A book trailer that allows us to peek inside Harlequin’s proofreading department. What surprised me is not only do they have a proofreading department, but 15—15!—people work there. Clearly The End is Nigh/Publishing is in the Crapper/All Bookstores Will Be Closed by Next Week Bookmageddon hasn’t reached Harlequin yet…
Harlequin are very nimble and are well in tune with their readership, so it’s not surprising they’re doing well. Romance and crime fiction seem to be doing well regardless of Bookmageddon. Long may it continue.
I wish I had a proof reading deprtment. I’m currently reading my WIP from end to beginning in the hope that I don’t go into auto-skim mode.
I am so happy you posted this video. I really want to be a proofreader. I absolutely love reading books! I might not have many reviews up on my site, of course, but that’s because I just started doing it online as an add-on to my site’s original purpose.
I was wondering, how would I exactly get into the biz? How do I start?
But!!!! what kind of kat does the proof reeder have?
I would love to have this job! Thanks for the video. I would also love to know how to get into writing for Harlequin.
Be sure to do plenty of research on Harlequin before jumping into that ring. They’re facing a major lawsuit from a large group of their authors over non-payment of royalties.
Ha! Bless them (and their cats) for their drive for perfection.
Thanks for sharing..
When I work in graphic design/print publication I did my fair share of proofreading. I worked for local newspapers and magazines: on average they require three rounds of proofreading on the final print layout before it goes out the door to the printers. Mind you: that isn’t all of the proofreading a newspaper receives: each article has been separately edited and proofread before it reached the layout department. This is to say that in traditional publishing, many rounds of correction are involved. I’ve found it almost impossible to duplicate this in self-publishing. All of my writing seems to end up with typos, and I keep having to send it back to yet another editor or proofreader for yet another round of correction. It makes me so frustrated sometimes I want to cry, but this of course is the consequence of being “understaffed”. There really SHOULD be three or more people looking at every single work for errors.
If our evidence for the health of the industry is that Harlequin staffs 15 proofreaders, then, yeah, Publishing Is In The Crapper.
The only publishers that will die will be those that don’t adapt and the same goes for bookstores.
The date of Bookmageddon is irrelevant, actually, because e-books need proofreading too! In fact, modern technology is making it so easy to publish an e-book that proofreading should be a boom industry.
Assuming, that is, that self-published authors decide to invest in paying professional proofreaders to check their manuscripts.
PLEASE, PLEASE do – there is nothing more distracting from the flow of a good book than finding it full of avoidable errors.
No author should be the only person to proofread their work because they are too familiar to it and too emotionally attached to be able to spot every error. And there will be errors – trust me!
Good luck to those of you wanting to go into the proofreading profession – it is noble and valuable work that you aspire to do!
By the way, I have no vested interest here – I do not earn my living as a proofreader!
I’m a writer and book promoter – and I will now seamlessly demonstrate that multitasking role by dropping a link into the end of this comment about my new book “Sell Your Books!”::
http://offtheshelfbookpromotions.wordpress.com/sell-your-books/
Thanks for sharing the video, Catherine!