The first step of the online galley review process is reviewing your cover, which begins with this screen of the proofing process:
Clicking on the thumbnail image of the cover will open up a larger .jpg version for close review. This is your chance to review everything very, very closely. It’s important to note that two elements of the cover won’t be finalized at this point — the barcode and the price. That’s because, you, the author, haven’t officially finalized your pricing yet, and the final price plays a part in the price-embedded barcodes we include on the covers as part of our services. So the barcode box will be blank and the price on the back will be place-held with Xs.
But otherwise, what you’re seeing is what you’re going to get. So, read the title word for word. Read the sub-title word for word. Read the back cover word for word. Read the spine word for word. Don’t assume that just because the title is spelled correctly on the front that it will be spelled correctly on the spine. Yes, 999 times out of 1,000 it will be. You don’t want to be that .01%
Any errors that have cropped up, either through human error on the book designer’s fault, or human error on yours when you supplied the information to us originally, should be fixed at this time. We give you 10 free edits to make those corrections. Make them count.
So, if you see anything that needs fixing, you would click the first box on the screen: I have some changes I would like made to the cover.
Alternatively, if everything is absolutely perfect (and that happens for covers more often than not), you would click the second box on the screen: This proof is perfect. Go to print!
Let’s assume for the sake of this walk-thru, that I have some corrections to make to my Fandemonium Volume 2 cover. I click the first box and receive a pop-up message reminding me once again that I am responsible for catching all the errors I want corrected. We often notify our authors of their responsibility because we have to overcome the assumption authors have that “self-publishing” is similar to “publishing” in this regard. A “publisher” will correct things; a “self-publisher” will expect the author to correct things. You might actually be surprised to learn the degree to which authors get mad at us for making corrections without their approval. We prefer to leave it entirely up to the author. That’s where the “100% of the control” comes from in our marketing materials.
So I proceed to the nitty-gritty of my cover edits by clicking the “Proceed to Cover Edits” button that appears along with the pop-up box….
President of Outskirts Press 