For a development editing project, the minimum number of rounds of editing is four.

One round of Development, Copyedit, line edit and proofreading before giving to the author and after receiving the revised copy, the sequence goes with Copyediting, Lineediting and Proofreading and finally handing the final manuscript to the Author.

Many times, we confuse revision with editing. Revision is basically reassessing your ideas, your plot, the characters and their personalities. It may also include how the picture unfolds, scene by scene and elimination or addition of certain ideas or replacing with better words.

Whereas, editing is scrutinizing how those ideas are expressed. Whether they resonate with your thoughts, what you are trying to convey, how it is being perceived in the developmental editing phase. And the change of sentence structure, usage of correct punctuation, grammar, better word usage in the subsequent editing phases.
In proofreading, spelling, typos, capitalization, textual inconsistencies and other minor errors are rectified before the final publishing phase.

Now comes who should carry out your Revision. In developmental editing, you take advantage of the editor’s skills, and experience to get the manuscript revised. But the final call has to be yours. After all, it is your masterpiece.

In other editing processes, editors refrain to comment, suggest or give major plot changes suggestions. Here, you are your best judge to revise your manuscript as per how you want it. And finalize it, before you send it to your editor.

First of all, you need to ask yourself- “How much flexible and open to changes I am in my manuscript?” If not much, it does not matter even if you take the most premium editing service, and are assigned to work with an editor holding expertise in your genre, you won’t be satisfied. The thing is, the editor is going to be your best critic. And if critics and suggestions make you uncomfortable, go with copyediting.

Go with line editing if you are 100% satisfied with your plot and only want editing to contribute to make it the best version of itself.

But if you are highly open and flexible to changes, and could do some hard-work with your editor to shatter all boundaries and barriers to think out of the box to give your ideas some wings, go with developmental editing.

And even then if you are confused to decide the type of book editing, you need not worry. Send us first few pages of your manuscript, along with the sample edit, you will be provided with a package designed specifically for you direct from the editor’s desk.

Proofreading is entirely different from editing, especially heavy editing (developmental or line-editing). It does not contribute towards the final product whereas the latter not only improves the content significantly but makes the manuscript the best readable version of itself.

Proofreading corrects minute errors, typos, spelling errors, textual inconsistencies and punctuation. It does not leave any room for improvement or up-gradation of your Art. And more importantly, the final manuscript will more likely look similar to what it was prior to getting proofread. Whereas, developmental editing work on your plot, its characters and their personalities to check for major inconsistencies. How your story unfolds, how you start and end your manuscript, are you able to hold their attention midway, all lies in the domain of your developmental editor.

That does not downright rule out its importance. It is highly important to get an edited manuscript proofread before the final publishing to avoid the mishap of 2000 copies in print of ‘City Sage’ instead of ‘City Saga’.

For a 10,000 word manuscript, it takes around 2 days for proofreading to 2 weeks for Heavy Editing. The time also varies on the basis of the editing package being selected.

For a 10,000 word thesis the cost would be:

There are 4 types of Book Editing.

1)    Developmental Editing

(Also called: conceptual editing or manuscript appraisal.) – Developmental Editing is the most premium editing service, where the ‘’big-picture”- of your plot, your characters and especially your storyline if you are writing fiction, or the organization of lessons for your audience if you are writing non-fiction. Developmental editing comes at an initial phase where the writer is ready to rewrite the manuscript after the expert suggestions, feedbacks and critics of the editor to make the manuscript a masterpiece! 

The novice writers are especially advised to take up developmental editing, as while working on your manuscript with an experienced editor, you learn a lot about writing. It is not a luxury but a prerequisite to becoming an Author.

2)    Line editing

Similar to copy editing, line editing is done after you and your editor are fully satisfied with the construction and organization of your content that is after developmental editing.

Here, the emphasis is on line-to-line editing to make the sentences flow like a song. You might have noticed in professional writings, the ending of a previous paragraph tells a subtle tale about the paragraph that is about to come next. If it is abrupt, as if thrown on the reader out of nowhere, we call it odd.

Many such oddities are removed from your manuscripts in line editing to make each sentence a better version of itself. 

3)    Copy Editing

Whereas in Copy Editing, the editor zoom-in on your manuscript moving word to word, looking for spell-checks, punctuation errors, the syntax used, tense form, inconsistencies, odd word or line spacing and minute grammar rules that 70% of native English speakers are unaware of. Here comes to rescue the precision tool – the “editor’s eye”, that actually sculpt your manuscript into a ‘professional book’ setting your level way high to amateurs.

  Often the novice writers ask me that this type of mechanical editing is even provided in MS WORD, ‘Grammarly’ and other tools, then why can’t we edit our own book using these editing tools, that too free of cost? Why to hire an editor anyway?

Well, a copy-editor is not that mechanical so that you can replace him with a robot. There is so much more to copy-editing than the edits provided by these tools. They altogether skip the part where even a little information processing is required.

A copy-editor even rewrites certain word flow if necessary, he might also suggest if a word fits into the context, or if the “factual” data is correct or not.

For example, there is a good chance that you might skip some geographical facts about the fictional cities you are describing, or some of its indigenous details might be described incorrectly. Here the copy editor comes at your rescue.

Editing tools are indeed helpful and are designed to make your writing experience better. Most writers use these tools as a medium to write their manuscript.

Finally, after copy-editing, a proofreader checks your manuscript on the surface level, surfing for any typos before giving a final pass for publishing.  

4)    Proofreading

This is the final stage of the book editing process and is done as a last recheck scrutinized by the editor, just prior to getting your book published. This is the surface level correction of misspells, grammatical or punctuation errors that might have skipped in the previous editing processes.

Imagine getting 2000 copies printed with the name, “The Sage of Armed-Love”, instead of “The Saga of Armed Love”.

Make sure your manuscript is thoroughly edited before you opt for proofreading. Nowadays editors provide proofreading as complementary with premium editing services like developmental editing, line-editing or at times even copy-editing.

Read more at our blog: What are different types of Book Editing?

For a 30,000 word manuscript: