The Difference between Copyediting and Proofreading

A publisher I’ve worked with a little bit in the scholarly field has an interesting acquisitions and distribution method that I won’t get into here, but the manuscripts the publisher accepts are often not in great shape. As far as I can tell, the publisher — let’s call it FN Books — agrees to print the book, then sends it out to an editor for whatever is necessary to make the book publishable. That includes formatting the Word document to precise standards, because the Word document is going to serve as the image for the printed volume. I’ve seen some blog postings about this press from the authors’ perspective, and the reports are about 50/50. One of the issues is that some universities won’t consider books that FN Books publishes when assessing professors for promotions, tenure, and so on. It’s not a vanity press, but the business model is unique, and to describe it would give away the company’s identity . . . for those who are familiar with the field. If you’re just dying to know the company, you can email me. I’ve only worked for one author publishing with FN, and I don’t think my experience was that bad  —  mostly because the work was interesting and the author was friendly and entertaining. But I just finished writing an email to the production editor requesting to be taken off of its recommended vendors list.

Two problems:

1. Lot of tire-kicking. I don’t mind some of that from individual authors, but a press that sends me three or four people over a few months with faulty instructions and little knowledge is more trouble than it’s worth. The authors don’t know what they’re looking for, and the back-and-forth is nonproductive for all concerned.

2. The aforementioned faulty instructions. I don’t blame the authors. I blame the press.

The typical query from the author is for a “bid on proofreading a manuscript.” As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, manuscripts are for copyediting, and that’s what most authors have in mind when they say “proofread a manuscript.” The authors want someone to perform quality control: grammar, spelling, sentence structure, consistency. . . . I could rattle off another half-dozen things that authors will say “yes” to if I ask them what exactly they want me to do. I explain that what they want is copyediting.

I told the story a few years ago of a screw-up on my part that led to three hours of midnight panic and a run of semi-hostile phone calls and emails with the author. I point to that as about the only situation I can think of where I actually should have proofread a manuscript. The author is severely dyslexic, but a very good writer, and he wanted not a word or comma changed. I did a standard copyedit. He was looking for the most basic of errors that you’d expect from a seriously dyslexic writer working on a book, and he flipped out when he saw what I did (in retrospect, I didn’t understand the author’s desires. Mea culpa). Hence the emails, the calls, and two hours of me backtracking 95 percent of the changes in the Word document. All’s okay between the author and me now. I hope.

The issue is that FN Books gives its authors the instruction that, to have the book published, someone needs to “proofread the manuscript.” FN then sends the authors off into the ether with a list of recommended editors.

Forthwith, I give you the opening paragraph of a sample chapter that an author sent me a few weeks back, looking for a bid on the work and requesting a sample edit. I feel bad reproducing this excerpt on the blog for fear of embarrassing the author, but I also feel that this text will never be published in the following form. If it is, then shame on everyone concerned.

Strap in, folks.

To begin with Western countries that had a gloomy history with Africa thought approaching the post-colonial continent with cautious but also was tactful, international institution in this case used by the former as a mediator or rather they became an ideal platform for powerful countries to pursue their global agendas. Power always instrumentalised and maintained through discursive practice. A practice that proclaimed the blessings of a new era is globalisation under neo liberal market policies, global governance, and multilateralism and new paradigms were set in thorough out the world using these non-economic base. Some joined some did not others watched but those who joined succumbed to governmentality hence the subjectivity.

After picking my jaw off the dungeon floor, I wrote the author. You can file this correspondence under “Not really wanting the job, so putting in a ridiculous bid for it, knowing that even if the author paid my son’s college tuition for a few years, it probably still wouldn’t be worth the headache” [fledgling editors, take note. And you can use the copy below without crediting me]:

While I’ve worked on a number of academic books about African resources, societies, and economies (mostly through XXX Press; also through YYY and ZZZ), they have all come to me after having been through the usual publishing and in-house editorial channels. That is, the books are basically readable and understandable when they come to me. And most of my work is done for academic publishers, so an academic presentation doesn’t faze me. [UPDATE 2/9/2012: Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader for calling me to task on an error that formerly appeared here.]

The chapter you’ve attached would require an entire rewrite to be comprehensible to an English-speaking (-reading) audience. While I’ve worked on numerous occasions with authors for whom English is not their primary language, usually I can make a pretty good stab at discerning what they’re discussing. I’m afraid that the chapter attached doesn’t lend itself to such easy interpretation. Working on this book would entail not only a complete rewrite, but likely much in the way of author/editor contact.

