Most Australian authors land on an article about editing vs proofreading in one of two situations. A reader in their writing group has said the manuscript needs an edit without saying which kind, or a quote has arrived carrying the word proofreading when the manuscript is still structurally unsettled. Both point to the same confusion, and this article is written to resolve it. The short version: editing shapes a manuscript across several related levels, and proofreading is the final check on the typeset page proofs before release. The two are different trades, performed at different stages, usually by different specialists.
What follows walks through the actual difference in Australian editorial practice, locates proofreading at its real place in the publishing workflow, and leaves you with a working self-assessment you can run on your own manuscript tonight. If the self-assessment points toward professional support, professional book editing services for Australian authors at Sydney Book Publishers cover all of the stages described here. Nothing in this article promises an outcome or quotes a figure. It is written to help you make a well-informed decision about writing and editing your book before anyone sends an invoice.
Editing works on the manuscript. Proofreading works on the typeset proofs after design. That single sentence is the answer most readers are searching for, and it is worth sitting with before the vocabulary becomes more detailed.
Editing is a cluster of related trades covering developmental shaping, structural reorganisation, line-level prose work, copy editing against a style sheet, and stylistic tightening against an intended audience. The editor's output is a revised manuscript the author can commit to design. Proofreading begins only after that manuscript has been laid out as pages, whether in InDesign, Vellum, Atticus, Affinity Publisher or the author's own production workflow through a publishing partner offering end-to-end book publishing in Australia. The proofreader reads those typeset pages against the latest edited copy, catching errors introduced during design and any residuals the copy edit missed.
Why does this matter? Because paying for a proofread on a manuscript that has not yet been edited does three things at once. It asks the proofreader to work outside the scope they quoted for. It leaves the deeper issues of structure, voice and consistency in the finished book. It often results in a second invoice later when the author realises the book still reads as unfinished. The author ends up paying twice, and the manuscript ends up thinned rather than strengthened.
Running a copy edit on a manuscript that still needs structural work has a similar problem in reverse. A copy editor cleans the prose sentence by sentence against a style sheet. When the author then restructures chapters after the copy edit, half of that work is undone, and the author has paid for sentence-level polish on material that was going to be cut or rewritten anyway.
The real question every Australian author is actually asking is which kind of work does my manuscript need next, and the honest answer depends on where the manuscript currently sits. The rest of this article walks that question through step by step. If you remember nothing else from this section, remember that editing changes the manuscript and proofreading checks the pages, and those two things happen in that order.
The answer in Australian English is the closed single-word form. Write proofreading, proofread and proofreader as one word each. The spaced variants proof reading, proof read and proof reader are not incorrect in historical or informal use, but they are not the current Australian trade standard recorded in the Macquarie Dictionary. Pick the closed form and stay consistent through the manuscript.
The word proof in this context comes from the historical publishing stage where a proof was a trial print pulled from a typesetter's plate. Reading the proofs was the job of checking those sheets before a full print run. The trade name proofreader solidified as the closed compound during the twentieth century, and the closed spelling is now how the word appears in Australian editorial practice, in British editing under the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, and in most contemporary American sources. All three major varieties of English have converged on the single-word form for professional use.
The occasional misspelling proofreading, missing the second o, is worth a mention only because it appears in search data. Readers who typed it were looking for the same information and simply mistyped. If you find the spaced or misspelled forms anywhere in your own manuscript, a single find-and-replace during your own revision pass saves the copy editor time that is better spent on genuine queries. On meaning: to proofread is to read a text closely to find and mark errors, usually on a final version before publication, and a proofreader is the person who does that work.
An Australian editor working professionally will usually distinguish between several levels of editing. The names and boundaries overlap between providers, and the agreed scope in your letter of agreement matters more than the label on the quote. The following levels describe what most Australian editors mean when they use these terms, and they correspond to the kinds of work the Australian Standards for Editing Practice set out as the trade's core domains.
Before any of these levels, many Australian authors commission a manuscript assessment. An assessment is a separate service in which the assessor reads the whole manuscript and writes a report on where the book is working, where it is not, and what the author might consider revising. The report is diagnostic. It does not change the text itself, and it does not substitute for an edit. Assessment is often the most economical way to answer the question what does this manuscript need next, particularly when the author has drafted alone and has not yet shown the work to a professional reader. Thinking at an even earlier stage sometimes involves working through creative book ideas for authors before shaping a draft into an assessable manuscript at all.
