Literary Readiness

The following is taken from an e-mail that my editor sent me. It'll give me an idea of what to expect for the next few months. I'm done with the major revisions. It goes to copyeditors now.

"Copyediting takes about a week; once I have edits returned, I'll email them to you for your approval. I'll explain how this works when we're there but in short what I'll need for you to do is email me back the document with any tweaks, revisions per the copyeditors instructions. I'm guessing that I'd send this to you on Sept 11, so the faster you can go through the edits (and they'll be fairly light) the faster I can get the book typeset.

"My hunch is that the book will be typeset by Sept 20 or 21. From there galleys get printed, taking another week. That said, we ought to have galleys in hand around Sept 27-Oct 2. These will be uncorrected, so while galleys are being mailed, I'm going to send typeset pages to you and to a professional proofer for one last round. This will be your last and final chance to correct or add anything. I stress this because after you retrun typeset pages, that's it, so you'll want to make sure we have everything including acknowledgements, dedication, etc.

"We'll collate your corrections with the proofers and this will be the book that goes to press. Actual printed books should be here about Novemebr 20. That's a lot to take in so let me know if you have any questions. Also, now is the time to consider blurbs. Depending on who the writers are and how well you or I know them, it might be ok to send manuscript pages. Things can get really rushed by year end so I want to warn you that the pace can turn brisk out of nowhere and the production dept might ask from out of nowhere to have blurbs turned in right away. Just an FYI"