I'm reworking a book that I published 5 years ago. This is not something I recommend ever doing, but here I am. I don't consider myself a perfectionist. I think it would be near impossible to ever send a book out if I was obsessed with perfection. Which doesn't exist, by the way. There's always some little thing that comes up after the book is out. Or sometimes multiple little things... Like dozens of them.
But this book is different. Written after I left Penguin Putnam and before I came to publish with Thomas & Mercer, it was a lone venture. And I don't recommend those. It takes eyes--multiple sets of them--to make a book great. And it takes another set of hands to pry it away from you so that it can go out into the world.
You're not supposed to look back after that.
But I have to.
Just this once.
And then I'll be done... For real.