Non-Fiction Editing
Non-fiction books need editing just as much as fiction books, if not more. The editing process can deal with anything from spelling and grammatical mistakes, to factual errors and inconsistencies. Having your recipe book edited means you won’t accidentally forget to tell your readers to soften the butter before mixing it in. It means not claiming that the Federation of Australia happened in 1801, or misattributing that famous quote about insanity to Albert Einstein.
A non-fiction edit can also involve looking at the book’s overall structure. Is your biography telling the story of someone’s life in the most dramatic way possible? Is your how-to book teaching each step in the correct order, from simplest to the most complex?
It is vital that your editor understands why you wrote the book, what the book’s purpose is, and what its readers will expect to get from it. Without first addressing these areas the editorial process could harm, rather than help, your book. That’s why I start by asking these questions, and I don’t stop until I understand your answers completely.
Before reinventing myself as a professional editor, I was high school maths teacher. I spent twelve years at the front of a classroom figuring out how to explain to teenagers everything from basic algebra to advanced statistics. That experience has given me the ability to break down complicated ideas into smaller and more understandable pieces. This is what I draw on when editing non-fiction: turning your words into something that anybody can understand.
While I am more than happy to work on any non-fiction project, I have a few areas of special interest that might suit you:
education/training
nutrition and fitness
mathematics
general science and critical thinking
music
woodworking
magic
games (video/board/role playing)
If you have a non-fiction project you’d like help with, click the button below and let’s start a conversation.
