3 Types of Editors: Do You Need Them All?

You are in the midst of writing your book. You have gotten into the process, utilizing all your enthusiasm, will power, organization skills, and chutzpah to plow ahead, envisioning a book with your name on it. And now you realize you need an editor. But what type of editor do you need?

Maybe you‘ve written 10, 50 or even 200 pages.  You’re more or less proud of your effort so far, but you know that what you think is good versus what is publishable are two different things.  You wonder whether you should involve an editor to help you.  You know you want to hire someone who is a professional in the field, a person whose years of know-how and expertise will transform your words into a high quality book that will dazzle your readers and build your professional reputation. This article is to help you understand the three different types of editors and what role each can play in helping your book.

Developmental Editors (DE)

As the name suggests, a developmental editor’s skill is helping you develop or improve your “intellectual property” (IP) when your ideas are all over the place.  There are two main instances when you want to hire a developmental editor:

1. If you are starting out and believe you have a great idea for a book, but don’t know how to turn your idea into the actual chapters, hire a DE. This type of editor, if highly experienced, has the expertise to help you figure out the flow and what chapter organization makes the most amount of sense for your book, given your market. The DE can talk with you about your ideas and select a meaningful “paradigm” for your book’s organization. The DE can then help you figure out the specific arrangement of your chapters as well as help you outline your book.

2.  A DE is also useful when you have written and rewritten your chapters many times and feel that you have just not found the right organization for your book. You may have reams of pages but  you know that your writing gets off the trail here and there, or you find yourself repeating ideas or “forward-referencing” a lot  (e.g., “I’ll tell you more about that in Chapter 5.”)

In both cases, hiring a DE will help you map out the purpose of your writing and help you craft your chapters to suit your topic and your audience in the best way possible. An experienced DE will help you ask yourself the hard questions about your content—what is your ultimate message? Is it meaningful? Have you proved your thesis? Do you have enough content to make a book? People often compare a professional DE to a ‘book doctor’ or ‘book coach’ to show how you can transform your content expertise and writing talent into a publishable book.

The Line Editor (LE)

A line editor is a professional language person who can help you strengthen the power of your words. This type of editing is all about your writing— the paragraphing, the use of headings, the actual language you use. A LE moves through your manuscript, reading line by line. It rewrites as needed to spin your words into gold. Think Rumpelstiltskin. Some line editors nearly become ghostwriters for you when they rewrite much of your manuscript. This strengthens your words and makes them sing. The result may be better than your originally written content.

If your book is well-organized but needs much rewriting to convey ideas powerfully, hire a line or rewrite editor.

The Copy Editor (CE)

This editor is ideal in the final stage of manuscript completion. Use it when you believe your manuscript is well organized and well written. A CE takes the manuscript to the goal line for you, ensuring grammar, punctuation, and stylistics are accurate. A quality book must be free from typos, missing words, punctuation errors, and misused terms. Complete this before your manuscript goes into production. Copyeditors may do some line editing. In general, their job is not to rewrite the manuscript; they simply clean it up. An attentive copyeditor will read your manuscript for sense. They may ask questions about content you do not understand. He or she may also do fact checking if you ask them to confirm your facts. This editor focuses on professional polish for your book. It helps land it in the hands of potential clients or customers.

Do you need all of them?

Each one of these editorial roles is vital and useful. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide which types of editor will serve you best. It’s beneficial to involve a development editor if you’re starting your first book and feel lost, needing support. With their help, you gain hand-holding from experts to craft the book you want with your name on it.

Write one chapter first. Then hire a rewrite editor later so you can learn from them as you work together. Your rough drafts of later chapters can improve too. While this editor rewrites your material, you can see how they can improve it. Your own writing of the rough drafts for following chapters can improve.

Many people believe they can skip using a copyeditor, but you will be amazed at the difference between a manuscript that has been through a professional copyedit versus one that has not.

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Publish to Get Clients can help you with all three types of editing. We are highly experienced in developmental editing and working with authors at the very beginning of their projects and with authors who are uncertain if their chapter organization is working. We also have worked with many authors as rewrite / line editors and we have a team of highly experienced, super-talented copyeditors.