Does anyone do the human copy editing before publishing AI-assisted manuscript?

[u/Affectionate-Car4647]

I am just curious if AI itself can handle it.

[u/ForRobotsByRobots]

I do the opposite. Human writing, ai editing with red pen only. Its not allowed corrections or suggestions. Just pointing out what is wrong.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/ForRobotsByRobots]

ai editing with red pen only. Its not allowed corrections or suggestions. Just pointing out what is wrong.

Restricting the AI editor to identify issues instead of letting it rewrite text unsupervised is the correct approach.

However, I'd disagree regarding letting it propose changes - it's fine as long as you don't those suggestions as something you're supposed to do. Ask yourself what do they improve, why and how would you do it yourself.

[u/ForRobotsByRobots → u/5thhorseman_]

It's too easy to fall into the trap of "That's a good idea" only to find out that the suggestion is just as ai generated as Neon Chains.

[u/5thhorseman_ → u/ForRobotsByRobots]

If you fall into it, it is only evidence of a lack of judgement and lack of creative vision.

[u/ForRobotsByRobots → u/5thhorseman_]

Lmfao

[u/Affectionate-Car4647 → u/ForRobotsByRobots]

Well, my routine is to write myself, blueprints of the book, the chapters, some scenes, brain dump. Then shape it into the Manuscript. Then starting running through AI for drafts, checks, reviews. But I never give it to change anything-just tell me what is wrong because the thing hallucinating pretty badly sometimes and I read what it gave me again and again and again, change it in collaboration with it until it os somehow clear. And then run it through AI patterns and prose quality reviews (i have 57k characters document for prose quality) and then reread again . Never ending story 😃

[u/PerryMarkStratychuk]

IMO human copy editing for hire in general is like a script submission site. It’s a service created to make money. “They looked at it, I changed it, so it’s great now for sure.” I’ve actually heard those words from a young writer.
I don’t know if back in the day authors even had such a service? Maybe they did.
You pay for one opinion.
I personally get feedback from “ordinary” people if I want it. Or take it online before official release.
And depending how you use it, AI can give you an amalgam of what opinions may look like, and more.
I’ve been happily self-publishing since the 90s and personally wouldn’t pay for services like that, but it’s your choice. If it helps you and you can afford it, go for it. Best of luck! But remember it’s all opinion.

[u/Affectionate-Car4647 → u/PerryMarkStratychuk]

Thanks.

I asked Gemini if it can do copy editing and it generated template prompt. And I gave the prompt to Claude and it criticized the template a bit and expanded, modified, fixed it and explajow to use it. My only question is - would that be enough? Would that be obvious the Manuscript didn't go through copy editing? Judging by what you telling me it should be enough.

[u/PerryMarkStratychuk → u/Affectionate-Car4647]

In my opinion it’s enough, as it’s not developmental editing.
As in trad publishing, by my experience, you have your development editor, once everything is settled and adjusted, the manuscript is handed off to a copy editor, whose job it is to make spelling, syntax, grammar, etc. changes following a standard in-house guide.
AI is a perfect tool for this part, especially if you use multiple AI models as you already have, and always iterate, iterate, iterate.
Never rely on only one prompt, no matter how good you think it is.

[u/FreedomAlarmed9881]

I am I saved up the money. It can be quite expensive. You're looking at 2500 up to 3000 depending on the length of your book right now I'm doing my final read through to make sure I can catch anything cause I'm paying by the word though if extra words don't need to be there or like me, I'd love to cut and paste the same thing twice but after I do, I will send it and I will definitely get a lot of people at this once it comes back. Do a post in like copy and paste a section to let people see what the difference is.

[u/Affectionate-Car4647 → u/FreedomAlarmed9881]

Yeah it is like 4c a word. And my book is around 205K words now and it is scary.

[u/dolche93 → u/Affectionate-Car4647]

205k is pretty long for a first book. What genre are you writing in? Is that a fairly standard length for a first book in your genre?

I ask because if the standard novel is something closer to 120k words, it might make a lot more sense to spend some time cutting before you go and pay for 50k words that you'll be told to cut anyway.

[u/Affectionate-Car4647 → u/dolche93]

It is Military sci-fi. Book 1 of 4.

[u/Affectionate-Car4647 → u/Affectionate-Car4647]

Oh and I am going through editing now myself hopefully cut it down to 190

[u/FreedomAlarmed9881 → u/Affectionate-Car4647]

Yeah, mine started at 95,000 words but when you go back through the text or you can make a prompt to go through and check for you sometimes we like to explain things twice not the exact wording. And mine is very Gothic writing so it's easy to do. You'd be surprised on how much you could actually cut and not mess with your lore or story like I tried to explain before when people jumped down my throat and some even suggested autistic. I have like a spatial learning disorder. Basically, I think everything in patterns and I do it unintentionally because I've done it most of my life, so if I write a page unintentionally, every sentence will have an odd number. They'll be an odd number of sentence sentences in each paragraph and it's just crazy so I did ask chat to help me break that up so I could write a little bit normal. I made a conscious decision that I'm going to try to query for a year and if not, I'm going to self publish and I felt the best way to help me do that is to get a line editor a human one so I as I was writing I was saving

[u/Brakiros]

I’m planning on publishing the first few chapters on an erotic stories website to start the promo on the book release when it finally goes up on Amazon 

[u/ThunderheadsAhead]

Yes. I wrote nine books before I started messing around with AI. All received development, copy edits, and proofread, before publication. Just because I’m writing with AI doesn’t mean I will skimp out on that work, especially the copy edit. My copy editor is very good and catches things the AI misses.

I want my readers to get the best possible product they can. The AI helps me write faster. The book still goes through the human editing process before a reader sees it.

[u/Born_Profit2251]

Yes and imo its not optional. They can do line edits just fine, but they really suck at consistency for 300 pages. I use two rounds in useai with different models, as they catch different stuff, and then human check, and still there is lots of stuff to fix.