4. Copyediting
4.1 Once we have agreed on a cover design a few months will pass as your book works itself up along the queue. About three months before the expected launch date, we start copyediting.
4.2 Depending on the length, style, nature, and format of your book and a whole bunch of other factors, copyediting can take up to several weeks. We may email you intermittently with queries. The sooner you respond the faster we can work, but we won't rush.
4.3 You will receive the copyedited files back from us together with verbiage explaining our interventions and changes. Most of them will be track-changed in the document, but certain repetitive errors (such removing UK spelling, inserting Oxford commas, or citation formatting) may have been done "silently" to avoid cluttered Word documents. There may also be larger, cross-volume changes or problems that the volume editors will need to address.
4.4 The contributing authors have a chance to review all our changes and respond to our queries. Please ask them to do so fastidiuously, and to not make any undocumented changes but to use track changes or the comment function. Editors and authors should not accept/reject any of the track changes, but comment on those you disagree with. Compile the reviewed documents into a single folder, and making sure that file name has been updated, such as,
JOHNSON_SMITH_History_of_Roquefort_Reviewed
Return the reviewed manuscript to us as a single package (i.e., don't send back reviewed chapters individually) by uploading this file into the dedicated punctum file drop and notifying us that you have uploaded your reviewed files. Do not send us files by email.
4.5 We will then check your reviewed manuscript against our edits to make sure nothing has slipped through and all open issues have been attended to. We do all this to avoid multiple rounds of corrections at the proofing stage, when such corrections are much more cumbersome to implement.
4.6 We may get back to you with additional queries, but after that it's time for typesetting.