Throughout our 40-year history, HK has provided a higher level of editorial assistance to you, our authors, than many other publishers offer. While some publishers focus primarily on copyediting and production management, HK provides authors with developmental editing by in-house staff who are experts in the publishing process and in many of our subject areas. HK’s developmental editors (DEs) have an average of 13 years of editorial experience!
We routinely hear that you appreciate the advice our DEs provide about structure, tone, voice, flow, and clarity as well as their guidance about effective illustrations, photographs, and special elements. The development process lengthens the publication time line, though, because we build in time after you’ve submitted your manuscript for a DE’s review and your revision. A recent goal has been to continue to provide excellent developmental guidance while speeding up the publication process.
To streamline the process and help you deliver high-quality content during the writing stage, DEs will become involved at an earlier point in a product suite’s life cycle. Your acquisitions editor will map out a submission schedule with you as you’re firming up terms of the publishing agreement. The schedule will identify interim dates for the submission of various “chunks” of content. A chunk might be a chapter or a collection of chapters, depending on what makes sense for your specific content.
At the point the first chunk of the manuscript is submitted, we’ll bring a DE on board to review what you’ve submitted. He or she will offer advice and suggestions at this very early stage about how to revise the first batch of the manuscript so it meets the overall needs of the audience and to ensure you’re on pace to meet the page count established at the contract stage. The DE’s review will also help you to write your subsequent chapters efficiently.
Your DE will review each batch of chapters as you complete them and will guide you in the conceptualization or development of art, photos, video clips, or other specialized content. DEs will help you along the way to manage permission needs, know how to format references, and think about the display of your content in the various e-formats that we are planning for your product suite.
When you’ve submitted the last batch and your DE and acquisitions editor have confirmed that the complete manuscript meets the vision established with you during the contract stage, a managing editor (ME) will join your publication team. Your acquisitions editor and developmental editor will remain invested in your book, but the ME will be your main point of contact during the final stages of the process, overseeing the copyediting, content proofing, and layout proofing stages.
This new approach will provide more collaboration during the writing process and require less revision time than our previous process, allowing us to bring your content to the market more quickly.
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