Developmental editing is the deepest intervention. The developmental editor reads the manuscript as a whole and gives the author structured feedback on premise, concept, argument or story shape, character arc, pacing, chapter order, point of view, world-building, non-fiction thesis, evidence base and reader fit. Some Australian editors use substantive editing as a synonym for developmental editing. Others treat substantive editing as the stage at which the editor actively proposes changes to the manuscript, not only diagnoses them. The output is normally an editorial letter, in-manuscript notes and a conversation about how the author wants to revise. Developmental editing suits a manuscript whose shape is still negotiable. It is not well suited to a late-stage draft that the author has already extensively revised, because the service at that point tends to duplicate work already done.
Structural editing sits between developmental and line editing in many Australian workflows. Where developmental editing identifies what needs to change at the big-picture level, structural editing works through those changes at the manuscript level. The structural editor may move scenes, rebalance chapters, cut subplots, tighten a non-fiction spine, propose a new chapter order or restructure an argument. Some providers fold structural editing into developmental editing. Others sell it separately. The practical test is whether the editor is only advising or is actively proposing structural changes to the text.
Line editing works on the manuscript sentence by sentence, looking at voice, tone, rhythm, clarity, dialogue cadence, scene-level flow and word choice. Stylistic editing overlaps with line editing but focuses on tightening the prose against an intended audience, rather than the author's expressive choices. The line is blurred in practice. Most Australian editors offer one bundled service under either name and will be happy to explain where their version sits.
Line editing matters most where prose is doing heavy lifting. Literary fiction, memoir with a strong narrative voice, short-form work and poetry all live or die at the line. The craft decisions involved in how to write a poem make line editing effectively the dominant editorial mode for a poetry collection. Short fiction works similarly, which is why thinking through creative short story ideas often leads an author toward line editing rather than a full developmental process. For commercial fiction and non-fiction, line editing is often bundled with copy editing. The differences in how editors approach fiction vs non-fiction writing usually surface most clearly at this level.
Copy editing is the penultimate stage before design and typesetting. The copy editor works on grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, sentence-level fact checking, style compliance and the mechanical correctness of the manuscript. The output is a clean, consistent, style-compliant manuscript ready for the designer, usually delivered with tracked changes, a style sheet and queries for the author to resolve.
The style authority a copy editor works against matters. For a trade book intended for an Australian readership, the default is normally the Macquarie Dictionary for spelling and usage, supported by an agreed house style. For non-fiction aimed at an institutional or academic readership, the publisher's house style or a named style manual applies instead. The right style authority is the one agreed in the letter of agreement, not the one the editor happens to prefer. Copy editors also commonly check short marketing copy drafted at the same time as the manuscript. Writing the back-cover text well matters, and sharpening it against the same consistency pass is efficient; the mechanics of how to write a book blurb often live in the copy editor's working file alongside the manuscript itself.
Academic proofreading sits in a different category from book proofreading and has its own rules. An essay editor working on a student's assessed work is governed by the institution's policy on third-party editing. Most Australian universities limit third-party editing of assessed work to what is effectively light copy editing and proofreading, and require the author to acknowledge the editing on submission. A thesis is a separate matter again, and IPEd publishes guidance on editing research theses that sets out what is and is not within scope. Any editor working on assessed work should be able to describe their scope against that guidance. Academic editors, thesis proofreaders and essay editors do not restructure assessed work for the author; the work has to remain the author's own.
Together, these levels are the vocabulary an Australian editor uses when quoting. An editor who sells editing as a single undifferentiated service, without being able to describe the level, is harder to brief precisely.
Book proofreading in the professional sense is a focused final check on typeset page proofs, carried out after developmental, line and copy editing have finished and after the book has been designed. It is a separate trade from copy editing, and its purpose is not to rewrite but to confirm that the typeset book is ready for release. Professional proofreading services in Australia at Sydney Book Publishers operate at this stage, on PDF proofs or printed galleys, against the final edited manuscript and the design.
The proofreader is looking for a specific set of problems. Typographic errors introduced during typesetting sit at the top of the list: a character that dropped out during the import, a non-breaking space that broke, a hyphenation at the end of a line that split a word awkwardly, a hard return in the wrong place. Layout problems come next: inconsistent page numbers, running heads that carry through on the wrong chapter, chapter openers that do not match the design standard, captions that have drifted from their images, folios that print on pages that were meant to be blind.
