A little education, if you’re new to editing…
Editing Process
There are several levels of editing that go by slightly different names depending on the editor, company, country, etc. For our purposes, I’ll use the names below:
- Developmental editing – Not offered by Front Runner Communications. This level of editing is most often used by commercial publishing houses and established authors.
- Content evaluation – AKA structural editing or manuscript evaluation. Starts with your current draft. High-level overview of organization, story flow, plot problems.
- Line editing – A close look at your paragraphs and sentences. Do they make sense? Do they read well? Here the editor considers the audience for your book, the voice it’s written in, and the tone of your writing.
- Copy editing – Spelling and grammar. Style and layout. Formatting is done at this stage (but not before). Notice how the editing is getting tighter and more detailed?
- Proofreading – Not offered by Front Runner Communications. As good as I am (ahem), I don’t do proofreading. Proofreading is the last set of eyes to see your work before it goes out into the world. At this point in the process, you and I both have read the content a lot and can go bias-blind (miss obvious typos, misspellings, etc.). I can refer you to professional proofreaders. Or you can take your chances and do your own proofreading.
Publishing Process
So, that’s the basic editing process. There will be a lot of back and forth between author and editor, suggestions and corrections, until FINALLY, we have a finished manuscript.
But wait! After all the editing comes the publishing process:
NOTE: The next steps apply to self-publishing only. Commercial publishing houses handle these details for their authors (which is the primary advantage of have a commercial publisher).
- Print/ebook submission – For self-published authors, the online book submission process (Amazon Kindle, for example) includes: cover design, back blurb, ISBN, front/back matter, search tags, etc. More proofreading is also required for the final formatted submission.
- Marketing plan – If you want to sell your book, how do you plan to market it?
- Book release – When your book is available for sale, how do you plan to distribute it? Hard and soft copies? Which distributors? How will you announce the date of your book release (part of marketing plan)?
- Publicity – Beyond the marketing plan, how will your publicize your book going forward? Next month, in six months, next year? Books can be promoted on the internet fairly cheaply forever, and that’s how you sell your book.
The good news is that Front Runner Communications can help you with every step of the publishing process!