Two developmental editing quotes can look very different because they cover different levels of support. One might include an editorial report identifying structural problems, while another adds comments throughout the manuscript and a follow-up discussion. Before comparing the fees, check what each editor will assess, what feedback you will receive, and whether support with your revision is included.

Developmental editing focuses on how your book works as a whole. For fiction, that can mean identifying an unconvincing character decision, a subplot that goes nowhere, or an ending that feels rushed. For non-fiction, it can mean reorganising chapters, strengthening an argument or identifying explanations your intended reader needs. The purpose is to help you make substantial revisions before paying to polish sentences that may later change.

The cost depends on your manuscript’s length, complexity, condition and agreed editorial scope. To request a useful quote, provide your word count, genre, draft stage, and main concerns, alongside any sample the editor requests. This gives both sides a clearer basis for deciding what kind of editorial support the book needs.

What Does Developmental Editing Help Authors Improve?

Developmental editing helps you improve the structural and craft decisions that shape the whole manuscript, rather than the sentences themselves. Where a copy edit tidies grammar and a proofread catches typos, a developmental edit looks at what the book is doing as a complete piece of work, and whether the choices that drive it are serving the reader.

For fiction, that attention usually falls on plot architecture, scene logic, pacing across the arc, point of view, character motivation, the shape of each character’s change through the book, voice consistency, chapter order, and the way the opening sets reader expectations. A developmental editor asks whether a scene earns its place, whether a subplot is paying off, and whether the ending is doing the work the opening promised it would. If characterisation is one of your concerns, the questions the editor raises will often connect specific scenes to patterns across the whole manuscript. (A craft-level introduction to that specific question sits in How to Describe a Person for readers who want a prose-first starting point.)

For non-fiction, the editorial attention shifts. A developmental editor reads for thesis clarity, chapter sequencing, how evidence lands in support of each claim, how worked examples carry the argument, audience fit, and whether the book delivers what its title and subtitle promise. The editor is not fact-checking your sources or verifying research, which sit outside the scope of a developmental read.

For memoir, the attention includes scene selection, voice, authorial distance from the material, the pace at which personal revelation is handled, and the structural choices that turn lived experience into a shaped book for readers.

It helps to be clear about what developmental editing does not improve. It is not a grammar sweep. It is not line-by-line prose polishing. It is not a typo hunt. It is also not ghostwriting or substantial rewriting on the editor’s part: if your manuscript needs someone to produce new text with you, that is a different service, closer in nature to the work described in What Is a Ghostwriter?.

Understanding this distinction is useful before you look at any proposal. A quote that is heavy on sentence-level corrections is pricing a copy edit or line edit, not a developmental edit, and the two are not substitutes for each other. The rest of this article explains how proposals are built, what moves them, what you should receive, and how to decide whether to commission one.

How Do UK Developmental Editors Set Their Prices?

UK developmental editors generally use one of four pricing structures, or a combination of them. Each structure is a way of expressing the editor’s internal estimate of how much time your manuscript will take; the model affects how the proposal is presented to you rather than how the work itself is done.

Per word

A per-word rate is a common structure for a full developmental edit on a complete manuscript. It is popular because you already know your word count, which lets you anticipate the shape of a proposal before it arrives. Per-word rates for developmental work typically sit above those for copy editing or proofreading, because the reading itself is slower and the written feedback is more substantial. The rate expresses the editor’s time estimate per thousand words of manuscript, not a direct piece-rate.

Per hour

Hourly rates are more common for shorter engagements than for full developmental reads. They suit a chapter critique, a short consultation call, a sample read on an opening section, or a diagnostic pass on a partial draft. The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading publishes suggested minimum hourly rates for freelance editorial work, including a figure for substantial editing, rewriting and development editing. These are indicative professional guidance, intended to help editors avoid charging unsustainable rates. They are not an enforceable market floor, and they do not by themselves tell you whether an individual editor will do good work on your manuscript.

Per project

A fixed project fee is often what an author eventually agrees to. It is usually quoted after the editor has seen a sample or looked at a representative part of the manuscript and formed a view of its condition and length. A clear project fee caps scope risk for both sides as long as the proposal names what is included and what counts as a change of scope. A flat project fee with a clearly described deliverable is not the same as an unexplained lump sum; the question to ask is what the fee covers, not whether it is a single number.

