Tag: opProd

The 3-step galley review process at Outskirts Press begins with the following screen:

There are three important pieces of information to take away from this screen:

1) You have 14 days to complete your review (if you need longer, notify your rep). This is to keep your project moving along so we can get your book published.  Some authors breeze through this process; others, inexplicably, take months. But we’ve found that giving a 14-day requirement is a good way to curtail procrastination.

2) You are reviewing your print-ready files. It’s your responsibility to thoroughly check them for any and all corrections you wish to make. Anything you don’t bring to our attention during this process will be in your final book.

3) And any corrections you bring to our attention after submitting your edit forms will incur additional fees for us to fix.

Authors acknowledge all this “fine print” by clicking the “Start Reviewing My Proofs” button….

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….

Upon submitting all your cover edits you’re taken to your shopping cart to check-out. Unless you added MORE than 10 free edits, you will have a zero balance, like this:

Simply go through the check-out steps to complete your submission. You must complete this check-out procedure, even with a zero balance, to submit your edits to us for correction. We won’t know when you’re done with your cover review, or whether you had more than 10 edits, until AFTER you check-out of your cart.

And then, the next step…

Reviewing your interior proof works much the same as reviewing your cover. It begins with this screen in your Publishing Center during the galley review process:

Just like with the cover, the first step is opening up the file, which in this case is accomplished by clicking the “Interior Proof” Adobe graphic.  Your interior proof will open in Adobe Reader (if you don’t have the latest edition of Adobe Reader, you can get it free from Adobe’s website at www.adobe.com.

The biggest difference between reviewing your cover and reviewing your interior is that your interior is much longer, obviously, and therefore requires a greater degree of concentration and thoroughness.   This will also be your chance to get your first glimpse of the interior of your book, and the nature of that “presentation” is going to depend upon whether you selected the standard interior, the enhanced interior, or the custom interior.   All three interior choices will result in a great looking book, albeit perhaps somewhat different from how it looked on your Word for Windows word processor or in your head.  This difference is a GOOD thing — after all, Word is called a word processor for a reason. If it was meant to be used for book design, it would be called… inDesign, which is the industry standard book design and formatting software we use from Adobe. Our books look like industry standard, high-quality professional books.

If/when you see something in your interior file that you wish to correct, you will then  select the first box: I have some changes I would like made to the interior.

If, after thoroughly reviewing the ENTIRE manuscript, you find nothing you want to fix, look over it again. Perhaps have someone else look over it. Then, and only then, click the second box: This proof is perfect – Go to Print!

Hmm, on second thought, look your file over one more time anyway.  Since we provide up to 25 free interior corrections, we get a little nervous (i.e., suspicious) when we receive initial galley proofs for the interior without any corrections at all.  This usually tells us the author didn’t look the file over at all (and, inevitably, they’ll see  something only after the book is published that they’ll wish they had fixed).  At that point, revising your publication costs money; so please do everyone a favor and thoroughly review your book now, when 25 fixes are completely free.

When you click on the first box indicating that you have some corrections, you will receive a pop-up asking you to acknowledge the fact that you understand your responsibility in finding and bringing to our attention everything you want fixed.  Clicking the button to proceed indicates your acceptance, and then the  interior edit form appears, just like with the cover….