Referencing Services

If your book contains any facts or quotes that come from another published source (book, article, website, etc.), chances are that you’re going to need to reference those sources correctly within your book to add authenticity and avoid any claims of plagiarism. This can be quite complicated if you aren’t familiar with referencing – in fact, we’ve even written a guide to help you with this, which can be found here.

In addition to giving you some advice on this subject, we can also give you some more direct help, if needed, as part of one of our two referencing services.

If you’re comfortable with sorting out the referencing yourself, we offer a service in which we’ll simply check the references for you, but if you need a little more help, we also offer a more in-depth reference-crafting service. The details of each of these two services is given below.

In addition, if you have any images/figures within your book, you’ll also need to consider the copyright implications of those and how that is handled/expressed in your book. We can also help advise on this as part of our more in-depth service.

Editing iconReference-Checking Service

Our reference-checking service is open to you if you’ve already done the following when writing your book:

  • Chosen the referencing style you wish to follow (e.g. Harvard referencing or our recommended Whitten-Corten style).
  • Identified the published sources you’ve taken facts or quotes from within your book and created a references list at the back of your book, with the references formatted in line with the style you’ve chosen.
  • Included citations at the correct points in your book to point your readers to the corresponding reference for that information.

We’ll then do this:

  • Check each reference in the list contains the correct information and is in the correct format for the type of source it is (book, article, website, etc.), based on your chosen referencing style.
  • Check each referenced source is cited within the book (though you can, of course, include non-cited references if you wish).
  • Check the citations for each reference match the reference (correct spellings of names and year of publication, if appropriate to the referencing style).

This service is included if you’re having your book copy-edited by us, and it can also be an add on to a proofread or a standalone service. If we’re either copy-editing or proofreading your book, we’ll also identify any facts or quotes within your book that are missing a reference/citation (we’ll only do this if we are already reading through your book as part of another service).

Editing iconReference-Crafting Service

Our reference-crafting service is for you if you need more help than our reference-checking service provides, particularly if you’ve written your book before becoming aware that referencing is even needed.

  • Advise on which referencing style is most suitable for you book.
  • Advise on whether a particular fact or quote needs to be referenced.
  • Advise on whether copyright permission is likely to be needed for any figures/images included. (Please note that you’ll need to let us know where each image has come from [or all images in general if they’re from the same source] and you’ll still need to obtain any such permissions yourself, where needed.)
  • Track down the full information needed for a particular source you need to reference. (Please note that you’ll still need to provide some basic information to allow us to do this [e.g. the author name and title for a book or the URL for a website / online article]).
  • Format the information for the references in line with the chosen referencing style.
  • Add correct citations within the text to point to the reference in question. (Please note that you’ll need to advise where this information is within the main text of your book.)
  • Format a list of copyright information for images, where appropriate and based on the information you’ve provided.

This service may be added alongside a copy-edit or proofread done by us, but there is an extra charge for this; it is also available as a standalone service. If we’re either copy-editing or proofreading your book, we’ll also identify any facts or quotes within your book that are missing a reference/citation (we’ll only do this if we are already reading through your book as part of another service).

Please contact us for a quote if you’re interested in using either of these services by emailing alexa@thebookrefinery.com

Email Alexa