FAQS

Editorial Services

Will Xlibris edit my manuscript?

Here at Xlibris we believe that you should have ultimate control of your work. We will not change your text or plot in any way. If you would like, Xlibris is happy to provide copyediting services for your work.

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What do you mean by "Copyediting"?

Copyediting means that we will have professional editors review your work for grammar, spelling, syntax and word usage. Our editors will also provide you with valuable constructive comments throughout your manuscript. These comments will include but are not limited to such things as:

• Do you consistently use the same spelling of your characters' names throughout your manuscript?
• Are there obvious errors within text quoted from other sources?
• Does your manuscript contain excerpts from other sources for which you may wish to consider obtaining permission to quote?
• Are all biblical references correct and are scripture quotations accurately quoted?
• Do you correctly italicise the names of books, magazines, movies and television shows?
• Provide additional explanation regarding the reason for less obvious edits that were made so that you can make an educated decision about the appropriateness of the edits.
• Provide suggested edits that our editors were not 100% confident about, but which they wanted you to consider.
• Offer suggestions to improve the clarity of your writing that they wanted you to consider but didn't make in the manuscript as they did not want to change your writing style.
• Bring your attention to non-standard, but consistent application of writing conventions in your manuscript that were not edited, out of respect for your personal style, but which you may wish to consider altering.
• Highlight concerns regarding the potential mistakes specified above.

Our copyeditors will not alter the flow or the plot of your manuscript in any way. Once they are done, you will have the ability to cheque their comments and edits and approve or reject their suggested changes.

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What standard do you use for your suggestions and corrections?

Xlibris' Copyediting service is based on the guidelines presented in the Oxford Style guide. Spelling is based on Oxford Dictionary.

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Should I pay for corrections when I submit?

No. In a perfect world, you would never need to pay for corrections. By proofreading your book before submission, you will catch the majority of typos and errors before we even begin the publishing process. Any formatting errors introduced by Xlibris are corrected at the first galley stage free of charge. If, after you review your first proofs, you discover errors or wish to make a change, you may order the Author Alterations service at any time.

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I would like to include an index in my book. How does this work?

There are two ways to include an index in your book. You can either take advantage of the Xlibris-provided index service or you can do it yourself. When providing the index yourself there are two methods of doing it:

• Prepare your manuscript in a recent version of Microsoft Word using its Index feature.
• After all your corrections have been done Xlibris can provide you with a paper galley of your book to be used as a reference for creating the index. Create the index as a separate text file and submit it on a PC-formatted disk to Xlibris. The index is placed at the end of the book and we will send you a confirmation galley.

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Xlibris accepts a very low margin of error in each completed edit – no more than three 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 email the list to info@xlibris.com.au. We will review the list with you and address your concern.