Getting your manuscript copy edited

If you are looking for copy editing online, it is difficult to ensure that you are getting a professional copy editor who will do a good job on your manuscript.

Hardly any authors can copy edit their own writing or know much about what is involved. It is in any case notoriously difficult to spot the errors in your own work. So professional copy editing does make sense, either if you are trying to give your work its best chance when submitting it or, even more crucially, if you are planning to self-publish.

There have been some recent high-profile cases of self-published authors complaining about the standard of freelance copy editing and we know that this can be a problem. (News Review 11 April) But how are you supposed to tell who will do a good job, when the editorial services on the web all sound pretty much the same and it’s tempting to go for the cheapest?

Well, to start with WritersServices has been going for ten years now and all our editors are professionals with experience within the publishing industry. During that time we have provided thousands of satisfied writers with many services, copy editing being just one of them.

It’s our experience though that writers have a continuing feeling of nervousness about copy editing. If your manuscript has been worked on by a copy editor, how can you tell what has been done if you have the changes made on screen (which we recommend)? How can you cope with ‘track changes’ (unless it’s something you’re already familiar with) but at the same time avoid the problem of introducing more errors into the clean version of your manuscript?

Uniquely, WritersServices copy editing will now be returned to you as two files, one with ‘track changes’ which will enable you to see exactly what has been done, and one with all the changes accepted which we recommend you read through and use. This will be standard and we hope it will give you confidence in our copy editing, since you’ll be able to see for yourself that our editors do know their job.