‘Pudding’ is a lot more polite than what I actually said when I took my first look at the proof copy of A Spoke in the Wheel.
The front cover has come out beautifully; it looks rather better in real life than it does in that photo. The inside… not so much. The text on about half the pages had been misaligned, and came out an odd shade of purple.
The photo below shows (bottom right) one of the offending pages, (bottom left) one of the pages that was just about all right, and (top) a spread from Speak Its Name for comparison.
Since then, I’ve been engaged in correspondence with Lulu, who have been very apologetic and promise that this is very rare. I do hope so. There was an article in the latest edition of The Author by a man who prints his own books, but I feel that this is taking things a bit far even for a control freak like me.
Having said all that, I’m feeling a lot better about the whole thing than I was this time last week. The cover looks good, the ebook looks good, the interior of the paperback will look good when it’s printed properly, and we are on track.
Kathleen Jowitt 