Enrollment opens January 3, 2026.
Need to spend funds sooner? Email support@manuscriptworks.com for early enrollment
So you want to be a developmental editor for academic writers
Offering professional editing services for academic writers can be a highly rewarding career. Working with scholars as a developmental editor utilizes skills learned in academia, allows you to stay connected to scholarly research, and can generate a sustainable full-time income.
For better or worse, there is no structured path into this career.
You don’t need anyone’s permission or approval to start seeking clients and helping academic writers achieve their publication goals.
What you do need is an understanding of how to perform academic editing at a professional level.
By acquiring the editorial and business skills necessary to serve your writers well, you’ll ensure that you have happy clients who give rave referrals that keep new writers coming your way. You’ll also gain the confidence to market your services effectively so you can grow your business and build a long-term, sustainable career as an academic editor.
If you haven’t launched your academic editing business yet—or if you’ve already launched and are looking to grow—this course is for you.
This course also welcomes editors who work in-house at academic publishers. You’ll learn the skills of developmental editing that likely weren’t part of your on-the-job training. After completing this course, you’ll be better equipped to guide your authors in developing their manuscripts and potentially augment (or replace) your salary by offering freelance developmental editing services.
learn exactly what academic editors do with scholarly texts and authors
Professional Developmental Editing for Academics (PDEFA) is a live six-week course running from January 20th to February 27th, 2026. It includes a comprehensive curriculum and six live weekly meetings held on Fridays at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern.
The course curriculum will be provided in written, video, and audio formats. Each module will include optional hands-on exercises to put your newly learned skills into practice.
The weekly meetings may include some live instruction but will be mostly devoted to interactive advising and Q&A (with the potential for group discussion depending on participant interest). The meetings will be recorded for those who aren’t able to attend live.
You will retain indefinite access to the curriculum materials and recordings, even after the live course ends.
A deeper dive into the course curriculum
Module 1 (Week 1): What Academic Developmental Editors Do
Module 1 covers what developmental editing is and how it benefits academic authors. You’ll get an overview of the scholarly publishing process and when developmental editing typically takes place in the life of an academic manuscript.
Optional assignment: Reflect on your preparation for becoming an editor and your goals in taking this course
Module 2 (Week 2): Beginning an Editing Job
Module 2 offers an overview of a typical developmental editing job and details the steps an editor will need to take in preparation for editing. We’ll go over the nuts and bolts of learning about the author’s goals and deciding if and how to move forward with an author and their manuscript.
Optional assignment: Decide what kinds of authors/texts you want to work with; craft a questionnaire that will help you determine if an author/text are a good fit for you
Module 3 (Week 3): Assessing the Text
Module 3 dives into the work of reading and evaluating a writer’s manuscript, showing you how to think like a developmental editor. We’ll cover the four pillars of scholarly writing and how to assess a text’s strengths and areas where further development (editing) is needed.
Optional assignment: Generate assessment notes for an academic manuscript
Module 4 (Week 4): Editorial Letters and In-Text Edits
Module 4 covers the deliverables of professional developmental editing, showing you exactly what you will be producing for your authors. You’ll learn the typical components and structure of an editorial letter along with best practices for in-text comments, queries, and edits. You will see real examples of editorial deliverables, which are rarely publicly accessible due to client confidentiality.
Optional assignment: Draft an editorial letter and write up in-text comments and edits
Module 5 (Week 5): The Author-Editor Relationship
Module 5 turns to a less tangible but still vital aspect of being an successful editor: working effectively with human authors. You’ll learn the concrete steps of acquiring a new author client and communicating with them throughout the editorial engagement. We’ll also cover general tenets for productive editorial relationships and how to handle tricky author situations.
Optional assignment: Reflect on your own tenets and/or reflect on a tricky author situation; what questions do you still have? how might you handle it differently in the future?
Module 6 (Week 6): Running an Editorial Business
Module 6 discusses what it means to be a self-employed editor and how to market your editorial services to reach new clients, including what you need to include on your editorial website. We’ll go over various pricing models for editorial services along with concrete lessons on how to set rates and how to get paid. (In-house editors are welcome to skip the last module, though you may find it helpful if you are contemplating a freelance side-hustle or career pivot.)
