What do you mean that you will only accept a completed manuscript?

What do you mean that you will only accept a completed manuscript?

By the time your manuscript reaches the point of formatting, whether for print or eBook, it should have been through a very specific process.

  1. It should be in a complete format, rather than an in-progress manuscript.
  2. You will have read through the manuscript several times to make sure you are happy with everything that you have written.
  3. You will have had it edited by a professional editor, who will have sent the edited file back to you with Track Changes available.  This allows you to accept and reject any of their edits.  Your editor would have taken care of typographical errors, grammatical errors, fact checking where necessary, and inconsistencies.  They will also have made sure each character within a fiction novel has their own paragraph during dialogue.
  4. You will have read through the manuscript in its edited form to make sure you are happy with the content, accepting or rejecting every change made and actioning any queries put to you in the form of a comment so that all issues were completely resolved, resulting in a clean manuscript.
  5. You will have sent the manuscript to a proofreader to check that everything is in order.  A proofreader is your second line of defence against errors, and will bring your manuscript to a formatting-ready state. They will also provide you with Track Changes to accept/reject as you see fit.
  6. You will have read through the manuscript after your proofreader has gone through it and, as above, you will have accepted or rejected all changes to ensure that no tracked changes remain prior to submitting and actioned all recommendations.

Once you have completed all of these steps, your manuscript is considered clean and ready for formatting.  We will not make adjustments to typos, adjust grammar, correct paragraph spacing to break up large chunks of text, or split dialogue into separate paragraphs per speaker.  Submitting a manuscript that has not been through the above process will not result in your book being rejected for formatting; we will simply format it in whatever state we receive it and any changes that have to be made after formatting has been completed will result in additional fees (quoted in advance, prior to commencing work on the changes).

PLEASE NOTE: If your incomplete manuscript is formatted by us and, on reflection, contains too many changes to be financially viable (to you), then you would be required to make the necessary changes to the original document yourself prior to submitting the manuscript for formatting as a new project.