How Not To Write A Novel comes out of many years of experience. We have worked with many authors, both beginners and best-sellers. Once you’ve learned the basics of what not to do, if you’d like to go further and get some one-on-one guidance from Howard and/or Sandra, please feel free to contact us to discuss our availability. Whether it’s a novel that needs an edit before you send it out, a nonfiction book, a shorter piece of writing, or even an MFA submission that you’d like someone to look over, we can probably be of assistance.

We work on both fiction and non-fiction.

Sandra’s primary expertise is in literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, YA, and historical fiction. In non-fiction, she focuses on memoir and the personal essay.

Howard has a particular affection for and deep experience in science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers, and contemporary romance. He’s also edited a wide variety of non-fiction, but leans toward history.

We offer two basic services, developmental editing and line editing.

Developmental editing: If you’ve written a book and you suspect it isn’t as good as it could be, one of us will read your manuscript and write you an editorial letter (between 12 and 25 pages) explaining what’s working and what isn’t, and giving suggestions about how to improve it.

Line editing: When you feel your book is largely in the shape you want it to be, we would do line editing. This means fixing sections that still aren’t working, cutting things that aren’t helping, reworking sentences that could be doing their job better. It includes copy editing for grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation.

We’re also available to work with you on an ongoing basis as you write your book, if that’s what you think will help you most.

Fees: For developmental editing we charge three cents a word and up, depending on the manuscript. Line editing tends to take more time, so it costs four cents a word and up. For short stories, essays, and other works under 25,000 words, the word rate will be somewhat higher. 

When we’ve had a chance to look at your manuscript, we’ll be able to give you a specific price. We’re also always open to some negotiation.

You can contact Howard here.

You can contact Sandra here.