MJV Literary

Not sure whether your book requires copy-editing or proofreading?  No problem; our editorial appraisal is totally free of charge or any expectations to proceed.

Before going ahead and booking editorial work, we will check through your manuscript and advise you which services we propose are required to elevate it to a standard required for publishing.  

This includes grammatical amendment and formatting recommendations ONLY - our editorial consultation does not offer appraisal feedback about creative merit, or advice regarding submission to publishers and/or literary agents, other than in exceptional cases; for this type of advice please see our BETA-READING AND SYNOPSIS SERVICES.

Rest assured we will never recommend futile or unnecessary work, and will advise you if we think you have much more work to do before using our services.

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ALL INSTRUCTIONS COMPRISE TWO HUMAN-EYE EDITS AND SOFTWARE CHECKS.

An essential spelling, punctuation, capitalization, italicization and indentation polish to finalize your proof for publication; recommended for all authors, in particular those whose grammar is just a little short of perfect.  We will return your .DOC word manuscript to you, amended with tracked changes in the markup, which you can reject or accept at will (we will instruct you how to do this).  You will not have to accept any changes we make before you have had the opportunity to review them.  

PLEASE ENSURE THAT WE RECEIVE ALL OF YOUR INTERIOR PAGES - DEDICATION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, PREFACE AND ABOUT THE AUTHOR, ETC. - WHEN SUBMITTING.

Our PROOFREADING/LINE-EDITING service comprises the following:

• All inaccurate instances of grammar, punctuation, spelling and indentation amended, ensuring contextual punctuation (such as capitalization, use of bold and/or italicization) is uniformed throughout the book’s entirety.
• Additions/changes to words and/or sentences, where we feel their inclusion or omission may be confusing to the reader, repetitive in nature, or otherwise need to be improved, in order to be fluid and coherent to an English-speaking audience.  This may include occasional deletions and rewriting of sentences, as non-intrusively as possible, whilst optimizing retention of your author voice, and only where we deem it necessary to do so, for reasons of coherent language and syntax.

• PLEASE NOTE THAT IF WE CONSIDER IT MORE SUITABLE WE WILL RECOMMEND A COPY-EDITING SERVICE.

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​​ALL INSTRUCTIONS COMPRISE TWO HUMAN-EYE EDITS AND SOFTWARE CHECKS.

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We will grammar-edit your work to a very high standard of English, amending spelling, punctuation, paragraph formatting and section breaks (where we deem it appropriate, we may replace entire words or restructure sentences for purposes of valid literacy).  We will also address issues of story structure, chapter layout and consistency, where we think it is appropriate.  PLEASE NOTE: we will go out of our way to ensure your work is coherent to a very high standard, and will not shy away from using initiative.

Just like our PROOFREADING service, we will return your .DOC word manuscript to you, amended with tracked changes in the markup, which you can reject or accept at will (we will instruct you how to do this).  You will not have to accept any changes we make before you have had the opportunity to review them.  

PLEASE ENSURE THAT WE RECEIVE ALL OF YOUR INTERIOR PAGES - DEDICATION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, PREFACE AND ABOUT THE AUTHOR, ETC. - WHEN SUBMITTING.​

Our COPY-EDITING service comprises the following:

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• If we feel it is necessary to do so, we may make structural changes to your book and linear changes to its narrative.  This may include reorganizing chapters and scenes within and across chapters to present a more fluid and palatable reader experience.  Occasionally we may also do this for subjective creative suggestion.  We may also omit or rewrite significant sections of text, if we feel it is confusing, inaccurate or otherwise detrimental to the overall narrative.

• For non-fiction books, we will ensure tables, indexes and appendices are professionally presented and fully functional.  This will also apply to images and illustrations.

• All inaccurate instances of grammar, punctuation, spelling and indentation amended, ensuring contextual punctuation (such as capitalization, use of bold and/or italicization) is uniformed throughout the book’s entirety.

• Additions/changes to words and/or sentences, where we feel their inclusion or omission may be confusing to the reader, repetitive in nature, or otherwise need to be improved, in order to be fluid and coherent to an English-speaking audience.  This may include occasional deletions and rewriting of sentences, as non-intrusively as possible, whilst optimizing retention of your author voice, and only where we deem it necessary to do so, for reasons of coherent language and syntax.

• REST ASSURED THAT IF WE FEEL YOUR MANUSCRIPT REQUIRES NO MORE THAN SIMPLE PROOFREADING/LINE-EDITING, WE WILL ADVISE YOU AGAINST THE COPY-EDITING SERVICE.

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Whatever language your manuscript is written in, we can translate it to English before copy-editing to our usual high-quality standard.

PLEASE NOTE: This is one of the few occasions when A.I. will prominently dictate the outcome of your instruction.  We will use software to translate your book before carrying out our appraisal, and will base your quotation on the translated word count, as if appraising any other English-language book.

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Your A.I.-software-translated manuscript will be returned to you along with your editorial appraisal, and subsequent instruction will confirm your acceptance of the translation.  Because we will be using third-party software to translate your book, unfortunately the translation can not be included in the MJV Literary Quality Guarantee, only the grammatical quality and any books created after the review process. Your quoted pricing will be based on the English word count after translation.

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PLEASE NOTE: THIS SERVICE ASSUMES YOU ARE TRANSLATING YOUR BOOK FOR SALE TO AN ENGLISH-READING MARKET; YOUR FINAL MANUSCRIPT WILL NOT BE TRANSLATED BACK INTO ITS ORIGINAL LANGUAGE AS PART OF THE SERVICE.

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