There is! I’m not a good fit for:

• Nonfiction, Screenplays, Short Stories, Poetry
• Literary Fiction
• Procedural/Slasher/Serial Killer
• Religious Fiction
• Erotica or very spicy erotic romance
• On-page sexual assault, dubiously consensual sex, or extreme domestic violence
• Middle-grade or Lower-YA
• Any writing created or modified by an AI reinforcement learning or natural language processing system, such as Chat-GPT.

If you’re not sure whether your work fits into this list, get in touch!

No. I’m a substantive (developmental) editor; my focus is on the story, not on spelling, grammar, or prose. I do some line editing with my 5k Pass service, and I’ll give feedback on prose quality in the margins of developmental edits, but your manuscript will likely need to go through more rounds of editorial work with a line/copyeditor before it’ll be ready for publication.

A dev edit is a much closer reading of the manuscript. I leave frequent marginal comments which address mid-to-big picture issues as they impact individual scenes, and often give some feedback on the prose, too. The editorial letter dives deeper into structural issues and tends to range between 15 and 25 pages. A developmental edit also includes a book map, which is a breakdown of major and minor arcs within the story, made with excel. It’s not fancy, but it can help spot big-picture structural or pacing issues. Finally, the edit includes an hour-long editorial call.

By contrast, a manuscript eval is a bigger-picture service that doesn’t dive quite as deeply into the story. I don’t leave marginal comments, but deliver feedback instead through an 10+ page editorial letter that focuses primarily on premise, character, plot, and world. I don’t do book maps for evals, but an hour-long call is still included.

In general, a dev edit is the best fit for authors who are interested in self-publishing. That said, I’d lean more towards an eval if any of the following three conditions were met:

1. You’ve undergone a lot of editorial work at the developmental level in the past (and/or feel like this story is quite structurally solid) and think a broad-brush overview will get the manuscript to where it needs to be. I have repeat clients bounce back and forth between evals and full edits depending on how they feel about each individual project.

2. You suspect you’ll be overwhelmed by the amount of feedback a full dev edit would provide, or, you know you wouldn’t get as much from a dev edit as you’d like to because there’s something very broken in the MS and you can’t figure out what it is.

3. Money! Because I don’t include marginal comments or book mapping with evals, I’m able to offer them at a much lower price point ($0.015 / word vs $0.03 / word).

I won’t take on unfinished stories for either a dev edit or a manuscript evaluation, but I do offer coaching services for writers who need help with unfinished manuscripts. Check out the coaching page for more details.

Yes, in 10k-word increments. Check out the Lieutenant and Captain Plans on my coaching page for more details. I also do outline / prewriting material consultations (see the Midshipman Plan) and hour-long coaching calls.

Yeah, sure. I have 60-minute timeslots for consultation calls most days of the week. Note: these don’t involve pre-reading or editorial work on your writing; for that, you’ll want to take a look at a coaching plan.

All of my prices are listed on my services page. If you’d like to compare my prices with industry standard, check out the Editorial Freelancers Association.

I typically book between six and eight months in advance, so if you’d like to work with me, planning ahead is important! If you’d like to know when my next available slots are, check out my intake form and/or hop on my waitlist. I open for bookings once a season, so my intake form will also let you know when you can expect to hear from me and/or go through the sample edit process.

Through a sample edit! For developmental edits, I do a no-obligation sample on the first ten pages, including marginal comments. For manuscript evaluations, I read the opening scene and include a few paragraphs of feedback along with my quote so you can get a feel for my editorial voice.

Right here!