As I noted in my last post, the mss was copy edited by: my editor’s manager, and a professional copy editor, and finally by my editor, before they sent it to me.
For those who’ve never dealt with this, what going through a copy edit – in the pre-computerized days, it was called a proof, and was hard copy – involves is pulling it up in your word processor, and going through it edit by edit (for example, some edits replace ‘ with ` – see the huge difference? No? Didn’t think so…) through the entire novel. For each individual edit, accept/reject the change, or manually edit the text.
As a writer friend put it, ah, the glamorous life of a writer.
That all these folks were involved is a perfect example of one of the reasons I have NO intent to self-publish. How many folks who self-publish pay for a professional copy editor (which could be hundreds or thousands of dollars – their time matters, too)?
And my editor’s manager, I am told, was considering tossing the mss in the fire… because the copy editing software she was using was, of course, going out of its coded mind. Why? Because one of the three major characters, who shows up in the last third of the book, has a language processing disorder, and if you think any oah-dinah-y copy editing sofwah-e can deal with that….
However, I’ve completed the dealing with it. I really need to contact the PR guy, and beg him to let me vet the blurb (oh, Ghu, what’s on those beautiful new print copies’ back “the reaches of a black hole”, not “the event horizon”… And wait for cover proposals.
And wait to hear about the Marianne story.