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What We Do | Who We Are | Samples of Our Work What We DoWindhaven® is a highly experienced editorial & prepress production company, offering consulting & developmental editing for publishing houses, businesses, and authors; full-service typesetting & design; research, copyediting, and proofreading services; and full prepress production. Since its inception in 1985, Windhaven has edited, designed, and/or produced literally hundreds of books for the professional publishing field: our name is on the copyright page of hundreds of books in regular bookstores this very day. Want to check our credentials as book prepress producers & typesetters, for example? Easy: head over to any large bookstore in any town. Want to check our editorial credentials? When asking for references, please ask us for specific titles in any given genre--we will be glad to provide them, and (more importantly) provide references at the publishing house who hired us, so you can actually verify our editorial work and quality on books found at any major bookstore. We can offer what few other online editorial services can: over 23 years of experience in the professional New York book publishing industry ... and still ongoing. Editorial ServicesWindhaven's editorial services include full developmental editing, consulting editing, contract advisement, agenting advisement, researching services, copyediting & line-editing, and proofreading. We can take a manuscript from concept to full development, provide writing for the author (often referred to as ghostwriting--samples of published books we have co-written are available upon request), or simply provide copyediting and proofreading services for either authors or publishers. Windhaven has worked with publishers and directly with authors on editorial development, line-editing, ghost-writing, and copyediting or proofreading for over 23 years, having trained and worked in-house at major publishers since 1983 (see Who We Are). * We have hundreds of books to our credit, including dozens of New York Times bestsellers and bestselling, award-winning authors.Authors: please ask for a confidential list of other professional authors who have used our services for their manuscripts.
Typesetting, Book Design, Prepress Production for Publishers & AuthorsWindhaven has been typesetting and providing prepress production for books since the early 1980s. In those days we worked on now-arcane Compugraphic typesetting machines and dumb terminals. We graduated to computer-aided typesetting in 1986, with the advent of more affordable personal computers. Our in-house and freelance typesetters have continued to hone their skills with each improvement in the field, keeping pace with the industry. From the DEC Rainbow to the Mac G5, we've done it all. Our prepress services run the gamut from brochures, menus, or business card designs to typesetting, designing, and packaging full prepress production for books. Windhaven is expert with all the major typesetting programs, including InDesign, Pagemaker, and Quark--we use both Mac & PC platforms in our offices, along with a library of thousands of Postscript and OpenType fonts. Design is done using Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as specialty programs as needed. See our samples of work (interiors, covers, advertisements) to see some of our more recent projects for a taste of our abilities.
major publishersSince 1988 we have provided full prepress production and interior designs for large mainstream publishers such as Baen Books (distributed by Simon & Schuster), both paperbacks and hardcovers, Black Widow Press (part of Commonwealth Books), and Rounder Books (a divison of Rounder Records). As noted above, we provide editorial services for many of the major publishers; a sample list of our clients is at the bottom of this page.
smaller presses and self-publishing authorsSmaller presses and self-published authors utilize Windhaven's publishing knowledge & the contacts we've built up over decades in the book-publishing field--this makes Windhaven unique from such "on-demand" services one can find on the Internet where "one size fits none," all the books look the same inside, and your choices of book covers are Bad, Horrible, and Worst.
Windhaven isn't about the flash and fancy marketing techniques that self-publishing services use to talk authors
and small presses into spending unnecessary money on prepress services that can be priced 250% too high. Instead, at Windhaven we provide
services to authors and publishers who want beautiful books at half the cost and created in less than half the time of
conventional publishing and printing. A small-press or self-published book can have the same look as a book from a major press. Windhaven can provide self- and small publishers:
When it comes time to print, Windhaven has current professional contacts with both the newer on-demand digital printers and with the shorter-run offset web-press printers, in the U.S. and abroad. We find you the best printer at the best price for your particular project and specialized needs-- whether it be gold-edged, watermarked paper, or leather covers, bound-in CDs, or recycled tri-fold brochures.
Some customers of our small press/self-publishing program include: Sharon Simpson Joseph's award-nominated And How My Spirit Soars
(consulting, editing, proofreading); the bestselling novel
Portion of the Sea by Christine Lemmon (Penmark Publishing) (editing, proofreading, design, typesetting, prepress
consulting);
Please see samples of our work for samples of some of these projects.
There are "book doctors" and
"book packagers" and "on-demand/POD publishers" out there who will claim credit for the sky and the
sun. We don't take credit for books we didn't actually work on; we don't take credit for work done
by other freelancers; we don't price our work at exorbitant rates; we don't mislead authors or publishers about book distribution;
we don't take advantage of anyone's ignorance of
the field--we educate, instead. We are active (and proactive) in educating authors and small publishers about the facts and pitfalls of
Internet vanity press scams masquerading as self-publishing production houses that have, unfortunately, proliferated in the last few years.
(See footnote at the bottom of this page.)
We have a name and reputation to uphold: a name and reputation known in publishing. With our contacts and
knowledge, small publishers and authors can and do make a difference. You won't just end up with a poorly printed, ugly book in your hands
at the end of the day and no idea what to do with it: you will have a beautiful book and the knowledge of how to market and distribute it.
No other company with our credentials and background offers its services directly to small publishers and authors.
We ask for half the estimate up front, half on delivery of the final product.
Developmental editing: $45/hr.
Examples of how long it takes to copyedit a book: A "clean" book that's 400 pages would be about $700. A slightly "messy" manuscript would take
about 40 hours, which is more the norm, and would be about $880. That's TWO PASSES OF COPYEDITING.
All copyediting and proofreading are two passes.
Figure 10 pages per hour for your manuscript for copyediting and proofreading unless you are an established, long-term professional writer.
Our Editorial & Production Clients include (not comprehensive):St. Martin's Press Tor/Forge Books Bantam Dell Publishing Group (Random House) Black Widow Press becker&mayer! Miramax Books Penguin-Putnam Time-Warner Inc. HarperCollins Publishers Prentice-Hall Wiley Computer Publishing Morgan Kauffman Publishers Byron Preiss Publishing Learning International, Inc. (a Times-Mirror Company) Baen Books (dist. by Simon & Schuster) Avon Books (HarperCollins Publishers) Bookspan (Book-of-the-Month & Book Clubs [formerly Doubleday Direct])
Windhaven's Offices......are in a 200-year-old house & barn in rural southern New Hampshire.Here's what Windhaven looked like in 1901:
* FOOTNOTE: A Cautionary Tale--
Hanging out a shingle and calling yourself an editor (or typesetter or book producer) doesn't mean you are one. You know the websites I mean.
Check to make sure the editor or book producer has worked in-house for mainstream publishers, has been trained in-house, and has a list
of references and credentials you can check. Anyone can join an editorial association or guild. Again: ask for references and specifics,
and check them before hiring anyone to work on your title. If possible, look for samples of their work in major bookstores--but always
check their references.
As Andrew Phillips pointed out to me as I was writing this: Anyone can say, "I copyedited John Grisham's latest bestseller." It's up to you
to call the publisher's production editor--who hired the freelance copyeditor--and find out if your person really did do the copyedit.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had freelancers pad out their resumes with false, or exaggerated, assignment credentials.
Our work speaks for itself. Ask for references.
What We Do | Who We Are | Samples of Our Work
All contents, unless otherwise noted, copyright © Nancy C. Hanger, all rights reserved. No reproduction in any form, including electronic, without written permission of copyright holder. Windhaven® is a registered trademark (#75756527) in the United States. | |
