Dog Ear Publishing has for many years provided editorial services to most of the “traditional” publishing houses. There are certain standard editorial processes that each and every book receives when we do this work for a traditional publisher. These processes include proofreading, copyediting, and/or development editing. Copyediting is the single most important service because it can make or break every book’s editorial success.
Proofread - Cost: $0.02/word ($250 minimum)
This service provides a “nuts and bolts” check of your grammar. It is done by an experienced editor who corrects basic errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and syntax through your entire manuscript. It is important to remember that in a proofread, the editor does not make structural suggestions at any level and does not check for the phrases and word order that could lead to misreading. The editor ensures that your text makes sense on a basic level and is as free from error as possible.
Dog Ear recommends a proofread if your work has already been professionally edited. (Many authors are tempted to receive only a proofread because several friends have already reviewed their manuscript. Unless those friends have been professionally trained as editors, however, no matter how much they read or how well they speak or write English, they have likely not spotted less commonly known errors or spotted potentially confusing passages or plot holes and inconsistencies. In such cases, Dog Ear recommends at least a copyedit.)
Copyedit - Cost: $0.025/word ($250 minimum)
"Please let [the editor] know how much I appreciate her work. She has added enormous value to the product. And she has also taken ownership to see to it that this is the best product it can be. I am truly amazed at her skills and commitment. Even seemingly smaller organizational suggestions within sentences of a paragraph makes the text so much better. I told my wife my nickname for [her] is "accept all." There isn't a suggestion that she has made that I have vetoed. Everything she suggests always makes sense. I am very lucky to have her involvement and very grateful for her work! Thanks to you all."
Bob Wagner
The Assassination of JFK: Perspectives A Half-Century Later
Proofreading is good. It catches basic mistakes. Most manuscripts, however, benefit from the services of a copyeditor ,who spends time on structure, flow, and consistency. Our editors work through manuscripts from start to finish, often reading each work in its entirety two or three times. They look for all of the items a proofreading editor seeks but also address sentence structure, paragraph structure, word choice, flow, tense, and consistency. Our editors add queries and suggest basic structural changes. The objective is to improve readability. This is our most used editorial service.
Be aware that although the copyeditor corrects and comments on structure, flow, and consistency, he or she does not generally critique or address the manuscript’s plot development, market appeal, or character development.
Dog Ear recommends a copyedit for most manuscripts. A professionally trained editor, like those at Dog Ear, has been trained not only on how to spot technical and grammatical errors but also on how to spot and correct passages that can be read or misunderstood in ways the author did not intend, how to recognize plot and character inconsistencies, and even how to rearrange paragraphs to more effectively express an idea. Dog Ear’s editors can also streamline and polish your text. We all use redundancies and “filler” words in the course of our everyday lives, but many of these common words and phrases generally serve to weaken rather than strengthen written text. Dog Ear editors recognize and eliminate these to strengthen your text, going above and beyond ensuring that your text is simply clean and technically correct.
Literary Edit - Cost: $0.03/word ($250 minimum)
“Traditional” publishers consider this service, also known as a production edit, the most critical to produce an anticipated best seller. This service is a combination of a copyedit and a literary critique. Because this service also includes all of the tasks performed in a copyedit, the analysis is often more in-depth than in a literary critique. It discusses the greatest strengths in your manuscript as well as areas for improvement, which may include storyline, character development, focus, and overall structure.
If yours is a business or technical book, the literary edit focuses on how well you have communicated your topic and the depth to which you have addressed issues and provided solutions. In a work of fiction or in a nonfiction narrative, the edit focuses on such issues as character development and consistency, stylistic methodologies, and storyline progression.
Dog Ear recommends a literary edit for the author who wants his or her text to receive the technical and stylistic attention of a copyedit as well as the structural attention of a literary critique.
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