Frequently Asked Questions

The American Copy Editors Society (ACES) found that readers usually notice errors in text, period—which inevitably damages your author brand. As you can see on our site, even if you’re brilliant at grammar, you can’t self-edit perfectly. You need to hire an editor if you want a reputation of releasing only the absolute best. And if your first round of editing involves heavy changes, you should sign up for proofreading, as errors may be missed or introduced. According to the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a good copyeditor picks up 80% of errors, and a good proofreader picks up 80% of what’s left.

Unless you specifically request otherwise, we will edit your manuscript in adherence to Merriam-Webster Unabridged and The Chicago Manual of Style. Universe-specific style guides and author preferences contrary to these guides will be maintained on a customized style guide that will be referenced for all books we edit in a given series for you.

Good old Microsoft Word is the industry standard. You’ll submit your manuscript as a .doc or .docx file. We use the Track Changes feature in Word. This can be intimidating because it tracks every single keystroke we make in the document. Don’t worry! It’s not nearly as much as it looks like.

• First, we recommend opening the Review tab and reading all the comments in the right-hand sidebar. Don’t make any changes until you’ve read all the comments.
• Then, still using the Review pane, you can go through all the text changes. Click on “Accept” or “Reject” for each suggestion (though beware, rejecting a change will probably create leftover errors).
• You probably want to look at the “All markup” view, though the “Simple markup” view is easier on the eyes, because in the former, you can see original text we recommend deleting.
• If we ask a question in a comment, you can right-click on that comment and click “Reply to comment” and answer it there. If you want to add a new comment of your own, you can do so by right-clicking in the relevant text and clicking “Add comment.”

Some authors only want to see the document with changes tracked. Some authors also request a clean document with all changes accepted and all comments cleared so you can go ahead and move forward immediately. We’re happy to accommodate either preference.

We’re available to answer your questions as you go through the tracked changes. Our job doesn’t end when we give you back the marked-up manuscript. We want you to understand the edit and feel comfortable with the final product.

Please send your work as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file. (You may need to convert from Mac-hosted programs like Pages). If you don’t have Microsoft Word, you can do this using Google Docs, but we strongly recommend getting a working copy of Word, as it’s still considered the publishing industry standard. Make sure the entire file adheres to standard manuscript formatting guidelines.

• 1″ margins
• Times New Roman 12 pt.
• Double spaced
• First line indented 0.5″ (not tabs)

Find detailed instructions and more information.

For book-length editing

Your invoice is based on the initial word count of your manuscript.

A 50% deposit is required to begin the editing project, and the remaining 50% of the invoice is required upon completion of the editing service for which you’ve paid. RUFF! editors are available to answer questions after the completed manuscript is returned.

If your manuscript goes through multiple rounds of editing (most commonly, developmental editing followed by copyediting followed by proofreading), you will receive a separate invoice for each distinct service, each invoice only to be paid in conjunction with the dates of each round, not all combined at the beginning.

For submission critique packages and smaller editing services

We generally ask you to pay 100% in advance of the project beginning.

For book coaching

You will be invoiced on a regular cadence as determined by you and the coach. Generally, you’ll pay two weeks to a month in advance, and any unused portion paid will roll over until you use those paid-for hours OR refunded if you don’t end up needing all the hours of coaching you paid for.

For anything billed on an hourly basis

Please note that hourly increments are rounded up to the nearest quarter hour.

How you’ll be invoiced

You will be invoiced via email, and most invoices will arrive from an email address similar to [email protected], so please check your spam folder if you are expecting an invoice from us but don’t see it. We don’t monitor that email address.

There are a few different ways you can pay.

1. Send us a secure one-time ACH transfer by clicking on the button in the invoice email. This method has the lowest fee for RUFF! You’ll have to enter a couple of pieces of information to verify with Plaid each time you pay by ACH (bank transfer).

2. Send a Venmo payment at @ruffdraftpub. This method has the second-lowest fee for RUFF! Your Venmo payment will be manually recorded on the invoice.

3. Pay with a credit card by clicking on the button in the invoice email.

Note: if you’re submitting work to be edited, please see our FAQs on our website for instructions about how to format your work before sending it to us.

Cancellations and refunds

Once the 50% deposit has been received or a payment in full has been made, no cancellations are generally available. Contact us ASAP if you have an extraordinary circumstance.

For coaching sessions billed in advance, we understand that life can get in the way, but excessive coaching session cancellations with less than 24 hours’ notice will be charged at the full billed hourly rate and no refund will be given.

A note on the scope of the work

Before you are invoiced, you will have meetings and/or correspondence with RUFF! editors to define the scope of the work. You can ask as many questions about what the scope of the work entails before paying your deposit and beginning the project.

For editing services, the scope of work will include an email with the completed manuscript containing instructions on how to incorporate edits, plus an optional “clean copy” of the manuscript in addition to the marked-up version if you wish.

For other services, we’ll set expectations with how often we will communicate with you over the course of the project.

If you ask for a significant of additional work on RUFF!’s behalf to answer excessive questions, manage multiple versions of documents, or the like, then we will warn you that the project is growing outside the scope of the agreed work, and you will be billed an hourly rate of $75/hour for this additional work outside the normal scope of the project. For example, RUFF! editors are not book formatters. If your manuscript requires a lot of formatting legwork to make it workable, we might reach out to discuss the price of adding this to your project.

In very rare circumstances, if we discover that a manuscript is significantly rougher than we understood based on the sample we saw during consultation and requires more time worked per word than our norm, we’ll reach out to you and discuss options for moving forward in a way that best serves your vision but also doesn’t undercut our hardworking editors’ take-home pay.

You won’t ever just be charged an extra hidden amount as a surprise.

Hop on over to Karou’s Korner for a detailed editing checklist!

When we agree to work together, we’ll sign a contract outlining the expectations of the editor and the author and promising to fulfill our obligations to one another. The contract will look much like this sample from the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA). We will be discreet about your work in progress and stick to the deadline, and you will be responsive to queries about the direction of your edit during the process. If you cancel the project, you’ll be required to pay for the time already spent by RUFF! editors.