It has been proofing week at Casa Holland, with the usual interruptions. An eye test on Monday resulted in... nothing, so good news. My prescription hadn't changed enough to require new glasses, so I've avoided that cost for another couple of years. The eye strain is down to too much time in front of the computer, I was told, and I need to take more breaks — so from now on I can claim my innate laziness is actually medical advice from a trained optometrist.
My proofs arrived late on Friday and I spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday reading a physical copy of The Trials Of Hank Janson from cover to cover for the first time — I was darting around the text somewhat when I was doing the revisions and checking everything on screen, so this has been a real pleasure. I think it's a damn good book. It was good when it appeared in 2004 and was nominated for an award by the Crime Writers' Association, the prestigious Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction; I've been able to add more information that wasn't available to me back twenty years ago and I have reinstated a chapter that was cut from the earlier edition. I keep telling people the new version is 5% better because it's 5% bigger, but it's actually 7% (better and bigger!).
Physically, the book is taller than the old edition, so it has 26 fewer pages despite being 6,800 words longer, meaning that each page is 16% better. And that's scientifically provable!
The read-through highlighted a few odds and ends that needed to be cleared up, mostly typos but one weird glitch that meant that when I converted footnotes to endnotes for the Kindle edition it mysteriously added a blank note. Fixed now, but I still don't know why it happened. Everything was uploaded on Wednesday and Amazon takes up to 72 hours to publish.
Of course, the moment I hit the "publish" button, I became aware of a typo, a Spanish word that I had managed to misspell. Unfortunately, you can't do anything about it until the book goes live, so I've had to re-upload the text. All very time consuming.
Good things come to those who wait, and I'm now looking forward to getting my hands on some finished copies of the book and getting them into the hands of reviewers. I also need to sort out a page for the Bear Alley Books site, post various links and start promoting the book wherever I can. Spread the word to your friends! And don't forget to mention: it's 16% better than the first edition. You can't argue with maths!
While I'm expecting most sales will be done through Amazon, I'll only be able to supply signed copies from here, so if you think that's something you would like, drop me a line at the usual address (the one just below the photo, top left) and I'll get one sent, post haste, once I have copies in stock.
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