Style compliance on the typeset page is also in scope. If the style sheet calls for ranging numerals but the typeset proof uses lining numerals on one spread, the proofreader flags it. If the agreed style is to open dialogue with single quotes, as is common in Australian trade publishing, and a pair of double quotes slipped in, the proofreader flags that too. The proofreader does not restructure sentences, rewrite weak paragraphs, reorder chapters or argue with the author about voice. Any of that work belongs to an earlier stage.
Proofreading marks are drawn from a standard set. In British and Australian practice the common reference is British Standards Institution BS 5261-2:2005, which specifies marks for copy preparation and proof correction. The Australian Standards for Editing Practice expect proofreaders to be proficient in the relevant standard mark-up symbols. ISO 5776, the international standard, overlaps substantially with the British set. In modern work, most proofreaders use digital stamp sets in PDF software that correspond to BS 5261 symbols, rather than marking paper with a red pen. The vocabulary of the marks persists; the delivery changes. The design choices the proofreader is checking include typography, and considered reading on best book fonts by genre and format influences how the final page looks and reads.
What happens after the proofread is as important as what happens during it. The proofreader returns marked proofs to the designer or typesetter, who applies the corrections and sends a revised PDF. The proofreader usually checks those corrections against the originally flagged list, and a second pass sometimes catches new errors introduced by the correction process. For a complex book with footnotes, images, tables or specialist typography, a second proof pass is normal. For a straightforward novel, one careful pass with a correction check is often enough. Two technical points sit alongside the main work. Version control matters: a proofreader should always know which file is the authoritative current proof, because corrections made against a superseded file are expensive to unpick. Style sheets matter: the proofreader works against the style sheet the copy editor built, and any inconsistencies between the sheet and the typeset page should be resolved before the book goes to press.
The table below places the two services side by side across the attributes an Australian author actually weighs. It is written to help you compare; the paragraphs after it add context the table cannot carry.
Attribute | Editing | Proofreading |
Purpose | Shape and improve the manuscript at structure, prose, grammar and style | Catch errors on the typeset page proofs before publication |
Manuscript stage | Before design and typesetting | After design and typesetting, immediately before release |
Scope | Developmental, structural, line or stylistic, copy and related levels | Typos, bad breaks, inconsistent heads and folios, residual errors |
Typical changes | Reordering chapters, rewriting paragraphs, tightening prose, fixing grammar and style | Marking corrections against the proof, flagging layout issues |
Deliverables | Tracked-changes manuscript, editorial letter, style sheet, queries for the author | Marked proofs, correction list, correction-check pass |
Exclusions | Does not check typesetting or page layout | Does not restructure or rewrite |
Cost drivers (no figures) | Manuscript length, depth of edit, genre, condition, editor experience | Length, page count, design complexity, number of proof rounds |
Two framing points sit beyond the table. The right comparison is not which service is better; the two services are not substitutes. The right comparison is which service the manuscript needs next, and whether the previous stage has actually been completed. Most published books pass through both services, usually with two different specialists, because the mental mode required to edit at depth is different from the mental mode required to catch a wrong capitalisation on a chapter opener three hundred pages later.
Cost drivers in both columns show how quotes are structured. Professional Australian editors quote per word, per hour or per project, and are willing to explain which model they are using and why. Rates are driven by depth, length and the condition the manuscript arrives in, not by the author's publishing goals or the book's genre in isolation. An author who hands over a cleaner manuscript at every stage spends less at each stage, because more of the editor's time is spent on judgement and less on repetitive clean-up.
The usable order for a book heading to publication is manuscript assessment or developmental edit, then structural edit if the developmental work calls for it, then line or stylistic edit, then copy edit, then design and typesetting, then proofread. The order is not a ritual. Each stage changes the manuscript or the pages in ways that would undo earlier work if the stages were run in a different sequence.
A worked example makes the logic concrete. Consider a novel that still has an unresolved subplot and three chapters that are not pulling their weight. The author commissions a copy edit against a Macquarie Dictionary style sheet and receives a careful tracked-changes manuscript back a month later. The author then takes a developmental view, cuts two chapters, rewrites a third, splits the subplot and promotes a secondary character. Roughly a third of the copy edit is now undone, and the manuscript needs to go back for another copy edit. The reverse case is equally common. A manuscript goes through a developmental pass, a line edit and a copy edit, and is then handed to a typesetter and printed without a proofread. The published book carries two inconsistent chapter numbering conventions, three widows on right-hand pages and a misplaced folio in the back matter, all of which a proofreader would have caught in a single afternoon.
