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The Best Book Editors

From the world’s major publishing houses.

 
Choose your editor

The Best Book Editors

From the Big Five major publishing houses.

Professional publishing editors

 

Our editorial team are professionals with experience at the most famous publishers – Penguin Random House, Pan Macmillan, Hachette, Orion and Titan Books – where they have overseen many bestselling and award-winning novels published to acclaim.  Our editing services team are in-house and wholly dedicated to your publishing prospects.

When you select The Finished Novel Course or The Novel Development Course, youll enjoy the guidance of publishing professionals to oversee every aspect of your novel as we progress towards a finished draft whether for submission to literary agents for a publishing contract, for self-publishing, or to take your creative writing further to new heights.

Their mission is simple: your success.

book editors from the major publishing houses

Meet our editorial services team

The only book editing services with direct submission to literary agencies

Professional Publishing Experience

 

The Novelry’s editorial team is made up of people with years of experience across the roles every type of editing. At The Novelry, their responsibilities focus on the ‘editing’ part – the hands-on creative feedback, where they collaborate with you to help make your manuscript the best version of itself. But as book editors, they also bring our experience of the ‘acquiring’ and ‘publishing’ processes to help you with pitching your book. Agents used to submit novels to our editors: now our book editors are submitting to those same agents. There’s an established relationship of trust which gives our writers poll position to skip the infamous slush pile and beat rejections. Because they have been on the other side, they know exactly what editors are looking for.

At The Novelry, we offer the same quality editing services as a major publishing house, bringing to your work of fiction the best book editors with proven experience editing bestselling and award winning books. 

professional book editors with publishing experience
book editor josie and tash
editing services team at The Novelry
book editor Lizzy and book editor Craig

The right editor for your book 

 

Meet the professionals from The Big Five major publishing houses including Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan.

Lizzy Goudsmit-Kay

Formerly Penguin Random House

 

Before joining The Novelry, Lizzy Goudsmit-Kay was a Senior Commissioning Editor at Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House, home to general fiction authors including Kate Atkinson, Dan Brown, Bill Bryson, Lee Child, Richard Dawkins, Paula Hawkins, Rachel Joyce and Sophie Kinsella.

 

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Tash Barsby

Formerly Penguin Random House

 

Before joining The Novelry, Tash Barsby was a Commissioning Editor at Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House. Tash has worked as an editor on many bestselling titles including the #1 Sunday Times bestseller The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse.

 

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Craig Leyenaar

Formerly Titan Books & Orion 

 

Before joining The Novelry, Craig Leyenaar was a Commissioning Editor at the famous Titan Books, a publisher specialising in science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime and thrillers, and home to authors including Stephen King, V.E. Schwab, James Lovegrove and Mikey Spillane.

 

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Francine Toon

Formerly Hachette (Hodder & Stoughton)

 

Before joining The Novelry, commercial fiction editor Francine Toon was a Commissioning Editor at the Sceptre imprint at Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hachette, publishing distinctive prize-winning literary fiction. Francine has worked with internationally renowned authors such as John le Carré, Stephen King and Fredrik Backman.

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Josie Humber

Formerly Hodder & Stoughton

 

Before joining The Novelry, Josie Humber was a Senior Commissioning Editor at Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hachette, home to authors including Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, David Nicholls and Erin Kelly.

 

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Gillian Holmes

Formerly Penguin Random House

 

Before joining The Novelry, Gillian Holmes worked as an acquiring editor and a copy editor at Penguin Random House for the Arrow Books imprint, where she acquired authors such as Katie Flynn who was the bestselling saga writer in the country.

 

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Lily Lindon

Formerly Penguin Random House

 

Before joining The Novelry, Lily Lindon was an Editor at Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House, home to authors including Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Jeanette Winterson, Haruki Murakami and Salman Rushdie.

 

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Krystle Appiah

Formerly Pan Macmillan

 

Before joining The Novelry, Krystle Appiah was an Editor at Macmillan Children’s Books, a division of Pan Macmillan and home to authors including Marcus Rashford, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Tomi Adeyemi and Julia Donaldson.

 

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The Novel Development Course

 

To work with our editorial team to complete your novel-in-progress sign up for the Novel Development Course.

At $1865 / £1550 with instalment payment plans available from $175 / $149.

Sign up
our editors consider a copy edit for the target audience around a desk

Raise your editing game with our team

 

We offer a simple three-stage program at The Novelry, and the third stage is The Big Edit, the course to edit your novel with our professional book editor. This course is included in the Novel Development Course or The Finished Novel Course. To access our editorial services, you need to sign up for one of those plans.

