Well, to continue my experiences with Booktrope...the editor turned out to be first-rate, every bit as good as I hoped. If you ever put a book on Booktrope, look for Ross Hardy to be your editor. For this book, I wanted a male editor, not because I'm sexist, but because I hope the book will find an audience among teen-age boys, and I wanted to get the details right. Ross was very helpful with that, and presented suggestions along the way, many of which I accepted. Now the ms. is in the hands of a proofreader, again one of my choice.
Should you think that picking a proofreader isn't such a big deal, let me tell you a brief story about a proofreader we had many years ago when we were doing a YA bio of Captain James Cook for Putnam. The proofreader sent back the manuscript and we saw that she had added copy to our book. It was good copy, and we knew from our research that it was accurate. But it seemed almost too good, so we poked around in our research materials, and found that the proofreader had lifted entire sentences, word for word, from a classic book on the subject. Fortunately, we found that out before the book had gone to the printer's. But if we hadn't, we would have been labeled as plagiarizers--not the proofreaders. So don't take the proofreader for granted.
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