Revisions Policy: Ensuring Your Book's Perfection
At HMD Publishing, we are committed to delivering a perfectly formatted book that meets your vision. Our revisions policy is designed to provide you with opportunities to fine-tune your book's interior design and ensure everything is just right before publication.
We work with you to refine your book's formatting until it shines, ensuring a polished and professional final product.
Our Standard Revisions Policy
For all book formatting projects, we include **three rounds of revisions** as part of our standard service. This allows for a collaborative process where you can review the formatted manuscript and request adjustments.
What Constitutes a "Revision Round"?
A revision round is defined as a single submission of feedback from you, encompassing all requested changes to the formatting and layout. We then implement these changes and provide you with an updated proof for your review. This process is repeated for up to three rounds.
Typically, revisions cover:
- Adjustments to spacing (line spacing, paragraph spacing).
- Minor font size adjustments (e.g., slightly larger chapter titles).
- Corrections to page breaks or widows/orphans.
- Minor image placement adjustments.
- Any formatting inconsistencies that may have been missed.
Content Edits vs. Formatting Revisions
It's important to distinguish between formatting revisions and content (textual) edits. Our formatting service is based on the final manuscript you provide. Therefore:
- Formatting Revisions: These are changes related to the *design and layout* of the book (e.g., margins, font styles, spacing, page breaks). These are covered by our three revision rounds.
- Content Edits: These are changes to the actual *text* of your manuscript (e.g., adding/deleting sentences, correcting typos, rewriting paragraphs). These are generally outside the scope of formatting revisions, as they can significantly impact the layout and pagination.
Please ensure your manuscript is fully edited and proofread *before* submitting it for formatting to minimize additional costs and delays.
Fee for Minor Content Edits
While we strongly encourage a final, polished manuscript before formatting, we understand that small textual errors might occasionally slip through. For minor content edits (e.g., a few typos, a missing word) requested *after* the initial manuscript submission and during the revision process, we apply a small fee:
$1 per edit, with a minimum fee of $10 per revision round.
This fee helps cover the time and effort required to locate, implement, and re-check these small changes within the complex formatting software, which can be more time-consuming than it might appear. It also encourages authors to submit a thoroughly proofread manuscript initially, ensuring a smoother and more efficient process for everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions About Revisions
Addressing common concerns about our revision process.
Significant content edits (e.g., adding/deleting chapters, major rewrites) can drastically alter the book's layout and often require re-formatting a substantial portion of the book. In such cases, you have a few options:
- Option 1: Re-do with Discount: You can provide us with a new, fully revised Word document. We can then re-do the book's formatting from scratch at a **20% discounted price** from your original formatting package fee. This ensures a perfect new layout.
- Option 2: Make Edits Yourself (Adobe InDesign): We provide you with the Adobe InDesign source files. If you have InDesign software and familiarity with it, you can make the changes yourself. We have a guide available: How to Make Edits Using Adobe InDesign.
- Option 3: Hire an InDesign Professional: You can hire another professional designer proficient in Adobe InDesign to implement the significant changes using the source files we provide.
Yes, if the original manuscript provided to us did not have specific text in bold or italics, and you request these changes during the revision process, they will be considered a minor content edit subject to the $1 per edit fee. Our formatting process imports the text as it is provided, so any stylistic changes to the text content itself (beyond the overall design style we apply) are treated as edits.
We will provide you with a clear method for submitting your revisions, typically via a marked-up PDF (using Adobe Acrobat's commenting tools) or a simple, numbered list of changes referencing page numbers in the proof. For a detailed guide on how to add comments to a PDF, please visit: How to Add Comments to a PDF. We will provide detailed instructions upon delivery of your initial formatted proof.
Minor revisions are typically completed within 3-5 business days, depending on the complexity and our current workload. We will always communicate an estimated turnaround time when you submit your revision requests.
While three rounds are usually sufficient for formatting adjustments, if you require additional rounds beyond the included three, they will be subject to an hourly rate or a per-round fee, which will be communicated and agreed upon before any further work commences. This ensures transparency and fair compensation for extended work.