Magazine writers usually don't have much room to negotiate when it comes to contracts, although most reputable publishers will offer a fair contract, with reasonable rates, reasonable word-count and rewrite requirements, a kill fee, and payment on acceptance. In magazines, this stage usually comes after assignment. Art directors are usually in charge of assigning and supervising photographers and illustrators. If the writer needs guidance on length, he or she should ask the editor for an estimated word-count, which is the editor's responsibility to provide. Editing stage In books, the submitted manuscript passes to the development editor, who works closely with the author on the book's organization, tone, writing style, format, and art ideas and placement.
Authors have the right to negotiate and review all editing changes.
In magazines, the submitted piece goes to the assigning editor for similar review and editing for organization, tone, style, substance, and the like. The piece may be returned to the writer for one or more revision during this stage. All unresolved writing, reporting, and research issues should be finalized at this point. In books, a production editor takes over, passing the manuscript first to a copy editor for sentence-level style, spelling, grammar, consistency, and other checks. The production editor sends the copyedited manuscript to the author for review and negotiates with the author on disputed changes.