How does the editing process work? What happens at each stage?

Potential Client

1. If you’re curious about working with Cissell Ink, the first step is reaching out to us at the editors (at) cissellink (dot) com or use the contact form on the home page.
2. We’ll discuss what services you’re looking for, once we know what you want, we can proceed to the sample edit.
3. The next step is to send a sample. Send the first five pages and we’ll return it to you in fewer than 3 business days.
   1. The sample edit will allow both parties to decide if we want to work together.
4. If we decide we want to work together, the next stage is to agree on the date and time window for the project.

Contracted Client

1. Once a start date and time window is agreed upon, the next step is to sign our contract and pay the down payment. The down payment reserves your dates.
2. Send your manuscript before or on the contracted date. We use Word because it has the most robust editing features. Please send your file in a .docx format.
3. We’ll begin work on your project using the “Track Changes” feature of Word which will show all changes we’ve made so you can review each one, including additions and deletions. We’ll also include comments on the side to call out any specific information we need to relay to you about specific sentences or passages.
4. Once we’re done with the first round (assuming we’re doing the multi round treatment), the rest of the payment is due.
   1. The remaining payment is the total (minus) the down payment.
5. Once the payment is received, you’ll receive your edited MS.

Further Rounds

1. If you’ve contracted a multiple round edit or a multiple round and proofreading, you’ll need to determine when you can finish implementing the initial round of edits. Once you know when you’ll have your changes finished, we can pick the date for delivery of your MS and our return date.
   1. If it’s the full deal (2 rounds of edits and a proof), the same thing will happen after the second round of edits are implemented so we can schedule the proofread.

Romance author, Courtney Milan, goes into all the hard work it takes to produce an indie/self-published book in this blog post.