Developmental editing is a critical component of the book development process. This is when the foundation of your book is solidified and the major elements of your piece are appropriately organized.
What is Developmental Editing?
Developmental editing is when a professional book editor reads your entire piece and rearranges, removes, adds, and rewrites portions in order to make it stronger. If you need a better-defined character arc, a more dynamic plot, or just to add some clarity to some of the concepts you’re trying to convey to your reader, a developmental editor can help make that happen. Developmental editors also provide manuscript evaluations.
Why is Developmental Editing Important?
Developmental editing ensures that your book includes the structural elements that your reader expects. This means they are less likely to close the book feeling angry or disappointed.
If your book about copyright law doesn’t mention where to find a copyright application or spends an entire chapter unnecessarily discussing Library of Congress Control Numbers, a developmental editor will add or cut these things as needed.
If your mystery novel ends without the mystery being solved or gives away the solution in the middle of the book instead of the end, a developmental editor will rearrange scenes or add elements to make sure the book is a satisfying experience for the reader.
Professional Developmental Editing Can Be Expensive
One of the reasons you may have run across books that are disorganized and obviously haven’t been developmentally edited is because this service can be prohibitively expensive. Starting in the hundreds and very easily slipping into the thousands of dollars in price. The longer your book is, the more money it will cost to have it professionally developmentally edited. Breaking a larger book up into smaller volumes is one way of reducing the developmental editing costs of each individual book. For instance, if your single manuscript is 220,000 words long (epic length), you might consider putting out a series of four books of approximately 55,000 words (novel length) each. Using the proceeds from the first book, you can help supplement the developmental editing of the second book. Then use the profits from the first and second books to help pay for the developmental editing of the third book, and so on.
In addition to cash, developmental editing done well costs quite a bit of time. Developmental editing is a months-long process in most cases. If you’re in a hurry to have a thorough developmental edit completed in a week or two, your expectations may not be realistic, especially for books that are novella-length or longer. Shorter turnaround times for developmental editing may be possible if you’re writing something with smaller amounts of text, such as a short story or a children’s picture book.
Alternatives to Developmental Editing
If you’re considering doing without developmental editing due to the cost or time commitment, here are a few options to consider.
Manuscript Evaluation
For authors who still want professional guidance, a manuscript evaluation can offer that with a lower price tag. Manuscript evaluations involve a professional developmental editor reviewing your work and providing their notes and commentary on what you could change. Instead of the lengthy back-and-forth that happens with developmental editing, the manuscript evaluation is a single document that you can use in order to guide your next round of self-revisions. Because this service takes less time and effort on the part of the editor, it’s often much cheaper and faster to complete.
Alpha Readers
Enlisting the help of alpha readers can help you clean up some of the same issues that a developmental editor would help you with. Alpha readers are volunteers, so you wouldn’t need to spend any money in order to get the feedback you’re looking for. However, because alpha readers are not professional editors, you may not get feedback that is as in-depth. Alpha readers are often simply kind people who love reading and are willing to provide their feedback on an early draft of your work. While that’s wonderful, this perspective will generally be wildly different from that of someone who edits books for a living on a day-to-day basis.
Forgoing Developmental Editing
I don’t recommend this, but it is an option. As an indie author, you’re in control of what happens to your work, including what services it does or does not receive. You can decide that you don’t want to do any kind of developmental editing at all. If so, you run the risk of publishing a book that is distractingly disorganized, fails to meet reader expectations, and may even be difficult to understand. Not getting developmental editing help leaves your work (and your author reputation) vulnerable to these issues.
The Time for Developmental Editing
In theory, developmental editing would take place after you’ve completed your self-revisions, but before you start your line editing. Waiting until you’ve finished your self-revisions means you won’t be trying to change things after the pro has worked their magic. Doing developmental editing before line editing is important because line editing literally works sentence-by-sentence. Because entire paragraphs, scenes, or chapters could be rearranged, added, or removed during developmental editing, you don’t want the line editor applying their expertise to something that won’t make it into the next draft. That’s a waste of your money and their time. This is similar to making sure you sweep a floor before you mop it. When done in the appropriate order, you end up with a clean floor. When done out of sequence, you just end up with a dirty, damp mess!
Finding Developmental Editors
There are people all over the web who call themselves developmental editors. If you do something like ask for a developmental editor in your Facebook group, you run the risk of being connected with a scammer. It’s usually safer to go to the places where these kinds of professionals gather. The Editorial Freelancers Association (https://the-efa.org) is a good place to start. The American Society of Copy Editors (https://aceseditors.org) also has developmental editors. Because these are professional organizations, everyone who is a member in their directory has made a commitment to their craft by becoming a member and maintaining their membership in these organizations. This means doing things like paying memerbship dues, following a code of conduct, or meeting certain business requirements in order to be eligible for membership. Being part of a professional organization is an investment of time and revenue that scammers rarely want to make.
