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. Sometimes these edits may be more substantial than you are used to from other presses. Our editorial process thoroughly engages with the text and often we'll provide more than just line edits. All of this may appear overwhelming at first, but it is all in the service of the manuscript. This is what copyediting used to be before everything got outsourced.

4.4 You have a chance to review all our changes and respond to our queries. Please do so fastidiuously, and do not make any undocumented changes but use track changes or the comment function. Do not accept/reject any of the track changes, comment on those you disagree with. Return your reviewed manuscript to us. Compile the reviewed files into a single folder, and making sure that file name has been updated, such as,

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.