Sneaking things into your book after the deadline

When you hand your book in to the publisher to start the production process, it should be complete and perfect.

It never is.

Everyone is subject to the temptation to sneak things in after the deadline. And you can do this. When the marked-up text of the book comes back from the copy editor, you can always add some text that you forgot and left out of the draft you sent to the publisher.

That is, however, a very bad habit to get into. Anything you add will not get the benefit of being copy edited. The likelihood that it will include errors or inconsistencies with other parts of the book is significant. For example, I edited a book where the author kept trying to add complex graphics and tables after the book had already gone to copy edit. The new graphics and tables were published, including errors we failed to catch. The author, a perfectionist, was heartbroken. But it was his own fault for pursuing such a risky strategy.

These are the only changes to add after the copy edit deadline

Now that I’ve scolded you, I’ll describe the few categories of information you might be willing to sneak in after the copy edit.

• Fixes to errors. Sometimes you just catch mistakes when looking at drafts after you’ve handed them in. In some cases, pre-publication readers may catch errors. Keep a list of these mistakes — there should only be a few — and fix them when the copy-edited manuscript comes back.
• Crucially important events. Current events might make something you wrote obsolete, or add a irresistible new perspective. Authors sometimes add a sentence or two in this situation. Addressing the current event might be more important than the risk of introducing other errors.
• Permissions and fact verification. The right time to start your fact verification emails is three or four weeks before the final draft is handed in. But some people you’ve contacted for reviews will inevitably fail to get back to you by the deadline. If they respond too late but insist on changes (for example, if their title has changed or you got a number wrong), include those necessary edits in what you send back after reviewing copy edits.
• Late information that you’ve planned for. Sometimes you know something important needs to be created after you’ve already handed the book in. For example, in a book I’m working on now, we knew we’d receive a key piece of survey data two weeks after the copy-edit deadline. We wrote that portion of the book with placeholders for the forthcoming data; we’ll fill those in after we get the copy edited draft back. Because we know the risks of this strategy, we’ll be paying close attention to the new content we’re adding. But the there are only two places in the manuscript where it reads “xx%;” we made sure the rest of the draft was as complete and finished as possible.

Especially avoid changes at the page layout stage

Here’s a secret that everyone in publishing knows, but no one tells authors. You can even make change after the copy edit is done and as the pages are being laid out. It’s certainly possible to add or delete text once you see the pages.

Please, please don’t make a habit of this.

In addition to evading copy edit and proofreading passes, such changes can upset the pagination of the manuscript, causing page layout problems elsewhere in the paginated layout in a ripple effect. This drives publishers crazy, increases costs, threatens deadlines, and has an unacceptably high risk of introducing further errors.

Even so, if you find an error at this stage, it’s better to fix it than to leave it. Just try to make a limited number of edits that don’t affect the pagination of the manuscript.

Plan to succeed and you’ll rarely fail

Your plan should be to turn in a complete and perfect manuscript.

You won’t live up to that plan, because none of us is perfect. But if you pursue that objective with discipline, the number of unavoidable late changes will be minimal — and the chances of introducing late errors will be acceptably small.

Plan for perfection and you’ll survive. Fail to take the deadline seriously, and may the Lord have mercy on your author soul — and your reputation with publishers and readers.