I recently had an interesting conversation with WBN client Robert L. We were discussing a proof of his novel and he was anxious about moving forward, understandably. Robert had had a bad experience with a professional
proofreader who charged him an arm and a leg and didn’t deliver on what he had promised.
Unfortunately, this happens often. In an industry saturated with independents—either freelancers or writers who pick up
editorial work on the side—a writer better get savvy about choosing wisely (which is a post topic for another time). There are a lot of folks out there who call themselves professional proofreaders, but that doesn’t make it so.
Just because I say I’m a shoe doesn’t make me a shoe. In order to be a shoe, I would need to have certain characteristics, certain qualities about me that are shoe-like: I would be foot-shaped, for example, and made of perhaps leather, canvas, or rubber. Bottom line: to be a proofreader, you must know how to proofread and you must do it well. There’s little subjectivity there. You either catch the errors and fix them or you
don’t.
Still, even legit proofreaders make mistakes. So what is an acceptable margin of error? If not perfection, what defines a successful proof?
