Welcome!
Imagine that you're speeding along a beautiful coastal road, enjoying the scenery. Everything is wonderfully serene, the cliffs, the sea, the clouds in the sky.
Then you hit a big, bad pothole.
What happens?
If you're lucky, it just jolts you a bit. If you're unlucky, you'll get a flat or damage your steering calibration. If you're really unlucky, you could find yourself in a ditch by the side of the road.
One thing is for sure, it will ruin your drive, if not all of it then certainly the few miles immediately preceding the hole in the road, and if it happens often enough it could just make you give up and go home.
Typos, wrong words, missing or misplaced commas, character names that change, incorrect tenses, run-on sentences . . . all of these and more are the potholes of writing on which your lovingly created masterpiece could stumble.
The publishing world is changing. Just as music found a revolution with MySpace and YouTube, publishing has entered a new world thanks to sites like Amazon and Draft2Digital.
Self-publishing has been around for a long time, but it was always an expensive, painstaking process that offered few rewards other than a perception of vanity. Now, with the phenomenal growth in the popularity of ebooks, self-publishing has become an inexpensive way to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of the publishing industry and get your work available to the masses. It's not always easy; it takes a lot of skill and more than a little luck to be successful, but the best way to start is with a perfect, error-free manuscript.
Here's where I come in.
You want a clean, error-free manuscript. I can give you one.
Who am I?
My name is Chris Ward. I am a published writer, but I am also an English language teacher. I have spent the last eight years correcting English as a job in the UK, Spain, Italy, and now Japan. I hold a BA in English and am working towards an Msc in Linguistics.
I am not asking you to trust me. I will prove what I can do. Send me the first two thousand words of your novel and I will proofread it for free. If you like the work I do, I will offer to do the full manuscript.
Rates
I offer line edits or final proofreading.
Line edits - $4 / 1000 words.
This will include correcting textual errors, rewriting sentences for better flow, editing dialogue for authenticity. While I will give you comments on the story if requested, this isn't included as standard. However, if I think something is glaringly wrong with the plot or characterisation, I will point it out.
Proofreading - $2 / 1000 words.
This will involve basic error correction but not amendments to grammatically correct sentences.
I would ask that you allow me to link to your book on Amazon following completion of the proofreading. Not only does this offer a small amount of free advertising for you, but it also allows future clients to see what books I have worked on. Of course, this will not be done without your express permission.
Introductory offer
To see if you like my work, I will proofread 2000 words for free.
Contact
Email me at beautifulproofreading@gmail.com to discuss schedules, or ask any questions you might have. Due to my own writing commitments, I am currently only taking on a couple of clients per month.
Payment
Half should be made upon satisfactory agreement to continue following the initial free proofreading of the first 5,000 words of your novel, followed by the remaining half after completion.
Payment should be made via PayPal.
Thank you for reading. I look forward to working with you!
Disclaimer - I am good, but no one is perfect. While I will aspire to ensure your manuscript is 100% error free, it is recommended that you have at least two separate proofreads performed on each manuscript, preferably more. Typos get through even in traditionally published novels, after dozens of proofreads.