Optional assignment: Draft the structure and copy for your editorial website (or go ahead and build it)
Your instructor
Hi, I'm Laura Portwood-Stacer, creator of Professional Developmental Editing for Academics. I've been a professional developmental editor and publishing advisor for scholarly authors since 2015 through my company Manuscript Works. Prior to starting my editorial business, I earned a PhD in communication and taught courses in media and cultural studies at New York University and the University of Southern California.
I’ve been teaching this course for professional editors since 2019, first through the Editorial Freelancers Association and then through my own course platform. Hundreds of editors have completed the course and gone on to successful academic editing careers.
You may know me from my books on scholarly writing, editing, and publishing: The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton University Press, 2021) and Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly Writers (Princeton UP, 2025). I also write a weekly newsletter for scholarly writers and publishing professionals.
I grew up in Michigan, moved to California for grad school, and relocated to New York (Brooklyn and Long Island) for a decade. In 2020, I moved back to Los Angeles where I’m currently based. To learn more about me and the other programs I offer, check out ManuscriptWorks.com.
Who is this course for?
Professional Developmental Editing for Academics is a course for anyone who wants to learn how to provide professional-level support to academic writers. You may be at any point in your editing career, including still contemplating whether you want to have an editing career. This course is an excellent way to try on the identity of professional editor and see if it fits you.
Past participants have included:
academics who want to launch a freelance developmental editing business
established freelance editors who want to sharpen their developmental editing skills, serve a new market, or add new services to their slate of offerings
those who work for scholarly publishers, such as acquiring editors, series editors, and journal editors who want to better support their authors
academics who plan to remain in academia but want to level up their skills for journal editing, book series editing, assembling multi-author volumes, dissertation advising, and mentoring fellow faculty
university writing center staff and anyone else who supports scholarly writers in the course of their jobs
This course does not teach copyediting, proofreading, indexing, or how to serve writers of fiction, poetry, or memoir.
If you are interested in working with serious nonfiction writers outside of the academy, some of the material in the course will be applicable, though the focus is truly on serving academic writers who want to publish scholarly books and journal articles.
If you’re an academic writer looking for a course to support you in editing your own manuscripts, check out my Manuscript Development Workshop.
If you have any questions about whether the Professional Developmental Editing course would be a good fit for you, please don't hesitate to reach out to support@manuscriptworks.com!
What past participants have said about the course
"The whole course was excellent. I was finally able to articulate what services I wanted to offer in addition to coaching in a way that makes sense. Developmental editing is part of my business that I'd like to grow and now I have a much clearer way to pitch myself. The notes from the course will be extremely helpful to me for a long time."
--Career coach for academics, Canada
***
“I learned so much not only about academic developmental editing (which I had already been doing, but not with confidence) but also about marketing and pricing my services appropriately. I was able to apply this course to my next job just a few weeks later, and *I* was just as impressed as the author.”
--Academic editor and proofreader, United States
***
"I took Laura's course during my first year working full-time as a DE and found it to be extremely helpful. I appreciated Laura’s smart, accessible overviews of various topics, and I found the material on practical aspects of running an editing business to be invaluable. The course left me feeling empowered to figure out models for writing manuscript assessments and for pricing my services that truly worked for me."
--Developmental editor and book proposal consultant, United States
***
"This course is perfect for academic copyeditors and former academics seeking to offer developmental editing as a new service. I took the course alongside completing my first developmental editing jobs. I'm so glad I did – I now have several satisfied customers and the first book project I completed sailed through peer review!
The course materials offered me a map through this new terrain. I particularly liked:
1) the focus on accessibility – having the option to listen to the materials really helped the concepts sink in.
2) the sample editorial letters – these helped me 'level up' and shift from a more distanced writing style to one that engages more directly with the client.
3) Laura's open approach, including discussing thorny issues such as rates and what emotions come up when you send your editorial letters to clients."
--Social science editor, Europe
***
"As someone finishing up a PhD, the DE for academics course gave me the resources and confidence to launch a career in academic editing.
The course expertly breaks down each aspect of academic developmental editing, providing supplemental readings and samples that guide you through each stage of the process. Laura has a particular talent for explaining the most important things in a lucid and concise manner so that you feel you have a grasp on the often mysterious world of academic publishing.
As far as I am aware, it is the only course of its nature out there, so it is truly a rare insight into the field, especially into the workings of an expert like Laura. If you take advantage of all it has to offer, you’ll obtain the necessary tools and knowledge to confidently approach your first developmental editing job and learn a thing or two about academic presses and the business of freelancing along the way. I wholeheartedly recommend the course to all of those interested in learning more about DE or debating adding developmental editing to their services."
