It’s all in the wording…

To my considerable delight, not long ago I received word that a horror novella of mine had won a competition run by a publisher in the UK with the prize being publication as a standalone book.

The competition was for unpublished authors (prior publication in anthologies did not disqualify from being considered ‘unpublished’).

The proof arrived via email for me to proof read. So I went through it very carefully, found some errors on my part and raised some queries.

Where I now became unstuck was in certain matters relating to those edits. The publisher referred me back to the submission rules which were that the submission was to be ‘print ready’. The distinction here was that this meant ‘ready to be directly turned into print’ and not the more usually experienced process of final editing before going into that final proof stage.

This was my misunderstanding. On re-reading the submission rules etc., I now see what they meant. But as usual, I had rushed off to the end point of submission without thinking a little more deeply about this ‘print ready’.

The down side is that I now feel more than a little foolish for not realising that there was a quite specific aspect to the wording that they had used. However the up side is that in agreement with the publisher, I can make those changes and fixes myself, paying more attention to their house style and send it off to them once more for the publishing to proceed. That in turn means a better looking product.

So the lesson is – pay attention to the words.

Lesson learned.

Now if you have an opinion on what I'm blathering about or even just feel like saying hi, then don't be afraid to leave a comment or post something to me via Twitter or Facebook. I don't bite - at least not always.