I never sent my texts out for proofreading. I mean, to a professional proofreader.

In theory, proofreading should come right after editing. Any prepress service (we're talking about self-publishing here) offers paid editing, proofreading, and typesetting. And there's no shortage of independent specialists either. I've already written about editing and typesetting, so it's only fair I tell you about my experience with proofreading too.

Everyone knows the truth about their own spelling and grammar. There are people who never quite grasped Russian grammar rules in school, and there are, say, people with dyslexia. No problem, as they say. In either case, I'd of course recommend turning to a professional. It's like me and English. I can chat freely with Australian friends at a bar, but I wouldn't dare translate my own book into English myself. There are too many nuances I don't know that matter for translation. I hope in a couple of years I'll be able to do it myself. But for now it's one of my dreams — to learn English well enough to write books in it.

Anyway :))) That covers people who struggle with spelling and grammar.

But my own grasp of it is pretty solid. Not perfect, I'd say, but at a decent level. So after shelling out a substantial sum on editing and other services for the first book, I got stingy, honestly, when it came to proofreading. I paid for a service (it was much cheaper than a proofreader), put my brain to work, and got on with it. I went through the text twice. Done.

If your goal is to land a publishing deal, then once your manuscript gets a 'Yes!' (usually after countless attempts), professionals will be waiting for you there. Editing polished to a shine, proofreading polished to a shine, typesetting, covers, blurbs, all of it. So, in my humble opinion, it's worth investing wisely in prepress work.

You do need to prepare a manuscript before sending it to a publisher. But that doesn't mean buying every service before you dare to approach someone. Start with a clean working copy, check names and continuity, and make sure you understand what an agent or publisher has actually asked for.

These days there are two different ways to get a first editorial pass with EditRoast's free open-source skills: run the full-book roast or proofreading workflow in your own Codex or Claude Code environment, with your own AI access. You get an auditable report, not a silently rewritten, publication-ready book. The separate paid editorial report service shows its current price based on the manuscript and selected package before checkout. I'm not going to freeze an old price into an article that may live for years.

Neither an AI report nor a paid critique can guarantee acceptance by a publisher. But finding a contradiction, a misplaced scene or a spelling inconsistency yourself before someone else encounters it is a useful step. And sending a tidy, intelligible package respects the reader's time.

So why does proofreading matter? When it's there, nobody notices it. But they will absolutely notice when it's missing.

Do you really need that?