Day rate

Day rates are less common for a single developmental read, but they appear in extended work, hybrid-publishing commissions, or structural work done across several sessions with the same client.

Many editors combine aspects of these models in a single quote. The important thing is that each proposal explains, in writing, what the figure represents.

What Pushes a UK Developmental Editing Quote Up or Down?

A developmental editing quote reflects the editor’s estimate of the work your manuscript will require, which is not identical to its word count. Several factors can move the estimate up or down, and understanding them is the difference between a quote that feels arbitrary and one you can read confidently.

The first factor is manuscript length. Reading time grows with word count, although not always in exact proportion to it, because fixed overheads (preparing the brief, writing the editorial letter, drafting the chapter map) do not scale evenly with the number of words. A short novella can carry a higher per-word rate than a standard novel because the editor’s minimum engagement time does not shrink to match.

The second is the condition of the draft. A tightly self-edited third draft tends to need less structural intervention than a sprawling first draft of the same length, because the editor is finding fewer issues to work through and spending less time orienting themselves to the material. Draft condition is one of the areas where editing more generally interacts with the specific developmental stage, because an author who has already run their own structural pass has usually resolved several of the easiest issues before an editor opens the file.

Genre and complexity matter next. A multi-stranded thriller, a secondary-world fantasy with a dense magic system, a non-fiction manuscript with layered arguments, or a memoir handling sensitive material can take more hours than a straight-line commercial novel of the same length. This is a workload observation rather than a judgement about which forms are harder to write.

Editor seniority and experience shape the quote as well. More experienced editors generally charge more, and that premium often reflects faster, more precise structural reading and a longer track record on comparable projects. A CIEP membership grade is a public signal, not a licence to practise, and not every capable developmental editor is a CIEP member.

The deliverable list also matters. A diagnostic read that produces only an editorial letter is a lighter deliverable than a full developmental edit with in-manuscript annotations, a chapter overview and a follow-up conversation. The scope you ask for drives the scope of the quote.

Finally, turnaround and timing influence a quote. A standard window priced at base rate is quite different from a compressed window that requires the editor to rearrange other commitments.

What Does a Full UK Developmental Edit Actually Deliver?

A full developmental edit in the UK commonly produces a written editorial letter, in-manuscript annotations, a structural overview and, in many cases, a follow-up conversation. The exact mix varies between editors, so it is better to read a proposal for what it names rather than assume a universal package.

The editorial letter is usually the main deliverable. A useful letter identifies a problem, shows where it occurs, explains the effect it has on the manuscript or the reader, and offers possible directions for revision. For example, rather than noting that a middle chapter feels slow, a useful letter will show which scenes carry the slow feeling, explain why those scenes are not advancing the arc, and suggest the kinds of decisions you might make: cutting, compressing, re-ordering, or deepening. Length is not a reliable measure of quality. A tightly focused letter from an experienced editor can be more useful than a long one that paraphrases the manuscript back at you.

In-manuscript annotations are comments placed on the specific scenes, chapters, or paragraphs they refer to, usually using the comments feature in a word processor. They let you move between a wider structural point and the exact passage that illustrates it. An annotation that reads “this is where the subplot stalls, which connects to point three in the letter” is doing more work than one that reads “a bit slow”.

A structural overview or chapter map, where offered, condenses what each chapter is doing in the whole manuscript. It helps you see pacing and arc at a glance, and often reveals repetition or missing progression that is hard to notice while reading in sequence. Point-of-view decisions, for example, often show up differently in a chapter map than they do in the running prose. (If POV is one of your concerns, Third Person Limited Point of View gives a craft-level starting point.)

A follow-up call or written exchange is included by some editors so that you can clarify the notes before you start revising. Length and format vary. The point is not duration but whether the follow-up answers the questions you have, not the questions the editor expects.

Not every legitimate developmental edit includes every item above. A proposal that lists two deliverables is simply offering a different scope than one that lists five.

Where Does Developmental Editing Sit in the UK Editing Chain, and Why Does the Order Matter?

Developmental editing is typically the first paid editing stage after your own revisions, and it is followed by line editing, copy editing, and proofreading before publication. Running those stages roughly in order helps avoid spending editorial time twice on text that may still change.

Developmental edit

Structural attention to the whole manuscript. You revise afterwards based on the editorial letter and annotations.

