Four services, four different jobs

1. 01

   Developmental Editing

   The whole-book pass. Structure, arc, character, pacing, and whether your reader is where you think they are.

   A developmental edit is the pass that answers why — why chapter nine drags, why the midpoint lands flat, why readers keep putting it down at the same place. Bad pacing in chapter nine is rarely a chapter nine problem, so I trace the symptom back to whatever caused it and tell you where it entered.

   You get an editorial letter covering the book as a whole, and queries in the margin where a specific line is doing the damage. Every query is specific and answerable. None of them are “this doesn’t work for me.”

   You receive

   An editorial letter, plus in-line queries you can actually act on.

   Ask for this

   Ask for this when the book is finished but not working.

2. 02

   Line & Copy Editing

   Sentence by sentence for rhythm, clarity, and voice — and the same pass holds grammar, consistency, and house style to the line.

   These used to be sold as two separate passes, and for most manuscripts that is a way of charging twice for one read. A line edit that is paying proper attention is already catching the inconsistent capital, the character whose eyes changed colour in chapter nine, and the serial comma you use everywhere except here. So this is one pass that does both jobs properly.

   The line-editing half is about how the prose sounds: rhythm, clarity, and the difference between a sentence that means something and a sentence that merely says it. I sharpen what you already sound like. I do not replace it with what I sound like — that is the harm, and it is the thing most authors are quietly afraid of when they hire an editor. What comes out is throat-clearing, hedging, and the scaffolding you needed while drafting and do not need now that you have finished. What stays is you.

   The copy-editing half is the discipline underneath: grammar, continuity, and house style held consistently across eighty thousand words, which is longer than anyone can hold in their head. For technical books your code listings, terminology, and figure callouts come back exactly as you set them — Chicago 17th unless your publisher uses something else, in which case I use theirs.

   You also get the style sheet, which matters more than authors expect. On a series it is the difference between book three agreeing with book one and quietly contradicting it.

   You receive

   Tracked changes through the manuscript, plus a style sheet you keep.

   Ask for this

   Ask for this when the structure is right and the prose is not.

3. 03

   Proofreading

   The last pass before it goes out — typos, spacing, bad breaks, and anything the previous rounds introduced.

   Proofreading is not a cheaper edit. It is a different job, done at a different stage: the manuscript is finished, copyedited, and typeset, and this is the last look before it reaches readers.

   What I am hunting for here is small and unglamorous — a doubled word, a dropped quotation mark, a heading that has slipped to the bottom of a page, an inconsistent capital that survived three rounds. Errors introduced by the previous rounds are the most common thing I find, because that is where everyone has stopped looking.

   I will flag a genuine structural problem if I see one at this stage, but I will also tell you plainly that it is too late to be worth fixing. Knowing which is which is most of the value.

   You receive

   Marked proofs, or tracked changes if you are working in Word.

   Ask for this

   Ask for this last, on the laid-out proofs.

4. 04

   Manuscript Development & Editorial Consulting

   Work at the outline and the plan, before a year of your life goes into a shape that cannot hold it — or a standing second opinion while you write.

   The cheapest possible place in the whole process to be wrong is the outline. This is the pass for a series you are about to commit three books to, and for the draft that has already taught you the plan was wrong.

   For serialised fiction this is where escalation curves get designed rather than discovered — how power scales, what the reader is promised at each chapter break, and how you keep paying that off two hundred chapters later. Fixing that at the plan stage costs a conversation. Fixing it at chapter ninety costs a rewrite you may not have in you.

   Editorial consulting is the same judgement sold by the hour instead of by the manuscript. Some authors want a standing second opinion rather than a finished edit: a call when a structural decision is looming, a read of three chapters to check the arc is still holding, a view on whether a proposal is ready to go out. Publishers use it for assessments and second opinions on submissions.

   This is the one service I do not publish a price for, and the reason is honest rather than coy: the work ranges from a single two-hour call to months of chapter-by-chapter partnership, and any number I printed would be wrong for most of the people reading it. Tell me the shape of what you need and I will quote it before anything starts.

   You receive

   A worked structural plan, and calls rather than a document where that is more useful.

   Ask for this

   Ask for this before you commit, or when you are stuck and need a reader who knows the whole book.

How it works

From first email to final pass

1. A sample edit, free

   You send 1,000 words. I return them edited to the standard a paying client gets, in about one week. This is the real test — of me, and of whether we read the book the same way.

2. A scope and a fixed quote

   I read enough of the manuscript to know what it needs, then tell you which pass to buy and what it costs. If you need a different service than the one you asked for, you hear that here rather than after the invoice.

3. The work

   Tracked changes and in-line queries throughout, plus an editorial letter on the developmental passes. For serials and technical books I can work chapter by chapter against your release or MEAP cadence instead of in one block.

4. A conversation afterwards

   An editorial letter you cannot ask questions about is half a service. A call is included — you should finish knowing not just what to change but why, so the next book needs less of me.