There are a number of reasons to get a reader’s report. You may not be in a writers group, book club, or MFA program, for example, so access to honest readers and constructive criticism may be limited. You may be getting ready to pitch a number of agents and need your query letter reviewed. You may have already written a smashing query that’s getting gobs of requests for partials but no bites and need an editor to read your sample chapters to make sure the writing is meeting expectations. Or you may be at the end of a major rewrite and in need of a professional opinion on how to prepare your book for a publisher. Regardless of where you are, if you’re beginning to ask yourself what direction you should be going in with your manuscript, our reports can help you figure where to go editorially. [...]
Not everyone knows how to write a query letter or what material to include that will automatically snag the attention of that agent or editor you’ve been fishing for. What’s great about a query letter is that it forces you to articulate your work in an interesting and succinct way. It helps you know your book better. In our reviews, we help isolate and define the essence of your work. What’s the demographic? What are the titles it’s most like? How is your book different than what’s already out there? These are just some of the vital questions that need to be addressed in your query letter, and we can help you answer them. [...]
You did it; you penned a book or have the perfect idea for one, but a lot of writers don’t realize that the content you put into your book proposal is some of the most crucial material your book will have supporting it throughout the editorial and publishing processes. After all, as a writer, you first have to sell your book to an agent, and that agent has to sell it to an editor, who must sell it to marketing and publicity. Then marketing and publicity have to sell it to the sales department, who in turn must sell it to chain and independent book buyers. And so on and so on, until it ends up on your readers’ bookshelves. A strong, well-structured book proposal significantly increases your chances of seeing your book through this whole process. What a lot of people don’t know is that sometimes you don’t have to write an entire manuscript before submitting a proposal, which can save time, blood, sweat, and tears in the long run. [...]
Many different walks of life have hired us to ghostwrite for them, and in each case, we’ve had varying degrees of involvement. Sometimes we’ve been hired to edit and clean up a rough draft, and other times we were hired to do most of the writing based on an outline provided by the author. For some projects, a substantial amount of research is required, like taping and transcribing interviews. One non-fiction project took a full year to research, write, and edit for a client, for example. On the other hand, we’ve completed projects as short as press releases for book launches. [...]
Developmental editing more radically addresses the content of a work: the way material should be presented, the need for more character development, how the voice should be handled, and so on. Since editing of this kind may involve total rewriting or reorganization of a work, it should be done before submitting to publishers and agencies. [...]
Copyediting, sometimes called line editing, requires attention to every word in a manuscript, a thorough knowledge of the style to be followed, and the ability to make quick, logical, and defensible decisions. This type of editing is usually undertaken when a manuscript is being prepared or has been accepted for print or online publication, but this is not a hard-set rule. The full scope of copyediting falls into two orders of concern: substantive and mechanical copyediting. [...]
Proofreading is the last major stage of the editing process. As always, reading and consistent marking remain essential. When we proofread, we read word for word, noting all punctuation, paragraphing, capitalization, and italics, and ensure that any editing has been correctly interpreted. We also watch for the kind of errors missed by computer spell checkers and grammar bots: like double-checking word breaks, hyphenation, typeface, font, heads and subheads, set-off material, page numbers and running heads, illustrations and tables, page length, table of contents, article or chapter titles, footnotes, index, cross references, half title and title page, jacket copy, spine, and overall sense of appearance. [...]
Edited Titles in Print
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As we’ve said before, of all the nonfiction authors we’ve worked with over the years, author and media guru Susie Pearl has one of the most buoyant, can-do attitudes we’ve ever had the pleasure of editing for. She’s always happy, and this vibrant character and experienced voice comes through in her writing. That’s …
In addition to book publishers and individual authors, we also proofread and copyedit literature for quite a few non-profit organizations. One of our regulars is the Simons Foundation, whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences through generous individual grants and by funding …
We are pleased to announce the recent publication of a book we both worked on earlier this year called Impossible Loves, a collection of essays by Erin McNellis, out this month in paperback from Paper Rock Tiger, an emerging press based out of Seattle. Henry copyedited the manuscript and Gretchen …
Of all the non-fiction authors we’ve worked with over the years, writer Susie Pearl has one of the most buoyant, can-do attitudes we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. She’s always happy, and this is why we’re so over the moon about the recent news that her upcoming book …
As anyone can tell, I work on a large number of Pride & Prejudice continuations. One of the authors whose novels I have the absolute pleasure of working on is Sharon Lathan. Her Darcy Saga series is growing all the time, and the most recent, volume 5, The Trouble with …
Jill Mansell is making some waves. Not only is her newest book, Staying at Daisy’s, fresh out in the US, but her novel Miranda’s Big Mistake is #12 on the New York Times ebook bestseller list and #86 on the USA Today bestseller list this week! I had the honor of proofreading the US edition of Miranda’s Big Mistake. I also got to do the proofreading for the US Staying at Daisy’s and the copyediting for the US edition of Take a Chance on Me, which won the Romance Novelists’ Association’s Pure Passion Romantic Comedy Prize! [...]