Design and typesetting sit between copy editing and proofreading for a reason. Typesetting introduces its own errors, exposes inconsistencies the copy edit could not see in Word, and imposes decisions about hyphenation, spacing and spread balance that only exist on a laid-out page. The typesetter works against the copy-edited manuscript and the design brief, drawing on Australian book design services and specialist professional book formatting services that prepare the file for print and digital delivery. Typesetting choices also influence the economics of production, which is why many Australian authors weigh up digital book printing versus print on demand at this stage.
Not every manuscript needs every stage. A well-prepared Australian author who has run a strong revision pass against an assessment, or who has drafted with a developmental mindset throughout, can sometimes move directly to a combined line and copy edit, then design and typesetting, then a professional proofread. That is a legitimate path and a reputable editor will say so after reading a sample. What a reputable editor will not do is run a proofread on a manuscript that has not been edited and bill the book as ready. The honest version of that conversation sometimes delays a book by a few weeks, and the reader's finished copy is better for it.
These examples are illustrative and not drawn from client work. They are included to show the different kinds of change each stage produces, and the reasoning behind each change.
Example one: developmental edit on a novel opening. Before: a debut novel opens with two full chapters of the narrator's childhood in a small coastal town before any present-day scene appears. The dramatic question the book turns on, a legal fight the narrator inherits in her forties, does not enter the manuscript until chapter four. After: the developmental editor proposes reshaping the opening so chapter one is the moment the narrator receives the legal papers. The childhood material becomes braided flashback across chapters two to six, released in the order that answers the reader's questions as they form. Reasoning: readers commit to a book when they understand what question it is asking. Opening on backstory tests the reader's patience and buries the premise. The intervention does not touch sentence-level prose; it changes the structural logic of the book.
Example two: copy edit on a passage of dialogue. Before: "She reached for the phone, it rang again before she could pick it up. 'Hello?' she said, her voice was quieter than she wanted." After: "She reached for the phone. It rang again before she could pick it up. 'Hello?' Her voice was quieter than she wanted." Reasoning: two comma splices in three sentences. The first is fixed with a full stop; the second is resolved by lifting the dialogue tag so the voice description stands on its own. A copy editor flags the pattern systematically through the manuscript rather than fixing individual instances, and a style sheet entry records the decision for consistency.
Example three: proofread on a typeset chapter opener. Before: on the typeset proof, chapter openers read "Chapter 11", "Chapter Twelve" and "Chapter 13" on consecutive openers. The running heads carry the book title throughout, except on the chapter twelve opener, where the running head reads the previous chapter's title. After: the proofreader marks the chapter twelve opener for consistency, flags the two numbering conventions against the style sheet and queries which style the author prefers. The running head is corrected to match the chapter it sits above. The design team applies both corrections on the next proof. Reasoning: neither error was in the Word manuscript. Both appeared during typesetting, and neither falls within copy editing scope.
Five diagnostic questions, answered honestly, usually point to an Australian author at the right next stage. The table after the questions gives a usable routing for each likely answer.
If a trusted reader finished this manuscript today, could they tell me what the book is actually about, and does my answer match theirs?
Can I describe what every chapter is doing and why it sits where it does, without defending any chapter as there because I wrote it?
Does the prose read the way I want it to on every page, or are there scenes and sections where the sentences feel flat, the dialogue clunky, or the voice drifts?
Is the manuscript technically consistent, against a named dictionary and a style sheet I could hand to a copy editor today?
Has the manuscript been developmentally, line and copy edited, and been designed and typeset into page proofs or a finished PDF?
Honest answers place the manuscript at a stage. An unsure answer is itself a diagnostic result, and a sample edit on a short extract is usually the most reliable way to turn an unsure answer into a confident plan.
