The Secret to Success in Three Not-So-Easy Steps

Siobhán is a freelance developmental editor who spends her life reading children’s books, watching scary films and drinking unicorn gin. She lives in Surrey, England, with her graphic designer husband and four-year-old son who wants to be a Pokémon when he grows up. Siobhan works directly with authors of middle grade and YA genre fiction, specialising in…

Recently a post popped up in my LinkedIn newsfeed describing how a business coach helped the poster think about decisions using the “pick your hard” framing. The poster used as an example of this approach the framing that “staying healthy is hard” and “having a chronic illness is hard.” The idea is that you can…

Many self-publishing authors look for beta readers to give them perspective on their novels before they go to a professional editor for further help. An author doesn’t need a developmental editor to say the whole storyline is implausible and they yawned from beginning to end. Any reader of fiction can probably relay that information. Doing…

In my post on editing satirical fiction, I mentioned the message being the driving force in such stories. A recent question from a student made me want to explore the question of editing novels with messages a bit further. The Problem with Message Novels The student pointed out that some authors start novels with a…

Freelance editors often focus on what we might call indirect marketing and inbound marketing – that is, letting people know about their work through social media, blog posts, SEO, networking, and similar activities. Since freelance editors rarely have a marketing background, these approaches feel appropriate and doable. And that’s fine as far as it goes!…