When I Came West (Part Twenty-one)
In August 2008 I began working with a new editor at OU Press who would see me through the copy-editing stage of my book and with a marketing person who asked me to fill out new questionnaires.
The new editor wrote me on my birthday, August 21st, to let me know that a free-lance editor from Indiana would be contacting me to do the final editing on my manuscript before it went into production. Now we reached a stage of imperative deadlines for my book to slip into the project pipeline at OU Press.
On September 25th, I received the edited manuscript from the Indiana editor.
In addition to copy editing she had some concerns about the flow of the story and had made suggestions for revision. I needed to make the changes that I felt were viable and return the manuscript to her by October 22nd. Interesting to me, many of the changes this editor wished to make were a reversal of the changes that Matt Bokovoy had asked me to incorporate.
At this point I did not wish to argue or discuss anything beyond what I needed to do to have this book published. I made all of this editor's changes except for a few which we discussed and came to agreement with over the telephone.
On November 17th, I received word from the OU Press editor that the final manuscript was now in production. She had reviewed the edited version and felt that it looked to be in fine shape, that the Indiana freelance editor and I had made a great team.
She reiterated that the story read very, very well. I was to expect the final page proofs within a couple of months, which would entail one last reading on my part and I would need to be very discerning about making any last minute unnecessary changes.
Any changes at this point in the process, beyond the correction of typos, would be very expensive for the press and I would be charged for any such alterations at a rate of $2.50 for each line affected by a change.
Believe me, I hoped that I would not have to make any changes at all!
