At Virtus, the first major production step is when the final manuscript is copyedited. (We explored the ins and outs of copyediting in previous posts here.)

A big question many authors have is whether it is necessary (or advisable) for them to review the copyedited manuscript before it is set into page proofs.

The short answer isn’t really conclusive: It depends…

At Virtus, we strive to provide copyediting that is thorough, consistent, and accurate, without being invasive: We will not rewrite your text unless we are specifically asked to do so. Our #1 goal is to correct any errors that may have slipped through or otherwise gone unnoticed by the author in the course of writing the book. Often, when a manuscript has been copyedited, authors won’t even notice the changes unless they do a comparison to the final manuscript: That is as it should be. If an author isn’t aware of the types of errors they are prone to make, it’s unlikely they’ll be aware of it when these are corrected.

So in most cases, a thorough review of the copyedited manuscript can be a completely unnecessary step. I have seen many cases where an author introduced radical changes during a copyediting review only to decide later to revert to the original, copyedited version when reviewing page proofs. A copyediting review can muddy the waters and have a negative effect on the final product.

For an author, rather than reviewing the copyediting, a much smarter and more efficient approach is to review page proofs. At Virtus, we exclusively use word-for-word proofreading, which is assigned to qualified and vetted resources.

We provided guidelines for doing reviewing page proofs here.

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