Line edit and copy edit

Line editing attends to paragraph-level style, rhythm, scene-level flow and voice consistency. Copy editing attends to grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, UK versus US spelling patterns, timeline tracking and style-guide application (New Hart’s Rules or the Chicago Manual of Style, depending on the editor). In practice, line editing and copy editing often overlap in a single pass, and the labels differ between editors. Treat them as sentence-level work that comes after structure is settled.

Proofread

A final sweep for typos, formatting glitches, and missed errors before publication, usually after the manuscript has been formatted for its final layout. More detail on this specific stage sits in UK Book Proofreading Services.

The sequence matters because sentence-level work on a chapter that developmental notes may cut is time spent twice. If the structure is likely to change, polishing the sentences inside those chapters is premature. Working the stages in order protects the budget you spend on later editing.

The sequence also helps you plan the project beyond the manuscript itself. Once the structural revision is done and the manuscript has been through its later editing passes, several decisions sit outside the editorial chain but connect to it: formatting, cover, print production, audiobook production and marketing. For orientation on what those later stages involve, Book Publishing Service and Book Formatting Services are useful starting points. Production routes that sit alongside the main editing chain include Print on Demand Books Service for authors who want to avoid holding stock, and Audiobook Production Service in UK for authors who want to reach listener audiences. How to Market Your Book in the UK covers marketing planning once the manuscript is close to ready.

Skipping a developmental edit on a manuscript that needs one does not avoid the work; it defers it, usually to the revision stage after beta readers or early readers raise the same structural issues. Doing the structural pass first is not a stylistic preference. It is how the editing chain is designed to work.

How Do Editorial Needs Differ Across Manuscript Types?

Different manuscripts need different editorial attention, which is why asking a specialist in literary memoir to read a secondary-world fantasy, or a specialist in commercial romance to read a scholarly monograph, usually produces a less useful edit than matching the editor to the form.

Commercial fiction tends to need editorial attention to pacing, scene economy, genre expectations, character arc clarity, and the opening chapters. Readers of commercial fiction arrive with trained expectations shaped by the genre, and a developmental editor reads for whether the manuscript meets, subverts, or misses those expectations in ways that will land well with its audience.

Long or multi-point-of-view novels add arc management across several threads, timeline continuity, and the structural logic of how storylines converge. The editor is tracking several arcs rather than one. That extra tracking can take more time, although it is not the case that every multi-POV novel takes more editorial time than every single-POV novel; a disciplined multi-POV manuscript can read more smoothly than a sprawling single-POV one.

Genre specialism matters. A fantasy manuscript, for example, raises questions about worldbuilding depth, the pacing of exposition, and whether the magic system is consistent across the arc. These are structural questions, and they look different between a high-fantasy manuscript and a low-fantasy one, as High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy explains at the craft level.

Non-fiction shifts the editorial attention to thesis clarity, chapter-level argument, evidence placement, audience fit, worked examples, and the question of whether the book delivers what its subtitle promises. A developmental edit does not include fact-checking, research validation or authorship contributions unless they have been explicitly agreed and are appropriate to the project.

Academic manuscripts have their own expectations. Argument structure, source handling, consistency with disciplinary conventions and the balance between the author’s voice and the field’s conventions all come into view. A developmental edit on an academic manuscript respects where the editor can and cannot intervene, which is often narrower than on trade non-fiction.

Memoir sits closer in attention to literary fiction than to commercial fiction. Scene selection, voice, authorial distance, the pacing of personal revelation and the ethical questions around real people on the page all shape the editorial read.

Short-form projects (novellas, short-story collections, children’s books) do not scale down neatly from novel pricing, because the fixed overheads of editing (the brief, the editorial letter, the chapter map) do not shrink linearly with word count.

Matching the editor to the form matters more than reputation at the general level. A respected editor working outside their specialism is not automatically a better choice than a less-known editor working inside theirs.

How Can Authors Compare Developmental Editing Proposals Fairly?

If you have two or three proposals in front of you and they look very different, the first thing to do is hold each one to the same checklist. The headline figure is usually the last thing worth comparing, because it only becomes meaningful once you know what each proposal is actually covering.

Use these seven questions, in order, to compare proposals on like-for-like terms.

  1. Scope. Is this proposal for a full developmental edit, a manuscript assessment, or a lighter diagnostic? These labels vary between editors, so compare what is actually described rather than the label on the front page. Two proposals that use the same label can describe quite different work.

