How it works

 

How it works, in detail


First I’ll take a look at your MS to assess what it needs to bring it to a publishable standard. Editing isn’t so critical if the book is for family and friends only, but in such cases I will at least check the text for hard errors – books with obvious mistakes reflect poorly on the editor and publisher as well as on the author. 

I am often told that a friend or relative of the author who is good with words has already edited the manuscript, so no editing is needed. Unfortunately, that is hardly ever true. There's a big difference between the work of a professional book editor and that of someone who is just good at English, particularly if they are simply going through your manuscript as a favour. If you have a friend or relative who is proficient in written English and willing to put in the time, by all means ask them to check your MS – but please do this before you send it to me. How long is your book?

How long should your book be?

A good length for most types of book is somewhere between about 30,000 and 100,000 words. The longer the book, the more it will cost to edit, typeset, print, package and mail, and the higher the sale price that will have to be set.

Our agreement 

Once you decide to go ahead, I’ll send you a letter of agreement confirming the service I am providing, the fees and the terms. I’ll start work after you have indicated your approval and paid the agreed fee. There is usually a short waiting list for editing. 

Communicating with me and sending files

Please use email where possible to send files and advise your requirements. It’s the most efficient way of exchanging information, because we can both file the emails as a record of our discussions and what has been agreed. The details of phone discussions can too easily be lost or confused. 

Sending your manuscript

Manuscripts vary greatly; some need only minor attention to a few points of grammar, punctuation, sentence construction etc, while others may need partial rewriting. I very rarely receive an MS which is publishable as it stands, unless it has already been professionally edited. A book that contains obvious errors of grammar, syntax, sentence construction etc runs the risk of getting picked on by amateur ‘reviewers’ or rival authors who are eager to find fault. This will do neither your reputation nor mine any good. 

Keep the formatting simple

It’s best to keep the document plain and simple – the way it looks on the page does not matter at this stage as long as it’s easy to read and review, because it is still just a manuscript. It doesn’t matter where page breaks and headings fall, nor does it matter what font, size or spacing you use, as the designer will look after all that later (taking your preferences into account). Microsoft Word (or compatible software) allows the author to apply all kinds of elaborate formatting, from automated contents pages to fancy fonts, coloured characters, text boxes and space markers, but at the editing stage, these just get in the way. For editing purposes I usually convert the file to a simple text document, all in one font and size. The formatting will be applied professionally by whoever designs the book. 

Sending your MS

Manuscripts can easily be sent as email attachments, unless you have inserted pictures or graphics which push the file size beyond around 20 megabytes, so there’s no need to post files on a data stick or CD (although I’ll be quite happy to work from these). The book will be edited in Microsoft Word, so please send it as a Word document if you can. I can work from a PDF file, but it will have to be converted to Word for editing, and this can cause formatting difficulties. If you have only a hard copy (paper) manuscript, I can work from that, but it will need to be either scanned to create a digital file or (if not scanner-legible) typed up onto a computer (please don’t send your only copy of a paper manuscript unless you have no option, in case it is lost in transit). 

Pictures (if any) – selecting, captioning and submitting them

If someone else is designing and producing the book and there will be illustrations, I don’t need to know about them to carry out editing (although I’m happy to advise). If I’m also looking after design and production, I’ll need to know for quotation purposes what sort of images you plan to include, roughly how many and where you want them to appear. 

Inserting pictures in Word documents can cause problems, because Word, by default, embeds pictures in a way which messes with the layout and can cause major headaches in editing. It also compresses image files to keep the document file size down, so their quality will be degraded. We can copy your pictures from the MS if you have already inserted them, but it’s best if you supply them separately. The best plan is to insert a caption (description of the picture) where you want each picture to go, but not the picture itself. 

Please rename the image files numerically in the approximate order you want them to appear, eg ‘Jones 01’, ‘Jones 02’ etc. This is very important, particularly if there are many images, as any other approach can create confusion and lead to considerable extra work and possibly extra charges. The captions should be numbered to match. 

Colour or black & white?

The cost of design and artwork is the same whether your pictures are in colour or black and white, or a mixture, but colour will add to print costs and therefore bump up the sale price of your book. One option is for us to put the book on sale with black and white images but print copies for you in colour, if you wish. 

