Aspects of publishing, Part I: The Joys of Page Proofs

Lots of good folk have been talking about publishing-related issues of late. Originally, I was going to make one long post, but it got too unwieldy so I’m splitting it into 3 parts:

First, Terry Teachout, who just got the page proofs of his upcoming book back from the publishers, explains why a book isn’t really a book until it’s been typeset:

No one who hasn’t written a book can know what it feels like to see it set up in type for the first time. Your own manuscript, however neatly printed it may be, simply isn’t the real thing. It’s homemade, and looks that way. You can edit it as painstakingly as you like, but you still don’t know what your words will sound like in your inner ear until you see the thing itself. It’s unnerving, half scary and half thrilling, to pull the proofs out of their package and start riffling through them, pretending to look for typos (and sometimes finding them) but mostly just gazing raptly at each page, feeling your half-forgotten sentences and paragraphs quiver to life.

Teachout also experiences a serious disconnect between what’s on the page and what he remembers–or perhaps doesn’t–of the writing process some months before:

[A]s I glanced at the first chapter, my eyes grew moist. It seemed impossible that I’d written all those words mere months ago. I simply couldn’t think my way back into the fearfully intense state of arousal with which I’d raced against the clock to finish the manuscript and ship it off to Harcourt. I felt oddly detached from the thick stack of photocopied pages I held in my hand, detached and proud at the same time, the way one might feel while watching a child graduate from college. Had I really written this book? Could it possibly be as good as it looked?

Since I haven’t published a book yet, all I can use for comparison is when I see the finished story appear on the web somewhere. And I wonder, more often than not, if I could have possibly written that story. How did I come up with those words? Are they really mine? There are times when I still don’t know for sure.

Interestingly, S.J. Rozan had a different reaction when she got the page proofs back in January on her upcoming novel ABSENT FRIENDS:

This, by the way, is a process I always find fairly unpleasant. I’m always disappointed in a book at this stage. It’s too long, too clumsy, both too obvious and too obscure… You get the picture. This is one too many times I have to read this book. When I was in architecture school we used to say of a finished design that it was inevitably bigger than you wanted, smaller than you needed, more expensive than you’d hoped and less wonderful than you’d imagined. Same here.

Rozan definitely makes a great point here. After slaving over a book or article or story and editing it to a certain point, after a while, one doesn’t really want to look at it anymore. The self-consciousness kicks in, and the doubts do as well. Just part of the trade, but no less unnerving….

So, what do you all think about the whole page proof thing? Is it a thrill, or a chore? Something that makes you excited or overly nervous?