John Pettigrew is CEO and Founder of Futureproofs, where he is trying to make editors’ lives better with software designed for the jobs they actually do. A recovering editor himself, John has been working in publishing since 1997, including stints on academic journals, educational textbooks, and print and digital materials of all kinds. Here we interviewed John on Futureproofs and what’s next in the pipeline.

1) What exactly is Futureproofs?

Futureproofs lets you proofread effectively on-screen. It provides simple markup based on the BSI (or Chicago) standard, effective collaboration and powerful project management with real-time data. Bottom line, it helps publishing teams to publish their books at the required quality, faster and more cheaply.

2) What problem does it solve?

Many of us still proofread on paper – it’s simple, reliable and well-understood. But it’s also slow, surprisingly expensive and not environmentally friendly. But the existing software isn’t really designed for proofreading, so it’s slow and clumsy, which translates to ‘more expensive’. Futureproofs is designed specifically for publishing, based on long experience of the industry.

3) Who is your target market?

Currently, we’re targeting illustrated-book publishers – education, trade non-fiction and children’s. But Futureproofs can work for anyone who’s creating books, magazines or large-scale documents. We have customers who publish mostly narrative text, and we’re also talking to several academic publishers.

4) What results do you hope to see over the next few years?

I set up Futureproofs to make editors’ lives better. So, I hope that we’ll help to build a confident editorial community that can do its job effectively and demonstrate its value to the wider publishing industry (traditional and self-publishers alike). And for Futureproofs to be the default choice for proofreading!

5) What will be next for Futureproofs?

We’re always releasing new features for Futureproofs (usually a couple of times a month). The next Big Thing, though, will be support for ebooks via the EPUB format (they’re a real pain to check at the moment), which is coming later this year, probably around the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Read more on the Futureproofs blog and website.