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Developmental editing is the structural pass — story arc, plot logic, pacing, character motivation, scene order, and whether the book delivers what its premise promises. Copyediting (sentence-level grammar and clarity) and proofreading (typo hunt) come later and are pointless if the structure is broken. Developmental editing rewrites scenes, cuts subplots, flags plot holes, and reorders chapters; copyediting never touches any of that.

A full editorial letter (8–15 pages) covering big-picture issues: which subplots earn their page count, where pacing sags, where character motivation breaks, which chapter openings hook and which don’t. Plus inline manuscript comments at the scene level — what each scene accomplishes, what’s missing, what to cut. We do not rewrite prose at this stage; that’s line editing’s job.

For a full-length novel (60,000–100,000 words), 3 to 5 weeks — that includes the editor’s first read, a structural reread, and the editorial letter. Shorter manuscripts (under 40,000 words) return in 2 weeks. Rush turnarounds compress the second read, which we do not recommend for developmental work since pattern-recognition needs time.

Yes. Fiction developmental editing focuses on plot, character, voice, and scene-level construction. Non-fiction developmental editing focuses on argument structure, evidence, narrative spine in memoir, and chapter sequencing in how-to or self-help. We assign editors by category — a thriller editor and a memoir editor work very differently.

Rates run $0.04 to $0.10 per word at industry standard, putting a 70,000-word novel between $2,800 and $7,000. Word-2-Kindle starts at $49 for short manuscripts under 10,000 words and quotes a fixed price after reviewing a 5,000-word sample of the full manuscript. Fixed quote, no hourly billing.

Always before. Developmental edits restructure the book — entire chapters get cut, scenes get rewritten, character arcs get rebuilt. Copyediting that work first means paying twice: once on prose that’s about to be cut, again after the rewrite. The correct order is developmental → revision → line editing → copyediting → proofreading → formatting.