Types of book editing: developmental, line editing and proofreading

There are three types of book editing: developmental editing, which checks whether the story works; line editing, which checks whether the sentences work; and proofreading, which catches the last mistakes before print. These are three different jobs, usually done by different people and in a fixed order. If you understand the difference, you save money, because you don't pay for work you don't need, and you don't reach print with a hole nobody checked.

And if you're considering translation, the difference matters twice. A translated book needs some of these edits again, and some it doesn't.

What a developmental editor does

The developmental editor reads the book like a reader, but with a pencil. They ask big questions. Does the opening pull you in? Does the middle drag? Does the main character want something, and is it clear to us what? Does the ending earn itself?

Their answers look like a long letter, not like corrections in the margins. "Chapters 4 and 5 say the same thing, you could merge them." "The sister disappears halfway through the book and never comes back." "The reader figures out the secret too early."

This is the edit that costs the most time, because it can send you off to rewrite whole chapters. In nonfiction it's sometimes called content editing, and the questions are similar: is the argument built right, are the chapters in the right order, what's missing.

What a line editor does

The line editor works at the level of the sentence. They don't ask whether the chapter should be there. They ask whether every sentence in the chapter says what it's meant to say, as clearly as possible.

They'll flag a four-line sentence and suggest splitting it. They'll notice the same word coming up three times in one paragraph. They'll fix a phrase that doesn't sound natural, make the spelling of names consistent, and make sure the character who is "Dana" in one chapter doesn't turn into "Dani" in chapter nine.

This is also where your voice gets protected. A good line editor doesn't rewrite the book in their own style. They sharpen yours.

What a proofreader does

The proofreader is the last reader. They get the book when it's almost closed, and they look for what everyone else missed: a spelling mistake, a missing period, a word that shows up twice, quotation marks that open and never close.

They aren't supposed to change wording or suggest ideas. If they find a big problem, they flag it, but their job is to catch mistakes, not to improve.

In a printed book the proofreader sometimes checks the layout itself too: a single line left stranded at the top of a page, page numbering, headings that jumped.

What order the types of book editing go in

Order matters, because each stage changes what comes after it. If you proofread before the structure is settled, and then the developmental editor asks you to rewrite three chapters, the proofreading on those three chapters went in the trash.

The rule is simple: from big to small. First the story, then the sentences, and last the letters.

Type of editing	What it checks	When
Developmental editing	Structure, pacing, characters, what's missing	First, on a full draft
Line editing	Wording, clarity, repetition, consistency	After the structure is settled
Proofreading	Spelling, punctuation, last mistakes	Right before print or upload

What a translated book needs from all this

This is where it gets interesting. If the book already went through developmental editing in the original language, there's no reason to do it again. The story, the characters and the structure don't change in translation.

But the sentences change completely. Every sentence in the translated version is a new sentence no editor has seen yet. So a translated book needs a read by someone who writes well in the new language, and a proofread in the new language at the end.

Sometimes that read comes from a native speaker, and sometimes from a professional editor. We wrote about the difference in do you need a native speaker to go over the translation.

So what not to skip

If the budget is limited, the order of what to keep is the reverse of the order of the work. Proofreading is the last thing worth giving up, because spelling mistakes are the first thing a reader sees, and they judge the whole book by them.

Line editing comes next. And developmental editing is the big investment, which pays off mostly on a first book or on a book whose structure you're not sure about.

And if you want to understand how editing fits with different translation methods, we have a short glossary of translation methods.