How It Works
This page is the road every client’s book travels through the house — from application to written report, with the Gate first and the full battery of 179 checks along the way. Read our story.
Apply, Certify, and Send Your Manuscript
Complete the application: a few details about you and your book, your service choice, your own House Rules, and the content certification every Honest Edit author signs. Send the application with your manuscript file — an unedited manuscript, a raw manuscript, a first draft: bring it exactly as it stands. That is exactly the work an editorial scan does. And if your book still lives in a notebook, we can even work with a PDF of a handwritten manuscript (the pages just need to be legible) — our Digitization service starts there.
Pay $50
We confirm receipt, count your pages, and you pay the $50 Gate Scan deposit. The Gate runs first, before anything else: a content-integrity check only — we verify your manuscript against the certification you signed. No corrections and no editorial report are included at this step, and the deposit checkout accepts promotion codes.
The Gate Answers
Pass: you receive a short report — your book passed, your total price with the full $50 credited, and your balance, which is due at this point. Refusal: you receive a kind report stating plainly what the scan found; the $50 is kept as the fee for the scan, and your manuscript is returned untouched. If a violation surfaces later that the scan could not reasonably have caught, the same rule applies: work stops, the manuscript is returned as it stands, and no further fees are charged.
Pay Balance
Your Gate report states your exact balance, with the deposit already credited. Type that amount on our Pay page — then we run the full battery.
Receive Your Written Report
On Gate and Scan tiers, your report arrives within 24 hours of your balance payment; Full Service work is quoted per book. Your report carries the Gate result, every finding laid out for your own decision, the AI Sound-Alike reading, the fixes your tier covers, and your itemized statement with the price math in the open. Judgment calls are flagged as options — you decide, and we apply exactly what you rule, nothing more.
Upgrade Whenever You Are Ready
Every report closes with your next steps, priced with your own numbers: the difference between your tier and the next, on your own page count, with everything you have paid credited. Choose a step in your report, resend your manuscript with your decisions marked, and pay the remaining balance; the work runs, and you receive a Final Clean Report. Or fix the findings yourself and come back for a Rescan of the same book — half price, the full battery and the Gate run again, and a fresh report confirms it clean. Beyond the edit, the full path stays under this roof: Publisher-Ready Preparation, $100 flat, and Cover Art Development, $150 flat.
Confidentiality, Both Ways
Your manuscript is yours: we never share, quote, or discuss your book or its contents with anyone outside Honest Edit without your written permission, and your unpublished work is never used to train, demonstrate, or promote our service. Our side of the same promise: our methods, checklists, and report formats are the house’s work product, and we ask every client to keep them in the family. Details stand in Part 5 of the intake packet, which you sign at application.
Every Report Ends with a Thank-You
Send another author our way, and when their job is completed and paid, 10% of that job’s price is credited to your own account toward future services — one credit per referred client, on their first job, as a credit and never as cash.
Questions at any step: hello@honestedit.net · (707) 702-EDIT (3348).