I'm developing book summaries of out-of-copyright books on self-development. This is for a charity site to be made available for people to subscribe (the money goes toward children's education). The problem is I love reading but I'm terrible at picking up typos and grammatical errors. They need to look professional and I'm worried that I'm going to provide a sub-par product. Not enough time is also a factor. Does anyone have any ideas around this? Are there techniques in improving proof reading ability? Are there any good services out there for proof reading? They're great books - whoever reads them will get a lot of benefit - it's just a matter of polishing the final product.
One method I use is to load the book into my Kindle and then turn on text-to-speech. Most problems are more obvious when listening to the Kindle's voice speak. There are also many freelance proofreaders available to hire, though you'd have to ask around to get recommendations for a good one.
such writing services aren't cheap, if you want good results for your money... it doesn't sound like you'll be able to become a good enough editor to do the job, unless you can wait a year or more to do the editing... if it's for a good cause, i may be able to do it for you for free, or help you to do it on your own, by giving you a sample edit... email me if you want to discuss it... love and hugs, maia maia3maia@hotmail.com
For typos, I've read that it can help to read the work backwards, so that you remove the context from what you're reading and have nothing to focus on other than spelling. That won't help with grammar.
This tip has also been recommended to me, along with the tip of reading your work aloud. I've not actually got round to proof-reading any of my novels yet though, so I can't say how well the techniques would work!