In selecting pictures I suggest you are strict about quality, as poor images may let the book down and make it appear second-rate (an exception can be made for old photos taken in the days before modern cameras). I generally advise not using standard images of things we can all look at on the internet, such as famous places and people, and not including more than one photo taken of the same subject at the same time. 

Please ensure that the image files you supply are large enough to reproduce well – that usually means a file size of at least a few hundred kilobytes (kb). You can send digital images as email attachments, but if they amount to more than a few megabytes, post them to me on a USB drive, or better, send them using a free and easy file transfer service such as www.wetransfer.com. 

Don't copy from the internet (unless you have to)

Images copied from web pages or printed material will probably be far below reproduction quality and will let down the quality of your book, aside from potential copyright issues, so they are best avoided.

Dealing with photographsDea

If you’re scanning photographic prints to create digital files, scan them in the right order at a minimum 300 dpi and save them as sequentially numbered files as above. If you’re posting photographic prints for me to scan, please number them on the back in order (01, 02 etc) and prepare a matching list of captions as above. I’ll scan them and return them safely when I’ve finished with them. We can also edit your pictures for crop (framing), tone, brightness, colour correction etc as needed at small extra cost.

Bear in mind that when a large drawing or graphic is reduced to fit the page of a book, fine detail may disappear or become illegible. Maps, family trees etc may not be reproducible at the size of a book page (the standard size is 5”x8”, or for longer books 6”x9” or possibly 10” x 7” or 10”x8” for very long or heavily-illustrated books – other sizes are available). We’re happy to redraw maps, family trees etc as needed. 

The editing process

When I first receive your MS, I’ll assess it and advise you without obligation what editing work I feel it needs, along with an estimate. The estimated fee will cover editing as advised and then going through it once more to check my work before sending it to you. It also allows for dealing with normal author’s amendments to the edited MS. It will not cover the later editing of new material or rewritten text.

Some books may need (and some authors may ask for) a structural edit, which is a fundamental reshaping of the manuscript, covering every aspect from story and vocabulary to characterisation. Almost all books require a copy edit or line edit, which focuses on the detail, correcting grammatical and syntactical errors, punctuation and spacing, narrative order and exposition (the way the story is told and events are described), spelling mistakes, choice of vocabulary, use of tenses and sentence construction. If I carry out a copy edit, I will advise you on any more fundamental changes I feel your book needs.

What changes will I make?

I will edit a factual manuscript by correcting and improving the text (grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation, handling of direct speech, sentence construction etc) and addressing any problems with narrative order, repetition, unnecessary or missing detail, contradiction or exposition. I will also check and correct any apparent errors of fact I notice, such as historical or geographical information or spellings of place names etc. I will do the same with a work of fiction, as well as addressing any problems with the story, the narrative or the characters. I will not change your writing style, nor will I cut out passages (unless they are obviously repetitive) without prior discussion with you. If there are fundamental issues which I feel need further work by yourself before the MS can be finalised, I’ll advise you on this when I return the edited MS.

Title & chapters

In working on your book I’ll suggest chapter headings if needed and a title (if not already decided) – something which reflects the theme of the book and preferably has not been used before for a similar book (there is no copyright on titles, but a distinctive title will help your book to be found and identified on line and to sell). I’ll add notes of any points which need your attention, such as missing information, lack of important description or confusing or contradictory details.

Please be aware that once your book has been uploaded for sale, it will not be possible to change the title, subtitle or author name (unless the book is published afresh as a completely different book), so do make sure that both are final.

If your work is poetry, I will need to read it through to check for errors such as incorrect spelling, punctuation or spacing. If you would like me to help you with your poems at a slightly more creative level, eg by suggesting a better choice of word here and there or changes which will improve scanning or rhyme, I’ll be happy to do so.

The edited manuscript

When my work is completed I’ll send you the edited manuscript for your approval, usually as an emailed Word file. For practical purposes, I will usually have simplified any elaborate formatting and put the whole MS into the same clear font with standard spacing, justified on the left only for clarity and readability (it will be justified both sides when it’s typeset for the book). I will usually supply a clean version of the edited MS for you to work on, along with a second file showing my changes in Track Changes so that you can check what has been changed if you wish. Any queries or issues for your attention will be shown in marginal notes or in separate advice to you. 

