Editorial Services
Core │ Advanced │ Author Assistance │ Indexing │ Proofreading │ Cover Copy Polish
Regardless of your publishing goals, the quality of your work matters—no one wants to read a book that's riddled with typos and grammatical errors. However, even the best writers make occasional mistakes. iUniverse provides editorial services that will help you make your book the best it can be.
In order to take advantage of our Editorial Services, you must have access to Microsoft Word. Our editing appears as tracked changes in your manuscript, which must be read in Microsoft Word.
Read our Editorial Guidelines and visit the Editorial Services FAQ page to learn more about what to expect from your editing services and for more information on industry standards.
Please note: While our Web site copy generally conforms to the editorial style set forth in the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, iUniverse evaluators, editors, and copywriters follow the most current edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the premier style guide used by book publishers.
Core Editorial Services
Core editing services focus on improving the nuts and bolts of a book: grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure.
An experienced editor will correct errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation in your manuscript.
An editorial specialist will not only check your manuscript for more pervasive errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but also will make suggestions regarding sentence structure and word choice.
The Content Editing service provides extensive restructuring for manuscripts that need more attention than Line Editing provides.
This service is ideal for manuscripts that need more work on sentence structure and grammar than basic Content Editing can provide.
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Advanced Editorial Services
Sometimes manuscripts need specialized attention that goes beyond detail work in grammar, spelling and punctuation. Our experienced editors take an in-depth look at your book's content and other high-level stylistic considerations, including content, plot and pace.
The iUniverse Developmental Editing service combines three editorial services into one package: First, a developmental editor evaluates the manuscript at the paragraph, chapter, and book levels and makes suggestions throughout the manuscript to identify big-picture areas that need work. Second, the content editor will check the manuscript for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. And third, the manuscript will receive a quality review to ensure the manuscript is editorially sound before it goes into production.
A book doctor makes the changes recommended by an iUniverse developmental editor after you approve the suggested revisions.
A professional writer with general knowledge of the subject matter of your book will write the book in consultation with you.
The ghostwriter will examine materials from the author and provide an estimate together with writing samples for approval. Upon this approval, the author may purchase the Ghostwriting service.
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Author Assistance Editorial Services
While all of our Editorial Services aim to assist authors, this category of services takes an extra step, providing professional guidance to authors during the crucial revision stage following a core editorial service.
Quality Review
After you review and revise your edited manuscript, you may want an editor to check your work to ensure that you've done it correctly and haven't created new errors in the process. Our Quality Review provides a check of your work to make sure your manuscript is editorially sound before it goes into production—for a fraction of the price of your original edit.
Quality Review - Copyediting
Quality Review - Line Editing
Quality Review - Content Editing
Quality Review - Content Editing Plus
Editorial Assistant
Going through an edited manuscript can sometimes be a time-consuming process for even the most experienced author, requiring him to make decisions on each of the revisions, comments, and recommendations. For our busiest authors and for authors who may be unsure of their own ability to make the needed changes, iUniverse offers the Editorial Assistant service, in which a professional editor handles the editing. Your editorial assistant will review each change and suggestion given during the full editorial service and take action on each one, accepting changes, rewriting sentences, resolving queries, and handling other revisions as suggested by the original editor. This service is ideal for authors who approve of most of the editor’s work on their manuscript and do not wish to work with tracked changes in their manuscript.
Please note: There may be some questions or comments from the editor that you, the author, will need to address before moving forward with this service.
Editorial Assistant - Copyediting
Editorial Assistant - Line Editing
Editorial Assistant - Content Editing
Editorial Assistant - Content Editing Plus
Informational researchers will gather data, statistics, and other information; photo researchers and graphic artists are also available to help you provide professional-looking artwork for your book.
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Indexing
To maximize the usability of a nonfiction title, readers, book buyers, librarians, and reviewers will expect you to include an index in your book. You can even sell your book to readers by the index.
Our professional indexers will provide you with an industry-standard, two-level topical index that is personalized to provide maximum usability for the book's target audience.
Computer-Generated Keyword Index (Concordance)
A computer-generated keyword index lists a page number for a key term each time it occurs in the book.
Up to 500 Entries | Up to 700 Entries | Up to 1,000 Entries | More than 1,000
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Proofreading and Revisions
Our proofreading and revisions services can help save you from embarrassment and costly corrections after publication.
A proofreader's primary task is to conduct a comprehensive check for mechanical errors, such as misspellings, missing words, and incorrect cross-references. The proofreader also watches for formatting issues, such as problems with margins, word breaks, headings, and letter and word spacing, although these issues are not the primary focus of the proofreading service.
Please note: Because formatting issues fall outside the primary focus of the proofreading service, it is the author's responsibility to carefully check the layout and design of his or her book, and work to resolve any outstanding formatting issues with his or her design team.
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Cover Copy Polish
With iUniverse Cover Copy Polishing, the ideas you provide to us allows us to create intriguing copy that can help you clinch the sale.
Our professional copywriting staff will mold the text that you provide into marketable material by polishing the hardcover flaps, back cover copy, author bio and keynote, in addition to any other cover material you have submitted.
Please note: iUniverse accepts a very low margin of error in each completed edit, no more than 3 percent of the total errors found. Our professional in-house editorial staff reviews each editorial service for quality assurance. Upon reviewing your edited manuscript, if you believe that an unsatisfactory number of errors remain, please create a list of the errors and the page numbers on which they appear, and e-mail it to editorial.board@iuniverse.com, and a member of our staff will go over the list with you.
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