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Professional copy editing can help writers improve the presentation of their work and increase its chances of being taken on by a
publisher.
 | Do you know that spelling and grammar are not your strong points? |
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| Do you feel that your messy manuscript would have a better chance of publication if it
were professionally prepared for press? |
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| Do you just want your work prepared for the printer by an expert so
that you know it’s in really good shape? Publishers make sure that all the books they publish are
copy edited before being sent to the printer. However, if you are an unpublished author, you might help
your chances of publication by turning in a clean manuscript in the first place. |
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| Or do you intend to publish
your book yourself (see our Self-publishing service) and want it to
receive the benefit of professional copy editing, so that you can be sure you
will take delivery of a printed book you can be proud of. |
Manuscripts need copy editing. We
strongly advise self-publishers to have their work professionally copy edited
before getting it printed.
If you are not sure about the difference between copy
editing and proof-reading, this article
might help.
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Copy editing
WritersServices Copy editing service can help.
Our copy editor will be a skilled professional with many years of experience of
copy editing, which is a very specific editorial expertise.
| The copy editor will correct your spelling and punctuation, check
the sentence structure, grammar and use of words, and impose consistency, using
standard copy editing procedures throughout. |
| Due to demand from American writers, we have
recruited specialist American copy editors and are now able to offer copy
editing using American spelling and usage. See
our article on this. |
| You will need to decide whether you want your
work copy edited on screen or on hard copy i.e. on paper, and give us clear
instructions: |
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- Hard copy - Since the decision about specific copy-editing changes is yours, as the author of the work, the
manuscript will come back to you with the copy editor’s changes marked up and
you can decide whether to implement them or not. If the editor is doing the work
on 'hard copy', you will then have to input the changes.
- On Screen - Alternatively, we can arrange for your
manuscript to be edited on screen and to give back to you a disk of the
edited manuscript with the suggested changes marked up. You can check
through the changes on screen using the 'track changes'
facility and decide which ones to implement.
Handling Copy
Editing Changes)
- Changes made on screen - The third
alternative is that the copy editor can simply make the changes, working
on screen, and you will get emailed back to you a manuscript which is clean and ready for press. This
is the option we recommend.
If you opt for this solution, we would advise you to read through the
manuscript when you get it back to make sure that you are happy with all
the changes.
What it costs
Copy editing a manuscript is
a demanding and skilled task, with no shortcuts. The hours it requires are reflected in the fee structure, which is
according to the length of the manuscript. Since non-fiction is usually more
taxing to work on and takes more time, we charge more for copy editing
non-fiction manuscripts. On fiction we charge £.00535
per word, with a minimum of £267.50.This
means that a 80,000 word manuscript would cost £.00535 x 80,000
i.e. £428.
On non-fiction we charge £.006 per word, with a minimum of £300.
You can get your word-processor to work out the length
of your manuscript.
Please note that we will need to assess the manuscript
before we can confirm the fee. There is no charge for this assessment, but
please send your manuscript to us as one unzipped Word document to get a quote.
The fee is payable 50% on
placing of the order and 50% when the work is complete and before it is
returned to you. We will email you to
say that the second part of the payment is due.
If your manuscript is in a
very untidy state or needs a heavy copy-edit, we may need to quote you a higher
fee. If this is the case we will email
you with the revised fee before the copy-editor starts work. You can then agree
to go ahead or have the fee already paid refunded.
Please bear in mind that working on screen is more time-consuming and that
flagging up the changes as described in 2 above takes even more time, so these
may be slightly more expensive. If you would like to email us your
manuscript in the first instance, with a note of how you would like the
copy-editing carried out, we would be happy to give you a quote.
We would normally expect to get the copy edited manuscript back to you within
three weeks of receipt of the manuscript and your order, but please remember that many hours of detailed work are
involved, especially if it is a long manuscript or in a particularly bad state. When we send your
quote or your email
confirmation of the order we will let you know if for any reason the work will
take longer than three weeks.
Please send your manuscript as one unzipped Word file, unless it is over 125,000
words, when we recommend splitting it into two files.
A fictionalised account
