­I’m launching this blog at midnight on 7/7/07 and nothing has been going right around here. So I thought I’d go with the flow and itemize 7 things that can go wrong with your book if you aren’t careful. Some of them can happen even if you are careful! Why am I adding to your worries? Am I trying to torture you? You’ve been sweating over every word of your book for months, and you’re finally getting ready to publish it, and I come along and tell you horror stories.

Wait! There’s a method to my madness. I’m on your side — I don’t want bad things to happen to your book; in fact, I’m here to help you produce a beautiful, professional-looking book that will sell like crazy.

These 7 things will make you crazy if you don’t work with your designer to head them off. Here’s a list of errors that have shown up in real books by real people (some of the examples are from projects I’ve worked on), followed by best practices to keep them from happening to your book.

1. Title or author name misspelled on the cover
Think that couldn’t possibly happen? Think again! If Ms. Magazine can spell “feminism” wrong on the cover, the rest of us better not get too lackadaisical. It’s easy to miss something so obvious b/c our brains naturally fill in the blanks and we “see” the word as it’s supposed to be. We can learn from other peoples’ mistakes — in this case, Ms. mag — and make sure we proof every single word. Even the words we assume are right.

2. Text reflow
The best way to save time and money is to provide the interior book designer with the final, edited manuscript. If you end up rewriting the text or making substantial edits after the book is typeset, the text will reflow. If, for example, you add two long paragraphs to page 7, the designer must adjust everything from that page until the end of the book. Graphics, charts, and tables must be moved. Chapter openers might also be moved. It can get expensive.

3. Wrong page numbers in the index
This can be avoided by saving the index until the very last. When I work on a book with a client, we go through at least one round of corrections. Sometimes a few rounds are needed to catch all typos and grammatical errors. Sometimes the author needs to rewrite a passage. Text can reflow from one page to the next after a correction is made. If the index is completed before the final corrections are done, it’s possible that the page numbers could end up being wrong in the index. It’s tempting to put the indexer to work before the book is ready, especially when there’s a tight deadline. But an index with the wrong page numbers is worse than no index at all, and you’ll be living with the consequences a lot longer than you’ll remember the delay in deadline.

4. Falling behind schedule
Producing a book is a collaboration of several people — the team includes author(s), editors, proofreaders, designers, possibly an illustrator, a photographer, and the printer. The author may be the production manager, or a designer may fill that role. The key to understanding schedules is this: if one part of the process is delayed or takes longer than planned, the rest of the schedule is also delayed. It’s like dominoes. This may seem obvious, but when you’re in the middle of it, it’s easy to lose sight of this reality and hope that you can still meet the final deadline. Sometimes it’s possible to pick up the slack and get back on track, but it takes clear and open communication to make that happen.

5. Images with the “jaggies”
When the project starts, talk to your designer about your graphics. Send her one or two of your digital images so she can find out right
away if they’ll work. Graphics for print must have a higher resolution than graphics on a computer screen. You can’t take an image from a website and print it unless you don’t care if it’s blurry and pixelated (has the jaggies). Likewise, photos must be scanned at a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi) or resized from 72 dpi in a digital camera to 300 dpi. If your eyes are glazing over at this technical stuff, don’t worry. That’s what you hire a designer for.

6. Photos look bad
A good designer will also know how to enhance your photos so they print well. The designer will work with the printer to set up the correct specs on the photo files. One variable is how much the ink soaks into or stays on top of the paper you’ve chosen. Other variables are contrast, tone, brightness, and/or color. Know that you will see proofs from the printer before the book is printed, and if any of the photos are questionable, you can get high-quality proofs of single pages to see exactly how the photos will print.

7. Missing pages
When I was production manager at a small press, we inherited a book with a section missing. The previous staff had the missing section printed and inserted into each book. Fortunately, this has never happened to any projects I’ve worked on. We always go through the printers’ proofs carefully, and would notice any missing pages at that point. If the printer were to make a mistake after we approved the proofs, they would have to reprint the books. I always work with reputable printers that specialize in books, and we have good working relationships. Sometimes a printer will make a mistake — it does happen. It’s how they handle it that’s important.

And how we handle the ups & downs of book production as a team is what’s important. Invest in good people with integrity and experience, and you’ll end up with a book you’ll be proud of.