Is Your Book Manuscript Ready For Editing?

During my time as the senior book editor for a book publishing firm, I've worked with some very smart people and helped them get their smarts on the page. Some manuscripts came to me well researched and complete with appropriate citations and examples. Others needed some triage to stop the bleeding in overwritten sections and precision surgery to insert the right examples. All of these authors were a joy to work with and I'm proud of their work and mine. 
Below are the editing services I offer my nonfiction authors.

Editing Services For Your Book Manuscript

Big Picture Assessment Of Completed Manuscript: 

• Assess manuscript's topic scope, organization, and flow of content.
• Assess balance of research and development underlying core concepts.
• Assess thematic cohesion, and consistency of voice and message.
• Provide general recommendations for overall manuscript improvement.
• Provide specific recommendations to prepare manuscript for submission to publishers.

Line Editing:

• Chapter, paragraph and line level review to ensures clarity of authors' voice.
• Focuses on the use of consistent language and terms throughout the manuscript.
• May include review of grammar, punctuation, and spelling;  may flag repeat offenders or author to correct.
• May correct resources, permissions, and graphics references, or flag for author to correct.

Copy Editing:

• Detailed technical edit to correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax.
• Comments on or corrects deviations from the industry standard Chicago Manual of Style.
• Identifies conflicting, inconsistent, or factually incorrect statements and references, for author to correct

Proofreading:

• Final detailed typographical review of manuscript before publication. 
• This is after editing, design, and layout; and is often the publisher's galley proof.
• Identifies text and formatting errors.

Contact me for editing rates.

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Case Study: Edited Manuscripts on Stock Market Trading

Below is back-flap copy to position two books I edited while Senior Book Editor at Lighthouse Publishing Group. These books arrived as nearly complete manuscripts from new, but competent writers. My task was to check all the math and document trading transactions, ensure the language met legal constraints, tweak the copy to add a consistent authoritative voice, and request additional copy as needed to fill in the blanks for new traders, and enhance the value of the books for experienced traders. 

Stock Split Secrets
By Darlene Nelson and Miles Nelson

Profiting From a Powerful, Predictable, Price-Moving Event!
Stock Split Secrets will teach you about the five powerful, predictable, price-moving phases that often occur when a company splits its stock, and how to use these events to make phenomenal money in the stock market! In this book you'll learn:

• What forces drive stock splits
• Locating split candidates
• Five  separate strategies to play
• What indicators to watch

No matter what investing strategies you use now or plan to use in the future, you can dramatically increase your wealth by playing stock splits properly. This book includes easy-to-understand explanations and charts that demystify the amazing potential for profit in stock splits.

Beginning Investors Bible
By Doug "Safety" Sutton

Learn to Play Aggressive Strategies Conservatively
and Conservative Strategies Aggressively
The roadside to riches in the stock market is littered with the bones of those who started their journey without a map and without protection. In addition to teaching the basics of trading in Beginning Investors Bible, Doug explains some of the most powerful strategies beginners can use, as well as techniques to intrigue intermediate traders.
The book includes information on:

• How to create a game plan and mind set to build your wealth
• Where to set stop losses and how to formulate escape plans
• Play naked puts and how to build credit and debit spreads
• When and how to use straddles and strangles to safeguard your money

Beginning Investors Bible is a great place to start your journey into trading and financial freedom  safely.

A few words of praise...

“Special thanks to the Lighthouse Publishing Group … and my editor Leslie vanWinkle, who helped move my book project from concept to finished book so smoothly and quickly that it is unbelievable.” 
~ Doug Sutton, Author/Investor, The Beginning Investors Bible 

"The Day After the Dollar Crashes" ~ “I especially want to thank my editor, researcher and collaborator Leslie vanWinkle, for pulling this book together from all my ideas and keeping me on track. This book would not exist without her.”
~ Damon Vickers, Author/Nine Points/Damon Vickers+Co.   

Case Study: Ghostwrote, Packaged and Marketed 5-Book
Special Editions for Christmas Release

Situation:  Lighthouse Publishing Group specialized in publishing books on stock market trading and wealth management, written mostly by Wade Cook, but other authors too. I was Senior Book Editor. Our parent company conducted trading seminars around the country as well as maintaining a private membership with special benefits, so we had a solid customer base.

My directive was to develop a Special Collector's Edition Series of five books on "Successful Stock Market Trading Strategies for Every Investor." Three of the books had been released in the past, but needed to be updated and repackaged in a new design. I needed to conceptualize the two new titles and turn those ideas into copy.

It was June. We needed to have all five books ready to sell as  special Christmas package. That meant we had six months to produce two new books, update the existing three, and create a marketing campaign to launch by late October, in order to pre-sell the series and tell the printer how many books we needed for the Christmas orders. After we fulfilled those orders, we would print a run to distribute to stores In January!  

Solution:  I needed to run a dream team with a single goal: Create a 5-book series for Christmas sales.

Given the short timeline for the two new books this was my game plan:

• I created a master grid of all the topics that had been addressed in the author's past books, and identified areas needed updating.
• I conceptualized what the two new books could contain and created tentative outlines.
• I drew on existing, but under-used material, some of it edited out of prior books, because it hadn't fit into that book's focus. 
• To fill in some gaps, I called on the newsletter editor to pull content from white papers, newsletters and special reports that had been only available to the private membership prior.
• For fresh content I sent out a survey to our dozen trainers for feedback from their live seminars, to see what their audiences wanted to know more about. I assigned my author those topics, then edited his dictation.
• I also interviewed a few advanced and novice traders from the company membership database for their "wish lists" of what their students needed to know. I ghostwrote that copy.
• I consulted with our team of technical analysis researchers for trends and changes in the market place and had them pull trades to meet certain criteria to illustrate the new content.
• I researched previews of books in the pipeline from other publishing houses, to see what they were selling and where we might fill gaps.
• I completed outlines for the two new books, and ghostwrote what was missing, and fed the formatting production department the existing copy to start formatting as the copy was completed.
• Meanwhile, the art department developed a Special Edition template for the collection and I sent mock-ups to the website manager to start promoting the Special Editions to club members.
• I wrote marketing mailers and an email campaign to pre-sell the collection to our existing lists, then worked with a direct mail house to select two lists of triple-opt prospects. This email campaign had a 4% conversion to sales.
• We send the edited book files to the printer for a speedy turn-around and proofed the galleys over midnight pizza.

Result:  By mid-October we had mock-ups of the cover art for the Special Editions on the website, mailers mailed and the pre-sell email launched. Copy was being formatted into books as fast as we writers could write.

By mid-December the two new books were printed, the existing books had new jackets, and the warehouse fulfillment team was listening to Christmas music and eating home-made cookies while they impersonated Santa's elves.

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