What Type of Edit Do You Need?

One of the first steps in my job as editor is making sure my authors are getting the type of edit they need for their book.

Because there are a variety of different services, different edits, that you can have your book go through, and no one process is the same, or right for every author. 

So let’s talk about what you should consider as you start the editing process and figure out how you should move forward with your story. For the full video, head here.

As I mentioned, there are a number of different types of edits offered to authors looking to make their story stronger as they work toward querying and/or self-publishing.

And making that decision with so many options can be overwhelming. 

Does your story need a developmental edit or just an editorial assessment? Do you need a line edit or a copyedit? Or just a proofread? 

The key to making this decision is figuring out what you or your story are struggling with – what is your core focus moving forward to make your book better?

If you are worried most about the story – character development, plot holes, world-building, etc., then you will want to focus on edits that will strengthen your story. So a developmental edit or an editorial assessment is most likely how you are going to want to move forward, at least to start. 

If you are worried about voice, style, your writing, the actual structure of the story—how it is put together? You should look into a line edit. This focuses more on the flow and style of your craft, how you’ve written the novel and can help to make your story shine through pushing your writing to the next level.

Or if you are confident in your writing and the story, but you know you are the worst at the commas, the spelling, the dangling modifiers? Then you’ll want to look at copyediting and proofreading. 

Then, once you’ve decided what your core focus is—what type of edit you know you need, at least to start, then you want to look forward to depth of the edit.

What do I mean by depth? You’ll notice as you start to research editors that we offer different packages, not just different types of edits. But different combinations of services. And that is because every book needs something different. This book for you might need to focus more on story, so you want two rounds of story edits—a developmental edit and a secondary review to discuss how your revisions came across. But maybe your next story, you want a round to fix the story issues, but also want to focus on the writing, bettering the craft, so you have two rounds, one dev and one line. 

Or maybe you only need the one round and you can move forward from there. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking—I want my book to be the best it can be, so what if I want all of them?

And this is where the final step in deciding what type of edit you need comes in:

The budget.

In complete transparency with you, having your book edited is going to be expensive. It is an investment in your publishing career.

So the final step in figuring out how you should move forward with an edit is looking at it from the perspective of how you want to publish and what your budget is.

If you are going the traditional route, you probably don’t need to hire an editor before you go out on query. It is absolutely not a requirement. But some people do, either because they want their book to be as polished as possible before heading to agents, or maybe because they’ve received some negative feedback and want to fix things before heading back out. So for anyone in that situation, talk about that with your editor—you probably only need one round of an editorial assessment or even just an outline review to help bring more clarity to your story.  So keeping the cost down and looking at it from the publishing perspective of the fact that you are going to have an agent and another editor eventually work on this story, so you don’t have several rounds, a ton of depth to your edit right now.

The other side of things are those of you who are self-publishing. Now, again, having your book edited is not a requirement. But unlike authors who are going to have outside eyes on their story down the line—agents and editors—your decision on the editing process here directly affects your end product.

So you may want consider not only going through an edit, but having multiple rounds to make sure you are producing the best book possible for your readers. 

What does that mean for you? Again, it is different for everyone. The most common option I see self pub authors choose I’d say is probably a developmental edit round and a copyediting round, at least. And then depending on what you know your story might need from there, you can add or remove as you see fit and as your budget allows. 

And when in doubt, talk with the editors you are reaching out to. They’ll be able to help guide you if you aren’t sure what you should do. And as always, make sure you know exactly what you are getting when you sign with an editor and ask for a free sample edit. If you want to know more, check out my video on what to look for in a book editor.

Hopefully this has been helpful as you decide how to move forward with your edit. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Until next week, keep writing!