloud, “W-T-F?” No, I literally said, “W-T-F” not, “what the (fill in the blank)”.

Folks, I’ve proofread this book over twenty times during this past decade. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but I have looked it over numerous times. I just cannot see my own mistakes, even when reading the manuscript aloud word-for-word, the missing comma, slight typo, and flow issues are invisible to me like an advanced cloaking system.

My girlfriend said to me aloud, “In this one sentence you put a comma after the general made an action.” I immediately replied, “Comma? That’s supposed to be a period.”

“Oh Okay, I didn’t know if you did that on purpose.”

“That was really in there? What the hell did I pay the proofreader for?” I said.

And thus, the crux of my conundrum. What did I pay the proofreader for if there were still so many issues with the manuscript? Well, the truth is, I only paid the proofreader to do a one-time pass. When the editor turned in his corrections to me, I went ahead and approved and fixed what he said was broken. However, there were also parts where he suggested to “show” things and “clarify” certain scenes.

Well I did, but that resurfaced errors I was prone to making. Even though I tried to be as slow, methodical, and careful as possible in making my corrections. It still suffered from me putting a comma where there should be a period, missing commas, and POV issues.

It needed a second pass from the proofreader, but I, -having never published a book before- underestimated how easy it is to make a mistake. But hey, at least there weren’t that many typos!. (Though, we’ve already established that I am an unreliable source for catching these things. So take my words with a grain of salt.)

If you’re going to publish your book, go with a professional service that will allow you to resubmit your manuscript after you’ve made the changes. Unless of course, I’m the only freak and need to learn how to “sepll.”

[Release date will be announced after completion of the proofreading. However, expect the book to be available early to mid December. Basically, before the holidays.]