Nearly done

I'm finally reaching the end of the work associated with my game book. This has been an ongoing project for most of the year. I've only be working on it in fits and starts. Indeed it was mostly written during my lunchtimes at work, just a few paragraphs a day. Then I left it sitting for a while before starting on the editing.

I did two full editing passes, again during lunchtimes covering just a few entries per day, then let it sit again.

Then I sent it out to a few beta readers, only one of whom sent me feedback. I applied the fixes he suggested and let it rest again.

So here I am now doing the final proof-read-aloud. That's reading the whole book aloud. I'm so glad I opted to give this try. Even after all those passes once I read it aloud I found even more problems to fix!  This is process I'll definitely use in future.

With luck by the end of the weekend I'll have this book done and uploaded to LuLu as a POD book and I'll order a proof copy. If that comes through without issue I'll be foisting this on the whole world!

Hard copy from the POD for proofing

Today I received a hard copy of the gamebook from the P.O.D. company. It sure does look good, but of course I'm biased!  The cover put together by my collaborator has really popped into life when printed on shiny card. He's done an outstanding job of work.

I'm glad I paid for this copy as it's highlighted a couple of issues that need to addressed and a revision made.  Just like all stories need to be revised and edited before release, print editions all need to be printed and checked before going public.

In this case the bar code on the rear has crossed over some of the blurb text; it's come out significantly larger than I expected. Secondly despite all of the read throughs and double and triple checking, there is a sub heading that is not highlighted as it should be. Drat! and double drat!  You must always check the release before you blurt out and tell the world.  If I hadn't checked I could have been pushing a sub-standard text on an unsuspecting public.  However the joy of POD is that I can just make a minor revision online and it will be good to go!