An editor has a challenge. They must know everything about writing and, essentially, nothing about anything else. The power of remaining naïve Of course, I’m exaggerating. Editors tend to know a little bit about a lot of things, because they have to read so many things in detail. And editors in a specific genre need…
You are an expert on your topic and your ideas. I will never know as much about your topic as you do. I am expert on nonfiction books. You hired me because I know more about books than you do. This is the basis of our collaboration. It’s our greatest strength. It’s also our greatest…
I write. I edit. I ghostwrite. I also use AI — carefully — to help me with ideation and summarize research content. But I don’t substitute AI for own abilities. Unfortunately for the quality of the text I work on, my clients have made different choices. Here are two examples — an author that used…
At my previous employer, Forrester, there was a dedicated commitment to both quality of analysis and quality of writing. This meant that your editor took what you wrote and critiqued the crap out of it, and you had to learn to make it better to meet that high bar. My boss at the time, Emily,…
If you’re considering hiring me as a writer or editor, we’ll have to discover a few things about each other. You’ll likely interview me. And you might send me some samples of your writing and your ideas. I’ve been through this so many times that I no longer worry about the impression I’m making. I…
A typical editing checklist includes things that editors should identify, like failures of parallelism, mixed metaphors, sentence fragments, and factual errors. But this is your motivational editing checklist. Follow this to make sure that the person you’re editing will understand, appreciate, accept, and address the problems you point out. Why bother? It’s a lot easier…
I’ve seen a lot of messes that were supposed to become books. I learned that fixing messes is neither cheap nor fast, and the results are rarely great. A mess before you start writing is manageable; afterwards, not so much. What is a mess? Authors that build books haphazardly create messes. What is a mess?…
Publishers know all about publishing. Authors know less. This asymmetry means that authors are often at a disadvantage when negotiating with publishers — everything from advances to rights to manuscript edits to marketing. I’d like to fix that. If you’re negotiating with a traditional publisher, here are some tips on what you can reasonably negotiate…
I am very selective about ghostwriting clients and very open to a broad range of editing clients. Part of the reason is that a ghostwriting commitment means living in your skin for six or nine months, while an editing commitment means living in your manuscript for two or three weeks. But it’s not just the…