What Kind of Edit Do I Need?
I am often asked how long it will take and how much it will cost to edit a book. The answer to this is: it depends. How long is your book, story, or article? When do you need the edits or proofreading completed by? How dense or complex is the text (is there a lot of jargon, technical terms, foreign words, etc.)? What needs to be done to the text—does it need to just be proofread or are you uncertain that the plot works? Who is the audience for the book? Are you publishing this yourself or sending it off to publishers? Does the piece need to follow the style guide of a magazine, newspaper, website, publisher, or other entity? It can feel like you’re playing Twenty Questions when you first start looking for a copy editor, developmental editor, or proofreader, but ultimately this helps you determine what your work needs based on your time, budget, and inclination.
Genres I Work With
· roleplaying game guides
· science fiction
· fantasy
· romance
· mystery
· historical fiction
· contemporary fiction
· thrillers, espionage
· women’s fiction
Disclaimer
Please note that there are some projects that I will not work on. For example, I’m easily scared when reading horror (I have surprisingly still read a fair number of horror books though), and I often will skip pages during intense scenes. This means that I probably wouldn’t be able to do your horror novel justice if I edited it. Likewise, if your book or story has any of the below elements in it, I am not the right copy editor for you:
· Scenes of graphic torture
· Child abuse or animal abuse
· Graphic depictions of sexual assault
Line Editing
There are different types of copy editing including content editing or line editing and developmental editing. Line editing is the predominant service I provide. This involves reviewing a manuscript line by line (appropriately named, huh?) and ensuring that there are no misspellings, mechanical errors, plot holes, etc.
Proofreading
Proofreading should be the final step before the book goes to the presses. A misplaced comma or missing apostrophe generally is more embarrassing than anything else, but for some publications, it could cost a lot of money to reprint materials. Oakhurst Dairy learned this the hard way when they neglected to use a serial comma (also called an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma). A missing comma in this case resulted in a loss of $5 million.
Developmental Editing
What is developmental editing? I like how The Chicago Manual of Style: Seventeenth Edition explains it, “[developmental editing] more directly shapes the content of a work, the way material should be presented, the need for more or less documentation and how it should be handled, and so on. Since developmental editing may involve total rewriting or reorganization of a work, it should be done—if needed—before manuscript editing begins.”