Proofreading Service Explained

Now that you’ve finished your manuscript, and your editor has sent it back with their recommendations, it’s time to take your work to its final stage – the proofread.  This is the last opportunity to have everything checked over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure nothing has slipped through the cracks.  No matter how good your editor is, there will invariably be issues which have somehow managed to remain when they should have been dealt with; this does not reflect negatively on your editor, though, as even the best-selling novels in the world have been published and re-published with errors fixed at various points.

When you come to me to have your manuscript proofread, I will first of all ask you to provide any guides that your editor may have provided you with, so that these can be cross referenced at every point where a character, location, creature, business, or even any proprietary slang is used.

The Service Comprises

• Checking for and correction of:
  • Syntaxical errors
  • Grammatical errors
  • Any punctuation issues
  • Inconsistencies with plot or characters
  • Close repetition
  • General clean-up of dialogue and narrative
• Cross referencing with your editor’s style guide
• Following your editor’s character and location guide
• Making suggestions for general readability and flow
• All edits visible in Track Changes
• Corrections and suggestions will be explained in detail where necessary

Proofreading Rates

While it would be fantastic to simply say “one price fits all”, that isn’t the case with proofreading.  Each author will have a different word count to the next, a different way of conveying their thoughts on paper, and the quality of the initial edit will vary between manuscripts.  Your individual rate will be calculated based on a sample of your manuscript, taken from the middle of the book.  If you submit a relatively clean sample for proofreading, you should expect to pay £5 per 1000 words for the full proofread.  If the sample has obvious issues, suggesting that it would take longer than a typical proofread, we would either ask to see additional pages (to check whether the issues were isolated), or quote at a higher rate per 1000 words.

Typically, my rates are applicable to manuscripts where the sample edit comes in with up to 5% of changes, compared to the overall document size.  If your sample edit requires between 5-10% of changes, then that rate would increase to £10 per 1000 words.  This continues until 20%, at which point the price no longer increases and your manuscript will be edited at £20 per 1000 words, regardless of whether 20% is changed, or 90% is changed.

Timeframe

I will never take on a new client if I have just started work on another manuscript and have them join a queue.  If I am at least half-way through a manuscript, then I’ll make it clear that I wouldn’t be able to start straight away but would certainly be happy to take your project on.  In most cases, I expect a relatively clean manuscript of around 150,000 words to take somewhere in the region of ten-to-fourteen days, and if I think it’ll take longer than I’ll let you know before we even begin the project – I believe in full disclosure at all times.