Congratulations on writing a beautiful romance novel

You’ve poured your heart and soul into your story and can’t wait to share it with readers. This is an exciting time! It’s also the time to ensure your manuscript is as polished as possible. After all, first impressions can’t be remade. Give your novel its best chance for success.

Your work deserves to reach its full potential

Romance readers expect to be taken on a fulfilling journey to happily ever after (or happily for now). Nothing breaks that wondrous spell faster than an unsightly typo or grammatical snafu. Errors bring attention to the text and tug readers from the story, draining tension and emotion. You want sighs of satisfaction, not disappointment.

You don’t want readers swooning for the wrong reasons

Don’t let lingering errors blemish your precious characters and story—or your reputation as a writer. Professional authors use professional proofreaders because they understand their value. Don’t give readers an excuse to put down your book. Instead, give them confidence in your abilities, increase your chances of receiving good reviews, and make readers more likely to anticipate your next novel.

Not everyone is a proofreader

After doing all the hard work creating your novel, you may think your own proofreading is good enough. You may even have asked a few friends or relatives, librarians, teachers, or other authors to check your manuscript for mistakes—great! But this doesn’t take the place of professional proofreading. I guarantee there are still some (probably plenty) lingering issues.

Trained proofreaders check each syllable, space, and punctuation mark while also assessing word use and grammar. With my skills and experience as both a proofreader and a published romance novelist, I know what to keep a sharp eye out for. View my qualifications here.

I check for typos and errors in the following:

• Spelling
  (This includes correcting words such as alot to a lot and can not to cannot)
• Capitalization
  (For example, mom in “My mom” should be lowercase, but it should be capitalized when used like this: “I saw Mom…”)
• Hyphenation
  (This is more important than you might think. After all, “a man eating tiger” means something entirely different than “a man-eating tiger”!)
• Homophones
  (Those tricky words that sound alike but have different meanings, such as break and brake or dual and duel, are super easy to miss when you don’t know what you’re looking for)
• Numbers
  (For example, numbers in dialogue should typically be written as words, not numerals)
• Punctuation
  (This includes apostrophes, quotation marks, colons, semicolons, commas, etc.)
• Grammar
  (This covers faulty subject-verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, pronoun errors, and more)

Proofreading is not content editing

If your manuscript is still very similar to a first draft and hasn’t gone through “big picture” editing (aka content editing, heavy editing, or substantive editing) for characterization, plot, story, and overall logic and flow, there’s a good chance it’s not yet ready for proofreading. Proofreading is the last link in the chain of editing—a final polish that focuses on word-level details while eliminating typos and other small errors. Therefore, I will not rewrite your content or change your voice and style.

I proofread to publishing industry standards

This means I refer to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) as needed.

I keep your work confidential

Your work is precious, and I respect that. I will never share your writing with any outside source. For this reason, I will happily sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) upon your request.

Clean romance only, please

Please note that I proofread clean romance only, which means no “on-the-page” sex, graphic violence, or strongly offensive language. I welcome sweet romance, wholesome romance, inspirational romance, and all subgenres of clean romance such as contemporary, suspense, mystery, fantasy, time travel, fairy tale, historical, mail-order bride, regency, gothic, cowboy, billionaire, young adult, and new adult. I do not proofread steamy romance, dark romance, LGBTQ+ romance, or erotica. These are simply my preferences and the genres I’m confident working with.

How does the proofreading process work?

To ensure we’re a good fit and that you like the level of editing I provide, please send me up to 1,000 words of your work for free sample proofreading. Once you’ve looked over my changes and comments, decide if you want to proceed. If so, we’ll discuss my availability and expected turnaround time.

Once you send me the complete document (typically in Word, although I do accept PDFs when necessary), I’ll email a PayPal invoice for half the cost of the project. Once this is paid, I’ll begin proofreading as scheduled.

I’ll clearly mark all changes using Word’s Track Changes. This allows you to easily view and accept or reject each edit. When proofreading is complete, I’ll send the final invoice. Once it’s paid, I’ll promptly return the proofed manuscript.

I encourage you to email me with any questions or concerns you may have at any time during or after this process.

Your story’s heart is in the details—let’s make those details shine!