Re: Copy Editing for The Employee

Thanks for such a generous reply! We would be grateful to collaborate with you.

I’ve attached an up-to-date publication brief that should give you a better idea of the content, and a spreadsheet showing text status, word count, and other details.

As far as the timeline goes, Josh and I are trying to work towards deadlines in a way that lends some generosity to the contributors other work/life commitments, and as we are still waiting on the first draft of three of the texts there is some room for designing a copy editing timeline that works for you.

To that end, it would be great to know about your rate of working (how long do you usually like to spend with the first edit of a text, for example, 4000 words long?) and how many rounds of edits you usually like to do with a text.

Please feel free to let us know if you have any further questions. It would be good to set up a time soon to meet!

Warmly,

Lauren

This is great - thank you for the brief and essay breakdown.

In terms of timeline, depending on the length, my schedule, and the state of the text, I ask for between 4 and 8 weeks to turn around a book-length manuscript (50,000 words +). If you’d like, I can work on the four pieces that are ready for copyedit over the month of February and have those back to you by March 3. Depending on when the remaining texts are ready for copyediting, you can send them along and I can turn them around relatively quickly, as most of them are relatively short. Alternatively, I could edit the entire collection once all of the essays have been submitted (although that will mean a bit more of a wait on the final, copyedited manuscript).

I prefer editing in Microsoft Word - that way I can use Track Changes so that you’re able to see all of the changes that I’ve made, and I’m able to leave comments for any queries or suggestions. Once I’ve copyedited the text, I would return it to you (and/or the author, if you’d like me to communicate directly with them) to review. At that point, you/the author could highlight any changes that you disagree with or alternative revisions you’d prefer - as well as respond to any queries - and send it back to me. I would then clean up the text (resolve any issues and remove Track Changes) and return to you the final, clean, copyedited text, ready for layout/production.

Let me know what works for you and we can get the ball rolling!

Best,

Jessica