Editing for E-Book Publication

So, you’ve decided to be your own publisher . . .

E-book publication offers exciting possibilities for writers to share their work with the world . . . but should you be your own editor?

Most writers will tell you that writing and editing are incompatible efforts—a lot like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. So you create wearing your writer’s hat, then later switch to your editor’s hat and go over the text with a fine-toothed comb. But you can’t be fully objective. You miss things. You don’t get the benefit of another reader’s fresh perspective and experienced eye.

Wordplay Creative Services offers a range of editorial services for e-book publication:

✧ Manuscript evaluation: Maybe you’re still in the early stages of writing and you’re wondering whether you are on the right track. Or you have a finished manuscript, but you are not entirely happy with it and you’re wondering why. Or perhaps you’re ready to publish, but you’d like to run it past another reader for feedback. Wordplay offers a manuscript evaluation at a fixed rate. For more information please see my Manuscript Evaluation page.

✧ Substantive/structural editing: This is the process of working with a manuscript to identify areas that need to be reorganized or substantially revised. It’s a big-picture overhaul.

✧ Stylistic/copy-editing: This involves helping the author identify and address stylistic issues (repetition, run-on sentences, jargon or cliché) as well as correcting errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. This is more like fine-tuning.

✧ Indexing: If your non-fiction book needs an index, you might prefer to hand that tricky task to someone with extensive indexing experience.

✧ Proofreading: You will never be able to catch all the errors that creep into your text. Neither will your Spell-Checker. That’s just the way it is. Another pair of eyes, with years of experience in proofreading text, will help you.

✧ Formatting: E-book publishing takes place across a multitude of different platforms—if you let me know what platform(s) you plan to publish on, I can help you prepare your document to flow into the appropriate format with a minimum of difficulty.

“Extremely important! Don’t publish your book . . . until it has been thoroughly proofread for grammar, spelling and typos. One of the biggest criticisms leveled against self-published authors is that their work is not professional quality. Don’t perpetuate this stereotype. Take pride in your work and invest the necessary efforts to have others proofread and copyedit your book prior to publishing it. . . . Your readers will thank you and your book will be more successful.”

—Mark Coker, Smashwords Style Guide



“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”                    

 —Arthur Plotnik, author of The Elements of Editing and The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts Into Words

Please visit my Selected Projects page to get a sense of the range of my editing experience, and What the Authors Say for reviews from authors I have worked with.

Image courtesy of adamr at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net