Is your book ready for editing?

What Does An Edit Include, Anyway?

Here’s what to expect if we work together:

✅ Clients will receive a long editorial letter (usually about 8-12 pages, single-spaced) offering my overall thoughts on content, structure, characterization, pacing, dialogue, setting, point of view, technique, and other elements.

✅ I will use Track Changes to do some line editing and light copyediting, note areas that could benefit from further clarification, and flag examples of issues included in the letter. Be prepared to see notes all over your manuscript! You might want to put on sunglasses to shield your eyes from all the red. Kidding! Sort of . . . 😉

❌ I won’t rewrite your book, as an editor isn’t a ghostwriter, but I will sprinkle in what many of my clients have called ‘line editing magic.’ The stronger your manuscript is structurally, the more line editing it can receive. Line editing can’t fix a manuscript that needs major structural changes. Most of the line edits would become obsolete when you do the rewrites. If your manuscript isn’t ready for line editing, then I’ll revise sentences here and there as examples of how to improve your writing technique. Your pages will still be marked up quite a bit, but for learning purposes.

❌This isn’t a copyedit or proofread. I’ll correct punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors when I notice them, (and I do catch quite a bit through ProWritingAid, Grammarly, spell check, and my reading) but my focus is on developmental editing. For books with a lot of mistakes, I’ll give examples of how to punctuate correctly, clean up what was found in the electronic grammar scans, (which don’t catch everything), and direct you to resources to improve your skills.

Make Sure Your Book Is Ready.

Many manuscripts I see are early drafts. The authors could have turned in stronger, more polished submissions if they knew how to:

• Think like an editor so they could identify weaknesses.
• Do the rewrites and revisions in a streamlined way without getting overwhelmed.

Since these writers don’t know what to do next, they hire an editor to tell them. The thing is, editors are expensive. Your money should go toward high-level feedback, not a list of obvious issues you could have caught on your own.

That’s why I created my online program Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-By-Step Plan to Making Your Novels Publishable as an affordable steppingstone to hiring an editor.

But wait, you might be thinking. Isn’t it better to pay for feedback? Isn’t a course too generic?

Here’s what you need to understand. The real editing starts once the draft is strong enough.

Otherwise, you’ll hear the same information you’d learn in the Book Editing Blueprint course, but in much less detail and without all the checklists and worksheets to break it down into manageable chunks. Plus, the course is much cheaper than the price of a manuscript edit. 

The lessons came straight from my editorial letters, both the ones I’ve written and those I’ve received as an author. In case you’re worried it will take you months to go through Book Editing Blueprint, many authors finish it in a couple of weeks.

Your rewrites may take you quite a bit longer, though. And that’s okay, because in the long-run, you’d be saving time and money.  If your book needs work, I’d be sending you back to the drawing board, anyway.

Do yourself a favor and follow the link below so you can learn more about my Book Editing Blueprint program and see whether it would be a good fit. Because students are guided step-by-step on how to evaluate their book and do their rewrites, they tend to submit drafts much further along than most manuscripts that cross my desk.

As a result, course members get a discount on my editing services. It’s a big one⁠—$2 less per page than my regular rate. And remember, the stronger your book is, the more line editing I can do along with the developmental edits.

Don’t worry. I’ll wait while you check out the course!

It takes more time to work with new authors and writers who submit rough drafts than it does to edit books by seasoned, polished authors. Rather than charge everyone the same price per word or per page, I offer a lower rate in two cases.

1. For writers who have gone through my Book Editing Blueprint course, as even if they’re new writers, they have a solid foundation. If they did the workbook and followed the 26-page checklist during their rewrites, the manuscript should be in pretty good shape. Not perfect, of course, but they’ve caught a lot of issues on their own. That clears the path for me to do more editing and less teaching.

2. For experienced authors familiar with the editing process and who have a proven track record. A self-published or small press author with two books on Amazon and a handful of reviews isn’t necessarily going to qualify. Anyone can self-publish a book or call themselves a small press, and many indie authors publish their books too early without realizing they still need work. Some writers hire a copyeditor when they should have started with a developmental editor. Or perhaps they worked with a developmental editor, but weren’t able to pay for as many rounds as the manuscript needed. Therefore, I’ve set some guidelines below.

If you have had at least 2 books published by an established traditional publisher, then you would qualify for the discounted rate. If you just have one book traditionally published, or if you have a strong track record as an indie author with multiple books and lots of positive reviews, I’m happy to look at a sample and quote you a price.

If you’re interested in booking an edit, send an email to stacy@stacyjuba.com.

Madison Michael