Proofs, piling up

This photo is from a review of color proofs at the Atheneum offices yesterday, a nearly last look at Locomotive before the presses roll. I’m happy to say that the book will be printed on a great uncoated stock, a paper with a look and feel that’s really in sympathy with the period and sensibility of the book. There will be an ebook edition, too, but book-as-object is one of the goals here, and that’s a nice thing to be able to write these days. My sincere thanks go to everyone at Atheneum for all the thoughtfulness and work — and it’s a lot of both — that’s going into the book. Coming in September!

Proof, Part 2

Recently arrived here are the second proofs of Moonshot. Looking them over, I’m like a reformed drinker who just got a whiff of strong whiskey; I want back in. The feeling reminds me of lines which must resonate with anyone who has struggled with a labor of love, specifically with the mixed blessing of finishing it: “God keep me from ever completing anything,” Melville wrote in Moby-Dick. “This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

This is why both bars and publishers have such a thing as last call.

None Dare Call It Done. And Yet...

I reliably disappointment friends who ask if I’m happy to be done with a book. The thing is, it’s hard to be happy about being done when you don’t know if you are or not, and I almost never do. There’s no strip of tape to break as you cross the finish line, and usually there’s not even a finish line. For weeks after the final (“final”) art is turned over to the publisher, you, the editor, the art director, the designer, and the copyeditor are still looking for and catching things that might need work. (Whether you catch something or not, just the knowledge that you and others are looking manages to strip a lot of the sheen from the idea of the big finish.) Even weeks later, after the first proofs have come back from the printer, straggling problems may reveal themselves. So it’s good news here that Moonshot has now been through all, or at least most, of that. The proofs are reviewed, tweaked, corrected, patched, and amended, and shortly on their way back to the printer. There are worlds of work left for the publisher, Atheneum, but as far as mine own part is concerned, well, not until I have the bound book in my hands will I call it done, but as they say at NASA: the vehicle is through the region of maximum dynamic pressure!

Proof

Less than a month after the interior artwork was turned in, and the first proofs of Moonshot are here on my desk! Note the First Proof band in which the pages come wrapped. Not so dissimilar from the familiar Sanitized For Your Protection band, but we don’t dwell on that. Anyway, if you don’t know, proofs are what the printer sends to the publisher after the printer has received the original art, but before the book itself is printed. When the publisher receives first proofs, the art directors and designers put them under a good light, give them the eye, and then ask that the printer use less blue here, more contrast there, clean up that spot and that speck, and so on, all through the book. The printer takes these comments and produces—second proofs. This process repeats until everyone’s done all that they can to make the pages look their best. There's a nice old-fashioned sense of craftsmanship to the process, and also a meaningfulness to seeing a publisher working to make your book look the best that it can.

Only after everyone's satisfied (or, sometimes, reasonably satisfied; this is the real world, after all) do the printing presses roll in earnest.