Book Producer · Cambridge, MA
I help people finish, edit, design, and publish books.
You know how on TV a character will toss a box of receipts and hand-scrawled notes at his accountant, and they complain—but still file his return? You know how that isn’t a thing? (Accountants make you key in everything yourself.)
You can do that with me, and I won’t complain. Chuck anything and everything at me: coffee-stained typewritten pages, handwritten notebooks, audio or video recordings, Sanskrit tablets, etc. I’ll hand you back a manuscript we can edit to completion.
I also help authors bring older, out-of-print books back into print.
Talk about your projectI help you finish your book. We start by crafting an individualized process, using the tech you prefer: creating a weekly schedule, setting milestones, and providing accountability, support, and trouble-shooting when needed.
Make the book.
I pull the final manuscript together into a file you are comfortable working with. We can use track changes in these documents—or not, if you don’t know how, and have decided never to waste another second of your life acquiring new software skills. (Don’t feel guilty; I know a half dozen former programmers who have walked away from the technology treadmill.)
Developmental editing that looks at structure, voice, and market positioning before anything gets exhaustively copy-edited. Content organization, putting the pieces in order.
I have all the professional skills to make a book end to end. I have worked for decades as an author, business-writer, art director, illustrator, and graphic designer. Also, I have subscriptions to the stupidly expensive industry standard tools used to make high-quality books.
I don’t consult on or build traditional agent/publisher query packages, but I’ll help you find and work with someone who does.
I won’t guarantee a typo-free manuscript ready for a large offset press run without a final professional proofreading pass; I’ll help you find a professional proofreader, or help create a crowd-sourced volunteer process.
If memoir work unearths serious unresolved trauma, that’s not something I’m trained to handle. I’ll let you know if I think that’s happening, and we will revise your plan for completing your book.
I’m an author who has published traditionally and independently. I’ve written, published, marketed, and maintained a catalog of dozens of titles at Amazon and other online marketplaces. I’ve worked with and for indie authors making a living writing on their own terms.
I have one of those 4-year degrees we don’t advise kids getting anymore, and I’m a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. I’ve moderated writing workshops for decades, and I’ve taught at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.
I do not recommend creative writers use LLMs (Gen AI) to generate prose or poetry. If your first draft isn’t yours… no subsequent draft can ever be.
My process does not inject a single AI-written word into your manuscript. But I am not the purity police. I respect my clients’ process and privacy. You can, and should, use any tool you see fit—for organizing, creating story bibles, or copy-editing—anything that helps you get your book into the world.
Send me a note through the contact form and we’ll set up a phone conversation to see whether I’m a good fit.