Last week I shipped off nearly 700 copies of the book, to advance buyers and reviewers and some people that helped me along the way. And I'm beginning to get comments back from people who have received their copies. The most consistent comment is that they love the cover, and especially its wonderful colors (the flame-red and orange of a sugar maple in autumn).

A friend who's a physician wrote, "I read your entire book ... and I like the book even more than I liked the draft you gave me earlier. Your explanations are clear, and I like your metaphors and your humor. You represent Shadow Work accurately without proselytizing. Well done!"

A colleague in South Carolina, who received two copies, wrote, "These are so great for people wondering what SW is like.  The woman I gave it too was VERY intrigued and so appreciated the book."

A colleague in Iowa wrote, "I just want you to know that I'm LOVING reading Practically Shameless! It's so easy to read. Congratulations!"

And I find myself wondering, What will I learn during this process of getting feedback on the finished book? I hope I'll learn what worked and what didn't.  Of course, my integrity sensor is going off as I write that, and despite my committed willingness to learn anything that life wants to dish out, I really secretly would like to hear that it all worked wonderfully!
 
I expect I'll also learn what I didn't know when I wrote it, namely, more about the shadows I was writing about, things I couldn't see before.

I'll probably learn about more mistakes in the book. I've already come across a few, and most are very minor. Only one is somewhat egregious (giving someone credit for something that someone else did!), and I'll likely describe it on an Errata page on the website.

One thing I'm learning right now is how to handle the mistakes, which I'm glad to hear from other publishers are pretty much inevitable. Earlier in October, I read the book aloud in a recording booth to create an audio version, and as I was already aware of some mistakes, I decided to correct them in the audio version, even though the slight inconsistency that creates between the audio and printed versions bothers me a bit. I just found I couldn't ignore the mistakes as I read. The second phase of mistake-handling is in getting the book ready to go on Amazon.com with the "Search Inside" feature, which requires an electronic version of the manuscript. This evening I prepared a copy of the manuscript with the corrections noted to send to my layout designer so he can fix them prior to uploading to Amazon.