to make sloppy typos or misuse a certain type of punctuation, for example, tell your proofreader. The more clues you can give them as to what they might be looking for, the better your book will be. STEP 3: FINISH THE PROCESS Once the copyeditor is done, they should send you back a Word document with all their changes made in Track Changes. This is the industry standard, and it’s worth confirming with them before hiring them that they’ll be tracking the changes for you. When you receive the document, you should expect to find a lot of small tracked changes. Most of these will be obvious mistakes that you’re happy to accept, but some may be phrasing recommenda- tions, or questions about pieces that are unclear. Some may be spelling or punctuation corrections that are techni- cally accurate, but not commonly used—remember, their job is to follow rules, not make editorial choices. Sometimes you may want to purposely break rules to stay current or create your unique tone and voice. Be sure to go through all of these changes and make your own decisions about what should be implemented and what shouldn’t. STEP 4: READY TO PUBLISH? At this point, you should have a manuscript that you’re confident enough to lock in and publish. We should note that you’ll probably never be 100 percent confident that your manuscript is ready to go. No writer is. But at some point—generally after all of these steps—there is noth- ing else left for you to do other than lock it in and put it out. Don’t waste weeks or months trying to get it from 99.9 percent perfect to lOCk iN yOUr MANUSCriPT: COPyEDiTiNg · 237