Happy Book Proofs Day to Me

And why proofs always excite the author

There are certain pit stops that excite the author during their arduous trek towards publishing a book.

There is the germ of an idea, that spark when you begin obsessing over the story you want to tell, the people and places to explore, the locations to visit, and, of course, potential book titles.

Concepts race through your mind with reckless abandon, often distracting you from other, more mundane, life tasks. Even now, I maintain a long list of potential book titles in my mobile phone notes – you never know when you might want to explore further.

Then we have the confirmation of the book deal once you’ve laid out your thoughts into an orderly proposal, and the first day of writing, perhaps jotting down the introduction and helping yourself to set out what exactly you hope to achieve with this book.

We have the completion of the first draft, and then the exciting, perhaps even anticlimactic, submission of the manuscript and the dreadful quiet that follows after one, two, maybe even five, years of chipping away at the project. Months pass, during which some authors begin new projects or take the time to just breathe, perhaps take care of neglected duties.

And then, one morning on the way out, you notice a package on the doorstep. A4-sized, cardboard brown, with a tear strip. You know what this is. This morning, it was me stood on the stairs, staring down at said brown package. Forget the gym, I grabbed the intruder and raced back upstairs and into my flat.

Fiercely ripping the tear strip and discarding on the floor for Vera to enthusiastically investigate, what I pulled out were the proofs to my upcoming book ‘The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor’.

What are the proofs?

Sometimes known as page proofs, galley proofs or uncorrected proofs, these are a version of your submitted manuscript that have been formatted and typeset in a manner that will closely resemble the final product. The editor has carefully poured over your words, removed typos, altered some sentences for clarity, double-checked some sources and so on. The proofs are now returned to the author for one final examination of the work, to double, triple, quadruple check for any errors before it’s too late.

This is the final arduous task the author faces before publication, and also involves for many indexing, which might very well be the most daunting and laborious chore there is. Once you send these back off to the publisher, your work is done, for better or for worse. There is no going back.

The proofs, however, represent confirmation that all the work put in across previous years is about to pay off. For the first time, you get an idea of what your book will look like, flicking through page after page and seeing your words unravel the story you decided, many years earlier, to tell. You notice the typeset the publisher has decided to employ, the layout of the photographs you worked hard to collate, and even small little details such as what symbol they’ve used for chapter breaks.

So, HAPPY PROOFS DAY to me, and hopefully by the end of July you too will have the final book in your hands. I’m excited, and I hope you are too.

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Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor is on sale from July 2024, available from all good bookshops (online and in store). Pre-Order NOW.