Pre-publication review

What a pre-publication review is

A pre-publication review is the last pass over a finished document before it goes out, looking for risk rather than style. It asks a different question from the other edits: not “is this well written” but “what in here could come back at us”. Claims with nothing behind them, comparisons that name a competitor, images and quotations used without permission, links that lead somewhere wrong, prices that disagree with your own price list, and sentences written in a confident hour that will read badly in a complaint.

This is an editorial review and it is not legal advice. I am an editor: I do not tell you what the law requires, or whether a passage is actionable. What I do is find the lines a careful reader would stop on, say plainly why they carry risk, and mark the ones that should go to a lawyer first. Anything serious goes to a lawyer.

It is not fact-checking, which traces every figure and quotation to a source, and it is not proofreading, the final read for errors. Both are often bought alongside it. A document can be accurate, clean and still unwise.

When you need one

Whenever a piece of writing names somebody else, makes a claim about results, or carries a number someone could hold you to. A white paper going out under your company name. A sales sheet that sets you against a named competitor. A case study with a customer's figures in it. A relaunched website where years of pages go live at once. Anything written fast under pressure: a statement about an incident, an announcement of a price rise, a reply to a competitor.

You do not need it if what you publish only describes your own work, names nobody, quotes nobody, uses your own photographs and states no figure you could be asked to prove. A final read for errors is then the right and much cheaper service, and I will say so on the first call rather than sell you the larger job.

What gets looked at

The whole document, against a list grown from the things that actually cause trouble for small businesses.

• Claims about you. “The only”, “the first”, “guaranteed”, “certified”, and every promise about a result, checked against what you can actually show and flagged if you cannot show it.
• Claims about other people. Any sentence naming a competitor, a supplier, a former employee or a regulator. Comparisons are checked for whether they compare like with like, and for whether what the draft says is still true.
• Permissions. Photographs, charts, logos, fonts, quotations, testimonials, customer names and staff faces. For each one: who gave permission, and can you produce it. Missing permissions are listed, not assumed.
• Links and addresses. Every link followed: dead ones, redirected ones, and the worse case of a link that still works and now points at something you would not want to be seen endorsing.
• Prices, dates and terms. Every figure checked against your current price list, every date checked for whether it has passed, every condition against your terms.
• Tone under stress. The sentence that reads fine today and quotable in a dispute: sarcasm about a competitor, an absolute where a qualified statement would do.

What you get

The risk list. One ordered document, worst first. Each item gives the wording, where it sits, what the risk is in plain language, and one of four recommendations: correct it, soften it, source it, or take it to a lawyer. There are no traffic lights or severity scores; the reasoning is the useful part.

The marked document. Your draft with every flagged passage highlighted in place and an alternative wording suggested where one is obvious. Where no rewording will fix the problem, the note says so rather than offering a cosmetic change.

The lawyer's shortlist. A separate page listing only the items I think a lawyer should see, with the question to ask about each, so you are not paying a lawyer to read a whole brochure. Again: my view of what needs legal attention is itself not legal advice, and a lawyer may add to the list or take things off it.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Manitoba payroll software company has an 11-page buyer's guide, written in-house, comparing its product to three named competitors. The review turns up 24 items. Eight are small: a stock photograph whose licence nobody can find, three links to competitor pages that now redirect elsewhere, a phone number from before the office moved.

Seven matter more. The comparison table marks a competitor as lacking a feature that competitor launched last spring, and a pricing column quotes that competitor's old plan. The guide calls the company “the only Canadian-owned option”, which nobody in the building can substantiate. A customer quotation is attributed by full name and employer, and the permission email cannot be found. Three sentences promise a specific outcome from using the software. The company corrects the table, drops the pricing column, changes “the only” to a plain statement of where it is based, re-obtains the quotation permission in writing, and rewrites the three promises as descriptions of how the software works. Four items go to its lawyer, who takes two further.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the document is, who it goes to, whether competitors are named, and what has worried you about it. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Based on length, and on how much of the document involves other people's names, images and words.
3. You send the final draft and the paperwork. The version that will publish, plus whatever you hold: image licences, permission emails, the price list.
4. The review. Two passes: one for claims and permissions, one for links, prices and dates. Two to five working days for most documents; a website takes longer and is quoted by section.
5. Delivery and a call. The risk list, the marked draft and the shortlist, then half an hour on the items needing a decision. What you do with the shortlist is between you and your lawyer.

What it costs

A pre-publication review is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the size varies: a four-page sales sheet and a forty-page report full of other people's images are not the same work. It depends on length, on how many outside names, quotations and images appear, and on whether a live site must be walked page by page. The pricing page shows the four ways I work. The number is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Most people make the corrections and send the document for a final read, because corrections introduce errors. If the figures mostly traced back to other people repeating each other, a full check of every claim is the sensible next step. If the trouble sat in the pages that set you against competitors, those are worth rewriting as honest comparisons, and if dead links were the bulk of it, regular link checking stops them accumulating. This review is complete on its own. Nothing further is assumed, and nothing is booked unless you ask.