What you need to do

Please read the edited MS carefully through and check that I have correctly amended, adapted, interpreted and arranged your material. You’re bound to have a few corrections and afterthoughts – details you want to add, delete or change. That’s fine – now is the time to do it, because changes after the artwork has been prepared are likely to incur charges. However, if you rewrite passages or add substantial new material that needs to be edited, this may incur an extra fee.

If you specifically want any of the words, eg headings or quoted passages, to be capitalised, italicised or in bold, please do this yourself, either before submitting the MS or after editing. However, excess use of bold lettering or capitals does not work well in books, as it gets in the reader’s way and can look like shouting. If you need to indicate where the emphasis falls because it affects the meaning, it’s best to use italics. It’s common practice to put quoted passages and verse in italics, but that’s largely a matter of taste. Names of ships and works of literature are traditionally italicised. 

Making changes and corrections to the edited Word document

When you receive the edited MS, first save it to your computer as a Word (or Word-compatible) document, then make any changes directly to it, colouring each line you alter (not just a few letters) so I can spot the changed parts and check them. This is quicker than listing and explaining the changes separately, and it avoids any uncertainty about exactly how you want the text to read. Please don’t make any changes without highlighting them in some way, as I’ll have no way of finding and checking them and you may have introduced errors which are not noticed until it’s too late.

If you think I have made a repeated ‘error’, eg in consistently changing an aspect of spelling, spacing, hyphenation or the use or positioning of punctuation, please don’t ‘correct’ it wholesale without reference to me (it’s not unusual, for example, for authors to delete all commas before ‘and’ or ‘but’, having learned this often incorrect ‘rule’ at school). It’s very unlikely that my change is wrong, though there are grey areas in English – in capitalisation, for example, and certain aspects of punctuation – where I am happy to accommodate authors’ preferences.

Will you need a proofreader?

Proofreading is not the same as editing. A proofreader’s job is to check for hard errors in spelling, grammar, typesetting, punctuation, spacing, paging, paragraphing, text positioning etc, and later to ensure that the typeset pages match the manuscript, whereas an editor’s aim is to improve the MS more fundamentally by dealing with


Proofreading is not the same as editing. A proofreader’s job is to check for hard errors in spelling, grammar, typesetting, punctuation, spacing, paging, paragraphing, text positioning etc, and later to ensure that the typeset pages match the manuscript, whereas an editor’s aim is to improve the MS more fundamentally


Will you need a proofreader?

Proofreading is not the same as editing. A proofreader’s job is to check for hard errors in spelling, grammar, typesetting, punctuation, spacing, paging, paragraphing, text positioning etc, and later to ensure that the typeset pages match the manuscript, whereas an editor’s aim is to improve the MS more fundamentally

Will you need a proofreader?

Proofreading is not the same as editing. A proofreader’s job is to check for hard errors in spelling, grammar, typesetting, punctuation, spacing, paging, paragraphing, text positioning etc, and later to ensure that the typeset pages match the manuscript, whereas an editor’s aim is to improve the MS more fundamentally






