Every year, from February to mid-July, my boss and I go absolutely out of our minds trying to produce our fall catalog of books. There aren't all that many of them, (we have 12 this fall) so it shouldn't be so much stress. Except that it is usually just the two of us. He does the graphics, design, layout; we share scheduling; I do all the editing (on the production side), proofing, routing covers, and maintain one in-house freelancer and work with a small group of off-site freelancers (the number of people I use as freelancers has drastically slimmed in the last year because I've gotten more and more anal retentive). The thing is, one of those books is a huge directory that is primarily stats, poured from a data base, and then copy edited by myself and around 4 other poor souls you should really pity. That bad-boy weighed in at 1,600 pages this year. I almost suffered from a hernia trying the lift the passes of the damned thing. It’s huge. The other books range from 300 pages (easily do-able) to 800 pages (much more difficult), with all the normal run of the mill crap that goes on in publishing—editorial not delivering stuff on time, the occasional freelancer melt-down, and the higher-ups occasionally making me chase them down for weeks for cover-copy approval—but with only 2 full time people and 1 part time person working on them, it’s hectic. Very, very, very hectic. Which is why I tend not to read, write, craft, create, socialize, work out, or do any of my normal activities—I’m too damned exhausted from staring at page proofs and computer screens to want to do anything besides go home and veg. By the time I get there, my mind is usually close to an oatmeal consistency.
BUT, no longer! The busy season is over, so I will commence catching up on all the “me-stuff” I haven’t been doing, including driving my friends crazy with lots and lots of blogs. I hope you’re ready people. ;-)
Labels: editing, work
