If you are one of the brave souls who have decided to publish your own book, you have doubtless cleared very huge hurdles along your journey. With all the information about self-publishing on the Internet, sometimes it's hard to determine what information is necessary. One of the most important things for any self-publisher to do is check the page proofs from the typesetter, the person who does the interior and cover layouts for you.
If you have reached this stage successfully, chances are you have gone through quite a few rounds of revisions, corrections, and alterations with your editor. Your editor, more than likely, used a word processing program to electronically mark up your manuscript with corrections and comments. After going through this manuscript, you created a clean version so that your layout person could create a new version of your file-showing you how it will look when it is ready for the printers. Now we have reached the stage where it is time for you to go through your manuscript once more to make any final alterations.
One thing that you should keep in mind is the fact that the typesetter will not go through your book layout, like your editor did, and make corrections to the file. If there are any misspelled words, bad line breaks, mismatched page numbers, they will be left in the file until you-or someone representing you-goes through the manuscript at least one more time.
Before you begin, make sure you understand how your book layout specialist accounts for any corrections that need to be made to the root file. Your book designer uses a special layout program to format your manuscript, and it will be necessary to either have access to that file or to be able to pass along any corrections to your book layout specialist.
Most publishing houses rely on the skills of a proofreader to go through the formatted manuscript once or twice to check for any missing information. The work of proofreaders is highly underestimated in today's self-publishing world, but proofreading is a critical stage in the book production process. It would be worth your while to hire a freelance proofreader-in some cases your editor may be willing to double as a proofreader-to go through your book layout.
Proofreaders work either with a hard copy (a printed version of your book layout), a PDF (they have software that will allow them to mark up PDFs), or directly in the root book layout file (in this case, the proofreader uses a program, like Adobe InCopy, to make corrections directly to the root file). Like book editors, most proofreaders use the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) as a guide when reading and marking up the book layout file (which we will call the "proof" from now on). CMS has a list of proofreaders' marks that the proofreader will use to mark up the proof. When proofing electronic files, the proofreader will make comments on the PDF or make changes directly to the root book layout file.
There are several things that you can do while the proofread is taking place. Here is a checklist of basic book design elements that you can look for during proofreading.
1. Overall Presentation: You can do a basic scan of the PDF file to make sure that the basic elements are where they should be.
a. Is all of your front matter there (copyright, dedication, contents page, etc.)?
b. Are all of your chapter files in the PDF?
c. Are the margins uniform in your PDF?
d. Does each page have a number, and are they in sequential order?
e. Do the chapter files have folios (book title, chapter title, author name at the top or bottom of the page) and do they match the section or chapter?
f. Are there any areas of white space that could be fixed or filled in?
g. Do all chapters have uniform paragraph, header, and subhead styles, with the right font size and type?
h. Are all graphics in the right place, and do they have the right identifying information?
i. Are all sections/chapters listed on the Contents page?
Please note the proofreader will also be going through your proof and checking for the same issues. By going through it yourself, you can make sure that everything is presented the way it should be.
2. Content Issues: Since you have more than likely gone through at least one round of revisions during the editing stage, you can go through your proof to make sure that there aren't any outstanding content issues.
a. Are all of the corrections that were made to the edited file incorporated in your proof?
b. TREAD LIGHTLY! An experienced proofreader is designed to work in concert with the editor. Oftentimes, the editor will create a style sheet-a list of special renderings of text or places where a specific style element veers from the approved editing style-for the proofreading phase. Making new corrections to content may affect the overall presentation, so just come up with a list of possible errors/corrections and pass them along to your proofreader.
c. Missing Content: take note of any missing words, paragraphs, or sections, and pass them along to your proofreader.
You may want to have your proofreader go through the page proofs several times before you send the final files to the printer. Making changes once the proof has been sent to the printer can result in extra setup and design fees. Lightning Source, for example, one of the world's largest print-on-demand services for self-publishers, charges a setup fee each time a new file is uploaded to your account. A book layout specialist may charge extra for making changes to repackage your book contents for upload. Several rounds of proofreading can reduce extra costs and save you time.
In short, the more eyes you have looking at your proof the better. I would further qualify this statement by saying that several pairs of trained eyes is preferable to just letting your family and friends read your page proofs. Again, the best proofreaders work in concert with the editor, so you want to make sure your editing phase was not all for naught.
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