Pandemic Adjustments at Manuscript Works

Hello friends. This is just a quick message to say that if you’re not getting as much done as you wanted to while you supposedly have a ton of extra “free time,” I sympathize! I mostly blame my children (a four-year-old and a one-year-old who used to spend 40-ish hours a week in childcare), but honestly, I think it would be hard to work even if I didn’t have to pay constant attention to them. Due to this change in circumstances, I’m not as available to my clients as I would otherwise be, which is a bummer.

Normally, my door is very open to new clients who are looking for services such as my Quick Proposal Eval, which just takes a couple hours and lets me meet new scholars and learn about great projects-in-progress. But I’m putting a pause on these for now because I just don’t have any extra couple-hour chunks in my weeks anymore. In fact, I’m pausing almost everything work-related until childcare becomes available again.

The one major exception is my Book Proposal Accelerator, which I’m still running from May 1st to June 18th. This means that if you’ve been thinking about contacting me to work together on a book proposal this spring or summer, the Accelerator is the only opportunity for that in the foreseeable future. In the context of the Accelerator, I’ll be available on a daily basis to answer questions about your book proposal, your submission strategy, and anything else related to publishing your scholarly book with an academic publisher. I’ll give personalized feedback on the pieces of your proposal that you draft during the Accelerator if you want it (I just ask that you post your work in the group forum so that everyone can benefit from the feedback at the same time). We’ll also be doing some (optional) Zoom sessions with acquisitions editors at top university presses—I still have a couple invitations to send out but I’m hoping to announce the names of the confirmed editors next week. Even if you’re not fully ready to draft your proposal yet, you’re welcome to follow along with the discussions and Q&A sessions and then save the downloadable materials for whenever you are ready to sit down and bang out the proposal.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to work with more of you one-on-one in the near future, but I hope to see some of you in the Accelerator next month! If you have questions about whether the Accelerator is the right fit for what you need, I’m always happy to field them. You can reply to this email or find me over on Twitter.

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The one other work thing I’ve got going on in the near future is a webinar through the Editorial Freelancers Association, which I’m doing this Wednesday, April 22nd, at 7pm Eastern time. It’s aimed at people who may be considering getting into academic developmental editing and want to find out what it’s all about. If that’s you, please join me. I’d love to hear from some friendly newsletter readers in the Q&A after my presentation. :)