What will you get when you hire me to edit your book? This is a reasonable question since I could be a complete scam artist about to run off with your money.

I know you don’t particularly care about my training, other than to hope I’ve had some. Yes, indeedy, there are people out there who think reading a book on developmental editing and downloading a template off the internet is all it takes to start a business.

Before I go any further, I need to point out two things:

• Yes, I meant to write ‘indeedy’ because this is a somewhat informal post
• I once had a client tell me she got more feedback from me for her 20,000-word novella than she did for a full length developmental edit where she paid over £1000. Not to me, obviously. To another editor who may not have specialised in developmental work.

The skillset for developmental editing is very different from a proofreader’s skillset, or what you need to be a good copyeditor. Indeed, you can be a good technical copyeditor, but not a great line editor when it comes to fiction – especially fiction where you literally have no idea what the author is trying to do because you. don’t. get. literary. writing.

It’s like getting an actor to read a poem. Sometimes they do a good job – think Vincent Price reciting Annabel Lee. Totally blows my socks off every time. But there are some lords and dames of the theatre who absolutely murder poetry by reading it like a speech. They completely ignore metre and I never want to hear that poem read that way ever again. It’s like a tone-deaf person murdering a song.

But, I digress… I’m supposed to be telling you what you will get if you hire me.

I’ve been rather remiss when it comes to posting client feedback on this website. This is because my clients were all coming from another platform and I didn’t bother to promote my site the way I should. But it’s the end of 2020. I need to sort myself out, give myself a good slap, and remember that I will living on the streets if I don’t start charging what I’m worth.

A crash course in writing

Today was a great reminder. Though it started yesterday, or several days before that. A client whose manuscript has been through two rounds of full developmental editing sent me her new chapters one and two. I think she’s hoping for a third round soon, and my prices are such that it’s well affordable. Her new chapters one and two were a big jump from the previous two drafts. I was seriously impressed. She took my reading recommendations, ploughed through the list, read the novel I recommended because I thought it was perfect for her to learn certain techniques, and she has improved her writing in a very short period of time.

She’s a newish writer, so she doesn’t have years of writing behind her to learn all this stuff. Is she there yet? No, but her learning curve has been amazing. And that’s one of the most satisfying things about developmental editing and returning clients. If someone comes for a single round of editing, there’s not the same opportunity to see how they get on with it. You might even start to worry if they did get on with it. I personally prefer to see a second round of the manuscript at the very least.

But that leads me to what you’ll get with me beyond a potentially steep learning curve, if you’re a beginner. However, that learning curve is one of my USPs. Know what a USP is? It’s your unique selling point. If you ever mean to go into business, and that includes becoming an author-entrepreneur, you should give a great deal of thought to your USP. Because it’s what marks you out from the competition. It doesn’t necessarily make you better than the competition, because they have their USPs too, and their client base could be very different.

The basic built-in services

So, beyond the learning curve, what do you get? In some respects, it comes down to what is right for you, the individual author. And what is most appropriate for your manuscript. But there are the non-negotiables. For a full developmental edit, you get an editorial letter that is several pages long, plus a copy of your manuscript with track commenting. You also get a reading list.

I can do more than this. I can draw up a book map, which is time-consuming and therefore more of an extra. Although my prices are going up, they will still be lower than industry-standard for quite some time to come. This means I don’t put in extras that add a lot of time (because time is also money). You can get the extras on top. That includes a second round of editing. You can also get feedback between edits – for when you’re stuck and you need me to check something. A small amount of this is built into the price already. But a lot more and I’d have to charge. But, again, I wouldn’t be charging industry standard rates. Not for a while. I’m keen to give lower-income writers an opportunity to get a foot on the rung.

All of this, so far, has been about developmental editing. I can do this type of editing on different levels – starting with the most basic issues in the first round of editing, and moving on to more pernickety stuff later. This can be easier for a writer to deal with because it paces the rewrites better. Reworking a draft is no longer such a monumental task. And they’re getting guidance along the way. Of course, some writers want something much more detailed to start with because they don’t intend to come back for a second round.

Manuscript critiques

So, what about manuscript critiques? These are cheaper than developmental edits, so I ought to have done far more of them, right? Wrong. I’ve done far more developmental edits because my prices were low and many of those edits were my opening chapters edit. The wordcounts were around the 10,000 word mark, unless a client asked me to look at something longer. Many of those clients would then come back to me for a full developmental edit. They liked the track commenting in the margins and found it helpful.

However, as my prices go up, a full developmental edit will be more expensive. So, where does that leave the manuscript critiques? Well, cheaper, obviously. The full weight of the feedback is in the editorial letter since there’s no track commenting. These editorial letters can therefore be longer because they have to deal with everything. They are structured by subject, starting with the bigger issues and moving down the hierarchy of things-that-need-to-be-dealt-with. There’s also a reading list. You get this regardless of whether it’s a developmental edit or a manuscript critique.

Specially tailored manuscript critique

You can also ask for a manuscript critique with a sample developmental edit of the opening chapters. This means those chapters will have track commenting. You could ask me to look at the beginning and the end this way. But it’s important to remember that one of the reasons a developmental edit is more expensive is the sheer amount of time it takes to go through a manuscript and leave comments. It’s at least two passes of comments or even three or four in one edit. I never read a manuscript once, I read it several times.

My opening chapters edit is a developmental edit, but you could ask for the manuscript critique version instead, which means no margin comments. It takes me less time, and that means you save money. You miss out on the comments though.

The main thing to stress is that what I can do for you really depends on a number of things. These include the amount of knowledge you already have, the number of drafts you’ve already written, and whether you intend to send your novel to an agent or publish it yourself. In the case of the former, if you can get a cheaper developmental edit (from someone who knows what they’re doing), then that’s all well and good. But you don’t need a full DE if you’re submitting. If a publisher accepts your book, that kind of editing will be provided without you being out of pocket. Some writers do still choose a developmental edit even if they’re submitting to an agent. There are reasons… like, they think it’s the best way to rise above the other manuscripts in the pile. It’s true that the competition is huge.

Another editorial service I offer is a beta read with some additional developmental comments. However, this is nowhere near the input of a manuscript critique. It can work as the last read, checking that everything on the developmental level is now fixed or close to being fixed.

So, that is an outline of what I deliver. However, every client and manuscript is different. Custom orders are always welcome. If you want to know more, feel free to drop me a message through my contact form. We can discuss your needs and also assess whether you’re really ready for a manuscript critique or a developmental edit. Perhaps you need a beta read first, in which case I’d advise you to hire or find beta readers and getting feedback from them first. But it really comes down to the individual client. I will turn down work if I think I’m not right for the client or that the client is wasting their money.

In the meantime, you can check out my services page. Here’s a detailed post about the differences between a manuscript critique and a developmental edit.