The Concierge (Blog)

Once you’ve gotten some experience and are ready to find clients, you need to think about identifying your potential clients. Who is your audience of potential clients? It can’t be everyone who needs an editor because there is no way to find “everyone.” But there is a way to find, say, romance novelists. You can…

Editors often talk about how much they love stories as if this is a reason why someone should hire them. But loving stories is kind of a bottom-line thing, like having a medical degree is the bottom-line for being a physician. No one is going to hire you because you love stories. They’re going to hire…

You’ve probably heard that to get people to sign up for your newsletter list, you should create an information product of some sort (an ebook, a white paper, a collection of templates) to give away in return for their signing up for your newsletter. This is certainly a tried-and-true strategy (and I do it myself…

If you’re interested in trying to land a traditional publishing deal, you need a plan. You will have to be prepared to query many agents. Getting started I always recommend starting with a list of 100 agents who represent work in your genre. I recommend making the list of 100 ahead of time because the…

The 3-Step Process for Developmental Edits The process for developmental edits is very straightforward and easy to follow. It includes these three basic steps: Step 1: First Read-Through The first step in the process for developmental edits is doing a first read-through. During the first read-through, I recommend just reading the ms for content. You…

Recognizing Story Pattern and Story Structure Let’s dive in to a discussion showcasing story pattern and story structure. One common story pattern in fiction is the quest, such as this example: Huckleberry Finn is a quester; Dante (The Divine Comedy) is a quester; Charles Marlow (Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) is a quester. A reader seeing…

People like to pretend that you can write a book and make passive income from it. You can’t. If you write a book and stick it up on Amazon and never do anything to promote or market it, you’re not going to sell any copies. Okay, you might sell three or four from people who…

As developmental editors, our goal is to help authors figure out how to revise their stories to make them better. To do this, we are essentially comparing the work in front of us to some ideal in our heads. That ideal should not be “how I would have written this” but should be instead an…