Description

Date/Time:April 3, 2018/3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Almost certainly in your career, you have edited work that was not ready for prime time. Whether the draft was still very rough or the arguments weak and shaky, you knew the author skipped a step somewhere, because the text was just not ready for copyediting. It may have benefited from a more comprehensive service called “developmental editing” that is meant to help an author improve his or her manuscript in a holistic way, and which should precede the copyediting phase. This presentation will introduce you to developmental editing so that you can identify manuscripts in need of it (and be your clients’ hero), and to expose you to a new type of editing you might consider adding to your repertoire.

In this session, you will learn:

• how developmental editing differs from copyediting
• what developmental editors look to improve in different manuscript types
• what it takes to be a great developmental editor
• how to start honing your developmental skills or find other pros to partner with

Ally Machate is the founder of The Writer’s Ally and your ally in book publishing. She’s a bestselling book collaborator, award-winning book editor, and expert publishing consultant. With her  insider knowledge of the publishing industry, she helps others reach their publishing goals, whether it’s showing a writer how to improve a manuscript, get an agent, or successfully self-publish, or ghostwriting a book to help an entrepreneur skyrocket her business platform to new levels. Ally was the collaborator on the national bestseller The Way of the SEAL (Reader’s Digest Books, 2013) among other successful titles, and since 1999 she has helped over a hundred books across fiction and nonfiction categories make their way to the reading public one way or another.