Hire a Book Editor

A manuscript evaluation is usually the first step in the editorial process. After an evaluation is completed, you will receive a short report that discusses strengths and weaknesses, offers you some suggestions for revising your manuscript, and proposes a course of action for moving forward.

A developmental edit is an edit that is typically done after a first draft has been completed. It can also be helpful if a writer is stuck halfway through a novel or nonfiction manuscript.

With fiction, the focus is often on identifying how best to develop your plot and characters in order to realize your themes.

With nonfiction, the focus is on developing the best structure and approach for delivering your research, information, or story.

A substantive edit is often the first edit that gets done on a manuscript. It is a big-picture edit that identifies major substantive and/or structural weaknesses in a piece of writing. 

In fiction, these weaknesses might involve problems with your plot, subplots, or character development.

In nonfiction, these problems might include poorly organized chapters, arguments that require additional support, or chapters that are missing an introduction or a conclusion. 

A substantive edit, unlike a developmental edit, can usually be accomplished without the need for major rewriting.

The term “line edit” means different things to different people. For our purposes, it refers to an intermediate edit that is usually done after a substantive edit and before a copy edit. This edit catches smaller problems that were overlooked or set aside during an earlier round of editing. 

In fiction, these problems might include style gaffes, continuity issues, or the misuse of dialogue tags.

In nonfiction, these weaknesses might include wordiness, a reliance on jargon,  or unclear passages.

A copy edit is usually the last edit that is done before a manuscript is laid out by a designer. The editor focuses on standardizing spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, the presentation of numbers, the use of abbreviations, and so on. If you are offered a contract by a traditional publisher, that publisher will likely copy edit your manuscript so that it conforms to their house style. A writer hoping to find an agent or a publisher may still wish to hire an independent editor to copy edit his or her manuscript if it has a high number of spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in it.

Proofreading is done after a manuscript has been laid out by a designer. Proofreaders check for anything that was missed during the editorial process, including inconsistencies in capitalization and the treatment of numbers, as well as spelling, grammatical, and punctuation mistakes. Proofreaders also check for bad word breaks, font inconsistency, and faulty text alignment.

Our fees are reasonable. Contact me at diane@dianeyoungassociates.com  for a free estimate. Remember to provide the word count for your manuscript and be sure to tell me whether it is fiction or nonfiction.

Generally, manuscript evaluations take one to two weeks while editing takes a little longer. Please be advised, though, that we usually have a backlog of work. Typically, you will have to wait about four weeks for your manuscript to reach the front of the queue.

No, but you will be asked to sign a work agreement to reserve a place in line.