The path to traditional publishing requires endurance. It’s competitive, long-suffering, and full of rejection letters. You must have the fortitude to keep getting back up again while searching for your place in the publishing landscape. But when you make it, when you enter those hallowed woods and get to plant your novel amongst those mighty names and call them peers, do you know what you get in exchange for that hard fought trek? Ample light. The distribution and marketing strength of publishing houses is the sunlight you need to flourish as you establish your backlist.

Did you know that over 50% of queried manuscripts have undergone professional editing before hitting an agent’s inbox?

How do you prepare for this battle? What tools and editing does your story need in order to stand out and thrive in the querying market? The following services are tailored especially for manuscripts destined for agent representation and publishing house contracts.

If you’re seeking traditional publishing, we do not recommend hiring an editor to fix your grammar and punctuation unless it’s particularly distracting to acquisition agents and editors. The publishing house will handle all copy editing, typesetting, and proofreading needs as part of their production costs. What publishing houses and agents do expect a queried manuscript to have is an engaging structure and a strong voice. That’s where we can help. Our team has worked for the “big five” (“big four” now? Hard to keep track these days) as contracted editors for speculative trade fiction as well as with several literary agencies who need their clients to polish up their books before shopping it with an acquisition team. We understand what it takes to make it in today’s market, and our goal is refine, educate, and encourage our authors to craft the best version of their stories.