What to Prepare Before Sending Your Book to an Editor

If you’ve finished a draft and you’re wondering what to prepare before sending your book to an editor, you’ve come to the right place. Knowing how to prepare your manuscript before working with an editor is one of the most important things you can do as a writer, and honestly, it’s something that most people skip over entirely. Today’s post is going to walk you through exactly what you need to have ready and what you need to prepare before sending your book to an editor for them to check so you can get the most out of the process and avoid some very costly mistakes.

I’ve been writing fantasy and sci-fi for a long time (check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga!), and one of the things I’ve learned through the process of writing, editing, and publishing is that it’s super important to be ready before you send your story to an editor. The foundation has to be there first. Editors are professionals, and they work best when you’ve done your part on the front end.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, if you’re getting close to the finishing line of publishing your book, check out my free ultimate marketing checklist for writers. It’ll walk you through what you need before, during, and after publishing in terms of marketing that big project of yours!

Why Preparing Before Editing Actually Matters

A lot of writers assume that the editor’s job is to “fix” the book. And while editors do a lot of incredible work, they’re not magicians and they’re also not cheap. Developmental editors, copy editors, and proofreaders all charge for their time, which means every page of confusion you send them is money out of your pocket.

More importantly, if your manuscript isn’t ready, you risk getting edits back on a version of the book that you’re going to significantly rewrite anyway. Then you’re either paying for a second round of edits or you’re sending out a book that isn’t as polished as it could be. Neither option is great.

The goal of preparing your manuscript before editing is to make sure you are sending the cleanest, most complete version of your story possible, so that your editor can focus on the things that actually need their professional eye rather than catching the stuff you could have caught yourself.

What to do Before You Send Your Book to an Editor, Step-by-Step:

Step 1: Finish the Full Draft First

This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many writers send a partially finished manuscript to an editor and expect good results. Send the whole thing. Every chapter. The ending included.

Editors need to see the full arc of your story to give you genuinely useful feedback. A developmental editor especially cannot tell you whether your pacing works, whether your character arc lands, or whether your ending feels earned if they’re only reading two thirds of the book. And a copy editor working on chapters that are subject to massive rewrites is just wasting both of your time.

So if you haven’t finished the draft, finish it. Even if it’s messy. Even if you hate chapter seventeen. Finish the thing, then worry about what comes next.

Step 2: Do a Self-Edit Pass (At Least One)

Once you have a complete draft, your job isn’t done yet. Before you send it to any editor, you need to do at least one round of self-editing. This doesn’t mean you need to make it perfect, because that’s what the editor is for. But it does mean you need to take the manuscript seriously and clean it up to the best of your ability.

Here’s what to look for when doing your own pass:

• Consistency issues. Does your character’s eye color change halfway through? Does a character who was established as an only child suddenly mention a brother in chapter nine? These are things you need to catch first.
• Scenes that don’t serve the story. If you have a scene that you love but it doesn’t move the plot forward or reveal anything important about a character, think hard about whether it needs to be there.
• Pacing problems you already know about. You know your story. If you know act two drags, don’t just shrug and let the editor tell you. Try to address it yourself first so your editor can focus on deeper issues.
• Repetitive words or phrases. Most writers have verbal tics. Read through and look for patterns and repeated phrases. For instance, constantly writing “he sighed a frustrated sound” within multiple dialogue scenes.
• Dialogue that sounds unnatural. Read your dialogue out loud. If it sounds weird when you say it, it reads weird too.

This isn’t about making the manuscript perfect. It’s about respecting your editor’s time and your own investment in the process.

Step 3: Let the Manuscript Rest

This one gets skipped constantly and it makes such a big difference. After you finish your draft, put it away. Give yourself at least a week or two away from it before you even begin your self-edit pass, let alone send it to anyone else.

The reason for this is simple: when you’ve been living inside a manuscript, you stop seeing what’s actually on the page and start seeing what you meant to write. Distance is what allows you to read your own work more like a reader and less like the person who wrote it at 2am in a panic three months ago.

The longer you can wait, the better. Some writers prefer a month. Some do two weeks. The point is just to give yourself enough separation that you can approach the manuscript with fresh eyes.

