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, you’ll 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.
Meet our editorial services team
The only book editing services with direct submission to literary agencies

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
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.

Tash Barsby
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.

Craig Leyenaar
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.

Francine Toon
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.

Josie Humber
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.

Gillian Holmes
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.

Lily Lindon
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.

Krystle Appiah
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.
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 upA 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.
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.
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.
How does the traditional publishing process work?
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.
What might be the right course or service for me to work with your book editors?
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.
How does a writer get a publishing deal?

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

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

Clare Barnett Huerta
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.’
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