I’m going to whine.
I have put A Notorious Ruin through five rounds of proofreading. Five. Today I finished round five, and I updated my files etc etc etc., and then I uploaded the updated files to the places I have preorders just in case, you know, even though I have another week before bake-in, as it were, and I did Amazon last, and their spell checker, which has never ever before found an actual typo, found a typo that was an actual typo.
O_O
So I went back and fixed that, and then did one last check and I found another one (that Amazon missed. I don’t think “afer” is a word so what the hell, Amazon?) So I fixed that too.
Seriously.
::sigh::
The good news is that I have the final new cover for Stolen Love, and it’s pretty, pretty, pretty, and I’ve uploaded that most places. And, the Print on Demand cover for Scandal is gorgeous. I got that today. So, as soon as I have a final interior, there will at last, be a paper copy for Scandal.
Yay!!
You know, when I read your first post about how often you’d been through it I wondered whether you might have been better off spending that time differently and paying an editor to do it, partly because it is so difficult to see one’s own mistakes.
Assuming you place an hourly rate value on your time, what do you think now?
I do have a 3rd party proofreader. The issue is that even professional proofreaders miss things, but more, that every time a document gets touched, including when entering corrections, is an opportunity to introduce a new error.
Plus, quite often I’ll say, hmm. That language or word or phrase, that could use some tweaking, and I will “tweak” that passage — again, more chances to make new typos!
I’d do all those rounds no matter what. It’s not just catching typos, at least for me it’s not. It’s a way to catch places where the language isn’t quite right, or a continuity error, or … all kinds of things.
Side note: for the upcoming anthology, Christmas in The Duke’s Arms, we are sending the bundle of the four stories to three different proofreaders. Because we agreed that one isn’t enough.
Oh dear, I sympathize! My “final” version for upload to Amzn went from v3 to v10 through catching typos. I got to the point where reading one more sentence one more time made me want to throw the laptop across the room and yet a friend found another handful of errors that bypassed two rounds with a copyeditor and four passes by 3 separate people.
*laughs*
I know, right? I caught a lot having it read back to me. That’s worth it. But one of my reviewers found a typo… which I fixed. Sigh. Got to be done, though.