Observable symptom | Likely service | What to supply | Expected output | Next step |
Readers finish the book but cannot agree what it is about | Manuscript assessment or developmental edit | Full manuscript, synopsis, intended readership | Editorial report with structural recommendations | Revise against the report before any sentence-level work |
Structure holds together but chapters feel uneven or out of order | Structural edit | Full manuscript, chapter summary, intended arc | Proposed restructure with marked manuscript | Accept or negotiate the restructure, then revise |
Prose and voice drift between chapters or scenes | Line or stylistic edit | Revised manuscript, intended voice notes, comparable published works | Sentence-level tracked changes with queries | Review changes, accept or reject, resolve queries |
Manuscript is structurally settled but inconsistent at sentence level | Copy edit | Final revised manuscript, intended style sheet or named style authority | Clean tracked-changes manuscript, style sheet, queries | Resolve queries, approve style sheet, hand to design |
Manuscript has been fully edited and designed into pages or a finished PDF | Proofread | Latest typeset proofs, final manuscript, style sheet | Marked proofs, correction list | Apply corrections, run correction check, confirm press-ready |
If none of these symptoms describes where the manuscript sits, the manuscript is often still at the writing stage. A conversation with a developmental editor, or in some cases a professional ghostwriter who works with authors on ideas the author has not yet drafted themselves, is more useful than an immediate editing engagement. Sydney Book Publishers offers professional ghost-writing services in Australia for authors who have a strong idea but are not yet at a draft a professional editor can work with. Starting at the right place is the single biggest factor in avoiding wasted spend.
Australian authors can and should self-edit at every stage. Self-editing is not a substitute for professional work, but the cleaner the manuscript arriving on the editor's desk, the more the editor's time goes into judgement rather than clean-up. A practical self-edit involves multiple full reads with gaps between them, reading the manuscript aloud or in reverse chapter order so familiarity does not override accuracy, a running style sheet for names and recurring terms, and at least one trusted reader whose feedback the author takes seriously.
What a self-edit does not do is replace the professional pass. Writers read what they intended to write. The longer an author has lived with a manuscript, the more invisible its habitual errors become. That is not a flaw; it is how reading works for anyone who has drafted and redrafted a long piece of prose. Professional editors and proofreaders are reading the manuscript or the proofs cold, and what they catch is often what the author had stopped seeing weeks earlier.
AI-assisted writing and editing tools occupy a useful but limited space. Grammar-and-style tools catch repeated words, awkward sentence lengths, some consistency issues and obvious spelling errors, and they work faster than a human first pass. A large language model can summarise a chapter, flag passages that feel uneven and suggest alternative phrasing. Configured for Australian English, these tools are a credible safety net. Configured for American English by default, as many are, they can quietly convert Australian spellings and idioms into American ones, which is why checking the configuration before use matters.
Three limits are worth stating plainly. These tools do not read a book the way a reader does, so they often miss continuity, factual error and emotional weight. They do not know an author's voice well enough to preserve it under pressure, so their suggestions sometimes flatten the prose they were meant to tighten. They raise genuine confidentiality questions, especially for cloud-based tools, and authors with sensitive material in a manuscript should check a tool's data handling and retention policies before pasting work into it. Any suggestion from an AI tool that materially changes the manuscript should be verified against the author's own judgement and, where it is a factual claim, against a primary source. Used with these cautions in mind, AI tools are a useful part of a self-edit. They are not a replacement for a professional edit or proofread.
Working well with an editor is as much about the brief as it is about the editor. A clear brief includes the manuscript as it stands, the intended audience, the publishing route (traditional submission, hybrid, supported self-publishing or straight self-publishing), the style authority the author wants applied, any sensitivity to voice or regional idiom, and the specific stage the author believes the manuscript is at. The editor's job then becomes easier, because they can test the author's self-assessment against the sample they read.
A sample edit on a short extract, usually two to five thousand words, is a useful signal in both directions. The sample shows the author how the editor thinks on the page: whether changes feel supportive, whether queries are pitched at the right level, whether voice is preserved. Some Australian editors offer a complimentary sample on a short extract; others charge a nominal rate for the time involved. A paid sample is not a red flag, because experienced editors value their time, and a willingness to pay a nominal sample fee usually accelerates the conversation. A sample should be the manuscript the author will actually commission on, not a different extract.
Quoting conventions in Australian editing vary. Per-word, per-hour and per-project quotes all have a legitimate place, and each one answers a different question. A per-word quote is straightforward when the manuscript is in good condition and the scope is predictable. A per-hour quote fits a complex manuscript where the exact amount of work is hard to estimate. A per-project quote suits a well-defined scope where both parties agree on a flat deliverable. None of these is the correct model in every case, and an editor who can explain why they have chosen one is working with care.