In The Big Edit, we will guide you through all the aspects of the book editing process, developing and polishing your technical writing skills, on a sentence-by-sentence basis and teaching you how to self-edit.

The course helps independent authors learn to master these aspects of fiction editing in multiple genres whether literary fiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, fantasy, science fiction, children’s and young adult fiction and even some forms of nonfiction like memoir. Editing skills learned now will set you in good stead for your creative writing career.

From the developmental edit to a final review

 

We’ll guide you step by step with killer logic through the wonderful process of drilling down from structural development through to line-by-line style so that you become your own best editor for a lifetime of happy writing.

You want a straightforward guide to formatting. It’s here! You want contemporary examples of structure, sentences, openers, and brilliant editing techniques? We’ve packed these lessons with the most famous books in the English language: from Harry Potter and A Game of Thrones to The Couple Next Door and Girl, Woman, Other.

Check out our advanced  technique for stand-out prose to open your book with a bang – Lucid Compression ® You want to write a stand-out synopsis? We’ll make it simple to write. You want to write a brilliant pitch letter? We will help you with the precise word choice to put it in the bag.

You want tips and tricks from inside the editing network? Find out more about what literary agents and most editors really, really want and top up your course learning with our regular program of live classes and guests from within the industry.

Towards publishing 

Get access to our professional editing service when you need it to fast-track your writing skills. Once you join us for a course, you can simply purchase a Paid Feedback Session with a professional editor for £350 or $425 for a 5000-word submission to our editorial team as and when you need it. The Paid Feedback sessions allow you to book in with one of our developmental editors for a review with line editing and report on a word count of 5000 words a time. You’ll enjoy a 45-minute video debrief where you can ask any questions. We recommend you reserve these sessions for the second half of the year, when you’re more certain of the story and can apply the feedback to written work you know you’re keeping. Use them during the third phase of the year – The Big Edit – to really sharpen and hone your chapters as you move from the structural edit to sentence style and word choice.

Writers enjoy writing, but editing is the core skill that differentiates published authors from new writers. Invest wisely and learn from the best editors.

Sign up for the Novel Development Course

Our manuscript assessments

 

Writers who have taken their work of fiction through several drafts can choose the Ultimate Manuscript Assessment for a comprehensive manuscript review including developmental editing, copy editing and a line edit from one of our editors. This is a good investment for those who have become word-blind to their word document!

Good writing requires editing that goes beyond minor errors to more substantive editing that extends beyond the written word to the big picture of writing a story that stands out in a crowded market. You’ve come this far, so why not get your book edited to publishing standard by the best editors in the industry?

We will assign the right editor to your work ensuring you get a manuscript review from a professional editor with experience editing your genre of fiction. The service includes line editing of a marked up entire manuscript to a word count of 100,000 words or more by arrangement with a turnaround time of 6-8 weeks. You will get feedback on character development, writing style and consistency issues as well as plot structure. You will have the chance to communicate directly with your book editor with a live video debrief session. The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment will help you prepare your submissions package and elevator pitch for that all-important final step with our personal submission service to world-leading literary agencies.

You can view success stories and testimonials from past clients here.

Apply here

Find the best book editor for you

 

 

1. What can a good editor can do for you?

 

 

What can a good editor do for you?

A good editor will shine a light on what’s working and what’s not working on the big picture of your manuscript allowing for the most exciting story to surface from the structure and sentence style of your material, with a deadly focus on the reader’s reading journey. A good book editor will ensure your book hits the sweet spot where commercial sales meet positive reviews, acclaim and awards. They will help you write a bold story, beautifully told.

At The Novelry, our team of book editors are all experienced publishing editors who have worked with bestselling and award-winning authors at the Big Five publishing houses like Penguin Random House.

If you mean business, make sure you work with a renowned and experienced book editor.

What’s better than one editor? 

A team of professionals.

Book editors tend to have niche genre specialisms. Be careful when working with just one editor that they truly have experience working in your genre or niche. Publishers will only acquire books that perform well for the genre. Freelance solo editors will bring their experience to your work, but also their own personal taste and judgement. Working with just one book editor can destabilise a writer as they are only getting one person’s perspective when a broader view may be better.

At The Novelry, we meet as a team every week to talk about our writers’ work in progress to ensure we are giving you the best of our combined advice and experience. You will have access to our many editors allowing you to find the right book editor for you. You will be able work with your editor directly over multiple rounds allowing for back and forth and your editor will be familiar with your intentions and aspirations for your book. It’s not all about sentence structure! The best editors like to respect an author’s style.

