Editing takes several forms. Book editing involves some or all of this work, depending on the shape of the manuscript.

Book development means figuring out what goes in your book, what doesn’t, and how it fits together.

Structural editing has to do with the shape of the book. Do you know what you want to do, and are you doing it? How effective are your narrative arc and character development? Could your argument be stronger? Are things in the right place and the right order? What’s missing from the story? What’s extraneous? How effectively do you lead the reader on an emotional journey?

Line editing gets into the meat of the writing. Are the chapters working internally? Is the argument flowing from paragraph to paragraph? How are the transitions working? What about sentence structure and phrasing?

Copy editing and proofreading. All manuscripts need this for a final polish and to bring the book up to Chicago Manual of Style standards, the professional book publisher’s style guide.