--Humanities scholar, United States
***
"Laura's Developmental Editing Course for Academics was outstanding and I give it 5 stars! As a former tenured professor, I have plenty of experience editing academic manuscripts. Nevertheless, I found the course to be an invaluable experience that offers helpful strategies for approaching both the text and author. The course really broadened my knowledge of developmental editing and honed my content editing skills. The pre-recorded lectures and assignments were really well-organized through weekly comprehensive modules, which were very easy to navigate. I found Laura to be a delightfully engaging and responsive instructor; I highly recommend this course to those who are considering launching a freelance editing career and also academic writers who are hoping to enhance their self-editing skills."
--Freelance developmental editor and former professor, United States
EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT FOR THE COURSE and assignments
This course has been scheduled intentionally to fall at a time of year that can be slow for freelance editors and others who may be interested in this course. All participation is optional and you are encouraged to find the level of activity that works for you. You will retain access to all course materials after the course ends so you can access them entirely at your own pace.
There will be six optional Zoom meetings throughout the course each lasting one hour. You can come and go as your schedule permits. These will be held from 10–11am PST on:
Friday, January 23, 2026
Friday, January 30, 2026
Friday, February 6, 2026
Friday, February 13, 2026
Friday, February 20, 2026
Friday, February 27, 2026
Each week during the course you will get access to a set of lectures and an optional assignment to complete. It may take you an hour or less to watch, listen to, or read the lectures each week.
The assignments will vary in intensity and are entirely optional to complete. Some assignments will give you opportunities to practice the skills explained in the lectures on real academic texts. Therefore the amount of work involved will depend on the manuscript you choose to work with and how much time you choose to spend. You will not be submitting your assignments unless you specifically choose the enrollment option that includes instructor feedback.
You will be responsible for obtaining a manuscript to practice on for the assignments. You can use a journal article, book manuscript, or any other type of document you would like to practice developmental editing on. You may want to ask a friend, colleague, or client for a manuscript in progress. You can also choose any published text to practice on, since most academic publications could benefit from further developmental editing. The manuscript may be from any scholarly field.
You might spend just an hour or two per assignment or you might decide to devote several hours to the more involved assignments. If you have done previous developmental editing work, you can submit that work for feedback in lieu of undertaking the assignments from scratch.
All assignments are optional and you are welcome to turn in partially completed work or not to submit your assignments for feedback at all. There are no specific due dates for the assignments, so you can complete them at your own pace. For those choosing the enrollment option with private advising, the last day to submit work for instructor feedback will be August 31, 2026
You will have lifetime access to the course materials, so you can complete any modules and assignments on your own, even after the live course and feedback period end.
Participants may also opt to form small groups for post-course peer feedback and professional networking.
enrollment options and pricing
There are two enrollment options for this course. Please read carefully before making a selection and checking out.
The cost of standard enrollment in Professional Developmental Editing for Academics is $886.
Your enrollment includes:
lifetime access to the course curriculum, including lectures in written, video, and audio formats plus optional exercises to put your new skills into practice
six weeks of live support and answers to all your questions about developmental editing, working with academic authors, and running a freelance editorial business
There will also be a private advisory option for those seeking more structure and support.
The private advisory option includes:
Everything from the standard enrollment option
The option to submit assignments privately for direct instructor feedback. Assignments may be submitted during the live course weeks or up to six months following completion of the course (with the final date to submit assignments being August 31, 2026).
A one-hour private advisory meeting with Laura Portwood-Stacer to discuss any aspects of your developmental editorial practice that you’d like guidance or advice on, including your business and marketing efforts
The cost of enrollment with the private advisory option is $2486.
Questions about the enrollment options and which one is right for you? Email support@manuscriptworks.com.
how to enroll
Enrollment will open on January 3, 2026. Check back here then to complete your enrollment.
Checkout can be completed with a credit or debit card. You may use an institutional credit card if you have access to one.
If you will be using institutional funds and need to arrange vendor registration for Manuscript Works, please email support@manuscriptworks.com to get the process started as soon as possible. Your spot in the program will not be secured until payment is received from your institution.
All payments are nonrefundable. Please be sure this course and the enrollment option you choose are right for you before enrolling.