Copy edit phase starts this week with two chapters (Ch 1 and 4). The chapters that resulted from developmental editing have been converted to a new style regime, and are now ODT instead of DOCX format. Each chapter arrives with edits and comments from the copy editor.
At her suggestion, in this process I review tracked changes but don’t accept or reject them because this would lose her edits. Instead, I comment or provide my own tracked changes for her review, with any edits left alone implicitly to be accepted.
For comments I reply to each and every one. Often comments will describe a change that I can agree to or counter with other ideas. The idea of using a comment to describe a change is it allows the copy editor to explain why for context, and this is quite valuable.
Since I’m conscientious about reviewing and responding this system immediately works well. Ch 4 takes three roundtrips of copy edit to finalize; Ch 1 takes two. We agree to proceed at two chapter per week pace.