A team of professional book editors with combined experience across a range of fiction for considered writing advice.

 

 

 

2. What’s better than one editor?

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Can an editor fix my book?

 

 

Can an editor fix my book? 

A book editor is typically able to spot the problems but not fix them!

With our team of editors and currently published authors at The Novelry we are uniquely placed and motivated to find brilliant creative solutions to any story problem.

Our editing approach mirrors the book publishing process, beginning with developmental editing, proceeding to copy editing the entire manuscript, and onto matters concerned with book marketing. At the start of the developmental editing process, you will meet your professional book editor to review the storyline for a new draft likely to please publishers. A professional developmental editor from our team experienced in your genre will guide the process of book editing with developmental editing advice to structure the revision of their manuscript.

Guided by our course, you will proceed with confidence to line edits and sentence-by-sentence improvements. Our writers progress through the stages of the book editing process from developmental editing to copy editing and on to line editing, before they submit their revised manuscript to our editorial services team for review. Our editors will be there to review and catch your work before you move forwards towards submission.

If you’re not there yet, our editors will help you fix it to get it right.

What should I expect to pay?

Editorial services can be very expensive and you are placing a great deal of trust in your book editor. What seems cheap can prove expensive and downright destructive in the long run. Don’t economize on your dreams. Aim to invest in the best. 

Most literary consultancies and editorial services farm out the editing work to a freelance editor, often paid at very low rates, who is paid by the manuscript and will tick off yours to move onto the next. Some well-known publishing companies follow this practice. With this cheaper type of editing service, you neither get to meet editors, nor have them answer questions. (Top editors don’t work on a freelance basis.)

Professional editing services often require a 10 or 15% commission on your publishing royalties. Buyer beware! Check the small print first! (We would not dream of it.)

We are able to offer the expertise of in-house professional editors at more affordable price thanks to our combination of course-based training and editorial services to help you master editing for yourself guided by dedicated editors to enable you to learn editing skills vital for a writing career. 

Our team are in-house editors motivated by our success stories.

 

 

 

4. What should I expect to pay?

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Can a book editor get me published?

 

 

Can a book editor get me published? 

Typically a consultancy or freelance book editor’s work ends when they hand you back your manuscript with lots of red lines through it. It’s when you get their report the hard work really begins. They take no further steps to help you get published. Not so at The Novelry!

Your book editor will not only give you detailed line by line feedback on the work, honestly and clearly assessing its potential to meet the standards of a traditional publisher before advising changes but when your book is good to go, your book editor will work with you to undertake a query letter review and prepare the submissions package for our bespoke submissions service.

We review each and every writer’s submission as a team to ensure we meet the highest standards for your best chances of success. We submit our writers one by one to trusted literary agencies to secure representation towards becoming a published author. This is the fast track to getting published and typically 50% of our submissions are successful within two weeks.

Take a look at our roster of over 25 leading literary agency partners like WME, The Book Group, United Agents and more who look forward to receiving our writers’ brilliant novels.

The Novelry is trusted and recommended by world-class literary agencies

best editors

Nazima Pathan

Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency

Introduced by The Novelry, and now represented by Chloe Seager at MMLA.

 

The Ninety Day Novel
The Big Edit
best editors

Brooke Hardwick

A.M. Heath

Introduced by The Novelry, and now represented by Euan Thorneycroft.

 

The Ninety Day Novel
The Big Edit
The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment

 

best editors

Clare Barnett Huerta

Aevitas Creative Management New York

Introduced by The Novelry, and now represented by Chris Bucci at Aevitas Creative Management.

Clare says: ‘Having the support and guidance of accomplished publishing professionals was invaluable at every step. Editors Tash and Josie helped my submission package shine and introduced me to my agent. I’d recommend The Novelry to any novelist pursuing traditional publishing.’

The Ninety Day Novel
The Big Edit 

The book editors who help you get published.

 

“My story whisperer book editor took my submission package to the next level. She gave me the perfect premise line, went over my first three chapters with her brilliant editorial eye, and gave masterful advice on how to reorganize my book’s timeline to jack up suspense. She then. I couldn’t recommend The Novelry more highly.”

—Helena Echlin, is now represented by Janklow & Nesbit after submission by The Novelry. Clever Little Thing has been sold to Pamela Dorman Books/ Penguin Random House and Penguin Canada, Grijalbo (Spain) and Nord (Italy).

Enjoy finishing your novel with The Novelry.

The Finished Novel Course
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