With over eight years of experience copyediting and proofreading, and three years of experience formatting books for various self-publishing services, I know how complicated and confusing the self-publishing process can be.
I offer three services to help you realize your self-publishing goals: copyediting, proofreading, and typesetting. Each of these services occurs toward the end of the publishing timeline; once your book has been run through beta readers, self-editing, a developmental editor, and a line editor, and it is almost ready to be published, that’s where I come in.
Typesetting in particular presents a unique set of challenges for authors. Each self-publishing service has its own requirements for specific trim sizes (including margins and bleed lines), and creating a properly formatted reflowable eBook (text that adjusts based on screen size) can be notoriously difficult. I have worked on novels, poetry collections, memoirs, and children’s books, and am here to help!
A detailed breakdown of what each service entails is below:
Copyediting
- Corrects spelling, grammar, punctuation, and syntax
- Ensures consistency in spelling, capitalization, tense, and hyphenation
- Tracks internal consistency (ensuring that Character A has blonde hair on both page 10 and page 245)
- Completes light fact-checking of any dates or events mentioned (applicable primarily to non-fiction and historical)
- Draws attention to any repetitive words/phrases
Proofreading
- Meticulously corrects the final draft just before layout
- Ensures the manuscript is free from any typographical errors (typos), including any spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors that were missed during the copyedit
- Fixes tiny details like the proper use of em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens
- Catches any other details missed during the copyediting process
Typesetting
- Formats book for publication (setting trim size, margin size, bleed lines)
- Styles chapter starts and ornamental paragraph breaks
- Sets font typeface, size, and line spacing
- Adjusts to remove widows and orphans or maintains squared-off pages (per author’s preference)
- Fixes tiny details that improve readability (paragraph alignment and hyphenation, “smart” quotation marks, etc.)
- Ensures the formatted manuscript is free from any final typos and formatting inconsistencies
You can find examples of my typesetting work on my Portfolio page.
Each project is unique and may require different services, so I encourage you to contact me for a quote!