such problems as confused or disjointed narrative, unnatural-sounding direct speech, clumsy style or sentence construction, repetition, incorrect use of words and problems with content or exposition, as well as flagging up problems with story, description or characterisation. Of course, the editor will also correct grammar, punctuation etc, but proofreading puts a final magnifying glass over the text before it’s committed to the presses. No editor can guarantee an error-free manuscript. Nor can a proofreader, but proofreading should pick up any remaining errors. In practice, as proofreading often costs as much again as editing, most authors choose to manage without. 
Indexing
Some factual books may benefit from an index. Note that indexing is not an automated process – it takes time and understanding. It’s really up to you as author to make a list of the terms you want included. I suggest you don’t attempt to include every person, place or organisation mentioned in your book, just those it has something to say about, otherwise your index may be unduly long and unwieldy. Indexing cannot be completed until final artwork is done, because the page numbers of some of the words referenced may change. When you have final artwork, you will need to go through the text and search for every instance of each term that ought to be included, adding all the page numbers to the index. This is quite a laborious job, but I can do it for you (at extra cost) if you wish.
Design and production
If you are making your own arrangements for design, production and publishing, this is the end of the process. However, if you would like me to proceed to having your book designed, printed and perhaps published, I will next pass it to a designer. The following sections deal with the procedures involved. 
Cover design and text artwork
We’ll be happy to take any ideas for the cover that you may have on board as a starting point and may well be able to use an image supplied by you. Don’t worry if you don’t have anything suitable – we can usually find a photo or artwork from an image library that reflects the title, theme and content. Library images are available for practically anything you can imagine, although if you have a very specific requirement, for example if you’d like it to portray a character or a particular location described in the book, we may suggest commissioning an illustrator at extra cost. 
It’s not unusual for an author to tell us that they have already had a cover done by an artistic friend, but we often find that the design does not properly reflect the content and theme of the book or has not been designed to accommodate the title, subtitle and author’s name. Even if it is usable we still have to create the cover artwork around it, so there is little if any cost saving. Creating cover designs and preparing print-ready book artwork are specialised jobs which really need to be left to the professionals, using dedicated book design software (eg Quark or InDesign, rather than Microsoft Publisher or Photoshop) to produce files to the printer’s technical specifications.
We’ll add a copyright page, and if I am publishing the book on Amazon for you, I or Amazon will allocate an ISBN (please don’t purchase your own – it will cost you far more and I won’t be able to use it).
Checking our artwork for the cover and text (PDF files)
Our initial cover design will be provisional pending your comments, so it will not be of finished quality and may carry copyright imprints, which will disappear once we buy reproduction rights and download a high-resolution image file.
Along with the cover design, we will email you artwork for the text as a PDF file. The text (though not the layout) should be exactly the same as the edited typescript you have approved, and in an ideal world you should not have to make any further corrections. However it must be your responsibility as author to check that everything is correct before we go to press. You may well pick up previously unnoticed errors, and the typographical process can introduce glitches such as faulty line breaks and misplaced text (there’s no charge for correcting these). 
How to list your changes
To  help, I’ll send you an amendment form so you can note any such changes, listing page number, line number, old (wrong) text and new (correct) text. Save the form to your computer so you can fill it in. Please list each phrase or line to be changed in full, not just one or two words, so I can find your changes from your form using wordsearch. When you’re done, return the form as a Word file attached to an email.
Note that justifying text will cause variations in the spaces between words, so that some have large gaps between them and others appear almost to touch – this is normal, but in extreme cases we can rearrange the words to make the text look better. 
If you want to change a few words here and there at the artwork stage that’s no problem, but sometimes an author, on seeing their book typeset for the first time, will send us major revisions or additions which really should have been dealt with on the manuscript. Unfortunately it is much more laborious and expensive to make changes to the designed book text in the studio than at the editing stage, and if we go back and start again with a new Word file, we’ll have to run the setting all over again, so either way, there’s likely to be a substantial charge for the extra work. This is why it’s important to be sure you’re happy with the edited manuscript before it goes to the studio.
Publishing 
As I am not a publisher I do not have access to the book trade or the retail chains, but I can put your book on Amazon if you wish, or advise you how to do it (see below). Whether we like it or not, Amazon now has almost 80% of the entire world book market. You may be able to get your local retailers to accept copies, but be aware that although it’s nice to see your book on the shelves of your local shop, there is very rarely any profit in these sales; the retailers will pay no more than 40-45% of the cover price for their copies, which is likely to barely cover the cost of printing them, and they will usually insist on sale or return, so you may end up having to buy them back.
If your book has commercial potential and you would like it to be listed in the trade so that it can be ordered from bookshops, I can hand the design, production and publishing side over to Mereo Books, a full-house self-publisher with whom I work closely (Mereo will not normally publish a book which it has not designed and produced). This costs substantially more, but as Mereo is a recognised publisher, its titles are listed in the book trade through the Neilsen system, which means retailers can order copies from the wholesalers. This does not however mean your book will be stocked in the bookshops, because with several million books on the market no retailer can stock more than a tiny fraction of the available titles – naturally they choose the most commercial ones, usually by known authors whose earlier books have sold well. 
