The kinds of editing, and which one you need
Send the same manuscript to three editors and ask what an edit would cost, and the three answers will not resemble each other. That is not a sign that somebody is overcharging. It is a sign that "an edit" is not one job.
It is four, done by four kinds of attention, at four different points in a book's life. The fastest way to waste editorial money is to buy the wrong one, and the second fastest is to buy the right ones in the wrong order.
The four jobs, by what each one changes
- Developmental editing changes the book. Structure, argument, pacing, what to cut and what is missing. It is done on a draft, it comes back as an editorial letter rather than a marked-up file, and it is the only pass that can fix a book that does not work.
- Line editing changes how it reads. Sentence and paragraph: voice, rhythm, clarity, the buried subject, the paragraph that says its thing twice. Nothing a line editor marks is wrong.
- Copyediting changes what is incorrect or inconsistent. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, tense, continuity, and the several hundred small decisions that must come out the same way every time — written down as a style sheet. Facts get checked as far as an editor can check them, which is not the same as fact-checking.
- Proofreading changes what survived. The last pass, on the typeset pages, after everything else is settled.
The editing passes that have to happen before typesetting takes each of those apart in detail, and explains why only the last one happens after the pages exist. What follows is the buying decision.
The order cannot be reversed
Each pass assumes the one before it is finished. That is not a convention; it is what makes the work possible at all.
A copyeditor harmonizing the spelling of an invented word across 90,000 words is doing careful work on text that a developmental edit may delete in a single note. You paid for the polish and then paid again to remove the thing that was polished. The same is true of a line edit on a chapter that turns out to be two chapters, or on a scene that moves to a different act and no longer needs its opening.
Going backwards is worse than going out of order. A developmental edit after a copyedit does not just waste the copyedit — it produces new and unedited material, so you buy the copyedit twice.
The trap is that the passes are not equally easy to shop for. A copyedit is the most defined thing on the list, so it is the easiest to price and the easiest to ask for, and it is what a lot of first-time authors buy first. Easy to buy is not the same as needed.
Which one you actually need
A first novel usually needs developmental work most, and can least afford it. That is an uncomfortable pairing and it has partial answers. Do your own revision pass first, after six weeks away, because much of what a developmental editor would tell you about a first draft you can find yourself. Use Beta readers: what to ask, and when to locate where the book loses people. A shorter manuscript assessment — a read and an editorial letter, without the line-by-line work — costs less than a full developmental edit and answers the same question.
Nonfiction structure is cheapest to fix before the draft. A chapter outline finds a chapter with nothing in it in an afternoon; a developmental editor finds the same chapter a year later. See The nonfiction proposal, and why self-publishers should write one.
A well-drafted book by a writer with several behind them may need only a copyedit and a proofread. Experienced writers have internalized the structural pass. If you have published before, the honest question is whether this book is structurally solid or whether you simply want it to be.
Nobody should skip the proofread. It is the narrowest of the four and the most visible when it is missing. A reader who hits three typos in the first ten pages stops reading the book and starts counting the errors, and that is what the review will be about.
How to buy one: the sample edit
Ask everyone you are considering to edit the same few pages.
This tells you more than any credentials list, any client roster and any number of years in the business. You are hiring a specific person's attention, and the sample is the only way to see it.
Send pages that are typical rather than your best, and send the same pages to everyone so the results are comparable. Then look at what came back:
- Did they find the thing you already suspected was wrong? If they missed it, they are reading lightly.
- Does it still sound like you? A line editor who rewrites you into their own rhythm is expensive to undo.
- Are the changes explained, or just made? Queries phrased as questions are the mark of someone who knows it is your book.
- Is the work the job you asked for? A sample that comes back full of commas when you asked about structure is an answer in itself.
Agreeing the terms in writing before any work starts — scope, deadline, delivery format, how many passes — is the other half of this, and it has its own guide: Working with an editor without wasting the money.
In the tools. Previews are free, unlimited and watermarked, so you can set the book and hand your proofreader real typeset pages — with running heads, page numbers and a contents generated from the actual chapters — long before you pay for a file. Start your book → · about the tools
The proofread happens on pages, not on a manuscript
This is the one piece of sequencing that surprises people, because it puts an editorial service after formatting.
A proofreader is looking for faults that do not exist in a .docx, because a .docx has no pages: a word hyphenated at a line break in a way that changes how it reads, a running head carrying the previous chapter's title, a scene break that vanished at a page turn, a contents entry pointing at the wrong page.
So the sequence is developmental, line, copy, typeset, proofread. Book the proofreader for after your interior is set, not before, and expect their corrections to be small by design — anything larger re-flows the pages after it.
What you can do without paying
Your own revision pass, done with distance, is the closest free substitute for a developmental edit. A style sheet you keep yourself removes a large share of what a copyeditor would otherwise have to decide — see The style sheet: how a series stays consistent.
Self-proofreading is the one that does not substitute, because you read what you meant rather than what is on the page. Proofreading your own work, and when to stop covers the techniques that partly defeat that, and what they still miss.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: The editing passes that have to happen before typesetting · More: Proofreading your own work, and when to stop · Preparing a manuscript that typesets cleanly · Beta readers: what to ask, and when