The publishing process - Editorial evaluation

​The first step in the publishing process for Kelvoo’s Testimonial was to get a professional opinion from an independent third party. An editorial evaluation helps to determine the quality of a manuscript and discusses the steps that could be taken to improve upon the work to increase its appeal to a wide audience. I was satisfied with Kelvoo’s Testimonial and people close to me loved it, but without feedback from a neutral party, how could I really judge the work given the likely biases of my readers up to that point?

An editorial evaluation was performed in June and July, 2021. The evaluation listed the story’s strengths and areas in need of improvement. The evaluation had several pages of details. Here are just a couple of excerpts from the “Strengths” section:

“The novel is well-structured and well-paced. After setting the stage in terms of what this book is about, why it’s being written, and who the kloormari are, you do a great job of pulling us through the novel by crafting chapters that each have a clear setup, complication, and resolution.”

“Despite the fantastic subject matter, the novel also feels highly realistic. This is helped by the level of detail involved but also by the frequent asides to the reader. Over time, it feels like a real first-person account of actual events.”

Under “Potential Areas of Improvement”, the main point was:

“The only real issues I identified have to do with the mechanics of the prose itself, particularly in terms of grammar, punctuation, and style.”

This section listed a wide variety of improvements, especially regarding my writing of dialogue. Kelvoo’s Testimonial is my first significant work that is written in first person form with a great deal of dialogue, so there were many issues with correct use of quotation marks and punctuation. Additional areas needing work included:

• Compound Sentences
• Dialogue Attributions
• Prepositional Phrases
• Oxford Comma
• Dashes
• Ellipses
• Numbers (using numerals vs. spelling out numbers as words)

Overall, I was very happy with the results of the editorial evaluation since it indicates that I’ve written an engaging story. At the same time, I was pleased with the level of detail and examples of areas that need to be cleaned up from a technical perspective.

​As a result of the editorial evaluation, a “complex edit” is now underway to tighten up the text and improve the overall writing style without altering my story. The complex edit work started in mid-August. As I write this, we are in the first week of September, so I’m expecting to see the results in the next week or two. I can’t wait to see the improvements!

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