A few day ago, I received the galley for Love’s Gift, my historical romance, which is due to be released in March. I was very excited and told some friends of mine who aren’t authors. They never heard of a galley in reference to a book.
The word galley goes back a long way, from the ancient days of printing. Before computers, printing was done with metal pieces of the alphabet set in lines and placed into a metal pan, which was called a galley. Despite the advances in printing, the word continues to be used.
Since my father was a journalist, I had the advantage of seeing printers using hot lead to set the news stories for the day. It was rather fascinating, but definitely time consuming and working with hot metal type seemed dangerous to me, but that’s how it was done before computers took over.
I think it was a great idea to do away with the hot lead process.
In today’s publishing world, the galley arrives as a pdf. I read through it, line by line, and make sure there aren’t any mistakes. Unfortunately, there always are things that need fixing. Though at the galley stage, an author cannot make any big changes in the document. When I find an error, I have to record it in a separate document, noting the page number and line number. I cannot make any corrections on the pdf.
After the galley is sent back to the publisher with the corrections, the errors are fixed and the book is ready for publication. So, getting a galley is a huge step toward publication. In fact, you can pre-order the book now at https://www.amazon.com/Loves-Gift-Penelope-Marzec-ebook/dp/B0D49BZ5P4
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