  2. Assumed word count. Confirm the word count each editor has quoted against, and whether it matches your manuscript’s actual word count. A quote based on an outdated figure is not binding once the real figure is on the page.

  3. Deliverables. Line up the proposals on what you will actually receive: an editorial letter, in-manuscript annotations, a structural overview, a follow-up conversation, a revision pass. A proposal that lists two deliverables is not offering the same product as one that lists five. This is where visible differences in headline figures often disappear.

  4. Revision rounds and follow-up. Does the proposal include a second developmental pass after you revise, a short follow-up read, a clarification call, or none of these? If follow-up is not included, confirm in writing how a second read or further questions would be arranged.

  5. Timeline. Confirm turnaround, start date, and end date. Separate out the booking lead time (how soon the editor can start), the active editing window, your own revision time afterwards, and any follow-up. A proposal that promises a shorter overall window is making trade-offs that are worth understanding, but faster delivery alone is not proof of lower quality.

  6. Contract terms. Deposit arrangements, cancellation terms, confidentiality and intellectual property. A professional editor should be able to describe these in writing. Not requesting a deposit is not by itself unprofessional; some editors take a deposit, some invoice in instalments, and some invoice on completion.

  7. Editor fit. Relevant experience in your form and genre, communication style, and the editor’s sample response to your opening pages or author brief. Fit is the hardest item to compare on paper and the strongest predictor of a useful edit.

A thorough proposal from a mid-experience editor can be more useful than a terse proposal from a very senior one whose scope is unclear. The seven-item comparison is designed to surface that difference before you commit. If a proposal is strong on scope and deliverables but light on timeline, ask for the timeline before you ask for a lower figure. If it is clear on everything except follow-up, raise the follow-up question before signing. The decision gets easier when the comparison is honest.

How Can You Prepare Your Manuscript for Editorial Assessment?

Preparing a manuscript before you send it to an editor is not a strict rule, and some forms of early structural support are specifically commissioned for drafts in progress. For most authors paying for a full developmental edit, though, a short preparation phase makes the spend significantly more useful.

Finish the draft, if a full edit is what you want

A manuscript with placeholder scenes, missing chapters, or extensive notes-to-self is not finished for the purposes of a full developmental edit. If the manuscript is partial on purpose and you want structural guidance anyway, say so clearly in the brief and ask whether an early-structure consultation is what you need instead. Partial-draft consultations are a legitimate service when explicitly commissioned.

Do one structural self-edit

Read the whole draft from first chapter to last page without stopping to fix sentences. Note at chapter level what each chapter is doing, where the pacing dips, where the arc stalls, and where a scene feels unearned. This pass will not catch everything an editor would catch, but it will reduce the number of questions you are paying someone else to raise.

Run an informed beta-reader round if it suits the project

Careful readers from your genre, briefed with specific questions, often surface structural issues at the cost of a thank-you note. Beta readers are not substitutes for an editor, but their reactions can shape what you ask the editor to focus on.

Tighten the opening

The opening three chapters set the editor’s reading posture for the whole manuscript. A clean, confident opening lets the editor spend attention on structural issues further in; a weak opening eats editorial time that could have gone elsewhere.

Format and submit as asked

Follow the editor’s submission guidance on file format, font, spacing, line numbering, synopsis, chapter outline, and any specific questions you want addressed. A clean submission signals that you have thought about the project and lets the editor focus on the manuscript.

Write a short author brief

Before you send the file, write a one-page brief: three or four concerns you have about the manuscript, the audience you are writing for, the comparable titles you have in mind, and anything the editor should know about the draft stage. A proposal that answers a real brief is more useful than a generic edit.

Preparing the manuscript also makes it easier to plan what follows revision. The cover, formatting, print production, and marketing decisions sit outside the developmental stage, but they shape the project as a whole, and knowing roughly what each stage involves helps you budget realistically. Book Cover Design Cost in the UK and How Much Does It Cost to Print a Book in the UK? are useful starting points for the project view; How to Print a Book in the UK covers the process side of printing; and Book Cover Design Service covers the cover service side.

How Do You Spot a UK Developmental Editing Proposal That Isn’t Worth Paying For?

Some proposals are easy to walk away from. Others look professional at a glance but contain quieter signals that are worth asking about before you commit. The following patterns are worth questioning. None of them is proof of bad work on their own; they are prompts for a second question.

