Hats off to all of those behind the pages!

Recently a friend of mine released a book that she
"self published".  She has many other books that are
out there by various different publishers as well, but
when the contract ended for this one she decided to
give it an overhaul and bring out it again - new and
improved if you like.

I went through the labor pains with her to bring this
baby back into print and let me tell you I now have
a new found respect for all those people responsible
for doing the laps to get all of those books out there.

As the author everyone knows it's a long process to
write the story and then survive through the edits of it.
I applaud the editors for their patience with us when
they have to smack our hands repeatedly to prevent us
from making that same grammar blunders three pages
after the last one.

What I didn't realize was how tedious and trying it is to
take it beyond the editing process.  Formatting for a
print edition is a painful process - after all you don't want the
binding to eat away the edges of your story.  You want it
to look balanced and easy to read, which also means the
style of font becomes important too.  Simple seems to be
the best answer to that.

In the ever growing world of POD (print on demand) there
are templates available to make the process of proper layout
 as easy as possible and you would think a quick copy-paste of the
polished manuscript would do the trick ... but no, it's not!
Hours and I mean HOURS of shifting this and adjusting that is
involved to make it work are involved. Seriously it looks silly to
turn the page and have one word and a period printed on it.

We all gush over our cover artists for their creative brilliance -
not knowing at the time that their cover/spine/back images have
to fit perfectly for the print version of a book.  Without their work
half of your spine would be on the front cover and your book would
look like someone printed it in the garage on some antique printing
press.

I have a new found respect for all of those at all types of publishers
for the work they do to get our words out there!!  Without you
we authors would be out there in the world peddling out stapled
together manuscripts complete with typo's, uneven paragraphs,
ink smudges and lopsided covers!

My hat is off to all of those people behind the pages of each book
out there.  Simply put - you guys rock!