About Book Proofreading

A Video from Robert S. Nahas

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Hi, this is Robert S. Nahas, here again to tell you about the process required for writing a book.

After having your book written, then edited, the next step is proof reading.

Now, in no way should you consider that someone who was good in grammar in school, or was an English teacher, or whatever. That that is sufficient enough to have your book proofread.

By all means have them proofread it because it will be in better shape when it gets to the book reading proofreader, but don't think for a minute that you can get away with that. You have to have a person who is trained in proofreading books.

There's a lot more too it than the spellings, and the dotting of the "i's," and the crossing of the "t's." There are other things, like consistency, where are the colons? Are they, you know, before or after something or does the period go inside or outside of the quotation mark. All these different things need to be determined and made constant throughout the book.

Subtitles, headings, what is the font? You know, the first eight chapters have a certain font like Times New Roman or something, and then all of a sudden it switches over to Georgia, which is similar, but different enough to make it unprofessional.

These kinds of things are checked by the proofreader, and many other things. So you're looking at consistency to the Nth degree, and it just does the final polishing on your book to make it up to literary standard, and to have it be something that you can be very proud of.

So when you're looking for a proofreader, certainly yourself and anyone you want, you know, have them do proofreading as long as they're relatively qualified. But then as a final step, and a minimum of one time, after no more changes will be made to your manuscript.

Or if you're self-publishing, you wait all the way to the end of where your book is ready to be formatted into a "camera ready book," or what used to be called a "camera ready book" in the old days when they used a camera. But, you want to have your book all the way done to where you're not going to do anymore changes to it.

So if you're going to seek literary agents and traditional publishers, then, when the manuscript is no longer going to be worked on, that's when you have it proofread as a final action with a professional book proofreader. If you're going to self-publish, then you take it through the formatting stage where it's a file ready, formatted book, ready for the printer. That's when you have it proofread.

Now, it's best to have it proofread a number of times, 3 or 4 times is not a lot. But, that can be costly, so if you can only afford one time, then again, you know, have some qualified people, friends, whatever, do some work on it. But then, have a real professional who will do a really thorough job at least one time through.

Now don't expect to have 100% error free, that just doesn't exist, there are no absolutes. But, you want it to be very much error free, somewhere around 97% error free. That is acceptable. As you'll see with most books, especially with their first print run, there are a number of errors, and then those are handled for the next print run.

So that's how you get away with not having to spend a lot of money for proofreading, and still have, starting out with your first printing, as being at literary standard.

My name is Robert S. Nahas, and I'll be giving you more information about book writing and creating books, soon. Thank you.