Proofreading and Editing

It never hurts to have an extra set of eyes to look over your work.  Even after you have been diligent in proofreading yourself, there are often things that can escape your attention (and the spellchecker) or make perfect sense to you but are confusing to others when they read it.  Proofreading helps to catch these problems.

Even the best writers can make mistakes.  Recently, we noticed a typo on the back of a theological book boasting to have sold over 215,000 copies.  It happens to the best of us (and occasionally even escapes the eyes of professional proofreaders!)  That's why we recommend at least a simple proofreading for any book.

We offer two types of proofreading services.  The first is for the text, the second is for the layout.  It is one thing to have good content, it is another have it formatted in a style that is appealing to the eye.

Text Editing

For textual editing we will look for spelling and grammatical errors as well as structural problems such as sentence fragments and run-on sentences.  We will not act as English teachers and critique whether there are too many short sentences or too much dialogue in a scene.  Each writer has their own style and we seek to preserve this rather than make everyone conform to a certain standard.  If there are places where a style becomes distracting however, we will mention it and offer suggestions.

We will return your text to you marked up with our suggestions.  You make the changes that you want to make.  If you don't like our suggestion, don't change the text.  If there are numerous changes that you have made and you would like a second review we can do so at a discount.

Style editing

Style formatting involves making chapter and sub-headings proper sizes and just making sure that the text looks good overall.  This is priced on chapters instead of words because a long chapter may require much less work than editing a couple chapters in a Bible study even though there are many fewer words.

If you purchase both text and style editing at the same time you will get a discount.

See examples of style editing

Refund Promise

Our prices are based on how long we expect a project to take us.  If we edit your work in significantly less time than what we figured for what you paid, we'll refund part of your money.  This promise is especially helpful if your text is only a few thousand words over the limit for a lower price range.  If it takes us longer to proofread your manuscript we'll never charge you more money than your initial payment though.

How long will it take?

We know that you are ready to get your book published and we want to help you with that.  For that reason, we will get your work back to you as soon as possible.  Most times this will be within a week but there are a lot of factors that can change.  Length of manuscript, holidays, and other workload will all play a factor.  The beginning of the month will likely be a day or two slower as well because of doing paperwork from the previous month.  If we expect a significant delay (like being out of town for a week) we will email you and give an estimate when the work will be finished.  If you decide not to wait, we will issue a full refund.

How many words are in my manuscript?

A good rule of thumb is 500 words per full page of text in a word document.  If it is double spaced figure 250-300 words per page.  Usually you can just do a word count and find out exactly how many words you have.

Rates

Save more money when you purchase proofreading as part of a package.