Book Update: Typesetting & Proofreading and What I’ve Learnt

As I publish my book, I want to document the journey and share what I’ve learnt from it for those who are curious and for those who want to go into hybrid self-publishing so they can know what to expect and learn from my mistakes. As of right now, the book is typeset and has been proofread and the next step is the cover design (this is what I’ve really been looking forward to).

So now that the book has gone through editing, the next step is typesetting and this is really important for your book. Sure you could try to do it yourself with software like Scribus or Adobe InDesign, but you probably don’t know what you’re doing and then the book looks awful and it hinders the enjoyment of your hard work. Best to leave it to a professional so it looks good and it’s something you’re proud to put your name on.

Proofreading

Ever tried reading a word document manuscript? It’s not so friendly to the eyes like a properly typeset book and that means that at the copy editing stage, some errors can slip by. Thankfully, you have another chance to catch some errors in proofreading. Think of it like another filter.

You could have a professional do the proofreading (if you have the money to do it, go for it!), or you could do it yourself if you’re on a low budget, but keep in mind that you might be too close to your own work and might not notice things another person with a different brain and different set of eyeballs would. Now some errors might be your fault (careless errors like typos and other goofs like mixed up names or factual errors), but other errors could be the typesetter’s fault. I recommend reading through your proof a couple times, like the old saying for carpentry and tailoring goes, measure twice and cut once. Like I said about editing, take breaks because your eyes can get fatigued looking at walls of text, even if they’re nicely laid out like a book. I had a couple options with proofreading: one is I could print out the manuscript and then mark it with a pen and the other option is doing it all on the computer. There are pros and cons to each, but in the end I chose doing it all on the computer because printing out hundreds of pages is expensive and if I have a digital copy, I can search inside the book and that comes in handy.

I found that when the book was typeset, I had a clearer picture of what issues there were and I made sure to mark the changes. Your publisher is going to give you a set of proofreading marks so study that and keep that to the side when you’re going through it. For safety’s sake and so I could reference back to it later when I got my revised proofs, I also made a list of changes I wanted made along with the page number and I put that into a separate Word document and attached that with my returned proof in case things weren’t clear.

Some mistakes or tweaks I needed to make that I noticed were some uncaught typos, text being made bold when it shouldn’t have, a couple things I needed to fact check and correct, spacing on the title page, splitting paragraphs, and a couple small formatting errors with indenting and style guide stuff like fonts and font sizes for chapter sections and things like that.

Keep in mind that typesetters are human and this is their job and your book is just one of a bunch of books that they’re working on and they’re getting paid no matter what. Your book is your baby. The typesetter’s name isn’t going on the book. So if there’s a problem with the book, all the fingers are going to be pointed at you so it’s in your best interest to go through it with a fine toothed comb and catch as many errors as you can so you can release the most polished, professional book you can.

However, at some point, you gotta get the book out there and know when to say you know what this book is Kenough! As someone who reviews books, I see a couple mistakes in pretty much every book about classic rock that I review but for me, I think more about the bigger picture, but I do chuckle a little bit at silly mistakes. I think the industry standard for catching errors is about 95%. Heck, there were mistakes in “Louie Louie” but I still love that song, the mistakes and that impromptu garage rock sound is what gives it that charm! Even in all these professionally edited super polished YouTube videos, I see spelling and grammar mistakes (heck, Half As Interesting made a whole video acknowledging it).

Keep in mind how many free revisions you get for your proof. Typesetting takes time and time is money so if you need more than say one or two revisions or you have a bunch of changes you want to make, you’ll be charged for it, especially if it affects the layout. But don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself if some things are the typesetter’s mistake and they’re trying to charge you for it.

The Look

There’s a lot of different typesetting styles and ways to lay out the book. My publisher first sent me a proof of the typesetting style and asked me if I approve of the style. At this point you can pick the fonts and the headings. If you don’t like something, speak up and be as specific as possible about what you want. If they’re using Adobe and you have a specific font in mind, go to Adobe Fonts and pick out some fonts you like and let them know you like that for the book. Obviously for the body text, you need something plain, standard, and readable like Times New Roman or something similar to that. But for the section text, chapter text, and title pages, you can have a bit of fun with that. For the section text, the typesetters chose the Bradley font, which was designed originally in 1895 and was famously used at Disney World. For the title text, my Twitter followers liked Pentz Classic for its fancy, but still readable look and so I chose that for the title page and the cover. Thank you to my Twitter followers for providing great feedback! I’m a big font nerd and I’m very particular about the way things look as you can tell from my graphics on my blog and I used to go crazy on school projects using different fonts and colours and WordArt styles on every Powerpoint slide, but a book isn’t the place to do that. Different fonts are fine, but make sure that it’s all cohesive and limit the use of the fancy, ornate fonts, time and place!

You can get a feel for what you like in typesetting by reading other books in a similar genre to yours and seeing if you like it. I’ve looked at other classic rock books that I’ve reviewed in the past and I found I wasn’t as much of a fan of the typesetting styles in those books, but you know different strokes for different folks. I tend to like things that are classic and old-fashioned and I hope that feel comes through when you see the final product.

Anyway, next book update will be a bit more visually interesting because it will be about the book cover and the creative process behind it. Until next time!

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