My bid for the editing would be $40 per manuscript page, and let’s define a standardized manuscript page as 265 words, which includes all notes and bibliographies. I would ask for eight weeks turnaround.

Proofreading would be done at an entirely separate stage -- after the book has been edited and formatted according to LN’s directions. Three dollars per page would be the rate there, but understand that it would involve no rewriting, but only reading for typographical errors.

Formatting: I would do that at the same time as the editing, at no additional charge.

Forty dollars per manuscript page. That’s roughly ten times my base rate for editing. And it still wouldn’t have been enough. Guaranteed. 

The author didn’t blink, and I admire the hell out of that:

Thank you for your reply. Yet I still need to see your quality of editing by obliging to my request as per my email.  When it comes to rewriting, I will not agree to it and my work had been read accepted to by English speaking community before. So if you wish, I can consider you doing my work, but only if I can see your editing first.

Wow. Sounds like the author might not have minded the $40/page bid. Fledgling editors, take note again: When you’re dealing with an author overseas, sometimes it helps that the dollar sucks. 

My response:

I don’t see how the present manuscript can be published without almost an entire rewrite. If that’s not an option, then I’ll have to pass on the job.

Thanks.

Craziness averted. It’s also called setting boundaries. (Homies, is this the most useful LoD post in history, or what?)

Now, would you believe that while this episode was taking place, I received an email from my dear brother, who — wait for the punch line, folks — is a proofreader working a few different jobs in NYC?

[Brief interlude: What the hell was going on in the Land family that it created two proofreaders? Well, Mom was a special ed. teacher, but not until I was twelve years old — and my brother is five years my senior. Dad was a car dealer who came up just shy of finishing college, although he graduated high school at age sixteen with (he claims) the highest IQ or grades or something as of that time at the school (PS 1 on Staten Island, if you’re keeping score at home). The argument for a genetic element to proofreading is rather strong, but I’d rather not know what genes are involved, or what other damage they cause. I can think of a few things.] 

Anyway, this from my brother:

I had to resort to the outstanding website to be able to quote a rate to someone whom a coworker put me in touch with. The potential client, my coworker told me, was named XXX and needed someone to proofread a manuscript.

I called said Mr. XXX, who informed me that he had prepared with 2 coauthors a 130-page manuscript concerning [a semiscientific topic]. He asked me what my rate would be. Resorting to the LOD website, I told Mr XXX that the usual rate for this type of work was $1.50 per page, but since this was a rate charged to large universities I would only charge him $1.25 per page.

Mr. XXX told me to meet him at his place on 40th Street between [two of the tonier East Side avenues]. For some reason I envisioned a five-floor walk-up, a poorly lit one-bedroom apartment, a manuscript given to me off a table in a dinette where there was a Tupperware container full of some awful-smelling food.

Of course, Mr. XXX is Dr. XXX. His office was on the second floor of a condominium near the corner of XXX Avenue. His office was complete with chandeliers and fountains. I sat in this office for about 8 seconds and realized I probably should have charged $2.00 per page; this feeling was reinforced when he told me he needed quick 48-hour turnaround.

Moral of the story: I could never survive on the open proofreading market and must periodically thank Allah that I have two sponsors willing to pay an hourly wage. . . .

From a dropping jaw to a sinking stomach. My brother, bless his heart . . . Shoulda called me first. Then again, I think the last time my brother picked up the phone and called me was in the summer of 1974. We get along great. Always have. (Well, except for the time he tried to drown me.) But he should have charged three or four times what he did.

So, here’s the deal:

As an author, do you want me to make your manuscript read as nicely as possible while keeping your voice? Fix spelling, grammar, sentence structure, stylistic consistency (numbers, titles, and so forth)? Do that kind of stuff at manuscript stage — while it’s still a Word document? Copyediting.

Or would you rather I take your typeset pages and do a final quality-control check on them for design, layout, treatment of heads, footers, contents, chapter titles, and — of course — reading every single character of the book? Proofreading. Naturally, if something looked drastically wrong, I’d query it — but the proofreader’s job is not to rewrite copy nor do the kind of consistency making expected from the copyeditor.

If you’re a publisher, and you don’t know the difference between copyediting and proofreading, or you don’t know how to tell your authors accurately what they need  —  and you seem puzzled when I call wondering about expectations, and you explain that everything has always seemed clear before  —  please forget about me.