Questions About Editing
Expanding list of answers to questions about editing and editors you never dared to ask
This list will be expanding as I receive more questions or think up topics I feel should be asked, even if they aren’t. If you have some question that you’ve never had the chance to ask from an editor, don’t hesitate to reach out!
How much does it cost?
This has to be one of the first questions. The cost of editing varies wildly from one editor to the next. I’m not exaggerating that one editor can easily be 20 times more expensive than another. There are so-called guild rates that are used in very professional circles, but those will look high if we’re talking indie landscape and semi-professional authors and editors. I’ll start with them.
Example prices based on Editorial Freelancers Association:
Development editing: $0.03-$0.035/word x 120,000 words = $4000
Line editing: $0.027-$0.035/word x 120,000 words = $3000
Proofreading: $0.012-$0.02/word x 120,000 words = $1500
Now, for comparison, I have heard people offer dev editing a book for $200. Line edit + beta read for $300.
That’s a big difference to $4000.
How to audition an editor
How do you know if an editor is worth $200 or $4000? Especially if you haven’t worked with an editor before this. The sad truth is that it’s very hard. Proofreading you can actually try: give the editor something and find out if the person can put commas in the right place and knows how to use a semicolon. Evaluating dev editing is much harder, as it’s fundamentally only opinions, and much harder to test.
The best way is to talk to the clients of the editor.
Editors live and die by the reputation. Ask them for clients who they have worked with and who you could talk to. If they don’t have anyone to give, that’s likely not a good sign. The more experienced or noteworthy author they can give, the better sign it is. An experienced author can give more useful feedback about the feedback they received.
Don’t be too worried about bothering someone. Authors are usually very happy to yap about their writing. Be awkward and ask them if they can actually show something the editor gave them. A snippet copy-pasted from an editorial letter or an example of the line edits they did. Editors can’t share any of this stuff themselves, but the client can. These will tell you A LOT about both the quality and the style of the editor.
Second tip: always, ALWAYS, do a test edit. This is important for all parties. The editor might be excellent, and totally worth their rate, but still the wrong one for you. Or seen from the editor’s side, maybe your book is full of sexual assault and the editor doesn’t want to work on that. Sometimes the material doesn’t match, sometimes personalities don’t. I feel the test edit should be free once everyone is seriously considering the project and just needs the final compatibility check.
Will the editor force me into doing something I don’t want?
No.
Yeah, but for real? I heard a story and…
Yeah, ok. Those situations have happened, but it’s wrong.
The author always, always always, has full creative control (unless you’re writing a Star Wars or WH40K novel or something, but that’s outside the scope of this FAQ). The editor can have whatever opinions they have, but if the author says that they don’t want to turn their fun romance book into a grim literary fiction about the failing of the ethnostate, then the editor backs away. It’s the author’s name on the cover. They decide.
If the editor disagrees with a scene, they usually have a reason for it. It still doesn’t mean that the author needs to change the scene in question. If the author says “No, this is important. This is load-bearing,” the only real answer to that for the editor is “Cool, thank you for telling it to me. So let’s turn it to 11.”
If any editor tries to force something on you, that’s not a good sign.
What are the different levels of editing? Do editors get level-ups?
Editing happens in phases. Dev → Line → Copy/Proof. There are multiple ways to describe each level or phase, but the general idea is that we’re starting on the level of a whole book and zooming closer level by level. Here is a primer on the levels and their differences.
Developmental edit
Dev (or structural) editing means working on the structure of a book. On a higher level, dev editing answers questions like: What is this story even about? Who are these people, really? What is promised in the beginning of the story and are those promises paid off? Does the pacing sag or is it too fast on a manuscript level?
On a more micro level, dev editing answers questions like: Does this chapter go somewhere? Do these characters feel like real people and act like themselves? Does this emotional moment land?
Dev edit should be done first. It makes no sense to polish the prose of some chapter that ends up being cut completely as the dev editor pointed out that it didn’t fit the theme of the book at all. Dev editing is the most expensive type of editing as it takes the most experience and confidence about storytelling in general. Note that it’s also probably the cheapest type of editing you can find. The price and quality of a dev edit will vary WILDLY between different editors.