Publishing on Amazon 
If you wish, when you have approved the text artwork and cover and all amendments have been done to your satisfaction, I can upload your book to Amazon as a paperback and/or eBook using my KDP Amazon account, or you can open an account so you can do it yourself. If I do it, I will look after the listing and monitor sales, sending any royalties to you periodically (subject to a minimum receipt of £10 – smaller sums will be rolled over). I will also order any books you require at any time from Amazon or an independent printer and have them delivered to you (see ‘printing’). If you are planning promotion/PR activity it’s important to get this under way before the book goes on sale, so once I have ordered your own copies I will take it off sale until an agreed date.
Royalties
Unless we agree another arrangement, I will pass on to you 70% of all royalties, along with a report listing the details of sales. 
If you prefer to put your book on Amazon yourself by opening your own author account, you will of course keep 100% of the royalties. I’ll be happy to explain how to do this. In that case all future responsibility for the listing will pass to you.
The standard product is a paperback. I can arrange for a hardback version as well if you wish, but this will take longer and add extra cost, because of the board cover and the need to design and print a dust jacket. Hardbacks with jackets cost around twice as much to print as paperbacks. I can also arrange formatting of your book as a Kindle eBook and upload this to Amazon. The charge for this depends on the length and complexity of the book. 
Printing
If I am publishing your book on Amazon (KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing) I can usually also use Amazon for printing the copies you require. Once the book files are approved by the KDP computer I can order copies for you at the author price, which is typically around 35-40% of the sale price. Amazon printing is usually satisfactory for text-only books, but with colour content it is slightly different. Amazon offers only very limited choices of paper for cover and text, so if photo reproduction quality is important, it may be better for me to arrange to get your books done by an independent printer, even though this may cost more on small quantities. The minimum run for independent printing is 20 copies. 
Amazon royalties
The calculation of royalties is complicated. Amazon have an algorithm which works them out – the web form invites you to set a retail price (above a certain minimum), and the royalty is calculated on a sliding scale. A price needs to be set which gives a worthwhile royalty (eg around £2-3) without making the price too high. 
Sometimes Amazon will cut the price of your book, without reference to me or the author. This is simply to help sales – you’ll still get the royalty you would have received for the full price. 
After your book is published
Don’t worry if someone spots a minor error as soon as the book is out (it happens all the time) – most readers simply won’t notice, or care. Better to wait until the book has been out a few weeks and keep a list of changes that come to your attention, then ask me to revise the artwork and upload new files. There is usually a charge each time the files have to be revised and reuploaded, plus a charge for the studio time required, particularly if the changes are substantial or affect the page breaks, so that the artwork has to be adjusted for all the pages following.
Rights
Whether or not I publish your book you will continue to own all rights to it, to the edited text, to your original text and to all other material you supply before and after editing. You may use our artwork for your own purposes at any time, once I have received full payment for the work. 
Will your book sell? 
If you’re publishing your book for the satisfaction of having your work in print, and to share it with friends and relatives, great. If you’re publishing it in the hope of making money, I advise caution. More than two million books are now published every year, with over 32 million titles on sale from Amazon, and the vast majority of them will never sell more than a few copies. If your book is highly unusual or original, topical or controversial, or you are well known and have a following, you may have a chance of getting some return on the costs of publishing. Even then, you will need to invest time and money in publicity. 
However, if your book does sell well, there are considerable advantages: you will be in control of the book and the publishing process, and you stand to make far more money per sold copy than you would with a trade publisher. 
Getting sales
I do not act as an agent and don’t have the resources to promote books myself, but I am happy to advise you in general terms how to go about it. The main routes are:
• Word of mouth – tell your friends.
• Social media – circulate your contacts with the details of the book. You could even record a clip about it for YouTube.
• Local news media – tell your local paper, radio station or news website about your book, and offer a copy for review. This may get you some useful publicity if the book is topical or if you are well-known. It is not so easy for fiction, as journalists are mainly looking for the true stories behind authors and their books. 
• Specialist media – if your book is about a specific topic, from local history to beekeeping, circulate the relevant specialist media with details of it, and perhaps a review copy. You may be able to win some useful sales this way, particularly if you are a recognised authority on the topic. 
• Reviews – invite your contacts to review your book on Amazon (beware of asking family members to do this as Amazon is very strict about the probity of reviews). All kinds of media, from magazines to websites and radio programmes, may be prepared to review your book, but to do this properly you really need to:
• Best of all, though expensive, hire a PR consultant, preferably a book PR specialist who may be able to win local or national media coverage for your book, including reviews. I can supply details of some UK PR consultants who specialise in books.
Amazon has a number of resources you can use to promote books – see Promote Your Book (amazon.com) or set up an author page at Author Central (amazon.com). To open your own author account, go to Create a KDP Account (amazon.com).


  
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