You’re a freelance fiction editor who works directly with authors. These authors are usually either planning to self-publish or submit to literary agents. If the latter, the author wants their manuscript to be as strong as possible before they start querying – and so they come to you for help. But what kind of editorial service (if any) is right for this type of client?
There are two schools of thought on this:
- Authors submitting to agents should not get professional editing beforehand – it’s misrepresentative and a potential waste of money. Agents and publishers want to see the author’s own writing ability. And, if the book is picked up, the publisher will handle the necessary editorial work anyway.
- Authors submitting to agents should absolutely get professional editing beforehand – to help them stand out. A polished manuscript stands out in the slush pile and appeals to publishers who’ll have less editorial work to do.
Let’s untangle these and see if we can come to a definitive answer.
The case against sentence-level editing
Copy-editing – the mechanical, typo-fixing layer – generally won’t help a manuscript stand out in the slush pile. Publishers expect to do (and pay for!) this work anyway if they acquire the book.
The exception is if the manuscript is in a pretty scruffy state – riddled with errors to the point that it obscures the writing beneath. In that case, a copy-edit is more about removing distraction.
But then paying for a copy-edit ends up misrepresenting the author’s abilities: it presents a level of writing that the author doesn’t yet have as their own baseline. Hmm.
Line editing is slightly different. It’s more interventionist – refining and elevating rhythm, word choice, voice, etc. – and it actually can help a manuscript stand out in the slush pile.
But this still only helps if the big-picture elements are solid. And it still runs into the same misrepresentation problem as copy-editing, just at a different level. A publisher taking the book on would assume the author can sustain that standard unaided across future books.
If you take on sentence-level work for a querying author, your client needs to understand all of this upfront. You need to be clear about what these types of editing will and won’t do for their chances, and what it means for how they’re representing themselves to agents.
And no amount of sentence-level editing can help a manuscript that needs big-picture work done to it first.
When sentence-level editing is the right call
That said, this isn’t a reason to never offer this type of work to this type of client. For some authors, sentence-level editing is the most useful thing they can do before querying. In that case, these services can be the most effective use of their budget – and your skills.
This is also where two specific, and often underserved, niches come into play: dyslexic authors and authors writing in a language other than their first.
For these clients, the barrier usually isn’t the craft qualities agents are assessing – it’s a different kind of barrier, and a copy-edit can clear away the noise that would otherwise stop an agent seeing the quality of the work underneath.
So, if sentence-level editing would truly help, what’s the most transparent and cost-effective way for this to happen?
My recommendation here is twofold:
- Authors should only have their submission chapters edited.
- They should disclose this when submitting.
Just editing the submission chapters means that authors aren’t spending a big chunk of money on a service that might not ultimately make a difference to their publishing goals, and it also means agents and publishers can see what the author is able to do by themselves (by reading the pages that haven’t been edited).
Disclosure makes this work ethical rather than misleading. You should encourage your author to flag, when submitting, that the sample chapters have been copy-edited. That doesn’t mean the writing won’t be looked at properly – it means the agent has accurate information about what stage the manuscript is at and what level of intervention it might need later down the line. All things that will eventually become apparent anyway.
I also recommend that, where you can, you should build in more value than a straight edit here: flag anything that’s consistently going wrong, so your client can learn from it and apply the fix across the rest of the manuscript themselves.
This is good practice generally, but it matters more here – it turns a one-off spend into something the author can use more broadly. It helps authors close the gap between editorial intervention and their own writing ability! Everyone’s a winner.
Developmental editing: not automatically the answer either
If sentence-level editing can misrepresent the author’s abilities, and a solid story (with excellent structure and execution) is more important to agents, it can be tempting to think that developmental editing is therefore always the right service for authors seeking agent representation.
But it’s worth applying the same scrutiny here that we applied to sentence-level editing, because similar considerations apply.
With extensive, hands-on developmental editing, the author is still somewhat misrepresenting their abilities – just at the big-picture level rather than the sentence level.
If an editor has substantially reshaped the plot, refined point-of-view, rebalanced scene and summary, and made changes that affect characterisation, the agent is responding to a manuscript that reflects more of a collaboration. Can the author carry over what they’ve learned to future books? Hopefully, but it’s not guaranteed.
And, you know, not every author needs a developmental edit. Some manuscripts already have the big-picture elements sorted and are already well-pitched for the author’s target market.
As well as that, developmental editing is (usually) one of the most expensive kinds of editing, and so using it as a stepping stone to an uncertain outcome (gaining agent representation and traditional publication) can be massively financially risky for the author.
Though I believe most new authors do benefit from developmental editing, recommending a developmental edit by default to authors seeking agent representation, regardless of what the manuscript truly needs, isn’t the default answer.
The most useful service: manuscript appraisal
Given all this, the most appropriate service for an author preparing to query usually isn’t an edit at all – it’s a manuscript appraisal (or assessment).
Here, you read the manuscript and assess it against the author’s own goals, then advise on what it really needs. This could be sentence-level editing, developmental editing, both … or neither!
This lets you help the author spend their budget on whatever will truly move them closer to querying successfully, rather than defaulting to whichever service you happen to offer.
This can work as a standalone, paid service in its own right. It can be fairly in-depth, and clients are often glad to pay for clarity before committing further money to editing they may not need.
Equally, if a full assessment service isn’t something you want to offer, this kind of evaluation can simply be folded into how you vet projects before quoting – just bear in mind it needs to stay brief enough that you’re not giving away substantial diagnostic work for free.
And if you want to help authors beyond editorial feedback, you can even offer to help them craft their synopsis and agent query letter. Just make sure you are well-researched in this area before charging for this service.
The bottom line for editors
Both sentence-level and developmental editing can help an author succeed in landing a literary agent, but these services also risk misrepresenting what the author can do unaided – just at different levels of the manuscript – and this can muddy the agent–author relationship. As well as that, both services involve significant investment and neither service can guarantee results.
The most defensible starting point is usually a manuscript appraisal, which lets you match the recommendation to what the manuscript and the author really need. Whatever you end up offering, the value you bring to the table isn’t just the edit – it’s the guidance on what will truly help the author reach their goals, while helping them save money, effort and their enthusiasm in the process.
