I save the text of my book as a FTP file and upload it to the publishing site I’m using. The site then displays the book, as it should appear on paper, and I turn each page with the mouse, making sure nothing has gone wrong with any of the text formatting, graphs or images. If that’s OK, then I purchase a proof copy of the book at a discounted price. A week later the book comes in the mail and I go over it, page by page, looking for any problems. I don’t actually read the book again. Any typos that have made it through all of the re-readings I’ve done, are welcome to stay as far as I’m concerned.
I did, however, take the time last week to re-read the bio, which was the last thing I wrote before starting the publishing process. “Buzzer,” I found a problem. I had gotten “twentieth” and “twenty-first” centuries mixed up. That would have had people scratching their heads.
I also found where an image had slipped and was covering up exactly one paragraph of text – completely. I don’t remember how I found it – and the book really could have done without anyone ever reading that particular paragraph. But shift of text would have been repeated on the following pages, which could have rended the table of contents and the index inaccurate.
I’m waiting now, by the mail box, for what I hope will be the last proof copy.