Thursday, November 24, 2011

Quick Update

I'm still working off a back log of books to proof for one publisher, expecting more from another, and doing various editing and writing things for yet another. I just turned in the final draft of a new introduction I wrote for a forthcoming book and when that gets a bit closer to coming out, I'll be more specific.

I haven't been posting much simply because I've been too busy and at least up to now I've been reluctant to write about the books that I'm working on. Why that is so I can't exactly say; chalk it up to a vague reticence, a discretionary valor kind of thing. But that probably ought to change.

I'd like to write about proofreading a small bit. There's more that goes into it than one might think, especially as the source for the books I work on is typically riddled with errors of their own. So when a problem exists in the source, and I edit it out, I've changed the text of the book now, haven't I?

I was reading an editor's foreword to a prominent book and he seems to take things to the logical conclusion of not only is he correcting errors, but he considers it his job to make the author look as best he can. But that's the worm can being opened and it's Thanksgiving and I'd like to finish proofing a particular book tonight rather than begin a long series of posts on proofing and editing.

Although it is coming, I think, and it is interesting. Doubt me now, but really, it is. A bit. At least.