I have also made a video about development editing that you can watch on YouTube.
Line edit
Line-editing means polishing the intended meaning of what’s on the page. Is this sentence beautiful? Can I track what’s going on in this fight? Why is this line of dialogue wonky? Does this pastoral scene evoke tender feelings?
Working with a good line-editor is like going to prose school. The author is not only getting their manuscript polished, they are learning about how to work with language and hone their voice. A line-editor doesn’t make the writing sound like it was written by Stephen King or Ursula K. Le Guin. They make it sound like you, only more so.
Line-editing should be done after a dev edit, but before proofreading. The prose is being polished, but more grammar mistakes and typos are also being introduced that will need to be caught later. No one is perfect, not even line-editors.
I have also made a video about line-editing that you can watch on YouTube.
Copyediting / Proofreading
Copyediting and proofreading are the final pass to tighten the nuts and bolts. Is the dialogue formatted correctly? Is there a typo or grammatical mistakes somewhere?[sic]
I’m clumping copyediting with this category, as it’s about making sure the formatting is all similar, all the names are the same across the whole book, Fire Punch doesn’t become Fiery Punch at some point, etc. There are software tools (Grammarly, LanguageTool, ProWritingAid, etc.) that can help you with proofreading, but they won’t catch everything. Also, if you use them, beware of the extremely ham-fisted AI-powered stylistic suggestions they all now spew. Those are almost always bad.
How do I learn to do what editors do? To analyze stuff properly?
Analyzing works is an interesting and important skill for any writer. The short and flippant answer is: read and think about what you read. For a better answer, I have multiple materials that touch on this question. Check out:
How does the editing process actually look like?
Every editor has their own way of working and then it gets t-boned by the way authors happen to work. So always discuss this with the editor separately and make sure you are comfortable using the same tools and timeline of the edit etc. Some people refuse to touch Microsoft Word and other people dislike Google Docs. They might still need to be able to work together. The editor will walk you through this process, and if they don’t, ask them to.
The typical editing process begins with a preliminary exchange about the goals and shape of the edit: what is the author looking for and what will the editor provide them. The editor needs to know what is expected of them and the author should know what they are going to receive. As an example, here is a questionnaire I give to new clients.
Once the editor starts working, they will probably have more questions or things they need to confirm from the author. In the case of a dev edit, the author might just suddenly receive a 4000-word essay on their manuscript one morning. Or on the other hand, some editing can be done in real-time: the editor works their way through a Google Doc and you watch and comment and accept and reject suggestions as they appear. This might be stressful for everyone involved, but it’s also a fun and fast way to work 😅
When is the right time to get an editor?
This is a good question and even editors have different opinions on this. From an editor’s viewpoint, the answers fall between two broad extremes:
As soon as possible
Especially for dev editing, there are few things as painful as receiving a manuscript the author has spent three years polishing, and which would need major structural changes to hold together. Authors don’t have unlimited time to rework a single manuscript, so if they have already given it their all and some extra, the editor has limited room to maneuver. If some fundamental choice in the very beginning of the book fights viciously against the theme of the book, it’s good to catch it while the author still has spunk left to make sweeping changes.
As late as possible
The other preference is to work on books that are as perfect as the author can make them themselves. Their own work is mired in diminishing returns, so a fresh perspective is needed. The editor gets to work on a story that might already be a delight to read and can be polished to shining perfection. They don’t need to spend time salvaging something workable from a disjointed pile of ideas, but the book is already in a condition that it can be improved, not only rebuilt.
Editors fall somewhere between these two extremes. I prefer working on something that still has rough edges and unpolished bones showing.
For the author, the answer depends on what you need. If you are very confident about your structure, but the prose could be crisper, get a line-editor when you are already “done” yourself. If you’re struggling to make the themes of the book make sense, a dev editor could help you unlock the structure riddle, and let you handle the nitty-gritty with the actual words.
If a story did well as a web serial or in some other format, will it need an editor before being published as an e-book?
TBA