Release Week is here!

Brian Sanderson Blog entry Posted on 10.12.08

Release Week is here!

I've already gotten some emails from people who have seen the book on bookstore shelves! (Bookstores aren't always that good at paying attention to when a book is supposed to be out, and will often put it on shelves when it arrives. That's just fine; I can't imagine how difficult it would be to keep track of when each and every book's specific on-sale date is.) From today on, all sales count toward the 'first week' sales of the novel, so if you can find a copy early, go for it! (The 'first week' ends on Saturday. So there's only officially five days in the release week to pick up a copy.)

I just sent out an email announcement to anyone who's emailed me through my website, so you might be getting one of those soon in your inbox. In case you don't get one, the text is simple. Book Three is out on Tuesday! (Though the email is a lot more long winded.)

A lot of people have been emailing me, asking about the progress of the Copy Edit for Warbreaker. Many are curious at just what a copyedit is, and whether I've hit a rough spot on the Wheel of Time book since the progress has been so slow lately.

Don't worry--work on AMoL is going just fine. No rough points here! I just had to cut back for a few weeks to take care of other obligations. (I believe I warned you about them back in June.) I pushed very, very hard through August and early September on the Wheel of Time book because I knew that I needed to get ahead in order to have a chance of hitting my deadline by December. There were weeks when the percentage bar went up four or even five percent. Lately, it's gone up one percent. Remember, however, that my normal writing goal is 10k a week, and so cutting down to 5k these last few weeks hasn't been as big a stall as it might look. (It's just a big one in comparison to the 20k I was often doing the weeks before.)

One of the big time eaters lately has been the Warbreaker Copy Edit. This is the last chance that I, as a writer, get to look at and change a manuscript before it goes to press. After this, the text is locked into place, and it's very difficult to make changes other than little proofreading tweaks. So I like to take my time on a copyedit and make sure everything is how I want it. I also take a lot of notes during this point for the Annotations, as this is generally my last time reading straight through a book.

The copyedit arrives in a loose leaf form, having already been to a copyeditor. Their job is to do very in-depth line edit, meaning they're not editing for story or character, but instead trying to make sure everything is consistent, properly formatted, and grammatically correct. One of the big things I have to do in a copy edit is approve or reject any changes made by the copyeditor. (Of course, there are rarely things to reject here--but occasionally you do something for stylistic purposes that might not be standard. For instance, in Warbreaker, I wanted to have Kalad's Phantoms capitalized, despite the fact that the copyeditor wanted to make the Phantoms lower case.)

Anyway, for you Wheel of Time readers waiting for me to turn full attention back to AMoL, this copyedit is the last big thing that I had on my plate. I still have to do an Alcatraz 3 copyedit in February or so, but it will be very short. I'm polishing off the last few bits of the Warbreaker copy edit now. The only question now--and it IS a big question--is how much I'll be able to work on AMoL during book tour. I'm hoping to get back to 10k a week by writing in the car during Dave's turns driving or during points when I'm in the hotel waiting for a signing later in the night. We shall see! I'm going to give it my best shot.

As always, folks, thanks for reading! And please consider picking up a copy of Hero of Ages this week.