How to Work with a Book Editor: The Editorial Process Explained

Hiring an editor is the smaller half of the job. What you do after you receive the edits — how you approach the work, how you read the feedback, how you communicate with your editor, how you know when you're actually done — determines whether the money you spent on editing produces a significantly better book or just a manuscript with a lot of tracked changes that you didn't know what to do with.

The editorial process requires a particular mindset. You've spent months or years with this manuscript. Your instinct will often be to defend your choices. The editor's job is to show you where those choices aren't working. Navigating that gap is what this guide is about.

Before You Hire: What Stage Your Manuscript Should Be At

Professional editing should not be the first outside eyes on your draft. This is a common and expensive mistake. Submitting a first draft to an editor means you're paying professional rates for feedback you could have gotten — and problems you could have solved — through your own revision process and beta readers first.

When you hire a developmental editor, your manuscript should already be a complete draft that you have revised at least once yourself. You should know the ending. You should have resolved the major unfinished elements. You don't need the manuscript to be polished — developmental editing often results in structural changes that would make polishing premature anyway — but it should be complete and it should represent your best current understanding of what you're building.

When you hire a line editor or copyeditor, the manuscript should be structurally sound. Line editing on a book that still needs significant structural revision is wasted work — those carefully line-edited passages may not survive the developmental revision. Sequence matters: developmental editing first, then line editing, then copyediting, then proofreading after layout.

If you're not sure whether your manuscript is ready for professional editing, work through the self-editing checklist before publishing first. That process will either prepare your manuscript or clarify what still needs work before you hire.

Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission

Most editors work in Microsoft Word or accept Google Docs files. Before you submit, format your manuscript to the industry standard:

• Font: 12pt Times New Roman or Courier New (the specifics matter less than consistency — pick one)
• Line spacing: Double-spaced throughout
• Margins: Standard 1-inch margins on all sides
• Page numbers: Header or footer with page number and, optionally, your name and title
• Track changes: Turn off and accept all before submitting. Editors will use tracked changes to mark their work; submitting with pre-existing tracked changes creates confusion.
• One space after periods: Two-space-after-period is a holdover from typewriter formatting. Fix this with a find-and-replace before submission.
• Chapter breaks: Page break (not multiple hard returns) to start each new chapter

Some editors have a specific template or style they prefer. If they've provided instructions, follow them exactly. Small formatting courtesies signal that you'll be easy to work with — which affects how editors approach the engagement.

If your editor asks for specific additional materials — a synopsis, series bible, genre comps — provide them with the manuscript submission rather than waiting to be asked again.

The Editorial Letter

A developmental editor's primary deliverable is an editorial letter. This document — typically ten to twenty pages for a novel — is the editor's analysis of the manuscript: what's working, what isn't, and what they recommend you address in revision.

The first time you read an editorial letter, you may have a strong emotional reaction. This is normal. The letter is going to tell you that things you worked hard on are not working the way you intended. It may suggest changes that feel fundamental or alarming. Read through the entire letter once without responding, without taking notes, and without defending anything. Just read.

Then set it aside for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

When you return to it, read it again with the specific goal of understanding what the editor is actually saying — not what your defensive instinct heard. Often the suggestions that felt most jarring on first read are the ones that, on second read, you recognize as correct. The emotional sting is sometimes a signal that the feedback is true.

Not every suggestion will be right for your book. Editors are skilled readers and publishing professionals, but they are not infallible, and they are not inside your vision for the project. You will disagree with some of the editorial letter. That's legitimate. But approach disagreement with a clear head: is the editor wrong, or are they identifying something real that you don't want to address?

How to Approach Revision

After a developmental edit, work macro-to-micro. Don't start by polishing the prose of the scenes you're keeping — you don't yet know which scenes you're keeping. Start with the structural changes: the character arc problems, the pacing issues, the missing scenes or redundant plot threads. Get the architecture right before you work on the interior.