A letter of agreement protects both sides. IPEd and the Australian Society of Authors jointly publish a template letter of agreement widely used in Australian editorial engagements. The template covers scope, fees, payment schedule, delivery dates, confidentiality, ownership and the terms under which either side can end the engagement. Using the template, or a close variant, is standard for a professional arrangement.
Matching the editor to the book matters more than general reputation. A line editor who works mainly in literary fiction may not be the right line editor for a non-fiction self-help book, and a copy editor who specialises in academic non-fiction may not be the strongest choice for a commercial romance. Asking an editor what they have worked on, and what kinds of manuscript they decline, is a fair question. For authors still weighing up the publishing routes themselves, reading on self-publishing vs traditional publishing in Australia helps clarify the editorial expectations each route sets. For authors researching the wider provider landscape, context on top book publishing companies in Australia and top ghost-writing companies for Australian authors is available separately and neutral in tone.
Yes, in three specific ways, and the differences are worth naming before an editor is engaged.
The first is the style authority. For a trade book written for an Australian readership, the default dictionary is the Macquarie Dictionary. The publisher's or author's agreed house style usually sits on top of it. For non-fiction aimed at an institutional audience, the Australian Government Style Manual applies to government and government-adjacent writing; it is not compulsory for every Australian novel or trade book. An editor who defaults to Chicago, AP or any American style authority without being asked is not necessarily wrong, but they are working against a style that may not match the readership, and the author should raise that before the engagement begins.
The second is familiarity with voice and place. An editor who knows Australian idiom catches the natural rhythm of a scene set in a Sydney bookshop or a cattle station in the Red Centre, and will not reflexively flag colloquial spelling, place-specific language or local naming conventions as errors. The differences in how fiction and non-fiction use Australian setting are real: the voice work in fiction ghost-writing for Australian authors is not the same as the voice work in non-fiction ghost-writing for Australian authors, and an editor who has worked on both will say so when asked.
The third is First Nations content. Manuscripts by, for or about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people carry a cultural responsibility that goes beyond any style guide. The AIATSIS Style Guide for Authors and Editors is a useful reference for terminology and presentation, and it is widely consulted in Australian editorial practice. A style guide does not confer cultural authority on its own. Authors working with First Nations material are usually best served by engaging First Nations editors and sensitivity readers, and, where the material concerns a specific community or Country, consulting with representative individuals or organisations before publication. An editor who signals awareness of this landscape, rather than treating it as another style question, is likely to be a safer professional partner for that manuscript.
Several patterns in a quote or a conversation are worth testing further before signing a letter of agreement. None is disqualifying on its own, but a combination of them warrants a second opinion.
An editor who cannot describe what level of editing they are offering, or who uses editing as an undifferentiated single service without naming developmental, structural, line, copy or stylistic work, is harder to brief precisely. The level matters because it defines the deliverable.
An editor who promises an outcome rather than a quality of work on the page is making a claim no professional can keep. No editor can promise an agent, a publisher contract, a bestseller, a shortlisting for a literary prize or a specific review response. What a professional commits to is the level of care applied to the manuscript within the agreed scope.
Opaque pricing is worth questioning. A professional can explain how a rate is structured, what is included, how revisions are handled, how disagreements are resolved and what happens if the manuscript arrives in worse shape than the sample suggested.
Refusal to sign any form of written agreement is unusual for a professional engagement. The IPEd and Australian Society of Authors template is a known document, and an editor who declines any form of written agreement is departing from standard practice.
Two patterns are not red flags in themselves and are sometimes read as such by mistake. A proofreader who works only on proofreading is not suspect; a talented proofreader can build an entire career on that single stage. The pause is warranted only if a proofreading-only specialist offers to run a proofread on a manuscript that has not been edited and does not raise the mismatch themselves. A refusal to run a free sample is also not automatically disqualifying; some experienced editors run their sample as a short paid assignment rather than a free extract, which is legitimate and often sensible.
Ready to talk about your manuscript?
The right next step for most Australian authors is a short conversation about the manuscript, where it sits in the workflow, and which service it actually needs next. From there, a tailored quote can be put together against the manuscript as it stands, rather than against a template priced for someone else's book. Sydney Book Publishers works across every stage described in this article, and the same team supports authors when a finished book moves into launch planning through book marketing services for Australian authors once the manuscript is ready. The invitation is simple: get in touch, share a short extract and a brief, and have a real conversation about what the book needs before any commitment is made. Editing vs proofreading is not an either-or decision. It is a decision about what the manuscript needs now, and what will need to come next.
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