The Spectrum of Edits Your Book Needs

A few years ago, I didn't know one type of editing from another. I didn't even know you could be a professional doing the kind of book doctoring I love to do now. About the only kind of editing I knew existed was proofreading. Lord knows, my writing always desperately needs a second look for spelling errors and punctuation issues!

Here's the confusing part

Even when you learn there are all these other levels, they still spill seamlessly over into each other.

I've helped on several proofread projects which were so close to publication they had already had their graphic layout set, so I was working with the printer's PDF. But they had issues serious enough I knew the publisher wouldn't want to put it out in the state they were in. What I did was to suggest changes that took roughly the same number of characters so the layout designer wouldn't have a ton of work afterward.

It's rather a joy when a proofread is strictly that: watch for accidental mistakes that got missed up to that point along with errors in the layout itself. But all the other levels bleed into each other so much you will find different titles and descriptions for them everywhere you turn.

As a rule, these range from most expensive at the top to least costly at the bottom. This has to do with the brainpower and time it takes to work through a manuscript. I love to use my brain, but a good, messy manuscript wears me out in just a handful of hours. A typical work week for a full-time developmental/substantive editor only involves around 25 hours of direct manuscript work — and it's slow, thoughtful work, meaning it's going to take a while to get through a book-sized project.

The farther you go down the list, the faster things get.

How the Levels Work in the Real World

Infrared

A level I didn't mention in the graphic is the one where the editor is half writing the content. While I haven't done this often, I do regularly add content for one of my website contributors whose blog consists of collecting interesting news items with only minimal notes. When I syndicate his material, I add in editorial commentary to suit the needs of the website I manage.

Other projects involve offering minor suggestions. I am always delighted to help authors who write on topics I am passionate about. Sometimes this knowledge helps me spot gaps in their presentation and I'll either suggest fleshing a topic out themselves or offer additional words that would allow them to easily fold these ideas in.

Red and Orange (Molding the Message)

Then there are the edits that help shape the big picture of a manuscript. Depending on whom you talk to, these levels cover everything from the vaguest outline of a book idea to the first edit of a more-or-less finished manuscript.

These are usually the most painful because they are all about telling you how ugly your baby is (at the moment). Or, they're like major surgery chopping off limbs and grafting the good ones back into new positions.

They hit right at your creative heart. But the point isn't to break you, rather, it's to help your creative genius grow in ordered and helpful directions.

This is my favorite kind of edit to walk through with authors. We're helping authors sift through their ideas to find the gold and toss the dross.

I will never forget what it was like to be an aspiring writer who wasn't sure I had anything to say that others would care about reading. Bringing an editor in early can help us gain the confidence to pour our souls into a manuscript that we know will be worth presenting to the world.

• Writer's coaches work at this level,
• a manuscript critique (editorial assessment) is going to cover these things if the raw ideas are already on paper,
• and a first copy edit of a messy manuscript will spill up into these levels of edits.

It's all about drawing the best out of the author so the finished product will end up being the best for the reader.

• For nonfiction, the major concerns at this point are to watch for a clear flow of thought from beginning to end, overall reader experience, tone, chapter structure, and balance of illustrations and ideas.
• For fiction, it's all the big elements: story arc, character development, worldbuilding, plausibility, and general pacing. (I'm sure there's more, but my own specialties don't include full-length adult novels.)

If you are dreaming of building a series of books, especially for fiction, you have a lot of corners to avoid painting yourself into. A big picture editor is going to be a great companion helping you watch for ways to leave yourself open paths from first page to last.

Yellow through Blue (a 'normal' edit)

If you've learned how to avoid wordiness and clichés, or how to properly use the semicolon, you know something about what happens in these edits. Besides such grammatical issues, these edits watch for confusing turns of phrase that forces a reader to back up and figure out what was meant.

It's about smoothing the path for the reader to connect with your thoughts and images without getting caught in a thicket of awkward verbiage. It's also the level where an editor will push back about using the word "swell" in dialogue put in the mouth of a 21st Century teenager or having characters live in a palace full of windows in medieval Europe. Did Einstein and Abraham Lincoln really say all that?

Now, if you've been paying attention, you'll realize why this kind of edit needs to happen after the big picture has been dealt with. There is no point fixing the sentence structure of a paragraph that needs to be cut.

You've probably read the work of a great storyteller or idea smith that didn't get a good copy edit because she was so famous the publisher knew they would sell 100k copies even with the details a mess. It's about as embarrassing as seeing them out in public with their clothes unbuttoned.

Copy edits are done both for the benefit of the reader and also to protect the reputation of the author. No one gets a perfect book from their head onto the page the first draft. We all need a ruthless check for grammar and such.

For me, it doesn't even bother me to have a ton of red ink on one of my manuscripts for such things anymore. It's not personal, it's what it always takes to get my wild ideas unsnarled. No biggie, but it sure is important!

The Purples

Did you know there are directions to help you format your own self-published book or eBook online for free? If you keep your manuscript simple enough, it's not hard, just nitpicky.

For my own book, I used the free formatter at Reedsy.com. It baked in a shoutout to their company, but I didn't care because the result looked so good (I love the fonts they offer!).

If you want something fancier, there are plenty of people who specialize in laying out your words so the readers on any publishing platform can happily focus on your content. Some of these professionals also do the highly artistic work of cover design for you to break up the monotony.

But all of us need a proofreader.

And it should be someone different than your main editor whenever possible. This person is the last check before sending a glaring mistake out into the world, and they need to bring fresh eyes to the page to avoid seeing what "should" be there but isn't.

For my new writers, I point out it's OK to ask your friends and family to help with this last proofread — as long as they promise not to complain about starting sentences with a conjunction or other fussy details. (An editor friend warns her clients this is dangerous because so many people can't resist meddling. I'll leave it for you to decide.)

Self Editing

My hope for you as you read through these descriptions is that some level of editing resonates with your own skillset. While even professional editors hire editors to help them with their books, they don't hire a whole suite of them; we know what levels come naturally to us and get help with the ones that don't. And we always get a proofreader, even if proofing is our day job.

You can save yourself a lot of money by taking on as much of the editing process as you have time and skills to handle.

And, if you know you need some of the expensive, red-to-orange level help, an editorial assessment (aka a critique) is way more affordable. It leaves the rewriting and organizing work to you but points you in the right direction to let you jump on to a light copy edit next.