Back to bidness, again (501 updated)

September 4, 2012 · 1 comment

Hope you all had a great holiday weekend and a great summer. Now, it’s back to business, at least for me.

In case you were wondering, and I guess you weren’t seeing as you don’t call and you don’t write if you haven’t seen me for a few days (sniff), I was busy over the break completing revisions to the copy-edited manuscript. Fascinating project. I work at a newspaper and I learned that much of what I do here doesn’t carry over to the publishing world, as far as formatting, punctuation, even grammar, in some cases. So this was an education. I am fortunate to have a sharp copy editor (thanks, Taylor), and all I can hope is that he’s able to read all my comments, corrections, and emendations.

Actually, it wasn’t too terrible. Many were formatting and style issues. I did have to doublecheck a few citations and quotations, but that wasn’t too arduous except in cases where I don’t actual have a given book in my possession. Although I have more than 2,000 books scattered all over the house (had to do a lot of running up and down the stairs to find the titles in question; have to organize a bit better), there are a couple I found in various libraries and on-line. A few are in the public domain and so are available in their entirety on-line. I was able to get the required information for the other thanks to previews on Google Books and Amazon. There are just a couple I still have to go back to from my local public library.

So now it’s just a matter of sending it back to Tyler, answering anything that’s illegible, figuring out how to illustrate the darn thing, and waiting for the galleys. Then it’s creating an index and waiting for the fun stuff to begin. I already have one book talk tentatively lined up and look forward to arranging more. My wife thinks I should hire a publicist, but I know this isn’t going to sell a million copies, so I don’t want to lose money on the proposition.

Because of the nature of 501, I think this will appeal to more than just baseball fans. I have visions of it being used in colleges and universities as courses in “baseball and society” become more widespread and professors want a good list of material for assignments.

I don’t know about some of my colleagues who have been at this writing business for a long time. Publishing a book might not be a big deal to them any more, but I think it’s going to be pretty emotional for me when I get a copy of the final product in my hands.

 

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1 Dennis Anderson September 4, 2012 at 9:26 pm

Looking forward to the book. I feel like we’ve been writing it along with you.

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