The digital proof for the cover of my new fantasy novel, the Light Heart of Stone, arrived from Hong Kong in the middle of January. It didn’t look so very different from the printouts Michele and I used when we were pouring over design options. That’s the point, though. The proof should look the same as the original design, apart from being printed on slightly higher quality glossy paper.
The proof of the cover was wrapped around a parcel of dyelines and they were queer things: stapled sections of the interior of the novel, printed on thick, rough-edged paper. They looked really interesting – like chapbooks.
All I had to do was check that everything from my final files had made it onto the proof and dyelines, accurately.
The cover was easy to check. The little chapbooks took much longer. I sat myself at a desk with a long ruler, a print out of the final typeset manuscript, and the chapbooks. I put the proofs and the final manuscript side-by-side worked my way down each page, line-by-line.
I was sad to have to send the dyelines back to Hong Kong. I would have loved to have kept them.
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