EDITING AND PROOFREADING SERVICES
Has your manuscript been edited?
Editing polishes your manuscript like wax on a car. It makes a HUGE difference!
It makes your manuscript crisp, clear and concise. It refines and brings out the best of your writing in a way that is ideal for readability. A good edit is not only about rectifying grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. It also unearths loopholes, plot-holes in the story, character developments, and uncovers crucial and critical elements that you as the author may have missed.
Editing is targeted at improving the overall structure and quality of your manuscript, and those extra sets of eyes can catch typos and sloppy sentences before the book is out in the open. We offer three stages of editing depending on what your manuscript needs and what your personal requirements are, including:
An Evaluation will help you answer questions such as: Is my manuscript worth publishing? Is it a quality manuscript? Does it need a major overhaul or is it ready for publishing after a basic proofread?
A professional editor will read your manuscript intently from start to finish without making any changes. The manuscript is read from the perspective of the publisher, the reader, and more importantly the author. It is, after all, your message that we are working to get across. The reason behind this is to find a common ground, where the author's message or story is appealing to the audience and the reader, which in turn informs the publisher on the necessary steps to take towards final development.
After the manuscript is read, a short report is written, highlighting all the strengths and weaknesses, and assessing what can be accomplished with further revisions.
Critical Editing includes one round of Content Editing, one round of Copy Editing and one round of Line Editing.
A Content Edit scans the overall quality of your manuscript and how it can be improved. It searches and addresses issues related to pacing, structure, theme and overall effectiveness of the story. Is the story engaging and suspenseful? Are the characters well developed? Are there sections that are lagging, slow, dry, or unnecessarily repetitive? Are the dialogues captivating? And what about them pesky plot holes?
A Copy Edit fixes grammatical and spelling errors and polishes up sentence structure. Usually, this process can continue even during the formatting process.
Line Editing takes a closer look at every phrase, how it fits into every line, and how every line makes up a paragraph. This allows for a more structured format in order to provide the best reading experience.
At the end of the day, you as the author get the final say on every change.
As with any piece of writing, there are always opportunities to make it stronger. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to really find the weak points and patch them up.
A proofread is a final set of eyes to read, read, and re-read, searching for any errors, repetitiveness, captivity, plot holes and anything else that may hinder reader engagement.
If perfection is important to you, then a simple and single round of edit is not enough — the more editing done, the better.
A proofread may occur even after the design process to ensure a proper flow of text and to catch any errors missed during the earlier editing process (highly unlikely, but you never know!)