A proposal that guarantees agent interest, a publishing contract, bestseller ranking, or a specific sales number is making a claim no editor can keep. Reader behaviour, agent response and sales depend on far more than editing, and no editorial work can control them.

A proposal that reads as a single lump sum with no description of scope, deliverables or revision arrangements is not giving you enough to evaluate. A flat project fee with a clearly described deliverable is a legitimate pricing structure; what you want to see alongside the number is what the number is for.

Vague deliverables are worth probing. “A comprehensive review of your manuscript” tells you less than “an editorial letter of approximately x length, in-manuscript annotations and a follow-up conversation of approximately y minutes”. Ask specifically what you will receive and in what form.

An unrealistically fast turnaround on a full developmental read of a long manuscript is worth asking about. Structural reading is slower than sentence-level reading. A short window is not automatic proof of poor work, but it is a prompt to ask about availability, scope and the editor’s working arrangements.

A rate well below the CIEP suggested minimum, converted to hours, is worth asking about rather than dismissing. The CIEP figures are indicative professional guidance, not a market floor, and a lower rate does not automatically mean poor work. It does mean the proposal is pricing against assumptions you may want to understand.

No written terms at all is a stronger signal than a shorter deposit arrangement. Written terms covering scope, timeline, cancellation and confidentiality are standard for professional UK editorial work.

Resistance to any form of sample is worth asking about, with the caveat that a free bespoke sample on your manuscript is not every editor’s practice. Many legitimate editors offer an anonymised sample report, provide a short exploratory call or point to published work from recent projects instead. The question is whether you have evidence of how the editor reads, not whether that evidence takes a specific form.

Finally, a proposal that cannot answer plain questions in plain language is often the clearest signal. If the editor cannot describe scope, deliverables, and timeline in writing, that will not improve once you have paid.

How Do You Vet a UK Developmental Editor Before You Pay Them?

Vetting a developmental editor is less about a single credential and more about building a short, honest picture of relevant experience, communication style and fit.

CIEP membership grade is a useful public signal. The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading grades members based on documented training, experience and demonstrated competence. Different grades carry different directory and professional expectations, which are published on the CIEP’s own site. Membership is not a licence to practise, not a guarantee of developmental expertise for every project, and not a requirement for every capable editor. A grade in the directory is one piece of information to read alongside the editor’s work history.

Relevant experience matters more than headline reputation. An editor with recent work on manuscripts in your form and genre is often a better fit than an editor whose portfolio is impressive but mostly in unrelated areas. Ask what the editor has worked on in the last year or two. Confidentiality can limit how specifically they can answer, and that is reasonable; the question still produces useful information.

A paid sample can test fit when a free one is not on offer. A short paid sample on your opening chapters can reveal the editor’s communication style, tone of feedback, and how they frame problems. It cannot assess your manuscript’s whole structure, because structure is a property of the whole book, but it can tell you whether this editor’s voice is one you can hear criticism from across a long project.

Client references can help, but confidentiality may limit how many named references an editor can supply. An anonymised sample report, a public body of recent work or an exploratory call are reasonable alternatives.

Professional indemnity insurance is worth asking about rather than assuming. The exact requirements by membership grade are published on the CIEP’s site, and asking the editor directly is more reliable than inferring expectations from a membership label alone.

A written contract that names scope, deliverables, timeline, revision arrangements, cancellation terms, confidentiality, and intellectual property is standard for professional UK editorial work. If the terms are not written down, nothing you discuss on a call is enforceable.

A short exploratory call before any paid sample is often where fit becomes clear. You are deciding whether the editor is someone you can spend several weeks working with on a hard revision. That is a working-relationship judgement, not a credentials judgement. Spending twenty minutes finding out is cheap compared to finding out six weeks into the project.

When Should You Not Pay for a Full Developmental Edit Yet?

A full developmental edit is not the right next step for every manuscript at every moment. Paying for one too early can produce useful feedback that you were close to reaching yourself, or feedback on text that is likely to change substantially before the next revision. Holding off at the right time is not cutting corners; it is matching the service to the stage.

A rough first draft that has not yet had a structural self-edit is often not ready. Many of the issues an editor will raise are issues you can see on your own first full read-through if you give yourself time between finishing the draft and starting the pass.

