NYU School of Law, More than Human Rights book

Project Background

Following Flatpage’s successful collaboration with NYU Law CHRGJ’s Open Global Rights platform, the team at CHRGJ engaged Flatpage to perform copyediting and proofreading on a book that they were publishing for the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project, dedicated to the interdisciplinary consideration of the rights and wellbeing of humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all.

Flatpage has been extremely consistent in the high quality of service provided, always demonstrating a high degree of professionalism, responsiveness, and care in their work.

Jackie Gallant, CHRGJ

Derived from conference proceedings and edited by César Rodríguez-Garavito, the publication comprises approximately twelve essays written by various scholars, legal experts, activists, and storytellers. This means that some of the essays were highly theoretical, others contained legal jargon, and others still were quite artistic and abstract.

Furthermore, as the contributions were originally conceived as oral presentations, this project required both line editing to enhance the writing style for a general audience and copyediting to prepare the text for publication. Following the preparation of the manuscript, the Flatpage team also completed a proofread on the publisher’s page proofs to ensure that no typographical errors or layout issues were printed in the final publication.

The Collaboration

The MOTH team approached Flatpage in the early stages of preparing the conference proceedings for publication. They wanted a line editor who could assist the authors in achieving an accessible tone for a general audience, as some of the the contributions tended to be more legal and complex. Furthermore, all the texts needed to be copyedited, since each chapter had its own distinct citation style (footnotes, in-text/references, endnotes) that needed to be standardized. They also wanted to ensure that each text maintained consistent spelling and was free of mechanical errors.

The Flatpage team coordinated with the MOTH authors through MOTH lawyer Jackie Gallant, relaying the editorial passes and monitoring the project’s progress on a shared tracker. We exchanged documents using a file-sharing platform, divided into folders for each pass and author response.

Flatpage exceeded even our high expectations in the quality of work and ease and professionalism of service. Publishing a book is a difficult task but working with Flatpage made the process of producing the book enormously easier and less stressful. We are exceedingly pleased with the outcome.

The multieditor team at Flatpage used a shared style sheet throughout the project to ensure consistency in citation style, spellings, and punctuation usage. This style sheet was particularly useful during the final stage of the editing process, when our proofreader reviewed the publisher’s page proofs for any remaining issues in the typography and layout.

The Outcome

The MOTH book was published by the New York University School of Law in 2024 and is currently available online and in print.

We absolutely recommend working with Flatpage! They can 100% be relied on to provide high quality services and make the process of book (and other) publication exceptionally smooth.