Make a revision plan. Go through the editorial letter and create a list of every suggested change, sorted by category: structural changes, character changes, scene-level changes. Work through the structural changes first, character changes second, and smaller scene-level suggestions last.

For each suggestion, make a decision: accept it, reject it, or find a third path. Document your decisions. When you return to your editor for a follow-up round or check-in, being able to say "I accepted this, rejected this for the following reason, and addressed this differently by doing X" shows that you engaged seriously with the feedback.

Revision after a developmental edit is not a quick process. A thorough structural revision of a novel can take months. Don't rush it. Submitting the same problems to a second round of developmental editing because you moved too fast through the first revision wastes time and money.

Line Editing Revisions

Line editing comes as a tracked-changes document. Your job is to go through every tracked change and either accept or reject it.

The mindset for line editing revision is different from developmental editing. In developmental editing, you're rebuilding. In line editing, you're evaluating specific changes to specific sentences and deciding whether they improve the prose.

The default position for most tracked changes should be acceptance. Your editor is a skilled professional who has read this manuscript with fresh eyes. If they changed a word, restructured a sentence, or flagged a passage, there's almost always a reason. Give their suggestion a genuine hearing before rejecting it.

That said, rejection is legitimate — especially when a change alters your voice in ways that feel wrong. A line editor's job includes preserving your voice while improving the prose; if a change erases something essential about how you write, push back. Document why.

Don't reject changes purely because they're changes. The manuscript you submitted was not perfect. Changes are improvements, not violations.

The editorial comments (as opposed to tracked changes) typically flag places where the editor couldn't find the fix themselves — places where something is wrong but the solution needs to come from you. These require active revision, not just accept-or-reject.

Copyediting Revisions

Copyediting tracked changes require a different approach than line editing. Many copyediting corrections are simply correct — spelling, grammar, punctuation — and should be accepted immediately. The judgment work happens in the smaller category of style decisions.

Style guide application is not preference. If your copyeditor is applying Chicago Manual of Style and marks your en-dashes as em-dashes, that's a rule, not an opinion. The style guide exists to create consistency, and consistency serves the reader. Don't reject style corrections because you like your way better.

Your copyeditor should provide a style sheet with the edit — a document recording the decisions made throughout the manuscript (your invented character names and their spelling, your intentional comma-before-and decisions, your handling of foreign language terms). Keep this style sheet. Give it to your proofreader.

Places where you legitimately override a copyedit: intentional stylistic deviations that are part of your voice (intentional run-ons, intentional sentence fragments used deliberately), or factual items where you have a source the copyeditor didn't have. Mark these clearly with a comment explaining why.

Editorial Pass Summary

Pass	Timing in Process	What the Author Receives	Revision Response
Developmental editing	After complete draft; before line edit	Editorial letter; annotated manuscript	Structural revision — may take months
Line editing	After developmental revision; before copy	Tracked changes manuscript; inline comments	Accept/reject changes + active revision of flagged passages
Copyediting	After line editing; before layout	Tracked changes manuscript; style sheet	Accept/reject corrections; dispute factual or intentional exceptions
Proofreading	After layout; before final upload	Marked PDF or galley	Confirm corrections with typesetter/layout designer

How to Give Feedback to Your Editor

At some point in most editorial relationships, you'll need to tell your editor that something they suggested isn't working for you. How you do this affects the quality of the conversation.

"I don't like this" is not useful feedback. It puts your editor in the position of defending a change without understanding why you object to it, which typically produces circular conversation without resolution.

Useful feedback explains the why: "This change to Chapter 3 removes the ambiguity I was building between these two characters — I need them to stay in tension through Chapter 7, and making their dynamic explicit here closes that off too early." That's a specific, grounded objection that your editor can work with.

The same principle applies when you need something the editor hasn't given you: "The feedback on the pacing in Act Two helped, but I'm still not sure how to fix the gap where Sarah's motivation breaks down — can we discuss that specifically?" is a useful follow-up. "I'm still confused" leaves your editor nowhere to go.

