Copy editing

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Editorial Services

Copy editing

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Copy editing service

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?
	Do you feel that your messy manuscript would have a better chance of publication if it were professionally prepared for press?
	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 However, if you are an unpublished author, you might help your chances of publication by turning in a clean manuscript in the first place.
	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.

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:

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.

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