Developmental Editing

PLEASE NOTE: Development editing is a long, grueling process of vast change to your work that can be excruciating for newer writers. This service is for people valuing quality over speed and who understand that making their work stronger doesn't always mean keeping the piece looking the same way it did when it was submitted to us. 

Developmental Editing

1. Purchase the developmental editing service for the amount of words in your piece. Do this by selecting the "Buy now" option, uploading your manuscript, and entering the word count for your manuscript. If you don't know (how to find) the word count for your piece, select the "Get an invoice" option and upload your manuscript so we can calculate the length for you and send you an invoice for the total cost of the developmental editing service.  
2. Once your payment and manuscript are received, an editing plan is created in which your manuscript is professionally evaluated and our editorial guidance shown to you. 
3. You will have an opportunity to review our plans and recommendations for your piece before we begin making adjustments. If you decide to reject any part of our guidance, we will not make those recommended changes, per your request.
4. Once the first round of adjustments are made, the newly-revised manuscript is submitted to you for review and direct revisions, as desired. This pass will take the longest. 
5. Review the entire manuscript and make adjustments as you see fit. When you complete your review / adjustments, return the manuscript to us along with a list of proposed changes you want us to make during our final round of revisions (if you have any proposed changes). 
6. We complete a second full reading of the piece and make adjustments as necessary, including your requested changes, before returning the piece to you again.
7. We return the developmentally edited manuscript to you so that you can continue the book development process as you see fit (i.e., research, copy editing, etc.). 
   

Timeline: Due to the amount of passes of the piece we'll be doing, this process will generally take about 2 weeks per 15,000 words. But, as with any project, this timeline can change based on multiple variables (such as how long it takes you to send the piece back to us each time we submit it to you, office holidays, how long your payment takes to be finalized, etc.). 

Massive Changes: Our developmental editing process is not for the faint of heart and certainly not for anyone who is looking to rush through the book development process. The point of developmental editing is to make sure the fundamentals of a book in your genre are in place. That can sometimes mean a complete overhaul of what you submitted to us and that can be wildly uncomfortable and extremely time-consuming. But, much like cooking a high-quality dish or caring for a tree until it bears fruit, the time spent on the front end being patient and thorough pays off on the back end. Developmental editing can help you create a stronger piece that you'll be proud to put your name on and that your readers will be eager to purchase (and tell their friends about!). If you don't want major improvements made to your work, this is not the right service for you.