What happens if you quote material in your book, but you don’t get it exactly right?

Wave goodbye to your credibility.

If you want to come out of your publishing experience with your reputation intact, you need to have “source checking” done to verify that what appears in the manuscript is exactly as it appears in the original source. And I can do that for you.

How It Works and What It Costs

I check all quoted material in the manuscript to make sure that it is exactly as it appears in the original source—no missing words, exact spelling (this can vary in historical sources), exact punctuation, and so on. In other words, I help protect your credibility as an author or publisher.

I charge $25 an hour for source checking. The checking of straightforward sources that are easy to find goes quite quickly; tracking down obscure material obviously takes more time. A final cost for source checking will depend on how many quotes are in the manuscript and how difficult they are to track down.

What You Can Do to Cut Costs

There’s something simple you can do to cut the cost of source checking as you are writing your manuscript. Make a copy of the original source—the page of the book on which the quote appears, a print of the website on which the quote appears, and so on. Put those hard copies in a binder or scan them onto a thumb drive and pass them on to me. That simple measure will dramatically cut the time it requires me to check the sources and, as a result, will dramatically cut your cost.

So What’s Your Job?

Let’s get one thing straight: Source checking is not the same as credential checking. Just so there’s no misunderstanding, you as an author or publisher need to check the credentials of any sources you quote in a manuscript to be as sure as you can that your sources are credible and legitimate. That’s not what I do, but here are a few things to remember as you check credentials:

• What do you know about the source of the quoted material and that person’s or institution’s credentials? Is the source an expert? Can you find information about the source?
• If the information is on a website, do credible sites link to it?
• Who takes responsibility for the content?
• Is the material relatively free of emotion and bias? Watch out for highly emotional or biased quotes; they are more likely to be suspect.
• Is the purpose of the information to inform or to persuade?
• Are ads connected to the information? In other words, is it an attempt to make money?
• The bottom line is this: keep questionable sources out of your manuscript.

If you have questions or are ready to get started, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.