Most academics know they need editing before submitting — but few know which kind. Developmental editing works at the level of structure, argument, and logic, not punctuation. If a manuscript is struggling to find a home, the problem is rarely the grammar. Here's what developmental editing actually does and when to seek it.
Every author who writes non-fiction faces a minefield they often don't see coming: quote permissions. After years of editing academic and professional books, I've watched too many authors discover—sometimes weeks before their publication deadline—that they need expensive permissions for quotes they assumed were covered under fair use. The solution isn't avoiding quotes altogether. It's tracking them systematically from day one with a simple five-column spreadsheet that can save you thousands in legal fees and publishing delays.
Almost a year ago, a peer-reviewed article of mine was published online — and I was so deep in book deadlines and client work that I never said a word about it. So here, belatedly and a little sheepishly, is the study that sits underneath everything I write about grief: my synchronicity-and-meaning research in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.
A look behind the curtain at what actually happens after you hit “submit”: the first round of editor queries, the small fixes, and the surprisingly human back-and-forth that quietly turns a manuscript into a book.
This week I did something I've helped dozens of authors do, but never quite this way: I submitted a full book manuscript to Routledge — on time. It's about synchronicity in grief, and it opens a new series, The Patience of Publishing, where I share the real, unpolished version of what happens after you hit "submit."
A few weeks after I clicked “submit,” an email arrived from my editor at Routledge with two author queries — the cover design, and the words that will go on the back of my book. No one tells you how emotional these small handoffs are.