The process begins with an editor experienced in your genre reading your manuscript to get a sense of what you’re trying to do and giving you detailed feedback as to how successful you’ve been in accomplishing it. The primary focus at this stage is your manuscript’s specific strengths and weaknesses, where it currently stands in the context of its competition, and its overall chances of finding a publisher.

Recommendations can range from a few suggestions to make an excellent book irresistible through major structural or stylistic changes for helping a good idea work better. If your manuscript’s weaknesses significantly limit the likelihood of its evolution into something with a reasonable chance of being published, the report will address the problems in further detail and suggest how you might go about rethinking the whole project. More often, recommendations include coaching in a specific area such as writing dialogue, improving characterization, general structural or stylistic changes, possibly including line-by-line editing of your work. The editor will comment on any specific recommendations in the initial report, which can then be discussed further in the follow-up phone consultation that’s included in the price.