Book coach—Similar to a fitness coach, but for writing. Answers questions, creates work plans, cheers you on, and holds you accountable. It’s tailored support for each writer’s project/journey.
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Ghostwriting is essentially just commissioned writing, but the writer writes on behalf of someone else, using their voice. A ghostwritten text is attributed to someone else’s name and may be an autobiography, memoir, blog post, etc.
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Researchers and fact-checkers support the writing process by gathering information for the author to use and verifying statements of fact in the manuscript. Were the RAF runways in 1940 grass strips, concrete, or tarmac? A researcher will find out.
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Proofreading—One of the last stages in preparing a manuscript for publication. Takes place after the copy edit and typesetting. A proofreader looks for typographical errors missed in previous editing passes and formatting mistakes.
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Self-Publishing Assistance—An assistant can help and advise on formatting, cover design, pricing, marketing, using the major self-publishing platforms, and various other aspects of the business, showing you what needs to be done and how to do it.
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Permissions Editor—Essentially your go-to copyright Jedi, verifying copyright status and ownership of anything requiring permission to republish, such as images,
extensive excerpts from another author, poems, or song lyrics.
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Manuscript Evaluation—High-level analysis of a manuscript's structure, plot, character development, story elements, mechanics, and genre conformity. Differs from a developmental edit in being much less detailed.
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Logline—A succinct, attention-grabbing summary of a story/book, one or two sentences long. In pitches and queries, it is meant to get an agent/editor to read your manuscript and buy it. In pre-writing, it can help keep you on course.
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Developmental Editing—Focuses on the big picture: plot, structure, character development, and narrative flow. Might rearrange passages, ask for more information/extra scenes, cut scenes, or indicate a plot hole/character issue and give advice for fixing it.
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Index—An alphabetical list of terms, topics, names, and places within a work that provides page numbers for where those words are found. It is made by an indexer very near the end of the project, when page numbers are unlikely to change.
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Electronic Coding/Tagging—Comes after content is finalized. It involves inserting codes into the text (<h1> Chapter One</h>) or applying Microsoft Word styles to it. This signals the typesetter that text is italic, flush left, or a poetry extract.
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Copyediting—A copy editor goes over mechanical elements such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and hyphenation; enforces consistency and the chosen style guide; and corrects citations. From there, it varies a lot!
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Comparative editing: The comparison of a translated text to its source to make sure the translation is faithful to the original (unlike a certain Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula). Often involves aspects of stylistic and copy editing.
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Beta Reader—Gets the manuscript before it goes to agents, presses, or a copy editor. They review the book and give the author feedback (think test screenings, but for books), identifying plot problems, inconsistencies, missing elements, overuse of tropes, and unclear sections.
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Acquisitions Editor—Works for a publisher evaluating proposals for commercial potential and to see if they fit with the publisher’s guidelines and catalogue. They develop relationships with literary agents and may contract directly with writers.
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Line Editing—An editor goes through a text line-by-line looking at word choice, syntax, sentence structure, and overall pace. It differs from a developmental edit in focusing on the sentence and paragraph level and from a copy edit in dealing with style rather than mechanical errors.
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Sensitivity Reader—A person who reads a manuscript with a focus on the depiction of characters and themes related to a specific lived experience that falls within their area of expertise, such as race, class, nationality, or disability.
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Soft hyphen.
A regular, or hard hyphen remains no matter where the phrase falls in the line, but a soft hyphen is conditional. It signals a word break at the end of a line and should vanish if the interrupted word moves to the middle of a line.
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CMOS— The Chicago Manual of Style, AKA Chicago Style.
A Style guide used by publishers, journals, and companies worldwide.
In 2024, the 18th edition came out, and the abbreviation is often coupled with the edition number for clarity (CMOS18/CMOS17).
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