A galley is a pre-production, typeset “proof” of a book. I have some experience with galleys because I’ve ogled the galleys of my friend, Jenn Doucette’s books (she and her wonderful new book, Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This, will be featured on my blog Feb 23).

But knowing what a galley looks like didn’t diminish my excitement (and nervousness) over seeing the typeset photocopy of my own book for the very first time.

Publishing houses approach galleys in different ways. Some publishers ask their authors to make the majority of changes to their manuscript before the book is typeset. My publisher asks authors to make the changes to the galley itself (their philosophy is that authors worth their salt submit “clean” copy that doesn’t require much editing.

Therefore, edits to the galleys are minor, usually consisting of tweaking words and phrases here and there, proofreading for typos and punctuation errors, and in my case, chopping a book chapter in two (see the first post in this series for more on that subject).

My publisher is giving me the industry-standard one week to scrutinize every word in my galley of The Adoption Decision, to mark changes (in red pen) in the margins, and FedEx whole thing to him. While I’m busy making corrections and additions on my end, two proofreaders at my publishing house are doing the same thing.

When my galley arrives back on my editor’s desk, he’ll merge all the corrections into a clean version, which will then be sent to my librarian friend, Sue Dryer, who’s indexing my book.

As I read, I’m enjoying (for the most part) discovering the ways my editor tweaked my manuscript. Like every great editor, he’s wordsmithing, making what I wrote sound even better.

Other posts in this series:

Titling My Adoption Books: An Insider’s Look into the Publishing Industry

Putting a Lid on It: An Insider’s Look into the Publishing Industry