Congratulations, you’ve written your first draft! Now what?

Not all editors use the same terminology, but here’s a rough outline of what you’ll need to do to get your book to the publishing stage.

Developmental/Structural Editing

Developmental editors work with you to make sure your plot is strong, your characters and dialogue are well-developed, and your pacing, style, and voice are clear and consistent throughout your story.

Critique partners will read your story from the viewpoint of another writer and offer suggestions and comments on all aspects of your story.

Beta readers will read your draft from a reader viewpoint and offer feedback on things like the beginning and ending of your story, whether they liked and connected with your characters, and if they found any inconsistencies or plot holes.

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Book Design

When your story has been polished through feedback from critique partners, beta readers, and editors, you’re ready for a book designer. Their job is to lay out your book in the format you’ll need for publishing, whether electronic or hard copy, and make decisions on things such as font, margins, chapter head design, page numbers, and front and back matter, and they search for widows and orphans and other formatting issues in the text. A book designer may also do cover design.

Proofreading

Once you’ve thoroughly polished your book and the layout and formatting have been completed, it’s time for a final proofread to check for typos that have been missed along the way or may have been introduced through one of the previous stages and to be sure that everything looks the way it should.

Copy/Line Editing

A light copyedit will focus on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and coherency. Heavier copyediting, sometimes called line editing, will delve more deeply into sentence structure and can include things like fact checking and suggestions for reworking or reorganizing sections of your story.

The copy/line editor will typically provide a style sheet that includes details like spelling preferences, character names, how numbers or other typographical characters are handled, and miscellaneous facts. The style sheet is used to maintain consistency between the various editors and designers working on your book.

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