editing: How Your Book Will Benefit
Essential Feedback from Industry Professionals
Once you have reached this point, you have written a book! Congratulations on a terrific achievement. It's essential to get everything out of your head and into writing. I honor the genuine intentions that go into a first draft, because they arise from your experience and your desires for reaching out to readers.
Your next step is to hire an editor who can give the manuscript a fresh set of professional eyes. Yes, feedback from friends, family, and associates is helpful. But there is so much more to creating a book for publication. I can help so that your original intentions are enriched by professional feedback and meet industry standards.
Determine What Your Book Needs
Each and every book has unique needs. That's one of the reasons I love making them. Before I even earn a dime, I can assess your manuscript and determine the best way forward.
You see, there are actually many different kinds of editing, such as book doctoring, content or developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and proofreading. It's common to lump them all together, but they each have a distinct focus and method. Whatever state your book is in, I'm here to advise you on what's next.
Tailor a Process to Meet Your Needs
When we work together, I'll customize the journey to meet the unique needs of both your book and yourself. If you are super busy, great. If you want a lot of involvement, great. If you're at loose ends and just want someone to fix it, great. I'm here for you.
Advise Your Revisions
Some authors feel empowered and want to work on initial revisions themselves. And they want to benefit from professional feedback. I offer detailed reports with applicable advice for what you can do to improve your book.
Identify and Perform the Right Kind of Editing
You know the many types kinds of editing I just mentioned? I have experience doing them all. I do not recommend that I apply all phases to your book, as it's an important industry practice to have many pairs of eyes on the book. Whatever editing you need, I can help you on the next step toward publication.
Some types of editing i perform
Book Doctoring
A book doctor does whatever is required to fix your book—tasks big and small. This can include writing, restructuring, line editing, working with voice and tone, adding transitions, querying you for clarification, and prompting you for more content.
I approach book doctoring as an opportunity to further align a book with its readership. We want to deliver a book that is accessible.
Often, the content is not the problem. You just need more tricks of the writing trade, which I can provide. Working together, everyone can be happy with the result. Picky publishers included.
Content Editing
Content editing—also known as developmental editing or substantive editing—is usually the first step in the editing process. Everyone needs help with content development, mostly because when we write, we become blind to our own work.
I can take the thousand-foot view and make sure you're saying what you want to say, in the way readers will hear it, and that the content delivers on the book's promise in the best possible way.
Together we'll work on things like the table of contents, consistency, flow, idea progression, clarity, chapter structure, and manuscript length.
Copyediting
Copyediting
Copyediting makes changes to your manuscript that can seem so minor, you may wonder why they’re needed. Book publishing is a precise industry. It adheres to massive volumes of style requirements as well as many, many grammar rules and best-practice standards. The more book-specific decisions are recorded in a stylesheet to help the proofreader down the road.
I produce clean, quality writing that meets book publishing industry standards. Whether your book is professional and authoritative, or conversational and intimate, I preserve its intention while taking care of the details.