Before you hire a book copyediting service, it is necessary to find a reputable copyediting service. Book copyediting services are offered by many companies these days. You can find them on the internet, in directories, and industry magazines. However, before selecting one of them for your book project, it is important to know what kind of service to ask for and how much it should cost.
Most companies have a standard set of services for book copyediting. However, these companies are not always the best choice for your project. The real problem is that many of them can do more than just book editing, so they will offer you other services instead.
So before you start looking for a company, you should know what kind of service you need and where to look for this service.
You will need one or several of these services:
- Developmental Editing — This type of editing focuses on concept, story structure, and plot development. It looks at the overall flow and clarity as well as product quality and marketability. It also looks at character consistency and integration across chapters and scenes, and it checks for story/character inconsistencies and inaccuracies. This type of editing is usually done by a book editor or a book doctor, and it takes more time than other types of editing to produce the final results.
- Copyediting — Also known as Line Editing, this type of editing concentrates on problems with tone, syntax, grammar, punctuation and usage, word choice, and consistency; it also looks at character integration within scenes.
- Proofreading — It checks for typos, spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, inconsistencies in formatting throughout the document, numbers & symbols that are incorrect or missing.
- Indexing — This is the last step before the manuscript is submitted to production for printing. The indexer follows specific guidelines set up by the publisher, which helps them categorize the book’s content. Indexing ensures that all-important information included in the manuscript is indexed appropriately.
Book copyediting services includes formatting text, images, tables, and figures into specific style guidelines (i.e., font types, font size, margin sizes & styles, etc.).
Many companies offer these services; it is up to you to ask for what you need before they start working on your project. In conclusion, the more specific you are about what you need, the better service you will receive, and the fewer problems your book editing project will have.
