Developmental Editing

“This is giving some much-needed clarify and a motivational boost!”
-Client at Duke University, after receiving her full-book developmental edit

I provide concrete suggestions to help you reach your target readers more effectively, giving you a path forward so that you can tackle revisions with renewed energy, purpose, and confidence.

Developmental Edit of Book Manuscript

Feedback on the manuscript as a whole, with a special focus on your book’s argument and throughline. I help you identify and refine the book's central thesis and the arguments of individual chapters, with an eye to making sure that each chapter both builds on the others and advances your central thesis. And I provide concrete suggestions for resolving broad issues of organization, analysis, pacing, tone, or style in order to make your manuscript clearer and more compelling for your target readership. I include recommendations about how to prioritize and sequence the suggested revisions.

I offer basic, standard, and in-depth versions of the service. I can also provide follow-up developmental editing for individual chapters following a DE of a full book manuscript (if you’d like more intensive support for a given chapter or would like me to review your revisions). All full-book DEs include a detailed revision letter, light in-text edits and comments, and an hour-long call after you’ve read through my feedback.

Developmental Edit of an Individual Book Chapter

If you are confident in your book’s overarching structure and argument, or if you want my eyes on your chapters as you are writing them, you can skip the full-book DE and instead have me offer feedback one chapter at a time (or just on a particular chapter or chapters that feel especially tricky). I can also provide follow-up developmental edits on individual chapters as a form of iterative developmental editing after first doing a full-book DE.

See the following description for additional information.

Developmental Edit of Article, Essay, or Book Chapter

Big-picture comments on organization, argument, core concepts, or recurring stylistic issues provided either in a revision letter or in a set of notes at the top of the document. Micro-level feedback offered through in-text comments and queries as well as light in-text edits.

If needed, I can also suggest new section headings or identify points where you might cut or condense material. And if needed, I can provide structural editing (hands-on editing to help you reorganize your article or chapter, where I actually move material to new points, make suggestions about new transitional passages you might draft, and make cuts to help with pacing).

Early Stage Book Proposal Consultation

If you are preparing your proposal for submission, I recommend book proposal editing (see below). But if you’ve written a preliminary version of the book proposal early in the drafting or dissertation-to-book revision process to help articulate your vision for the book, I can offer developmental feedback on your project based on the window into your project that the proposal provides. After I’ve reviewed your proposal draft, we will hold a 90–120 minute Zoom call. I’ll ask you probing questions about your project and introduce my two go-to strategies for thinking through how each chapter can make a distinct chapter-argument that still contributes to one overarching thesis for the book as a whole. And then we can engage in collaborative brainstorming to begin refining your argument, chapter contributions, organization, or key concepts.

Book Proposal Editing

I review your proposal with an eye to helping you make effective use of a scholarly book proposal’s standard sections—including sections that often cause writers consternation, such as the “competing or comparable works” section. I pay special attention to how you convey your argument and its stakes.

By default, I provide developmental feedback through in-text comments and queries and edit your prose for clarity, tightness, and flow. I provide a 30-minute follow-up call after you’ve reviewed my edits. If your proposal is not yet ready for line editing, then instead of editing your prose I can offer additional developmental support through more extensive comments and queries and/or a revision letter. I can also provide a longer follow-up call. (Schedule permitting, I can then line edit your proposal after you’ve revised it based on my developmental feedback.)

Developmental Edit of Proposal Package (Book Proposal + Sample Chapters)

Revision recommendations for your sample chapters and proposal (prospectus), provided through a revision letter, in-text comments and queries, and occasional in-text edits. If your materials are in good shape and the developmental feedback I’m offering is relatively light, then I can provide more extensive line edits. Service includes an hour-long follow-up call.

I recommend this service if you want detailed feedback on your sample chapters and proposal but don’t need a DE of the full manuscript.