Editors are an important part of a writer’s team. They provide valuable feedback on what works and what doesn’t, along with suggestions for improvements. A good editor helps bring out the author’s strengths and actually advance the author’s writing skills, provides support, and pays attention to what kinds of help are welcome. Without this discernment, an editor can overstep.

Here are a few things that have been said about my work.

(See What clients say)

Types of Projects:

• Books (see Subject Specialties, Getting Published, and descriptions below)
• Articles and blogs
• Theses, dissertations, and other academic papers. See also APA Made Easy and Tips for Writing an Academic Paper.

Book Editing:

When working with books, it is often ideal to begin with a manuscript evaluation. This is a critique of your work, providing suggestions regarding content, organization, tone, writing style, and any other significant editorial issues. These issues can then be addressed before getting into more specific editing. It’s a waste to copyedit something that needs major revision. Why repaint the furniture if you’re going to replace it?

With a structural or substantive edit, I go through the manuscript and make recommendations about combining sections, eliminating sections, adding more material and other suggestions related to the overall functioning of the piece. In several manuscripts, I have rearranged chapters, broken up long passages, and provided subheadings throughout. If desired, I can also rework (rewrite) sentences and sections that are awkward.

Line editing is another term used to refer to working with th same elements as in a substantive edit, although also including more attention to the actual flow of words and making the writing as clear and powerful as possible. A line editor works through the manuscript, line by line (word by word!), smoothing the rough edges and making it a work of art.

Copyediting is a more limited form of editing, focusing on grammar, punctuation, spelling, word usage, and minor elements of style. Although often confused with proofreading, it precedes the final phase of proofreading which focuses on the few remaining typesetting or copyedit errors.

How I work:

Most of the authors I work with want the process to be as cost efficient as possible, and I find that some of these levels of editing can be accomplished simultaneously. It is best to assess each project to find out whether a manuscript evaluation is in order or if the work is actually ready for a line edit. I often combine a line edit and copyedit, and sometimes it is not until I’ve clarified the author’s message through initial editing that additional ideas come up for changing sequence of the manuscript.

What authors should consider with book-length projects is that most often it will involve more than one pass through the manuscript.

As you can imagine, costs for editing vary greatly, depending on how much work is needed and what the author is willing to invest. Having your work edited is an investment in making it usable, marketable, and something you’re proud of. I bill based on an hourly rate, which stays competitive within the industry.