self-publishing diaries | proofing

One of the most commonly proved facts is that you will scour your manuscript and galleys to make sure you've eliminated any remaining typos, misspellings, or wayward punctuation. Your editor will also scour for these, as will the occasional friend, partner, or critique buddy. You will think you are safe, but upon opening the book weeks, month, or years later, there will be at least one that has somehow eluded all eyes til just now. 

Some may say, in fact, this is one of the blessings of printing POD, since you can always fix your mistakes and oversights, especially if you are doing the ordering. I speak from both sides of the experience, since as an editor, I read through, one final time, before printing and have missed some pretty embarassing  punctuation gaffs. This is also true of my own books, either persistent errors that have eluded everyone til its been made public or some jostling that led to conjoined words, extra spaces, missing periods, and other pesky flaws. All the editorial eyes in the world will not catch a word you are all collectively mispelling (in my first book, It was the city of Albuquerque, which only the odd New Mexico native seemed to find. 

Most often, I know I always need an extra set of eyes, usually another poet or editor who is trained to read for things, though a friend or partner has had to sometimes help out. For books I edit, we can usually catch most things in a few back and forths before saving the final version. When your on you're own, though, without a formal editor these are things you need to attend to--whether that's enlisting help, trusting your own eye (the success of which will depend on how detail oriented you are) or hire in a professional as a developmental/proofing editor or what the cool fiction kids call a beta reader.  

One nice thing about the poetry collections of my own that I have published is that they usually have already existed in a published version, either in journals or zine projects that have themselves been proofread within an inch of their lives. Or even the print version of EXOTICA that required only minor adjustments since the zine was already published and its just slightly different in formatting for print. CLOVEN, however, like GRANATA, has not been published before in another version, so I am starting fresh with whatever I had as I cemented the poems in place as finished (and even that may change in the process.) This means, I am moving slow and extra carefully with each page and each fragment. It also gives me a chance to make tiny tweaks that may make the poems just a little better rhythm or language-wise. It's slower process as well, but I am hoping to wrap it up before the end of this month to be on track with my publication plan.  

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