Editing Services

Officina offers two main forms of editorial service: Developmental Editing and Copy Editing. There are numerous names for editorial work on books – some readers may be familiar with terms like desk editing and line editing, for example – but for simplicity Officina sticks to these two.

Developmental Editing

This form of editing is often paired with our Manuscript Assessment service, as it can follow directly on from the detailed recommendations we offer authors after reading their work. (Because of this, we are able to offer a discount to anyone who uses both services: see our rate card for details.) Currently, Officina’s developmental editing service covers general structural changes to the text, mostly concerned with priorities, pacing and, of course, getting the beginning and end right. For more detailed work, see the Copy Editing section below or have a look at our Authoring services page, which covers everything from rewriting on a sentence-by-sentence basis to ghost-writing from text supplied by the author to creating original work from scratch.

While many authors prefer to make their own changes based on our comments, some will wish us to perform this service. The rates for this are shown on the Officina Rate Card, which will enable authors to calculate the likely pricing for their manuscript.

The competitive rates offered for this service reflect our generalist approach. We will be adding specialist developmental editing for particular genres in due course. Watch this space!

Copy Editing

Officina’s conception of copy editing is as a largely mechanical service that weeds out misspellings and grammatical errors, introduces orthographical consistency and highlights potential ambiguities. At this stage of the process we do not tend to offer authors stylistic advice, as there are plenty of places they can get this, not least from our own assessment service. This focus on simpler editorial issues enables us to keep our rates very competitive.

The cost of this service is based on our assessment of the work involved. We have three levels of copy-editing: heavy for books that need a large number of editorial queries; standard for the majority of the books; and light, where the book is well-prepared and only needs a ‘once-over’. If you are uncertain about which level your book belongs at, it’s best to assume ‘standard’ for the time being. Once we have the manuscript we will make a judgement about the level we believe it belongs at and pass on this information before we start work on it, so that you have the option not to continue. Details of the rates for this service can be found on the Officina Rate Card.

The Future of Editing?

Anyone who has ever used a spell or grammar check will know that, at the end of the day, they are much less effective than the hype around them suggests (though the introduction of AI, as much as some decry it, has improved matters somewhat). Here at OFFICINA we have been thinking about a more integrated relationship between editing and computing for many years and are currently working on practical ideas about implementing this. For those interested, our Projects Blog will be covering developments in this area.