Jaime provides editing and marketing services for fiction and non-fiction…
Editing
My primary specialty is developmental content and line-editing of fiction and nonfiction.
Elements I analyze include:
- Action and pacing, to keep the stories moving and exciting.
- Characters and their personality, motivations and behavior to encourage complexity, consistency, and realism.
- The writing style at multiple levels from the syntax and grammar of individual sentences and to whole paragraphs and chapters. This is to keep the voice both interesting and consistent as well as to keep the storyline moving.
- Clarity, in all things.
Since the author has the whole story in his or her head, it can be hard for them to realize when they haven’t been clear to the reader. It is an editor’s job to make sure the story in the author’s head matches the story in the reader’s mind…on the page.
I show an author every last thing I see that can be revised and improved while also offering advice about the overall craft of writing so that the author can learn from their mistakes and be a better writer. The process is a dialogue, since the object is to help the author figure out and meet their own goals. After all, it is the author’s name on the book.
Marketing
In addition, I have many years of experience “selling” books. Within a publishing house, the editor is the linchpin for the author and title’s publication and sales process. The editor “sells” the author to the house in order to acquire the rights. The editor then sells and articulates the book and author to the Sales department in order to help them realize its place in the constellation of other titles being published.
The critical elements for success—whether or not an author is planning to sell themselves to a traditional house for publication or to sell themselves by self-publishing—are being able to articulate what your book is, who the reader is, and how to present it to that readership in a way that will be most enticing. It is essentially a process of figuring out an author’s “brand.” And, as they say, “branding is clear and consistent messaging.”
I can help authors figure out their message — either the handle they need to present themselves to a literary agent or publisher, or the description they need to craft to upload their book for digital.
If you have questions or would like to learn more about how we could work together, please Contact Me.