Advice From a Professional Ghostwriter About Proofreading
Every once in a while I’ll edit or ghostwrite a book for a valued client, and once the job is done they’ll ask me to proofread the manuscript. It’s very smart of the client to have the work proofread! Think about it this way: The average 60,000-word book contains over 300,000 individual characters – letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and spaces. Each one needs to be perfect. It’s a challenge; I’ve bought classic novels and have found typos buried deep within the pages. The goal of every author and publisher is to identify and eliminate as many mistakes as possible. You might even get lucky and eliminate all of them – but that’s unlikely. (By the way, for self-publishers, Createspace has a very powerful proofreading tool that is very effective. When I recently published a set of three Kevin Lone thrillers, in each one of the books Createspace identified a typo that I had missed.)
I charge one cent per word for proofreading, plus PayPal fees. For a 60,000-word book, that’s over $600. However, if a client asks me to proofread a book I’ve just written, I always decline. Why? Because the human mind is very good at “filling in” what it thinks it knows. This ability to fill in the gaps allows us to read quickly. But it’s a liability for proofreading. Therefore, the best person to proofread your book is someone who has never read it before. A new reader has fewer preconceptions and is more likely to stumble over a typo or a misused word.
Who should your proofreader be? Anyone who can read! The more proofreaders, the merrier. I have asked my college-aged son to read my books, and for every typo he spotted I paid him five dollars. The last time he did this he found four typos and made twenty bucks. Obviously a professional is going to charge much more, but you get the idea: the more often your book is proofread, the better!
Thomas Hauck, Ghostwriter and Book Editor
– Thomas Hauck is a professional book editor and ghostwriter who serves both emerging and published authors. For your free consultation, contact Thomas today.