Publishing/Editing

What Can a Publishing Professional Do for You?

What does a Consulting Editor Do? Authors or publishers sometimes find they’re having trouble with the book’s overall structure or content. Some authors feel they’ve gotten their manuscript as far as they can on their own and need an expert editor. Still others have submitted a manuscript to their publisher only to receive editing comments so daunting they want to abandon the entire project. Have a story to tell or knowledge to share but you’re unsure of how to get your manuscript to the next level? Publishers today don’t buy many unfinished manuscripts or provide the editing authors might hope for the work. Agents don’t always have the time to be collaborators. They want a project with a strong concept and content. If you need help writing, editing or structuring your book, a consulting editor can assist you. If you’re stumped on the publishing process, contracts, royalties, or marketing, a consulting editor with solid publishing experience can help you.

What does a Ghostwriter do? Many busy professionals need help writing their book or preparing their non-fiction book proposal. A ghostwriter can help you. You might be a busy business professional who wants a book for seminars or clients. Publishers or agents may need a book doctor to assist you with the writing, research, and technical expertise from beginning to end. A ghostwriter can assist especially if you need someone to coach you through the ins and outs of the publishing process. Whether you’re an agent, publisher, or author, and whether you’re self-publishing or under contract, you may need a collaborator, development editor, book doctor, or proposal writer. Feeling overwhelmed? Know exactly what you need?  Contact me for guidance, to ask questions, or for an assessment on your manuscript.  Together, we can decide how you can achieve your goals.

Need a Cookbook Author or Recipe Developer? A professional cookbook editor can help you ensure your recipes conform to editorial standards including ingredient consistency and preparation steps. Did you know cookbooks and recipes should conform to specific style guides? Additionally, a good cookbook editor and recipe tester will help you make sure your recipes actually work, ensuring your readers love your creations. If you’re a publisher or chef in need of a themed cookbook? A good cookbook ghost/recipe developer can identify recipes, conceptualize your themes, and even write the recipes you need. I have deep experience in food history, wine, spirits, and travel, too.

Need a Non-fiction Proposal to Sell Your Work? Book proposals can be daunting documents running more than 50 pages. For someone outside publishing, book descriptions, chapter summaries, market research, audience data and competitive analyses can seem overwhelmingly complex. And agents today want to see marketing and publicity plans! Many authors hire professional writers and editors to prepare their book proposals. Whether it’s a stand alone plan or part of a larger project, I can prepare your proposal for you and work directly with your agent or publishing to make your project a reality.

Development Editing: While anyone can simply write a manuscript, most authors today know the value that comes with a review from a professional editor. Whether you’re looking for a solid line edit or development, or you need a writer to complete your project, a publishing professional can help you get to where you want to be. Committed authors know what they want to accomplish when they publish a book. To be successful, they understand the need to invest in quality editorial work with an editor who can guide them through the ins-and-outs of publishing.

Editing and consultative services:

• Manuscript evaluation, development editing, content notes
• Full non-fiction proposal preparation including refining the concept, outline development, marketing plan, descriptions, chapter summaries, audience, and market research
• Ghostwriting and full collaborative author services
• Book packaging working with partners on copy editing, production editing, layout, indexing and other services
• Coaching/coordination, ghostwriting or collaboration for celebrity or name clients or brands
• Editing and manuscript readiness for food and wine writing, cookbooks, and recipes
• Americanization for titles licensed from the UK and Australia, and editing for books translated from languages including French and German
• Editing for manuscript readiness for Christian Book Association market
• Review and advice on your book proposal from structure to the industry knowledge you’ll need to include
• Education on royalties, industry norms, and what you should expect in your contract with a trade publisher, academic or association press, hybrid or self-publisher
• Marketing plans for authors for both authors using either traditional publishers or self-publishers.
• Preparation of guideline-required formatting, graphics, figure logs, and other elements
• Some areas of content expertise:
  • Cooking/Food
  • Wine/Beverages/Culture
  • Writing/Publishing
  • Business/Leadership
  • Sales
  • Health/Fitness
  • Cooking/Food/Wine
  • Spirituality/Religion
  • Sports
  • Music
  • Culture/Arts
  • Computers/Technology
  • Reference/Foreign Language
  • History
  • Select academic and scholarly works in the health/medicine space

For the Organization:

If you are a not-for-profit association or scholarly society, you know that non-dues based revenue is more important than ever before. As a professional who knows the publishing business inside and out, I can advise you on:

• Expanding your book publishing program by helping you publishing titles that will sell.
• Building workflows for your team get books approved, written, and published on time.
• Guiding your sales team though today’s challenges including discounts, wholesalers, e-books, distributors, and ebook models for libraries.
• Helping you build efficiency and accuracy internally with a sales reporting system, royalty preparation and contract analysis.
• Open-access, library models and other current publishing concepts.
• Analyzing team and staff needs, outsourcing opportunities, performance metrics, and budgeting.
• The ins-and-outs of scholarly journals, Impact Factors and other metrics, peer-review workflows, and goals.
• Coordinating scholarly or industry-specific editor search committees.
• Providing a plug-and-play solution for publishing staff on temporary leave.
• Scenario planning and other strategic planning sessions to help your program prepare for the future.
• Full packaging including ghostwriting, coordination of copy edit, proofread, index, and as needed technical edit

Have another question?  Want to know more?  Contact me and ask!