Manuscript Critique
Candid, constructive editorial critiques for complete manuscripts, book proposals, and unfinished works-in-progress
Overview of Services
The first goal of our manuscript critique services is to provide candid, constructive, and thorough feedback on your manuscript’s condition and its literary and commercial potential. The idea isn’t to callously judge a work or its writer but to give you a professional book editor’s perspective on what works, what doesn’t work or could work better, and what you might consider doing to give your manuscript the best chance of marketplace success. This feedback helps inform your revision process and bring clarity to specific goals and objectives intended to improve the quality of your story and its writing.
The second goal of these services is to assess your manuscript’s editorial needs and what kind of further help, if any, would be most beneficial after you’ve revised with your editor’s feedback in mind. Once we’ve read your manuscript, provided written feedback, and discussed that with you by phone or email, you’ll have a much better sense of where your work stands in relation to relevant industry standards, what you need to work on, and what editorial course may be appropriate.
Further information about critique services pricing, turnaround time, and coverage is available via links at right (desktop) or below (on mobile devices) or by contacting our author services director Ross Browne at the Tucson office.
Quicklinks
Recommended Reading
Evaluating Nonfiction: One Editor’s Approach What can set your nonfiction manuscript up for success ... or doom it to the reject pile
[by Peter Gelfan] Fiction lives or dies by the author's storytelling and writing skills (and perseverance and some luck). For nonfiction, then, one might assume that likewise, an interesting topic well elucidated will do the [...]
Jonathan Balcombe on Writing, Editing, and Getting Published A bestselling nonfiction author shares his approach to editing and mentoring others
[guest post by Jonathan Balcombe] My career as a biology student, animal advocate, editor and author has required me to write at every stage: essays, lab reports, a thesis and a dissertation, peer-reviewed journal articles, [...]
The First Duty of a Manuscript Critique Why candor matters and what you can expect from your editor if your manuscript isn't very good
[by Ross Browne] The first thing I'd put on the table in connection with how we handle very flawed manuscripts can, I hope, go without saying. And that's that we never want to be discouraging [...]
“The ‘proper stuff of fiction’ does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon, no perception comes amiss.” Virginia Woolf