Line Editing vs. Copy Editing vs. Developmental Editing
Authors often aren't sure which type of edit their book needs, and that's a fair question, since the terms get used loosely across the industry. Developmental editing addresses whether the book works at a structural level: does the story hold together, does the argument build logically, is anything missing. Line editing addresses how the book reads sentence by sentence, tightening voice and flow. Copy editing addresses correctness, consistency, and grammar. If you're not sure where your manuscript stands, tell us; our editors will recommend a starting point after an initial read rather than selling you every level by default.
It's common for a manuscript to need more than one level, and in a specific order. Developmental issues should be resolved before line editing, since restructuring a chapter after it's been polished sentence by sentence means redoing that polish. We'll flag this if it applies to your project rather than letting you pay for work that has to be repeated later on.
We also treat proofreading as a genuinely separate final pass, not a rebranding of copy editing. It happens after all other edits are accepted and the manuscript is otherwise finished, catching the small errors, a missed word, an inconsistent spelling, a stray formatting slip, that tend to surface once a manuscript has been through several rounds of change.
