The proof is here at last

The proof is here and it looks fantastic! Lightning Source have done a great job and addressed the minor quibbles I had.

My rendering for the front cover is sharper than ever and the red go-faster strip is redder than I thought possible. Inside, the paper is really white and the text looks blacker than other books. It looks so vivid. Most of them seem to use a down market yellowy paper that might be made out of straw. And I think the publishers should have a quiet word with their printers for, by comparison with Lightning Source's results, I think their printers might be watering the ink. The cover for The Horsepower Whisperer looks like it's powered by batteries!

Either that or I'm feeling euphoric.

I haven't seen Bex yet to receive her graphic design analysis. She's probably practising for the London marathon. We're working on the cover for The Wormton Lamb and I got the first version two days with a very excited e-mail about getting excepted for the marathon and how she only had a 1 in 5 chance of getting accepted.

Just thumbing through The Horsepower Whisperer, I can see the improvements that I've made to the text. It's a funny thing but I've nearly lost the ability to actually read. Or rather I've nearly lost the ability to read The Horsepower Whisperer. I just admire the way the words look on the page. All that typesetting has gone to my head. I'm looking for where hyphens might be appropriate.

So tomorrow I'll hand it over to my mate Matt. He volunteered to read it when I showed it to him at the pub quiz because he's a speed reader. There shouldn't be any show stopping typos but I'm blind to The Horsepower Whisperer's text now. I still have reservations about Microsoft Word. From previous blog entries you'll have read about the trouble I've had maintaining the integrity of the formatting.

Matt reckons he should be able to read The Horsepower Whisperer in a weekend or three nights. Phil who works with him say Matt's brilliant at spotting typos. Matt has seen The Horsepower Whisperer but it's actually a big book for it's size. It's 140,000 words and 424 pages. Books of that page count printed elsewhere seem to have a spine of about 30mm. Mine is 20mm despite much nicer paper.

I'm tempted to just order a batch but I'll let Matt do his stuff first. If there aren't any significant errors I'll probably print an initial batch and fix any oddities after Christmas. Early copies might then attract a premium from collectors.