How do I send my book to an editor and bring their changes back?
Most editors work in Word with Track Changes on. The writer works with that.
Send it
Open your book, press Download, and choose Word (.docx). Send that file to your editor.
Bring it back
When the edited file comes back:
- Open your book and press Download.
- Under Got your Word file back?, press Update from a Word file… and pick the file.
Your words don't change yet. Each difference comes in marked, with the name of the person who made it, taken from Word's tracked changes. Your editor's comments come in as notes.
Accept or reject
- Click in a marked change, then open the Changes menu and choose Accept this change or Reject this change.
- The same menu takes or drops one person's changes at once.
- Accept all and Reject all do every change.
Nothing in your book changes until you accept it.
Good to know
- One file at a time. If a chapter still has changes waiting, a second editor's file skips that chapter. Finish the first editor's changes, then bring in the next file.
- Keep writing while your editor has the file. When you press Download, the writer keeps a copy of the Word file in this browser. When the file comes back, it's compared with that copy, so only your editor's changes come in. Anything you wrote since then stays as you wrote it.
- If you both changed the same words, yours stay. The editor's change is listed as left out, so you can make it by hand if you want it.
- Downloaded on another device? Then there's no copy to compare with here, and the file is compared with your book as it is now. If you changed the book since you sent it, your new words show up as the editor taking them out. Reject those changes to keep your words. The dialog tells you which way it compared.
- Not brought in yet: a change that is only formatting (a word put in italics), a change to a footnote's words, and a new chapter title. Make those by hand. A changed table comes in as the whole table, taken out and put back.
You can also mark your own changes this way: press Track changes in the writer, and what you type is marked for you to accept or reject later.