Oo, I love this. Messing around with a copy edit is fun. Together with the final proof reading, it’s the cherry on the cake, the final polish, it’s where you start to feel just a teensy-weensy bit proud of this monster (180,000 words!) that you have birthed.
This time around it is really, really interesting as well. I have two copy edits for the same book, from different publishers. Mostly they find the same basic errors (e.g. typos, grammatical hiccups and similar) but the rest is … interesting. The things they think would make a better book are simply different.
Of course, at the end of the day it is my name on the cover, and I make the final decisions. This is fun. But don’t expect too much eloquence from me for a few days…
I picked up The Last StormLord form my bookshop yesterday and started it very late last night. Too late for em to read very much but so far, it's fabulous. The kind of fabulous where you know something is going to happen and you don't want it to but you are forced to keep reading!!!
This begs the question…will the books be different (the "interesting" things they find that're different)? Or are you doing these at the same time and trying to consolidate the changes? Or are some market-specific, so you have to make things different to make "a better book" in each place, even if different?
(Do my questions even make sense?!)
Thanks!
Thanks 2paw. I was amused to find this morning that my nephew is too scared to begin, because he knows that once he starts, he won't be able to put it down…!! Torturing my characters – nah. I love torturing my readers…
Kendall, they will be slightly different. Very slightly, and for no more reason than I don't care which of the alternatives is used. Or for inhouse policy e.g. some publishers use the "ed" form for past tense verbs such as to lean, while others use "leant".