Developmental, line, copy or proofread: which edit does your book need?

The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) breaks editing into four types: developmental, line, copyediting and proofreading. Each works at a smaller scale than the one before, from the whole book down to a single letter. Most self-published non-fiction needs two or three of them, not all four.

Costs are our arithmetic on the EFA's 2026 median non-fiction rates. Per-word and hourly rates for each edit are in what a book editor costs, and the rest of the bill is in what it costs to publish a book.

The line editing meaning most editors use is line-by-line editing for style. The editor rewrites sentences so they are clearer and shorter and still sound like you. The EFA says a line editor's "main focus is on improving the language and style of the text." It does not move chapters, and commas are not its main job.

Here is a line editing example: a 132-word passage written for this page, from an imagined self-help book about email, then the same passage after a line edit.

Before:

It is important to understand that the reason why most people find themselves feeling overwhelmed by their email inbox on a daily basis is not actually because they receive too many emails, although that is certainly a factor that plays a role. In actual fact, the real underlying problem is that they have never made a clear decision about what email is for. When you check your inbox first thing in the morning, before you have even had your coffee, you are basically letting other people decide what your priorities are going to be for the rest of the day. Studies show that this is a common habit. What I want to suggest in this chapter is that there is a better way of doing things, and it starts with one rule.

After:

Most people are not overwhelmed by email because they get too much of it. They are overwhelmed because they never decided what email is for. Check your inbox before your first coffee and you have let other people set your priorities for the day. [Query: which studies? Cite one or cut the line.] This chapter offers a better way, and it starts with one rule.

What the line editor changed:

• Cut two openers that announce instead of say: "It is important to understand that" and "What I want to suggest in this chapter is that."
• Cut doubled phrases: "the reason why", "on a daily basis", "In actual fact, the real underlying problem".
• Dropped the hedge "although that is certainly a factor that plays a role", which weakened the claim it hedged.
• Turned "you are basically letting other people decide" into the active "you have let other people set".
• Queried "Studies show" instead of keeping an unsourced claim.
• Kept the author's voice: second person, and the coffee.

The passage went from 132 words to 56, plus one query. A line edit rarely cuts that much across a whole book, but the moves are the same on every page.

Reading in-line edits and tracked changes

In-line edits are changes made inside your text, usually with Word's Track Changes. Deletions show struck through, insertions show underlined, and each query sits in a comment in the margin. You accept or reject each change, one at a time or all at once.

Read every change before you accept any. Answer each query in its comment, so the editor sees your reasoning. Keep a copy of the file as it was before the edit. Send the manuscript double-spaced in a plain font, which leaves room between lines for editing on paper and makes tracked changes easier to read on screen.

Developmental editing changes what the book says and in what order. Copyediting changes how each sentence is spelled, punctuated and kept consistent. The first comes early and costs $3,200–4,000 for an 80,000-word book at EFA rates; the second comes near the end and costs $2,400–3,200.

A structural note reads like this one, from a Manuscript AI sample report on The Pilgrim's Progress, a public-domain book.

Example from a Manuscript AI sample report (The Pilgrim's Progress):

One improvement: add a short bridging note before the text, drawn from Piper, that names three or four episodes to watch (the key, the Slough, Doubting Castle). This would link the biography to the story and ease the move into archaic language.

A copyeditor would never write that note. They would check that "Slough of Despond" is capitalized the same way on every page. Developmental editing vs line editing is the same split one level down: the line editor works on paragraphs inside chapters the developmental editor has already settled. What a developmental editor does covers that edit in full.

A copyedit corrects spelling, grammar, punctuation and consistency, and records each decision in a style sheet so page 300 matches page 3. The EFA's definition adds "checking cross-references." It costs $2,400–3,200 for 80,000 words at EFA rates and comes after the last structural change.

Before:

In 2019 over 60 percent of freelancers surveyed said they had never raised there rates. (see Chapter 4) Having worked with hundreds of Designers, the pattern is easy to spot: rates set in year one stay put. A logo that cost $500 in 2019 still costs five hundred dollars today, even though the designers skills have doubled. Its not laziness. Most of them told me they were worried about loosing long term clients.

After:

In 2019 over 60 percent of freelancers surveyed said they had never raised their rates (see chapter 5). [Query: source for this survey?] Having worked with hundreds of designers, I find the pattern easy to spot: rates set in year one stay put. A logo that cost $500 in 2019 still costs $500 today, even though the designer's skills have doubled. It's not laziness. Most of them told me they were worried about losing long-term clients.

What the copyeditor changed:

• Spelling: "there" to "their", "loosing" to "losing", "Its" to "It's", "designers" to "designer's".
• Consistency, per the style sheet: "Designers" lowercased, "five hundred dollars" set as "$500" to match the sentence before it.
• Grammar: "Having worked with hundreds of designers, the pattern" left the pattern doing the working; "I find" fixes it.
• Cross-reference: the rate conversation is in chapter 5, not 4, and the parenthesis moved inside the sentence.
• Hyphenation: "long-term" before a noun.
• A query on the survey, because a copyeditor flags claims without a source but does not check them.

Proofreading catches what the copyedit missed and what layout added. The EFA calls it "among the last stages" of getting a manuscript ready. It costs $1,600–2,400 for 80,000 words at EFA rates and is done on the formatted proof, not the Word file.

A proofreader looks for errors that only exist once the book is laid out:

• A word broken badly across two lines.
• A chapter's last line stranded alone at the top of a page.
• Running heads and page numbers that do not match the contents page.
• A caption separated from its chart.
• A word doubled or dropped where an edit was accepted.

When you buy a proofreading editing service, ask whether the proofreader works on the PDF proof. Reedsy notes that proofreaders "often work on typeset pages," and suggests hiring someone other than your copyeditor.

A first draft needs a structural read before anything else: your own revision, then an assessment or a developmental edit. Line editing, copyediting and proofreading come after the structure stops changing. Pay for them earlier and you pay twice, because every rewritten chapter has to be edited again.

The order for most non-fiction:

1. Revise the draft yourself, structure first.
2. Get a diagnosis: a manuscript assessment ($1,200–1,440 for 80,000 words at EFA rates) or a developmental edit ($3,200–4,000).
3. Revise again.
4. Line edit, if the prose needs it. Many authors fold this into the copyedit.
5. Copyedit.
6. Lay out the book, then proofread the proof.

A $19 Manuscript AI report fits at step 2, before you pay for a human diagnosis. It reads the whole manuscript and gives chapter-by-chapter recommendations on structure and flow. It does not line-edit, copyedit or proofread.