Professional vs Free Help
“Do I really need a professional proofreader?” I hear this question frequently. (Almost as often as “What is a proofreader?”) Maybe your best friend has always had a knack for writing and you want her to proofread your novel. Besides, your friend will proof your work for free. After all, everyone loves free help, right?
And it’s great that your friend is willing to help you. I love it when friends and family members support each other. It’s beautiful and gives everyone warm fuzzies.
However, there are four potential points of concern when friends and family members are your go-to proofreaders.
Privacy
One of the benefits of hiring a professional proofreader is that you maintain your privacy. Maybe you don’t want your friends or family to know you write Star Trek fan fiction. Or perhaps you just don’t want to share your writing with your friends while it’s still a work in progress. In fact, some people are embarrassed that their writing isn’t perfect or that they don’t know all the comma rules. Either way, when you hire a professional proofreader, your work stays between you and your proofreader. No one else sees your work or mistakes.
Objectivity
Your friends and family love you. They’re very encouraging. Shoot, they’re even volunteering to proofread your work. I’m certainly glad that you have a supportive network cheering you on. But before you accept your friend’s offer to proofread for you, remember that if your friend proofs your work, you’re not receiving unbiased feedback. On the contrary, your friend has personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions about you, and that will influence how your friend views your work.
One of the primary reasons to hire a professional proofreader is that you’ll work with an objective third party. Professionals are not going to withhold some of our feedback because they’re afraid of hurting your feelings. That’s not to say that editors out for blood and we’re going to rip your work to shreds. As professionals, we want to spot the mistakes and correct them for you. We’re not here to judge; we’re here to help. If you accept some of the suggested changes and not others, it won’t hurt our feelings in the least. Professional editors respect that this is your writing, and you get the final say.
Efficiency
Proofreading takes time. Generally, to proof something well, you have to read the document multiple times. And depending on what the document is, those multiple reads can take a while. If you’re using your friend or family member to proof your book, that can slow down your turnaround time. Let’s face it: life happens. Your sister’s boss needs her to work late. Or your best friend’s kids get sick. Or a skunk sprays the family dog. When these sorts of things happen, it’s so easy for priorities to change. As a result, proofing your book is no longer near the top of the to-do list for your friend.
At the very best, that means delays for you. At worst, it means your friend was only able to give your book a quick review, not the in-depth assessment you were hoping for. If you’ve got a deadline for finishing your book, this could mean trouble.
But with professional proofreaders, reviewing your work is the priority. It’s literally our job. We understand that you have time constraints and deadlines. Some proofreading companies even offer a next-day guarantee if your document is under a certain number of words. A professional proofreader is able to review your work quickly because they’re experienced with the different rules and formats that writers need. That means you receive high-quality results quickly.
Professionally Trained
It does not matter if your friend is a pharmacist, sales executive, day care worker, bus driver, CEO, stay-at-home dad, or baker. It’s been twenty years since your friend had to write anything other than his journal entries or wedding vows. Whatever it is that your friend does, unless he is a professional proofreader, I guarantee you he doesn’t spend his days thinking about commas, reviewing hyphenation rules, and consulting style guides. And why should he? It isn’t part of his job description. That fact alone means your novel is more likely to still have errors by the time your friend is done with it.
But with a professional proofreader, you can be confident that we have trained for this. I’ve taken classes, attended seminars, studied style guides, and passed exams just to learn everything I can about proofreading. That means you can be confident that when I review every line of text in your document, I’ll find any possible errors.
Which to Choose?
So before you turn your novel over to your friend for some free proofreading, consider what is most important to you. Do you want the free help from your kind-hearted friend? Or do you want private, objective results from an efficient, trained professional? The decision is completely up to you, but I hope you’ll choose BulletProof for your professional proofreading needs. Contact me today so I can get started on your project!