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?