A manuscript you have not read as a reader since drafting usually benefits from one more pass by you before an editor sees it. The exact proportion of issues you will spot yourself varies, but the pass is almost always worth doing.

Before a round of informed beta readers, if that round is part of your plan, is another point where a paid edit can be premature. Beta readers are not substitutes for editorial judgement, but their reactions can usefully shape what you later ask the editor to focus on.

If what you need is early structural advice on a partial draft, a short consultation or an early-structure conversation may be a better fit than a full edit on a draft that is not yet complete. These are specific services, not downgraded versions of a developmental edit.

If what you actually need is substantial rewriting rather than editorial feedback, a developmental edit is the wrong service. The service that produces new text alongside you is covered under Ghostwriting Service, and a cost-level starting point sits in How Much Does a Ghostwriter Cost in the UK?.

You do not need a complete marketing, printing, or cover-design plan in place before a developmental edit becomes useful; that would be an unnecessary gate. What matters is that the manuscript itself is ready for someone else’s structural attention.

How Do You Know a Developmental Edit Was Worth the Spend?

Judging whether a developmental edit was worth it is about the quality of your next revision, not the length of the editorial letter or the figure on the invoice. The deliverable is a letter and some annotations; the value is the stronger draft that follows.

Before the edit, write down three or four specific concerns you have about the manuscript, the parts that feel wrong but you cannot quite name. A useful editorial letter will address those three or four and typically surface two or three you had not seen. If the letter speaks only in general terms and does not touch the concerns you noted, that is worth raising while the follow-up window is open.

The clearest measure is the revision itself. A useful developmental edit should make your next version shorter, longer or reorganised depending on what the manuscript needs; a developmental revision is not always a cut, and it is not always an expansion. What you are looking for is a next version that is structurally clearer than the one you sent, and reads with more confidence from the opening onwards.

Reader response to the revised manuscript is practical evidence of lift. The same beta readers reading before and after, agent responses to a revised sample, or early readers’ reactions can show whether the structural issues have landed differently in the new draft. These signals are indicative rather than conclusive; later agent interest, reviews or sales depend on many factors, and editing alone does not drive outcomes.

A long editorial letter is not automatically a useful one. A tightly focused letter that identifies the three or four decisions you now have to make is usually more useful than a long one that paraphrases the manuscript back at you. Length is a signal of the editor’s time, not of the clarity of their thinking.

A quieter benefit arrives on the next manuscript. Authors who have been through a careful developmental edit on one book often arrive at the next with a sharper structural instinct, see more of the issues themselves, and need fewer notes the second time around. If that is true for you after your revision, the spend has done its work in a way the first edit’s invoice does not fully capture.

Keep expectations proportionate. A developmental edit does not guarantee publication, agent representation or sales. It raises the probability of a stronger finished book by addressing the structural issues readers often reach for in a rejection or a one-star review.

Ready to Commission Your Developmental Edit?

If you have read this far and you are reasonably sure your manuscript is ready for a structural read, the next practical step is a direct conversation with an editor about the specifics of your project. The questions worth bringing to that conversation are the ones the generic version of this article cannot answer: your word count, your genre, where you are in the drafting cycle, the concerns you want the editor to focus on, and the kind of support you are hoping to receive after the editorial letter arrives.

A tailored proposal from Northern Star Press is designed around those specifics. To request one, send a short note describing your manuscript (form, genre, approximate word count, draft stage), the three or four concerns you want addressed, any comparable titles that help describe the project, and the kind of deliverable and follow-up arrangement you have in mind. The clearer that brief, the more useful the proposal that comes back.

Northern Star Press works across editing, cover, formatting, printing, audiobook and marketing for UK authors, so if you want the developmental conversation to sit inside a wider project view (what follows editing, how the stages connect, which decisions can usefully be made in parallel), that connection is often where authors benefit most from having one team across the chain. Book Marketing Service covers the marketing side of that view, and the launch-asset work covered under Book Trailer is one of the specific decisions some authors make once the manuscript is close to ready. A publisher-side perspective on where editing fits in a book’s full production chain sits in What Does a Book Publisher Do?.

When you have a tailored proposal in hand, use the seven-item comparison from earlier in this article to read it against anything else you have been quoted. A proposal that is clear on scope, deliverables, revision arrangements, timeline, contract terms, and editor fit is one you can decide on with confidence. That is the point this article has been working towards from the opening paragraph: not a number, but a position from which the number makes sense