The final pass: when a novel goes to print

A novel leaves your hands and heads for the printer. How, exactly, does that work?

Dec 03, 2025

Hello and welcome to December.

Last week, I bid my novel manuscript adieu in a rite of passage known as “the final pass.” It’s a dramatic term for a dramatic transition because it’s the last time an author will see their manuscript and have the ability to change it. That being said, changes at the final pass stage need to be extremely minute—better if there aren’t any changes at all.

As I explained in a post entitled “What is the copyediting process like for authors?”, an author with a traditional book deal (meaning that there is an editor and a publishing house overseeing the publication) will have an editorial calendar that looks something like this. (Something like this being operative words—there are always exceptions.)

1.5 – 2 years before publication (multiple passes): Developmental edits

The author works with their editor and sometimes their agent to incorporate (or reject) their editor’s suggested edits. There can be a great deal of back and forth around the edits or the edits can be agreed on and made in a fluid and uncomplicated manner—it really depends on the proximity of the publication date, the author’s bandwidth and how they feel about the requested changes.

For ALAN OPTS OUT, I worked with my editor on developmental edits from roughly April to August of 2025 for a June 2, 2026 publication date: an expedited timeline.

9-11 months before publication date (2-3 passes): Copyedits

Once you and your editor (and often, your agent) have agreed that the manuscript has met your publishers’ expectations for delivery, it doesn’t mean the manuscript is going off to the printer; it means it will be delivered to the copyeditor. Copyedits happen in phases called “passes.” Generally, this looks like:

First pass copyedits

The first pass can bring substantial edits with it. There could be factual errors in your manuscript, timeline errors, issues with character development or research—any number of concerns could be unearthed if you have a good copyeditor. The amount of work the author has to do to rectify these issues can be borderline tectonic. Accordingly, the author will usually have about 3 weeks to make the first pass edits. (Keep in mind, many authors have a day job so the first copyedits have to be made outside of other obligations—it’s a lot of work!)

My first pass experience for ALAN OPTS OUT was one for the ages. Because of a glitch in the editorial calendar and my copyeditor’s limited availability (I chose the copyeditor I wanted to work with as I’ve done books with her before—usually, your editor will just assign you someone), I had five days to do my copyedits and I had to do them with a retinal hemorrhage to boot. Not an experience I’ll soon forget, nor will my copyeditor and copy director forget it as they had to work overtime to keep our train on track

I do not recommend doing copyedits with one functioning eyeball but I do recommend making high-end lemonade out of shitty lemons.

My first pass copyedits were complicated and extensive. My novel has a dual narrative, and one of the narrators is experiencing something of a mental breakdown during the story, so his sense of time is skewed. Normally that would be fine, except the person who has the second POV (his wife) doesn’t have a skewed sense of time, and my copyeditor discovered that the “real” calendar and Alan’s imagined one weren’t in sync. On my first pass, I had to make fiction and fact align better to make the narrative timeline work.

If you are wondering how I did all this work in five days with a busted eyeball, the first answer is sheer grit and determination. The second answer is that I worked from 4am to 7pm straight each day. The third answer is: dark chocolate. Thank you, dark chocolate.

Second pass copy edits

First pass edits will be sent to your copyeditor for review as well as your your editor if necessary. (This was necessary for me because I made so many changes on the first pass.) Then, they’ll go to the director of copy at your publisher. Then, they’ll come back to you in a new form known as “the second pass.” These hit pretty quickly after the author turns in their first pass edits. Usually within two to three weeks.

The second pass copyedits should be far less substantial than the first pass, and with this second round, you’ll be encouraged by the publisher to try and reign your changes in. By this point, the publisher will have established a page count estimate and sale price for your book, and will be readying copy to go out to retailers that reflects all this. You might have the same amount of time for second pass as you did for third pass. I had another extremely tight turnaround for mine.

