Your manuscript is written. You don’t want to make any substantial changes to it.
You feel your text is ready to be prepared by a professional editor.
A good copyeditor understands how to help your reader absorb themselves in your book without stumbling over typos or errors.
When you need a copyedit
You are confident that your manuscript is pretty much the best you can make it, so far as content and structure go.
In the past few weeks, you might have spent hours poring over it, tinkering with bits here and there, wondering whether you would ever be able to tell when it was finished.
That’s the time to hand it over to a copyeditor.
Scary!
Your book is about to go out into the world.
It will be read by people who don’t know you. They won’t make allowances.
"To err is human."
You have a niggling doubt that you might have misspelt or misused some words.
Maybe you don’t feel 100% confident that you have used commas or hyphens consistently.
Or maybe you worry you have overlooked some fundamental errors. We all make them.
What will a copyedit do?
Copyediting is not rewriting. Nor does it change the structure of a written work.
Copyediting provides another pair of eyes on your work: eyes that are trained, professional, and supportive.
Copyediting looks at spelling, at whether the grammar is right and if sentences are correctly punctuated.
Two rules I adopt in copyediting:
📕 If the language is correct and clear, don’t mess with it.
📕 Would the intended reader of this book understand what is written?
What you want from a copyedit
As a writer, you don’t want someone changing your words because they think it “sounds better”.
You want the things that are actually wrong or confusing to be put right.
You want the grammar, spelling, and punctuation to be correct.
You want accuracy and consistency.
That’s the way to make sure they will enjoy what you’ve written.
My process
I work on your manuscript in MS Word. I provide you with a complete mark-up of all changes I make.
I start by cleaning the manuscript to ensure it is free from all hidden code that can creep in during the writing process. That code may interfere with the eventual formatting process undertaken by your book formatter.
I ensure Word Styles are used, correctly coded and applied; this ensures that both headings and running text are consistent and clear and that the table of contents works correctly.
Once I am certain the “engineering” of the document is correct, I then start work on the words, checking for accuracy, completeness, and consistent usage in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. As I work, I build a Style Sheet specially for your work, to record editorial decisions and to keep the editing consistent.
I aim for a smooth reading experience where no mistakes interrupt the reader’s concentration and the meaning is clear and unambiguous.
When I have completed the copyedit, I send you:
1. An editorial report explaining the edits
2. A tracked mark-up in Word
3. A clean copy of your manuscript
4. A style sheet that notes the decisions taken to govern the editing
5. Step-by-step directions for taking your MS forward to the publication stage.
How much will it cost?
I provide a quote tailored to each project, taking into account the word count and features (illustrations, footnotes, references, etc.) of the manuscript, the deadline, whether you require fact-checking, and so on.
How much will it cost?
As a very rough guide, my charge may average out at between £0.02 and £0.04 per word, and I usually require three weeks to copyedit a manuscript of 60,000 – 80,000 words.