Professional editors are used to author pushback. Good ones welcome it. The editorial letter and the tracked changes are a starting point for a conversation, not a final decree. What your editor is not well-positioned to handle is vague dissatisfaction — help them help you by being specific.

Multiple Rounds

Many authors assume that a single editorial round should produce a final manuscript. For developmental editing, a single round is rarely sufficient. After you revise based on an editorial letter, a second pass by the same editor — or sometimes a different reader — often catches what the revision introduced or what didn't get fully resolved.

Second-round developmental edits are shorter than first rounds — they're checking whether the revision addressed the original issues and identifying any new problems the revision created. Budget for the possibility of a second developmental round if the first reveals significant structural work.

For line editing and copyediting, a single round is typically sufficient. Some authors request a second copyedit pass on the final formatted text, but that is more commonly handled as proofreading.

The "Done" Question

Authors often feel uncertain about when revision is complete. Here are practical markers:

Done with developmental revision: You've addressed every major issue in the editorial letter with a conscious decision (implement, partially implement, or reject with reasoning). You've done your own read-through of the revised manuscript and it reads as a complete, coherent work. A second trusted reader (not necessarily a professional editor) confirms that the big-picture issues from the first pass no longer appear.

Done with line editing: You've reviewed every tracked change and comment. All comments have been addressed (either by revision or by a clear decision not to revise with a reason). The manuscript reads smoothly through from start to finish.

Done with copyediting: All tracked changes are accepted or rejected. The style sheet has been reviewed and is consistent with the manuscript. The manuscript is ready for layout.

If you find yourself making repeated small changes after an editor has signed off, ask whether you're improving the manuscript or just rearranging furniture because revision feels more certain than publication. At some point, the manuscript is as good as it will get in this round. Release it.

The Editor Relationship

A good editorial relationship is collaborative and honest. Your editor is not your adversary — they're a skilled reader whose job is to help you make the book as strong as it can be. The quality of the relationship depends partly on your behavior as a client.

Respond to editorial deliverables within a reasonable timeline. Communicate promptly if you're going to need more time. If you disagree with something, raise it directly rather than ignoring it. Pay on time.

Authors who find a strong editor often work with them repeatedly. An editor who knows your work, your voice, your tendencies, and your goals becomes more valuable over time — they know what to look for and they know how to communicate with you. This is worth cultivating.

The editorial relationship ends at publication, but the manuscript outlasts it. The goal of every editorial pass is a better book — and a better book serves your readers, your career, and your satisfaction as an author long after the revision process is complete.

For a broader view of the editing landscape and how to find and vet editors in the first place, see independent book editors guide.

FAQ

Can I work with an editor remotely, or do I need to meet in person? The vast majority of professional editorial work is conducted entirely remotely via email, shared documents, and occasional video calls. In-person meetings are uncommon and not necessary.

What if I disagree with most of the editorial feedback? If you find yourself rejecting the majority of an editor's suggestions, one of three things is happening: the editor is not a good fit for your book, you're not in the right headspace to receive feedback, or you hired the wrong type of editor for the work your manuscript needs. If it's a significant mismatch, it's worth a direct conversation with the editor before proceeding through the full revision.

Should I do multiple rounds with the same editor or get fresh eyes? Same editor for developmental passes — they know the manuscript's evolution and can assess whether revisions addressed the original issues. Fresh eyes can be valuable for copyediting (different readers catch different errors) but is not required.

What do I do with my self-editing notes after I get a professional edit? Keep them as reference for your next project. Don't discard tracked editorial changes until the book is published and you're certain you won't need to revisit decisions.

How do I know if an editor is worth their rate? The sample edit is the best evidence. Beyond that: authors' track records, the quality of their feedback in initial communication, and references from authors you trust. High rates don't guarantee quality; low rates don't mean bad editing. Evaluate the work, not the price.

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