Today’s newsletter is more of a year-in-review and housekeeping update than an advice post, but I hope you won’t mind one of these every once in a while. 2019 has so far been an unexpectedly busy year for me and Manuscript Works. One of my goals for the year was to diversify my editorial and consulting activities and I’ve managed to accomplish that: in addition to the one-on-one developmental editing work I’ve always done, this year I’ve added my book proposal accelerator, a webinar and online course for academic editors, much more consulting work on book proposals, and, of course, this newsletter.

A challenge I’ve faced as my editorial business has grown is that there’s only one of me and only so much time I can spend working with authors one-on-one. The accelerator and this newsletter have helped me reach more people when my editing schedule is full and, I hope, given many more authors the tools to develop their scholarly book projects and pitch them with confidence. Those have also been the aims of my Quick Proposal Eval service, which has allowed me to assist several authors on short notice with a speedy shot of feedback, encouragement, and strategic planning. Some of those clients have even seen results within a matter of days: a scholar I did an eval session with last week already has bites from two excellent presses. You love to see it!

My other major project this year has been a book manuscript that I conceived this spring and pitched to a handful of publishers this summer. It’s a handbook on scholarly book proposals, and I should soon be able to tell you who is publishing it and approximately when. I hope to have a full draft of that manuscript complete by early spring 2020, but in order for me to meet that deadline, my scheduling books will unfortunately continue to be closed to new clients. The one exception will be the Quick Proposal Evals, which I’ll still be scheduling all through this fall and winter. Watch this space early next year for updates on when my editing schedule will be fully open again. And definitely watch this space for updates about the handbook because you know I will not miss a chance to give you an insider peek into how books get written, edited, and published.

And hey, one more thing! I will be in Honolulu in November for a much-anticipated break from my one-year-old and four-year-old (they’re lovely but I really need a vacation). My trip will coincide with the first few days of the American Studies Association conference; if you will be there too and want to schedule an in-person Quick Proposal Eval, please hit me up.