In my previous post in this series, I examined some of unexpected difficulties one runs into after signing a book contract, at the revising stage: putting one's book into the publisher's 'house style' (which may involve learning an entirely new reference-style), keeping one's manuscript under one's contractual word-limit, selecting/commissioning a cover image, and the final "clearance review."
One final thing I forgot to mention are supplemental materials. One does not merely have to complete one's manuscript for the final clearance review. Along with it, I was surprised to learn that I had to submit (1) chapter abstracts for each chapter, (2) an author marketing form which requires you to put together a short book abstract, a slightly longer description for the book's back cover, a list of journals to send the book for reviews, and (3) a "permissions checklist" listing every quotation in the book, attesting whether the quotation is "fair use" or whether it requires copyright permission (which one has to secure for anything that does not fall under fair use). Although having to submit these other materials might not seem so bad, I found the entire process a bit like opening a new restaurant or musical play: no matter how well you plan ahead, it's a real scramble to get everything in line by one's deadline.
In any case, after submitting the final manuscript, you might think the hard part is over. Unfortunately, or so I found the "fun" is just beginning. The production process--the stage of copy-editing, proofing, indexing, etc.--is far more intricate and time-consuming than with journal publishing. With journal articles, you basically just get sent your page proofs to check for errors. The production process for a book actually has three parts. Allow me to provide a summary of each, along with some of the challenges one runs into.
Step 1: Copy-editing
The first stage of the book production process is copy-editing. Basically, each chapter of your book is outsourced to a company whose job it is to correct sentence errors and put the book into the publisher's preferred format. First, you are sent one sample copyedited chapter to review, with "author queries" asking about changes that have been made. In my case, a lot of changes were made by the copyeditor--some of which were really helpful, but some of which were frustrating. For example, principles I had intentionally capitalized--to give them titles to mention throughout the manuscript--had been put in all lower-case, making for a ton of ungrammatical sentences (since mentioning/referring to something by name is grammatically different than using a concept, as implied by lower-case words).
Anyway, a few days or weeks later, you will receive all of your copyedited chapters to go through--and you will be given a week or two (i.e. not a lot of time) to go through the whole book. Alas, each chapter may have been copy-edited by a different person, so you might have to correct inconsistencies from chapter to chapter. Yes, it's a bit of a pain--but I actually found the copyediting stage helpful on the whole, as your copy-editors help correct and/or draw attention to confusing sentences, and it gives you a chance to read the whole manuscript again, improve poorly worded passages, etc.
Step 2: First Proofs and indexing
Several weeks after submitting your copyedited chapters, you will receive your proofs--the actual typeset pages of the book. I have to say, seeing what one's book will actually look like is pretty cool. Unfortunately, how cool it looks didn't prepare me at all for what I've found to be the most difficult part of the production process: putting together the book's index. When you get your proofs, you will be given a couple of weeks to check them for errors (and yes, errors miraculously keep appearing in the manuscript at every stage!)--but checking and correcting them is just proofreading.
The real killer, in my experience, is the index. You know what an index is, right? It's that list of words at the end of the book, accompanied by page numbers to help readers find stuff in the book. Yes, of course I'm being pedantic (you know full well what an index is!). Alas, I'm being pedantic for a reason: an index seems so simple. It's just a list of words and page numbers, right? No, it's the Devil's spawn. Okay, I'm being half-serious here--but only half. Putting together an index is ridiculously difficult and confusing. First, you've never done one before. Second, it's hard to figure out what to include in the index, and what not. Third, it's hard to know how to arrange everything. You can do an "analytic" index, which simply lists everything alphabetically, or a "synthetic" one which groups subentries by meaning (viz. "basketball", "baseball", etc., under "sports"). Fourth, there's the issue of what to include as subentries (e.g. "argument for", "restricted to", etc.). Fifth, there are problems of duplication (e.g. you include an entry for "practical reason" but also have an entry on "rational deliberation"--should you have both? Refer readers from one to the other?).
Finally, last--but certainly not least--there's actually recording page numbers accurately, to which I can only say, see also "total nightmare." That's all there is to be said, really. It's a total nightmare. You have a few hundred concepts in your index, and you have to go hunting around in a 300 page manuscript for each of them--and you can't just do it by "word search", since many discussions of a concept may not actually use the word referenced in the index. You literally have to go through the manuscript, page by page, figuring out what--of the hundreds of concepts in your index--is on that page...and then record that page number for each concept...before moving onto the next page. And of course if you're lucky you'll have two weeks to complete the proofs and index in the middle of the semester, right when you're grading term-papers and midterm exams. ;)
Final proofs?
Anyway, this is just the "first proof" stage. I'm assuming there's a "final proofs" stage...well, because the files I was sent were entitled "first proofs." So, yes, after all of the above, apparently one has to go through another set of proofs. Fortunately, it will all be worth it in the end, right? That's the hope, at any rate--but you'll have to wait around for future posts in this series to find out the truth. You'll find out as soon as I do!
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