In the pursuit of the holy grails of greater efficiency and cost effectiveness, an increasing number of publishers are making the decision to sub-contract more and more aspects of their book production work. For many years we at Carnegie have been managing complete projects, including author liaison, collating proof corrections and smoothing out all of those tedious and sometimes irritating problems and delays that occur as a manuscript works its way through the production process.
A manuscript has been approved by your editorial department. It passes to production, but in many niggly little ways it doesn't yet look quite right. The author has not been entirely consistent in -ize/-ise spellings; date and money notation are not as you would like them; the endnotes need standardising. Here at Carnegie we can (very efficiently and quickly) sort out all of these relatively minor but very important problems. We refer to this as a ‘house rules’ edit. We can check for common errors in spelling, grammar and usage, notifying all changes back to author and publisher as required; we can correct endnotes and bibliographies; we can refer queries to authors via phone or email so that these are resolved at an early stage; and we can relieve your production and editorial departments of many of the more tedious aspects of preparing a manuscript for publication.
Production budgets and schedules are both under pressure. Carnegie might well be able to help you streamline and simplify the process of moving from manuscript to finished book. We can quickly analyse a complete text to identify copy-editing queries, inconsistencies, common errors and problems. We can then refer these issues and queries to your editorial department for an ‘in principle’ decision on how to proceed; then we can liaise directly with the author to resolve all of the issues at an early stage in the production process, usually before first proof stage.
Ah, you might say, what if Carnegie make changes to the text we don't approve of? How do we know what has been changed, when and by whom? It is critical that we keep a detailed log of work undertaken. No change is made to the text without a written record being made ... in some cases individual changes are recorded; in others a general note is made (e.g. ‘All subheadings have been standarised with minimum capitalisation’ or ‘After liaison with author, we have checked and corrected usage of square and round brackets within quotations’).
There is no doubt that Carnegie’s project management approach is a more streamlined and effective method of copy-editing, standardising and checking manuscripts for publication. As it works on the whole book as a single file it is particularly cost-effective on long manuscripts, where huge savings in time and money can be obtained by working on-screen rather than on hard copy.
Unsure about delegating your copy-editing in this way? Telephone Alistair Hodge (01524 840333, or 07889 288452) to discuss ways in which it can work to save you money and time. Alternatively, email Alistair. You can even send a sample chapter, which I will be happy to assess and copy-edit on screen FREE OF CHARGE as a sample of how the system works.