Lock in Your Manuscript: Copyediting
“Remember, Grammar Nazis: it’s YOU’RE going to die alone.”
-Damien Fahey
To be perfectly clear: when we say you need “a finished manuscript” to start the publishing process, we don’t just mean a document that’s pretty close to your finished book. We don’t mean a file with only a few typos left.
We mean a finished manuscript.
It’s crucial that you get as much of that work out of the way as possible before starting the publishing process. Adding a paragraph now, rather than after the interior layout is finished means the difference between a few minutes and a few hours of work.
This is NOT hyperbole. Getting your manuscript locked prior to publishing often translates to thousands of dollars of savings. It’s worth taking the time to lock everything in thoroughly.
Step 1: Hire a Professional Copy-Editor
I can’t be any clearer about it than this: hire at least one professional copy-editor to review your book.
Don’t rely on spell-check. Don’t ask your friends. Don’t get your neighbor to look it over.
I don’t care how confident you are that there are no mistakes. You’re wrong. They are there, and if you don’t hire professionals to find them, you’ll miss them, and then readers will think you are stupid.
There is a lot of data on this, but average people only detect about 60 percent of errors, and even professionals usually only catch about 85 percent (that is why we have two different people review every manuscript we do for authors at Scribe).
While your read out loud editing will catch a lot of the small, sloppy mistakes and wording issues, there are a whole other set of issues that professional proofreaders are looking for: small grammatical rules that native English speakers often don’t even realize exist.
For example:
- Do you know the difference between an en-dash and an em-dash?
- Do you end sentences in prepositions?
- Do you start too many sentences with conjunctions?
These kinds of mistakes are not life threatening, but they make the difference between a professional book and one that comes across as amateur. And beyond that, if Amazon gets too many reports about typos in your book, they will pull the book down.
There are two distinct types of copyediting services: those that allow you to submit the manuscript and they manage their team internally, and marketplaces that allow you to find your own freelancer. The first is simpler, but the second (marketplaces) tend to be more effective.
Editing Services
If you choose to go with editing services, you’ll likely be charged a flat fee. You can ballpark that these options will cost about $250-750 depending on various factors. You’ll submit the manuscript, and within a week you’ll get back a finished product. Simple.
Here are a few services we’ve tested and recommend:
Marketplaces
The other alternative is to use a marketplace. Most of these options will allow you to list a job for free, and the marketplace will take a percentage of the cost.
The copyeditors will usually work on a per-hour or per-word basis ($20-30 per hour and 0.75-1 cent per word are normal), but some will be open to charging a flat fee as well. The total cost should be similar to the prices above.
Here are a few marketplaces we’ve tested and recommend:
The real benefit of using a marketplace instead of a service is the direct engagement you get with the copyeditor. Not only will you be able to choose someone who seems best suited for your project (and who has been rated well by past clients), but you’ll also be able to convey extra information to them that might be useful in their proofreading work.
Step 2: Working With Your Copy-editor
Once you’ve found the right copy-editor, you’ll need to assign them the job and work with them. We spoke to our team of professionals to gather feedback on what they need out of a job assignment. Here is there advice:
1) Define the Role: As one of our editors said, “Copy-editing is rarely just copy-editing, no matter what the client calls it.” There’s a lot of responsibility that can be put on a copy-editor, and it’s important to be clear about what that responsibility is.
Traditionally, a copy-editors task is to find any mistakes, inconsistencies and errors, like typos and grammatical and spelling mistakes. However, it’s not uncommon (because they’re the last line of defense against a faulty manuscript being released) for them to take on more responsibility.
2) Explain the Audience: Not every book is written in the Queen’s English. For a copy-editor to accurately distinguish between what to edit and what’s an intentional style choice, it’s important for them to understand the audience for the book and the message it’s trying to convey.
This can be as high level as whether or not profanity is okay, or as specific as the country of origin to make sure that the sayings and spellings are correct.
3) Point Out What Needs Work: You can often (although not always) anticipate issues. For example, we recently worked on a book that was written in such a way that it jumped back and forth between past and present tense. We fixed this problem in the manuscript, but it was worth explaining the situation to the proofreader so that she, too, could be on the lookout for similar mistakes.
You can apply this strategy, too. If you know you have a tendency to make sloppy typos or misuse a certain type of punctuation, for example, tell your proofreader. The more clues you can give them as to what they might be looking for, the better your book will be.
Step 3: Finish The Process
Once the copy-editor is done, they should send you back a Word document with all their changes made in Track Changes. This is the industry standard, and it’s worth confirming with them before hiring them that they’ll be tracking the changes for you.
When you receive the document you should expect to find a lot of small tracked changes. Most of these will be obvious mistakes that you’re happy to accept, but some may be phrasing recommendations, or questions about pieces that are unclear.
Some may be spelling or punctuation corrections that are technically accurate, but not commonly used–remember, their job is to follow rules, not make editorial choices.
Sometimes you may want to purposely break rules to stay current or create your unique tone and voice. Be sure to go through all of these changes and make your own decisions about what should be implemented and what shouldn’t.
Step 4: Ready to Publish?
At this point, you should have a manuscript that you’re confident enough to lock in and publish.
We should note that you’ll probably never be 100 percent confident that your manuscript is ready to go. No writer is.
But at some point—generally after all of these steps—there is nothing else left for you to do other than lock it in and put it out. Don’t waste weeks or months trying to get it from 99.9 percent perfect to 100 percent. It’s impossible. Recognize when diminishing marginal returns have set in, and move on.
Once your manuscript is locked, it’s time to get started with the publishing process.