The Editing Process

Your in-depth guide to getting your manuscript edited with Cillian.

Getting Started

Each manuscript will require pre-screening to ascertain eligibility for comprehensive editing. Submit your manuscript by clicking on the Manuscript Editing - Initial Assessment button below. Provide us with some details about your work by answering the short questionnaire. This is to ensure its suitability. Upload your manuscript using our secure upload process – most common document formats are accepted. Please ensure that the contact information is accurate so that we can get in touch with you afterwards. Once card payment has been accepted, your manuscript will be placed on a queue for our Editors. An account with Cillian Editing Services will be automatically created and you’ll receive a welcome email along with an order confirmation receipt.

Initial Assessment

Our Editors will scan through your entire manuscript in its current form and assess whether or not it is ready for the next stage. You will receive a short editor’s feedback report outlining the main issues found. As each manuscript will be unique, the editor’s feedback will be tailored to your specific work. This independent, unbiased and professional feedback should be carefully considered and is generally not much more than a one-page document. With extensive industry experience and commercial awareness, our Editors will be able to give you honest and professional advice. In some instances it may not be worth investing further, which makes the assessment a very cost-effective way to have it initially appraised. If it is deemed eligible, you’ll also receive a link to initiate a full manuscript edit.

Comprehensive Editing

Having received your initial assessment report, you’ll be given a chance to make some changes to your manuscript based on your Editor’s initial feedback.  Once you are ready to start with the main editing process, click on the link that your Editor has provided you with. As before, provide us with some information about your work and upload your manuscript when prompted. When you get to the checkout page log into your existing account using the credentials you used for your original submission and then make the payment. Your manuscript will be placed in a queue ready for your Editor to pick up.

The comprehensive editing process entails a more detailed analysis and critique of your work. Your Editor will look at all aspects including structure, narrative, character development, pace, realism and writing style. This is the most crucial part of a manuscript’s preparation. Our experienced Editors will know exactly what to look out for in order to transform a good narrative into an exceptional one.  A detailed Editor’s report will be provided with a set of recommendations. The contents of this report is what’s known as its structural edit, also referred as its developmental edit. In addition to this, line-by-line editing may be necessary to allow the Editor to pinpoint the exact problem areas and to make additional notes. This is done electronically within your manuscript with tracked changes enabled so that you can immediately see the areas being referred to.

At this stage in the process, your Editor will arrange a telephone consultation so that areas for improvement and potential options can be discussed and clarified. Once the initial consultation is complete you have time to consider these suggestions and make any changes that you deem to be important. When you are happy with these changes you will be given the opportunity to re-submit your final manuscript to your Editor within a given timescale for a concluding analysis and any final thoughts or last minute suggestions.

As part of the full Editing service, you will be provided with an insider's guide on how to effectively pitch your novel to agents and publishers. This is a crucial and somewhat overlooked part of the process. You’ll have put great effort into perfecting your manuscript but it’s also vital that you correctly market it to the industry, especially if you are a new writer. We will provide you with a step-by-step guide and some tips on how to perfect your submission pitch.

Copyediting and Proofreading

Considered to be the final stage of Editing, this service generally is selected once your manuscript has been professionally edited, fully refined and you are happy with the narrative in its current state. However, should you wish to go straight to copy editing you have the option by clicking the link below for copy editing only.

Copy Editing is a very detailed process and as each writer’s style is different your manuscript will need to be evaluated by one of our professional copy editors before work can commence.

To submit your manuscript for Copy Editing, please select ‘I need an initial Quote for Copy Editing’ when prompted. A Copy Editor will email you back with an indication of the level of copy editing that will be required. This will be based on a number of factors such as writer’s style, consistency, grammatical errors, punctuation and spelling mistakes.

Once you’ve received a response from our Copy Editors, click on the same button below, select the service that our copy editor has indicated and enter the quote code that will be provided. At the checkout screen, login with your account details (if you have one with us). All payments will be via PayPal and once payment has been processed your manuscript will be sent for Copy Edit.

When the Copy Editing process has finished, you’ll receive an email from our Copy Editor with two documents attached. The first will be your manuscript with line-by-line changes made using tracked changes enabled so that you can see every change that has been made. The second will be a new document with all changes confirmed – a new clean version.

Typesetting and Book Layout Design

Our interior book design and layout service is available for those choosing to self publish. Our talented typesetting design and eBook team can transform your finished manuscript into a stunning book interior that is customised for your intended readership. With their fastidious attention to detail and experienced eye for page composition, our designers treat each manuscript individually and the resulting output will comply with the technical requirements required by your commercial book printer or print on demand service provider.

Click on the link below to use this service. Answer the short questionnaire and upload your fully-edited final manuscript and make a payment. Our team will start by performing some text clean up and remove hidden formatting issues. A custom template is created based on the book dimensions that you have specified. Then the transformation magic begins. An initial draft PDF proof is generated so that you can see how the design is progressing. At this stage, you’ll be contacted by one of our design experts to get initial feedback. The final steps that our experienced team carries out are quite meticulously detailed. They will alter fonts, tweak font sizes, correct optical alignment, remove or reduce orphan lines so that each unique book will have perfect page composition. Once complete, you will receive a final PDF proof for approval. We will then provide you with the final output ready for submission to the printers, ensuring that it is fully compliant with print industry requirement and standards.

Book Layout and TypesettingTransform your final manuscript for book publication


eBook preparation and design

This service is also aimed at those wanting to self publish. Our talented typesetting design and eBook team will take your manuscript and transform it into a re-flowable work of art. Unlike a fixed layout of a printed book, the text interior will resize or reflow based on screen size.  As such, text is not fixed.

To obtain our eBook Design service, click on the link below. Similar to the above, our experienced eBook design team will start by performing some text clean up and remove hidden formatting issues. New specifically tailored eBook format styles are carefully applied to each individual section of text. Each manuscript is custom tailored and meticulously formatted by hand to ensure that you get a professionally produced eBook. Once the coding of your eBook has been completed we check it across a number of readers to ensure it works flawlessly across multiple devices so that it passes EPUB validation checks. You will then receive your finished design in the formats that you specified when you created the order. These files are now ready to be uploaded to the relevant online eBook marketplaces.

eBook Design & ConversioneBook Design for your final manuscript

Self publishing Combined Services

Why not combine our Book Layout & Typesetting and eBook Design services.

Generally most authors wishing to self publish will want both print and eBook formats. Our combined service package offers you just that. Much of the design process is common for both print layout and eBook design, so it makes complete sense to do both in combination with each other. This cost effective combined approach will save you both time and money. Simply select both services as you go through the upload process and the combined package will be automatically selected for you during the checkout process.

Combined - Layout and eBook DesignCombined Book Layout and eBook Creation Service