FORMATTING and EDITING SERVICES
EQP Books provides top-notch ebook formatting and editing services for anyone from self-published authors to major book publishers.
Prices vary depending on what you want done—whether a full treatment from a handwritten manuscript, including major editing; or simply a formatting conversion from a word processing file into Kindle (.mobi) and ePUB files. But one thing that never varies is the quality.
FORMATTING
We get into the nuts and bolts of making your document look good, using HTML5 and CSS. You automatically get your book formatted for both the Kindle and EPUB—versions 2 and 3. Whether you go with one of our standard formats, or choose your own, we guarantee to do what you want (within the limits of e-readers) and do it perfectly, or we’ll fix it.
WHY USE EQP Books?
OUR GUARANTEE OF PERFECTION
- First off, we guarantee that we will do what we’ve promised the author/publisher to do, for the price agreed upon. And we’ll do it perfectly.
- Our guarantee has no expiration date and no warranty period. If you find that we made the chapter title for chapter 13 “Chapter XIII” and you wanted “Chapter Thirteen”, we’ll fix it—whether you discover it after five minutes, or not for fifteen years. (Caveat: We are not responsible for any lost sales, incidental damages, etc. that you feel may have arisen from the error. We will do the work, but it’s your responsibility to review and approve it.)
OUR COMMITMENT TO QUALITY CONTROL
- No errors will be introduced. When you hire us for formatting only, the text you get back will be identical to the text you supplied.
- You get total accounting of changes. If you want us to fix any typos that we happen to see, or if you hire us for proofreading as well as formatting, we will supply a list of every change we make. When we’re finished, you’ll know exactly what changes we’ve made without having to proofread the book to find them (after all, that’s what you hired us for.)
THE VALUE OF OUR NAME
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Our name and logo constitute a trustworthy, reliable guarantee: the “EQP Stamp of Approval.” As a result, any reader who sees this mark in an ebook:
knows they can count on the entire ebook being well-formatted. (Of course that means that, if you want us to format your ebook in a way that we consider ugly, or if your book has lots of typos and you don’t want to pay us to fix them, then we won’t put our name or logo inside, or allow you to use them in any promotions. But we’ll still do it the way you want.)
OUR LOW PRICE
- Given the above, you might expect our formatting prices to be on the high end. They’re not. In fact, formatting is probably the least expensive service we provide.
- Feel free to look around at what other companies say they’ll do, what they charge, and what guarantees they offer. Don't forget to look at some samples of their work, and some samples of ours (you can link to samples on our Showcase page). Then, with that in mind, look at our formatting prices.
EDITORIAL SERVICES
The names of the various tasks that go under this umbrella have been bandied about rather freely, especially since the ebook revolution started. For our purposes, the terms as we use them are defined here:
PROOFREADING
In print publishing, proofreading is one of the last stages of the process, happening after the document is sent to the printer’s. The main purpose is to make sure that the printer has introduced no errors, and it involves a line-by-line, word-by-word comparison of the galleys (or “page proofs”—hence the name proofreading) with the most up-to-date version of the manuscript (i.e., the one that was sent to the printer). Obviously, this meaning of the term is of little value in ebook publishing.
In everyday language, though, proofreading is simply reading through the material looking for typos and other errors. That meaning is how we will use the word here. In particular, when we proofread we will find and correct:
- typos
- missing and duplicated words
- striking, easily fixable grammar errors
- missing and improper punctuation
- incorrect capitalization
- missing or incorrect hyphenation, and
- wrong choice of homonyms (its/it’s, their/there/they’re, past/passed, etc.)
COPY EDITING
When you hire us to copy edit your manuscript, we will perform all the tasks under proofreading plus searching for and correcting the following:
- subtle grammar errors
- issues with sentence clarity
- inconsistencies (a character’s name spelled different ways at different times, someone’s hair changing color midway through the manuscript, etc.), and
- incorrect facts
Copy editing will often involve a degree of sentence restructuring, though it will be kept to a minimum.
EDITING
Editing includes all the tasks in proofreading and copy editing, in addition to examining the document as a whole and making or suggesting changes intended to strengthen the entire manuscript. This is still a broad area, so at EQP we divide it into line editing and content editing.
Line Editing
If you hire us for line editing, we will:
- edit for clarity on the paragraph level
- reduce wordiness
- improve flow
- watch for and correct stylistic inconsistencies
- possibly rearrange certain sections, consisting of as much as several paragraphs, to improve clarity, readability, and flow
Content Editing
In addition to all the above, this will consist of:
- a critique of the work as a whole
- suggestions for revision, possibly major ones
- reordering of chapters
- identification of slow and/or rushed areas
- stylistic changes and suggestions
- extensive comments and explanations throughout
Generally, with content editing, the author elects to make quite a number of changes following the first edit. In order to keep you from having to pay for editing twice, we first do only the tasks specific to content editing. Then, when you have finished the revision and sent it back to us, we’ll do the rest.
How much will it cost? We can’t give you a fixed quote without seeing the material. We can say that editorial work is easily more expensive than formatting. For an estimate of prices, see our Pricing page.
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