Page proofs!

My page proofs just arrived in the mail. Hooray!

Wait - what are page proofs?

This giant stack of papers are the page proofs for my upcoming book!

Page proofs (also referred to as typeset pages and, rarely, galleys) are the interior pages of the book, designed and typeset and laid out just as it will appear when it prints. Though they're still printed on basic office paper, you can nevertheless get a feel for what it will look like in the final form.

You can see here, these proofs are printed in full color, and are printed single-sided on office paper (340 pages!). It looks like there are huge margins, because the proofs are printed at exactly the scale of the books, which is in "real life" 6x9 inches, smaller than the normal 8.5x11 inches of the office paper.

Proofs allow me to see if there are any weird mistakes in layout, like large blank spaces without any text, cut off photos or figures, images missing captions or with mixed up captions. I pore over these and make notes on the margins, which I then send to my coauthor and editor with thoughts on correcting any mistakes.

This also lets me take a look at how the book flows. Page proofs are a really nice way to see how everything fits together and how it will look in print.

Putting a book together requires a lot of steps beyond just putting words onto paper or into a computer. I'm lucky to have a great publisher (The Mountain Press) who helps shepherd me through the process with this book.

If you are keen to have more info on this book, please follow this link to sign up for my newsletter!