Words of the Week: famous, renown, notorious
Famous is emotionally neutral. A famous person is well known.
Renown has a positive connotation. A person of great renown is famous for a good reason—usually because he or she excels in his or her field.
Notorious has a negative connotation. A notorious person, or a person with great notoriety, is famous for something bad. People misuse this word all the time, but now you won’t.
Writer’s Word of the Week: Galley or Galleys.
Also known as a galley proof or sometimes called “first pages.” After your editor has gone through a substantive edit and a line edit, the manuscript may go to the design department, where it is laid out as it will be printed. Galleys used to be long sheets of paper but now they are usually printed on regular 8.5 x 11 sheets or may even be digital. Writers are usually sent the galleys for “one last look” before the book goes to the printer. As the writer reads over the copy, the publisher’s proofreaders will also be checking it. Writers are urged to avoid making any major changes at this point, but to highlight any typos, bad breaks in a hyphenated word, inconsistent formatting, etc.
If you are self-publishing, the manuscript you upload should have already been through this process—you should have had your manuscript edited and proofed, because you are technically uploading the galley. Ingram Spark will actually send you a digital proof with the cover for you to check, and Amazon KDP lets you preview the document online. Don’t ignore this—for some reason, errors tend to jump out at us when we’re looking at them on a formatted page. If you find a mistake, fix it in the original file, upload it again, and repeat the process. You can fix mistakes later, but it’s much easier to repair them at the proof stage.
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