Line & Copyediting

Whereas a Manuscript Assessment looks at your book in overview, line & copyediting looks at the details of your writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

Publishing is a competitive world and whether you want to catch an agent’s eye, or desire to make your mark on the indie world, it’s essential that your book be as polished as possible.  As an author myself, I know the importance of giving our work the best chance of success in a crowded market.

• Your book is nearly ready but you know some of your paragraphs and sentences need polishing and your spelling might need fixed up.
• Maybe there are some ideas or words you’ve repeated, or you sometimes jump from one point-of-view to another.
• Or you’ve written historical fiction and you are not sure if all the words are accurate for that time.

I can help fix those things so that you can get your book ready for market.

How does this work and what does it cost?

I charge for line & copyediting on an hourly basis, offering the level of editing your manuscript needs.

Copyediting has three main levels:

• Light copyediting which focuses on punctuation, grammar and spelling.
• Heavy copyediting which may include rewriting of some sentences and paragraphs to make the meaning of the writing clearer.
• Medium copyediting  is the most common type and sits somewhere between the light and heavy options. This type of copyediting may also involve deleting words and sentences to reduce word count. For example, you might want your book to meet specific genre expectations or you may want to enter your work in a competition with a word-count limit.

You send me approximately 4000 words of your manuscript – sections from near the beginning, middle and end of the book. I read your work, get an idea of the type of editing needed, then draw up a quote.

I can do a sample line & copyedit of 3000 words of your manuscript for AUD $300.  This not only helps me work out how long it will take to edit the manuscript, it will help you know if I’m the editor for you. It’s important that you like my style of editing and feel I’m a good fit for your book.

You can then decide if you want to work with me (I hope you do).

Click here to read my terms and conditions.

Please note that I don’t edit horror, erotica or books with gratuitous sex and violence.