Step 4: Know What Kind of Editing You Need

Not all editing is the same, and this is a really important thing to understand before you start reaching out to editors. There are a few main types of editing, and knowing which one your manuscript needs will save you a lot of confusion and money.

Developmental editing is the big picture stuff. It looks at things like plot structure, character arcs, pacing, world building, and whether the overall story is working. This is typically the first round of editing a manuscript goes through, and it’s usually the most intensive.

Line editing is more focused on the sentence and paragraph level. It looks at your prose style, word choice, clarity, and flow. It’s not grammar policing, it’s more about whether the writing itself is doing what it needs to do.

Copy editing focuses on grammar, punctuation, consistency, and style. This is the technical cleanup pass.

Proofreading is the final pass before publication and catches any last typos, formatting errors, or small mistakes that slipped through everything else.

Most manuscripts go through more than one of these stages, but not necessarily all four. If you’re a debut author or this is your first time working with an editor, a developmental edit is usually the most valuable place to start. Getting the story right on a structural level before you polish the prose is a smarter use of resources.

Step 5: Write a Synopsis and a Brief

Before you send your manuscript anywhere, you should have a synopsis ready and a brief that tells the editor a little about the project. The synopsis is usually a condensed version of your full plot, including the ending. Many editors will ask for this upfront.

Your editorial brief should include things like:

• The genre and target audience
• A short pitch or summary (think one to two paragraphs)
• Where you are in the editing process and what you’ve already done
• What your goals are for the book (self-publishing, querying agents, etc…)
• Any specific concerns or areas you want the editor to focus on

This brief gives your editor context before they even open the file. It helps them understand what you’re trying to accomplish with the book and where you feel uncertain. The more context they have, the better they can serve you.

Step 6: Get Your Manuscript Formatted Properly

Standard manuscript format exists for a reason and most editors expect it. Before you send anything, make sure your file is clean and readable. General standard formatting includes:

• 12-point Times New Roman or a similar serif font
• Double spacing throughout
• One-inch margins on all sides
• Indented paragraphs (not block paragraphs with extra space between)
• Page numbers in the header or footer
• Chapter titles and scene breaks clearly marked

You don’t need anything fancy. In fact, a simple and clean Word document is usually preferred. Just make it easy to read and navigate, and save it in whatever file format the editor specifies (usually .docx).

Step 7: Read Through It One Final Time

Before you hit send, do one final read-through. Not to fix everything, but to make sure the manuscript is in the state you think it’s in. You want to catch any leftover notes to yourself, any placeholder text you forgot to fill in (like [INSERT NAME] or [FIX THIS LATER]), and any formatting issues that crept in.

This final pass is also just a good opportunity to reconnect with the book before someone else’s eyes are on it. It’s your story. Know it well.

What You Shouldn’t Do Before Sending to an Editor

Since we’re here, it’s worth going over a few things that writers commonly do that actually make the editing process harder, not better.

Don’t obsess over perfecting every sentence before a developmental edit. If the story needs structural work, you may be rewriting chunks of it anyway. Polish comes later.

Don’t send it to your friends and family for feedback and then present their opinions to your editor as if they’re editorial notes. Friends and family are wonderful, but they’re not editors. Their feedback, while well-meaning, often isn’t specific or technical enough to be useful in an editorial context.

Don’t skip the self-edit to save time. It sounds counterintuitive, but skipping your own editing pass usually means your editor spends time on surface-level issues that you could have fixed, which eats into the time they could spend on deeper, more valuable feedback.

And don’t rush the process. A book that goes to an editor before it’s ready tends to come back needing another full editing pass, which doubles your costs and your timeline. Take the time to prepare properly.

Conclusion

Knowing what to prepare before sending your book to an editor is not just about formatting or having a clean file. It’s about being a responsible and professional author who takes the process seriously. 

Editing is where your story really comes alive, but only if you give your editor the best possible version of what you’ve written. The preparation you put in before that first conversation or email will shape the entire experience for both of you.

If you’re also working on self-publishing a book, check out this post where I talk about how you can make your self-published book feel professionally published!

Don’t forget to grab my free ultimate marketing checklist for writers and authors!

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