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but when a "developmental edit" done in Chennai, India, is 1/10th the price of a proofread done in Boise Idaho, then you should expect that not everything is as it appears.
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When I am taking on a copy-editing brief and the commissioning editor tells me they want a 'developmental edit' done on it what they are telling me is that the manuscript is all over the place and they expect me, in addition to copy-editing, to rescue it like a battlefield soldier wounded in a minefield, and they expect me to do it in a week. They're saying 'we've paid for it, save it from the bin'.
I should point out that the phrase 'developmental edit' in normal use secretly means 'get the author to write the book we want, not the book they want'. Just in case anyone was wondering about professional publishing.