Third pass copyedits

This is an optional stage. Many copyedits only go through two rounds before moving on to the final pass. That was the case with my novel.

7-9 months before publication: The final pass

If you can imagine the frenzy of a backstage environment before a fashion show where the designer is tucking and nipping and sewing looks on the models, fixing stray hairs and then sending them down the runway, this is the atmosphere of the final pass.

When you get your final pass edits, you will be encouraged to (I’m paraphrasing) leave the manuscript the hell alone unless something absolutely, positively, must be changed before the book goes to print. Allowable changes include:

Spelling errors.
Factual errors.
Minor grammatical changes (you want a period instead of an exclamation point; a semi-colon instead of a colon.)
Continuity issues (For example: In chapter 3 you have established that your character is vegetarian but in chapter 10, they are eating a hamburger without any explanation as to why).

Most publishers will hire a professional proofreader for this stage to catch anything that you don’t.

My final pass experience: I had three weeks to do my final pass. I caught one spelling error and 1-2 minor continuity errors, plus a spattering of echoes that I couldn’t stand going to print. “Echoes” are a copyediting term for unique words that are repeated closely enough to each other in the manuscript that they’ll ring inside the reader’s head and possibly distract them from the story. For example, I have my male character Alan using the word “clocking” as a verb, but his wife also uses this word in this manner in one of her chapters. While it’s normal for people who live together to ape each other’s language, this echo was distracting to me. So I wanted to use another word for “clocking.” But in order to replace that word, I had to use a word with the same amount of characters less the paragraph (and entire book layout) get messed up.

Because this is the tricky thing with final pass. Any changes that you make need to honor the established page count less you alter the design plan (and price plan) for your book. You really can’t go changing things willy nilly without 1) pissing off your publisher and 2) jeopardizing your publication date and book price.

I have two examples here of what conscientious, respectful changes look like in final pass.

In the two screenshots below, you can see me querying whether it’s “East River Drive” and not “the East River Drive.” If it is, in fact, “the East River Drive” that would change the way the paragraph falls so in the second screenshot, I’m requesting they remove the word “so” to preserve the paragraph layout.

In the following and last example, I decided I hated the word “charming” in this context and found a replacement word (“winsome”) with nearly the same amount of characters so the paragraph layout wouldn’t change.

Not only will conscientious changes like this make it clear to your copyediting team that you respect them and the process, they will streamline the printing preparation, helping to keep your galley production on schedule.

A quick note about acknowledgements

Author acknowledgments will need to be handed in with your final pass. This is a tricky deadline for a lot of authors (me included) because you effectively have to thank everyone nine months before the book publishes, pretty much guaranteeing that you will leave out people on your publishing team simply because you haven’t met them yet.

It’s good practice to ask your editor for a full list of the people she envisions helping you bring your book to life even if you’re not in touch with them at final pass. Don’t leave out the assistants of your editor, your agent, etc. Assistants do so much work behind the scene, but rarely get acknowledged.

That’s all she wrote. Literally!

Today’s dispatch marks the handing in of my final pass and my acknowledgements—as of today, I won’t be invited nor allowed to change anything inside my book pretty much ever again. If some horrible error is unearthed in the hardcover, I can fix it for the paperback or possibly for a second printing, if we’re lucky enough to get a second printing (never a given!). But mostly, I have to be comfortable with the reality that my book isn’t mine to futz with any more, it’s off to the printers, and it will soon belong to readers.

It’s exciting. Terrifying. It’s both things at once.

If you’ve been through final pass before and your deadlines/timeline varied wildly to mine, let us know about your experience in the comments. Likewise, if anything here surprised you or you have questions about the process, off to the comments we go.

And of course, the fact that my book is past its final pass means it exists in the order system. If you want to support me (and Alan, and Vivian, and Lenny, a lobster rescued from the “Surf and Turf” night at a country club), you can do so by pre-purchasing the book.

Purchase ALAN OPTS OUT

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