Be Clear About Your Project
When searching for a developmental editor for your project, you can save yourself a lot of time and headache when you are clear about your project in advance. For example, you can submit a job for free on the EFA website. Then there are thousands of professional editors who will see the job and respond with estimates. But if you simply state, “I need an editor for my book,” you’ll have to field a lot of questions about the details you left out of your post. Instead, be sure to post (on the EFA site or elsewhere) with pertinent information so that the replies you get will give you exactly the info you want.
- Your WORD count. Telling someone how many chapters or pages are in your book is a great setup for inaccurate estimates. This is because these measurements are going to vary even when the number of words in the piece doesn’t change. A 45,000-word novel could be broken up into five chapters or ten chapters or twenty. Simply saying you have fifteen chapters or seven chapters doesn’t tell the pro anything about the precise length of the piece. The same goes for pages. A 45,000-word novel could be 100 pages long or 200 pages long. It will depend upon how many words are on each page, what size each of those pages are, the size of the margins for those pages, the size of the text for those pages, and the leading and tracking settings for the text, just to name a few variables. Telling someone your book is 180 pages long (while a little better than using chapters), still doesn’t provide an accurate measure of the length of the piece. Finding your word count is straightforward in most cases. In Word, the word count is displayed in the lower left corner of your screen. In Google Docs, you would click on “Tools” and then “Word Count.” You can also use external sites like WordCounter.net to get a word count for your piece by copying it and pasting it into the text box on the site.
- Your budget. There are some professionals who are going to be more expensive than you can handle financially. In that case, there’s little point in hearing from them about their estimate for your project. By announcing what you’re willing to pay in advance, you spend less time reading replies from people you can’t afford to hire and more time reviewing replies from professionals who can work within your budget. That being said, if you’re lucky enough that money truly is no object, or is of less concern to you than speed or quality of services, you can writing something like “Budget is negotiable.”
- Your content type. Different editors will specialize in helping with various kinds of content. From fiction to self-help to manga. Let them know what kind of piece you’re working on. If you’ve already created a blurb and written your premise, these are helpful to provide as well. Adding this to your job post helps an editor know if they are the right fit for that type of work. You wouldn’t necessarily want someone who mainly edits science fiction to be editing your romantic comedy.
- Your timeline. As with pricing, it’s helpful to be upfront about any time restrictions that you have related to getting your developmental editing completed. I don’t encourage rushing and hope that you’ll give your piece as much time as it needs to bloom. However, if you have some major reason to set a deadline for this step in the book development process, put it in your request. A simple, “I’d like to finish with developmental editing by 6/1/2023” or “Hoping to complete the developmental editing within five months of hiring you,” would work. Any professional who doesn’t think they can meet that deadline would not reply, creating fewer estimates for you to sift through.
Pricing Comparisons
While Writerwerx University offers flat, transparent pricing, some editor pricing methods are a bit more complex. This doesn’t necessarily mean that other firms or editors aren’t trustworthy. It just means that they have a different way of running things for their enterprise. Since it is so easy to quote yourself on WU, feel free to use our prices as a starting point.
- From the dropdown, select ‘Developmental Editing.’
- In the quantity box, enter the number of words in your manuscript.
- Write the price down and use it to compare with other firms and professionals so you can select a firm that fits your budget best.
- NOTE: Don’t forget that services can vary from professional to professional and this is sometimes reflected in the price. For instance, AKRION EDITING may be willing to developmentally edit your book for $500 and ZULTRAWN SCRIBES may be willing to developmentally edit your book for $400. You may be tempted to go with ZULTRAWN because you’ll save $100. However, when you look at the service descriptions, you see that ZULTRAWN will read your piece and give you notes a single time, much like a manuscript evaluation. AKRION includes an initial manuscript evaluation and two rounds of developmental editing. Even though AKRION costs $100 more, you’re receiving three services instead of one. Be careful and do your best not to be led around by the wallet. Sometimes a little extra money can mean a lot more quality.
Developmental editing is meant to help ensure that the foundational structure of your piece is in place. This means considering three central questions:
- What’s here that can be removed?
- What’s missing that can be added?
- Is this the best sequence for this content?
Connecting with a talented developmental editor can help you craft a book with the bones of a masterpiece!