Newsletter #69 — Proofreading Takes Time
November 1, 2023
Newsletter #69 — Proofreading Takes Time
Keywords Tutorial — In order to sell more books on Amazon I've been learning more about keywords. As I shared this knowledge with my publisher at City of Light Publishing, she asked me if I would give a Zoom "tutorial" on the subject to other City of Light authors. I said I'd be happy to do so, and we set it up. I enjoyed helping my publisher and my fellow authors in this way.
My favorite part was at the end, when I offered to test a long-tail keyword for each author. Always fun to see whether one's guess at a good keyword turns out to be the same words that searchers use . . . searchers being customers who are looking for something in particular.
It takes a lot of fine-tuning to choose the best keywords. For Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel, I had how to write fiction as a search term. But some investigation let me see that more people search for how to write fiction books than for the term I had. So, even though I cringe slightly at the redundancy, I changed my long-tail keyword to how to write fiction books. Sales have increased . . . though whether the increase is due to this keyword term or one of the other six keyword terms, or to something else altogether, I don't know.
Proofreading Exit Velocity — As I reported a couple of newsletters ago, I had a busy September getting Exit Velocity ready for June 2024 publication. And I had an even busier October. I know I did many things in October, but it feels as if I spent the entire month doing only one thing: proofreading.
Because I and one other person had proofread my manuscript three times before I submitted it to BookBaby, I assumed the ms was more or less perfect.
Ha! It's a truism that typographical errors don't make themselves visible until one is looking at the beautiful typeset pages. That's when these errors shriek out — Ha, ha! See how well we hid?! Now you have to make corrections, Nyah, Nyah!
Here are seven of the errors that eluded me and others until they were in page-proof form.
page 2: So yesterday I went to tell Jerry I was ready to be my former reliable self, to drive around the city in a Wheelers vans, part of a two-person crew that moved rental bikes from one location to another all day
should read: So yesterday I went to tell Jerry I was ready to be my former reliable self, to drive around the city in a Wheelers van, part of a two-person crew that moved rental bikes from one location to another all day long.
page 45: "You can stop. now," I say. "I do get it."
should read: "You can stop now," I say. "I do get it."
page 100: Ss far as Antwon's concerned, I'm not even there. "Say again?" he asks.
should read: As far as Antwon's concerned, I'm not even there. "Say again?" he asks.
page 163: He's thinking about this when the door to the studio flies opens and Harita comes running out.
should read: He's thinking about this when the door to the studio flies open and Harita comes running out.
page 250: Well-wrapped ones sloppily-wrapped ones.
should read: Well-wrapped ones, sloppily-wrapped ones.
page 279: "I'm going to put you with Paul tonight," he says, 'the two of you unloading a 55-footer."
should read: "I'm going to put you with Paul tonight," he says, "the two of you unloading a 55-footer."
page 292: We return to our seats — just as another scrub-clad surgeon comes out of the swinging doors.
should read: We return to our seats — just as another scrubs-clad surgeon comes out of the swinging doors.
I just know you caught each and every error. If by some chance you didn't — well, then, I'm sorry, but you must proofread the sentence until you find the error. Hint: It helps to have a pencil in hand and touch each and every character with the point of the pencil, to make certain that character registers in your brain. That's one of the tricks I learned when I was a typesetter and sometimes-proofreader at the Boston Globe in the 1970s.
Cookie — Point of view is not usually difficult for me, but when I was writing Cookie the Cockatoo defining the POV proved to be quite difficult. You can read about it in this blog.