It’s a 5-day turnaround, so still good for the release party in honor of Aaron’s book, but just to make double sure, we put on a rush job order.

The postcards we ordered should be here by tomorrow (was hoping for today). Once I have those in my hands, I’ll be footing around downtown passing them out.

All in all, almost time to breathe. Almost. Need to see those boxes of books here. Then breathe.

Also, we got a Press Release written up and sent out. Hate writing those. I don’t know why. Something about it creeps me out. But part of the business.

SEE YOU AT THE PARTY!!

The hope is, with each proofreading session, every error will be caught. Um…no.

It’s like they multiply while you’re not looking. Those stray commas. Them extra spaces. Those O’s mistaken for o’s.

Anyway, caught all of ‘em this time for sure! I swear! And back to the printer. Ready to order the 250 copies for the PARTY!!

Come to the party and you’ll see how perfect the book is.

We’ve been pretty much geeked like this with each next step in the process…with the exception of one: proofreading.

Originally, we had five people read through the manuscript. And we caught a few errors and corrected them right away, all of us happy at how clean the manuscript was to begin with. With each subsequent step, however, we got a bit more lax on it, until at the end, by the time we set up our digital files with the printer to order the proof, I was more obsessed with the poems, the flow of the book, the overall quality and vision of the collection, to focus entirely on the details.

Well, that carelessness has cost us a few dollars because we will have to reload the digital files with a couple of corrections. I can sit here and tell you that in the big scheme of things, the money (80 bucks) won’t be a big deal. But Writ Large Press isn’t Penguin Books and we need to be careful with every bit of resource, which means each dollar spent, each penny.

After the pure joy of having the proof wore off, I noticed an error inside and Kim caught a mistake on the cover. They were truly minor–an extra space on top of one page inside, a missing dash on one of the blurbs on the back cover–but they were mistakes that should have and could have been caught. I can chalk it up to being overextended as a two-person team or say that we’d all just looked at the book too much for too long and had become too close to the material.

But ultimately, what we’re calling it is a lesson, a tripped up baby-step. A reminder that Art, above all things, is not careless.

So other than the monetary loss, everything is go. The corrections are being made, with one last, last look through to check for errors, and we’ll be ready order our first shipment of books to have for the launch at La Cita.

And, after all that, it is truly a beautiful book.