Editing. First I did a thorough edit myself. I tried to be ruthless in cutting unfunny material -- I actually dropped an entire chapter from the book, which needed to be replaced. It took me weeks to get through this edit, but I was very pleased with the final product.
Then I mailed it to my editor, who sent it back with various suggestions. I'd always thought an editor would do more editing, but I was really pleased with how much creative freedom Kensington gave me -- they really wanted it to be my book, and made virtually no suggestions to the overall structure. My editor suggested cutting various jokes or small passages, and suggested an actual joke himself on a few occasions (one of which was much stronger than my original joke -- I reference this one in the Acknowledgments section). I'd say I took his suggestions about half of the time, and ignored them the other half.
One of his suggestions, for instance, was to take out the Lee Iacocca scrotum joke. I was like, "Lose Lee Iacocca's scrotum? Are you nuts?" (Always use double-entendres when talking to your editor. They love wordplay.) I was willing to defend the scrote joke to the death, to scrap the whole book over Lee Iacocca's scrotum if necessary -- but fortunately, he was like, "Hey, we don't have to bag it if you don't want to."
"My double entendre was better," I reminded him.
Test reading. While my editor was reviewing the original manuscript, I also sent it to ten test readers, a diverse cross-section of people (superfans, people who were familiar with ZUG, and people who just barely knew me). I had them rate each chapter in funniness from 1-5, as if they were clicking an article on ZUG. Then I graphed all their answers on a chart. I can't explain how useful this was to me.
The book started off strong, which was good. It also ended strong, which was equally important. We had some problems with the Jerry Springer chapter, so I cut it. (Eventually it was replaced with the Michael Jackson prank.) The "Royal Pain in the Ass" chapter, intended to be one of the cornerstones of the book, got bad reviews, so I went back and generated a ton of additional material for that chapter. Now I think it's one of the book's strongest pieces, as it should be.
Since looking at averages can be dangerous, I also calculated variances for each chapter, so I could see if some chapters got wildly mixed reviews (some did, like the United Nations prank). Netflix and Amazon should do the same thing with their ratings.
Copyediting. My final, final manuscript (note: never use the word "final" in any filename, because it never is) now went to Kensington's copy editor, who was responsible for going through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb (she would mark this as "FINE-TOOTHED COMB"), correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar, and stylistic issues. I knew the book was funny when it came back with little smiley faces in the margins. My editor later told me it was the first time he had ever seen a copyeditor make a personal note to the author that she was enjoying the book -- and this is a guy who's been in the business twenty years. Unfortunately, the business he's been in is prostitution. He's only been an editor for three.
Design. Here I have to single out the great Jeffrey Rutzky, who designed the book, and Elleanore Waka at Kensington, who hired him. You have to understand that most books are text, and the kind of book I wanted to write -- with photos, drawings, charts, footnotes, and all manner of visual chaos -- is very difficult to put together.
When I got back Jeff's first pass at the design, I was just floored. I did not appreciate how the design could make or break a book like PRANK THE MONKEY, until I saw the outstanding job that Jeff did. I really got lucky, not only for his design and layout skill, but also because Jeff took a liking to the book, and poured the same passion into the design of the book that I did in writing it. I could have been assigned a designer that just wanted to get paid, left the book looking like hell, and there wouldn't have been much I could do about it. Instead, I got Jeff (who has authored several gorgeous-looking books of his own).
Proofs. A few months later, I got my first glimpse at the finished book, in the form of a big stack of printed pages. The "proofs" are meant to be the final, final, final chance to make any minor changes or edits. In my case, I had a ton of edits, and while I'm sure I must have seemed a pain in the ass, I really wanted the book to be perfect.
The biggest issue was my fault: when writing the book, I did not realize that pages have a bottom. On the Web, I write as long as I feel like, and you scroll. The fact that book pages have a lower edge where things must get cut off just did not occur to me. This was a huge problem, as half my jokes are reliant on some photo or other visual cue -- and many times they just wouldn't fit on the same page as the text that referenced them. Jeff and I had to do a lot of negotiating, on a case-by-case basis, on exactly how each page should be laid out.
They're called "proofs," I guess, because they're "proof" that the author is a perfectionist asshole. But finally we made all the changes to everyone's satisfaction, I got a new set of proofs, and the chance to make my final, final, final, final changes.
Legal review. Man, was I nervous about this one. My experience with lawyers, like everyone's experience with lawyers, is unpleasant. In my experience, they always want to gut your creative work to go with the most conservative solution. My biggest fear was that they were going to chop huge swaths of the book, taking out every e-mail correspondence and prank phone call, and I'd be left with something that was unsellable.
Imagine my delight and surprise when I got the legal review to find that there were almost no changes to my original manuscript! Due to copyright law, I could not reproduce things like the spammer's e-mail, or the full text of the Chris Rock speech. But I was able to do things like design a new spam mail that captured the flavor of the original, and cut down the Chris Rock quote. These were relatively easy fixes. I meant to buy the lawyer a mug that read "World's Coolest Lawyer," but never got around to it. There would probably be some legal issue with that claim, anyway.
Galleys. Finally, the finished book! The galley arrives at your house fully bound, just like a real book, with everything except the final cover. (It has a temporary paper cover explaining this is a galley copy.) Galleys allow any final, final, final, final, final edits. They can also be sent to the media for early reviews.
By this point, I had read the book approximately 12,000 times. But this was the first time I had read it in book form, which really does change things. Just as text reads differently on a computer screen than on a hard copy, so did the final book seem much more "bookish" when being read in book form.
Blurbs. Just before the book went to press, I sent galleys to a number of famous and semi-famous people and asked them for blurbs. I also turned to ZUG readers for help in The Blurb Project, which didn't end up producing any new leads, although I did talk with Eric Idle, who was ultimately too busy shooting a movie to write me a blurb.
I did get enough blurbs to fill the "Advance Praise" page at the front of the book (which was the last thing Kensington added), along with an "Advance Rejection" page where we listed all the people who wouldn't write reviews for PRANK THE MONKEY. These were all real rejection excuses I received -- including the one from Dave Barry's assistant, who I tried to bribe into passing along the manuscript to Dave by buying her a pair of front-row tickets to a Florida Marlins game. (I had Googled her name beforehand, and knew she was a big fan.) She insisted that she wasn't allowed to accept gifts, and Dave didn't do blurbs anyway, so she sent me back the tickets, unused. I was sad about this for about five minutes, and then you know what I decided? At least I tried. And I got a nice little quote to use at the front of the book. Expensive quote, but a quote nonetheless.
At long last, this million-mile journey was complete. The book was finished, and on its way to the printer. And now the real work began: publicizing this thing. Stay tuned for my last update. (Or two.)
Next: Publicity Whore!