Developmental Editing: A Professional Edit for Your Whole Book

Developmental Editing is a full editorial review of your entire book. It is like handing your finished draft to a professional human editor: it checks structure, flow, depth, gaps, redundancies and consistency across all chapters. It is included in your book credit on all plans.

Developmental Editing starts after all chapters are written. It is part of the PublishFlow Writing Process: first you write chapter by chapter, then Developmental Editing reviews the whole book. The final Proofreading step comes afterwards.

You find it in the left sidebar of your book, in the Developmental Editing section.

Step 1: Run the Analysis

PublishFlow reads your entire book and creates two things:

• An editorial briefing for the whole book
• Specific feedback for every single chapter

While the analysis runs, your book is locked. You can watch the progress on screen.

Step 2: Review the Feedback

Read the briefing and the per-chapter feedback. This is the moment where you stay in control: nothing has been rewritten yet.

You do not have to agree with everything. The Developmental Editing Assistant in the right sidebar helps you shape the feedback before anything happens to your text.
You can ask it to:

• Refine a note or sharpen a vague one
• Disagree with a point and explain why
• Soften a suggestion or drop it completely
• Just talk a point through with you

The assistant only ever edits the feedback report. It never touches your chapters. Every change to the report is shown as a red/green comparison that you approve.

Step 3: Select Chapters and Rewrite

When the feedback matches what you want, select the chapters that should be revised. All chapters are pre-selected by default. Deselect the ones you want to keep untouched, then confirm with Rewrite my selected chapters. PublishFlow rewrites the selected chapters based on the approved feedback.

Step 4: Accept or Reject the Changes

Every rewritten chapter is shown as a comparison with red and green markings, like track changes in Word. You review each chapter and accept or reject its changes. Nothing is final until you accept it.

Running It Again: You Have Three Runs per Book

You can run Developmental Editing up to 3 times per book. To restart it, click the round arrow button in the top right corner (Re-run Developmental Editing).

A second run is most useful when your book has changed since the first one. Typical example: after the first Developmental Editing you rewrote a chapter by hand. A new run then reviews the current state of the book, including your manual changes.

What Developmental Editing Never Does

• It never changes your text without your approval. Rewrites only happen for chapters you selected. Every result waits for your accept.
• It never skips your feedback. The rewrite follows the report you approved in Step 2.

The final Proofreading step can only be started once per book. Starting it also locks Developmental Editing for good, no matter how many of your three runs you have used. Only start the Proofreading when you are completely done with Developmental Editing.

What Comes Next

After Developmental Editing your book is ready for the final polish: the Proofreading, followed by Format & Export. Both steps are described in the PublishFlow Writing Process.

Updated on: 09/08/2026