There’s been a bit of a gap in this series which was caused by delays in the editing process and my copy editor was changed. This left me with a three week gap when nothing seemed to be happening with my new book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press.
The editing process for a book takes several stages. With Microsoft Press in my case the chapters first go to a technical editor. This is the person whose job it is to check through everything you have said about Windows and technology and to confirm that everything is correct. This is quite a detailed process and includes such detail as the correct processes involved in completing a set of instructions, the right name for an open dialog window and so on.
It’s sometimes surprising how useful the editing process can be and you’d be amazed what types of error can slip through by mistake. All it takes is for a minor distraction, or for the author to be thinking ahead and the wrong word slips into a paragraph.
The next stage is copy editing and Paul Thurrott, of WIndows 7 Secrets fame from Wiley and Son has said that in the past this process has almost brought him to tears. I can see why and it’s entirely dependant on the copy editor you’re assigned.
I’ve had two, the first one just briefly. I won’t go into the reasons for the change but its very clear that different copy editors have very different approaches to the job, and very different ideas of what makes a good read. On the whole I’m delighted with the work my copy editor is doing but by this point the book becomes slow going as you have to go through all the track changes carefully but, as all the original text and any intermediate changes are there too, it all becomes incredibly messy. Below is one paragraph from the book demonstrating what I mean…
You can click on the image to see it full size. You can see that large amounts of the text are crossed out or unavailable and that the editing not just covers sentences or paragraphs, but individual words in those paragraphs and then even sometimes individual letters in single words. It’s all very confusing and, I have say, isn’t something I’ve been able to concentrate on for more than a couple of hours at a time without getting a headache.
It’s interesting to see though how a professional copy editor will change and rearrange your words for a commercial book. The language has ended up more clear than it was in my self-published Windows 7 Power Users Guide which was, when it came out a year ago, praised for its clarity of language.
There are a couple more editing steps after this that we haven’t reached with this book yet and they are the first and final layout proofs for the book. Both of these will come through as PDFs and will, no doubt, be much harder to comment on as a result.
The good part in all of this, at least from the point of view of writing for Microsoft Press, is that the author still has editorial control over their work. The amount of control afforded me during the writing of this book still surprises me, especially as it’s only my first book for the company. It’s wonderful to have though.
So this is it really, this is the full process of writing a Windows 7 book and writing for Microsoft Press. I’ll be posting back here next month when the book is finally released with photos of the first unboxing 
Keep and eye out on Windows 7 News too for a fantastic competition giveaway.
