The “Joy” of updates

Every time the stock on one of our books runs low, we go through a time-consuming process to prepare it for a reprint. We don’t just take the existing file and send it off to the printer for another print run. Instead, we carefully review the entire text for updates and changes to keep the story current.

Right now, our book Rimfire: The Barrel Racing Morgan Horse, is due for a reprint. But it can’t go to the printer yet…

Rimfire has a few spots of text that need updating. For example, there’s a section in the chapter “Rocket” where Heather, the protagonist, is asked by her mother to go to the grocery store. But Heather doesn’t want to go because she’s expecting a phone call. Today’s young readers wouldn’t understand the dilemma because they’d expect Heather to carry her cell phone. But Heather is expecting her friend to call the family’s home/wall phone, because when the book was written, most children didn’t carry a cell phone. So now, the text needs to be rewritten to reflect this lifestyle change.

Once the text is updated, we’ll redo the design/layout of the book and then, finally, send it off to the printer. For other books, where there are no changes, or perhaps just a few lines of text to update, then we can do that within the existing design/layout and not have to spend additional time redoing the design.