Friday 25 July 2014

Editing

I have to admit until I wrote my book I never realised what a time consuming job editing is.  It feels like the editing has taken much longer than the writing of the book itself!  My book is just short of 250 pages, and I have now read it from cover to cover at least 6 times in the last few months, some sections it feels like I know them word by word!  We started around the start of April and only finished editing a couple of weeks ago.

The red pen got a lot of use!

Because my book is so large we've been working through a section at a time.  My editor, Edd, goes over the section on his computer, adding in notes where he would like me to add/take away/change the text and asking questions.   I then get sent the whole section printed up on A3 sheets with lots of white space around the outside so I can write my edits and responses to his questions in.

It takes a lot of concentration reading over again and again to make sure the text makes sense, that it sounds right when reading and that there's no typos.  Then in the later stages of editing I was also looking at the layout and the design of each page to.

For me this has been the hardest stage of the book, I can quite happily write for days but found the editing draining and tiring.  However now it's all done, and the illustrations have been added in and the page layout sorted it looks amazing!  I am so incredibly proud of the book, and amazed at how good Search Press have made it look.




New cover

The last couple of weeks have been spent deciding on the cover, as much as I loved the illustrations on the first cover I think this new cover is really colourful and eye catching which should help it stand out in the shops.   What do you think?  Do you like it?

It's now only a few short months before I will have a copy of the book in my hands, and it will be in the shops.  I am really starting to get excited now!  The book was originally due to be published at the end of November but Search Press are trying to bring it forward to the end of September, so hopefully in a couple of months time the book will be here!  If you'd like to pre-order the book is now on Amazon here, so you can take advantage of their pre-order guarantee.

In my next post I'm going to tell you a bit more about the content of the book and who has contributed to it.

4 comments:

Jane said...

This looks like an amazing resource Fiona, congratulations! Just pre-ordered! x

Diane Warburton said...

Obviously I don't know you've said in the book about marketing but colour is so powerful. I'm currently awaiting my new logo for my new company and I can totally understand how you feel. I pre-ordered my copy ages ago and with posts like this; I too am getting very excited awaiting it's arrival. I'm almost hoping that I don't find any premises before the book is out, or I'll have to make it all up myself! :-)

Sewing Directory said...

Thank you both, I really hope you like the book and find it useful.

Best of luck in finding your premises Diane. And you are right colour is to important in marketing and branding, I have covered that particularly in relation to branding in the book :)

Irene Donovan said...

Love the eye catching cover, a great achievement!

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