So you’ve hired a copyeditor

You’ve hired a copyeditor. Congratulations! Now it’s time to ship your manuscript off to them, settle back, and wait.

*screeeeech*

Uh, no. Perhaps after you’ve worked with an editor for a while, this might be the case, but when you’re just getting to know each other, both of you need more information.

What do you need to know?

Formatting.

How does your editor want your document to be set up before they work on it? I have a paragraph in my contract that spells this out.           

The manuscript will be formatted as follows: Microsoft Word, Times New Roman font, 12-point type, double spaced, paragraphs indented using the Paragraph Indent function in Word and not the tab key or space bar, and no space between paragraphs. If manuscript has been converted to Microsoft Word from another program such as Pages, Google Docs, or Scrivener, Client should take special care to make sure all formatting issues have been resolved before sending to Editor, otherwise, a formatting fee may be necessary to address issues remaining from the conversion.

 I’ve charged a formatting fee only once, thankfully, and that wasn’t for a direct client.

You also need to know the timeline – when does your editor need your manuscript? How long will they have it? – and whether you should send along a character sheet, plot outline, or story map. These documents can help your editor answer questions of clarity and continuity in the text without initiating a back-and-forth with you or leaving comments about the missing information.

Additionally, it might help you to know what kinds of comments to expect to see in your document. What’s your editor’s style? Is your editor formal, with precisely composed comments? Or are they casual, with indications of where they laughed or cried, and with emoji* sprinkled throughout? Maybe your editor is neurodivergent and uses a combination of styles, with a bluntness and matter-of-factness that might seem cold or harsh but is meant as anything but.

 What does your editor need to know?

We need to know your preferences.

No, not your favorite ice cream flavor! (Although, yum!) Instead, knowing how you want your book to look will enable us to get it there.

“But just use the Chicago Manual of Style, silly!” Yes. However.

CMOS offers style guidelines. As UChicago News explains,

The Chicago Manual of Style is an American English style guide published by the University of Chicago Press. The Manual’s guidelines for publishing, style and usage, and citations and indexes—known as “Chicago style” rules and recommendations—are among the most widely used in the United States, especially in academic and book publishing. … [T]he editors at the University of Chicago Press acknowledge that rules are often context-dependent, and sometimes need to be broken. The Manual is thus also respected for its flexibility.

Flexibility. Self-publishing authors can choose how they want their books to look. That means, although CMOS says serial (Oxford) commas should be used, authors can choose not to use them. Authors can also decide whether they want to capitalize the deity when OMG is spelled out. Writers can also specify preferences regarding em dash, colon, and semicolon use and how they want text messages to be formatted.

Some editors will have a conversation with you via email or Zoom, while others will give you a questionnaire where you can provide all of this information for them to use as a reference. (In traditional publication parlance, this is called “house style.” In self-publishing, this is “author style.”) The editor will transfer your responses to your book’s style sheet, where they’ll also record your preferred spellings of various words, along with character details, word and phrase formatting specifications, brand and place names, and more. When you send your formatted book to a proofreader, you’ll include the style sheet so this other professional can check that no errors were introduced to the text and that everything in the book is consistent with your preferences on the style sheet.

Conclusion

This probably sounds overwhelming for a lot of folks, but then again, doesn’t everything when you’re just learning? The great thing is your editor can walk you through this process. You’re not alone!

*CMOS says to use the first spelling in Merriam-Webster whenever possible, but second spellings are OK too. “Emoji” is the preferred plural, but “emojis” isn’t wrong.