Book Editing Services + Other Creative Work
My main gig here is book editing, but I have also worked in marketing for fifteen years and could help you navigate your author website, too.
What would you like to work on together?
Meet Andie, the Page Carver
& Real Human Person
Got questions?
Check out the FAQs.
Want to schedule an intro call
or receive a FREE sample edit?
Book Evaluation + Editing Services
Personalized Manuscript Evaluation
With a personalize manuscript evaluation, you will receive an editor’s letter (one to three pages) on what worked well and what could be improved, with a few specific examples of changes you could make to elevate the work, including both big-picture and line-level issues to correct.
Comprehensive Copy/Line Editing
I will consider tone, clarity, flow, and rhythm, prioritizing action verbs over passive verbs. Improving syntax and diction while maintaining the author’s unique voice is my specialty. I track my changes in Word, so you can clearly see my edits, and I leave comments in the margins to let you know how the work is coming across to me as a reader. I use Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Ed. to guide my grammar edits and Merriam-Webster to guide my spelling edits.
Returning clients are eligible for discounts. Email andie@pagecarver.com for details.
The Book Report: Line Editing + Developmental Feedback
This service includes line edits (many of the tracked changes I would include in my copy editing services, plus I will move paragraphs around if the corresponding sections are only a short distance away), annotations, and a book report that covers:
- Assessment on how well the first third of the book communicates your thesis and/or introduces the story
- Identification of your reader audience
- Definitions of themes, motifs, tone, and voice
- Notes on words and sentence structures that have been repeated too frequently
- Evaluation of structural arc of the book overall
- Suggestions for rearranging your book or individual chapters as needed
- Chapter by chapter analysis: thesis, argument, sources, conclusion, segue
- Questions that need to be answered before the book can feel finished
- Points of plot or structure conflict that should be remedied
- Points of redundancy to cut
- Notes on specific areas you’d like me to review with special attention
- MORE
Returning clients are eligible for discounts. Email andie@pagecarver.com for details.
Books I’ve Worked On
These are some books I’ve worked on, some of which I’m especially proud of. If the book is included on this page I either had a hand in ghostwriting, developmental editing, copy editing, or proofreading—or I wrote the dang thing myself.
Hourly Services
Content Marketing – $60/hour
I started my digital marketing career in 2010, so you’re in good hands. I offer blog writing and editing, SEO/GEO, website management, copywriting, script writing email marketing, and more.
Book Marketing – $75/hour
I offer all content marketing services plus book-specific marketing services, including Goodreads author page creation and management, Amazon keyword optimization, newsletter creation, and more.
Book Ghostwriting – $150/hour
I have ghostwritten seven books so far, and if your book topic and our collaborative philosophies align, we could make it eight books. I offer discounts to authors willing to share a byline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are video calls included in your prices?
Calls are included in my ghostwriting and content marketing services!
For my manuscript evaluation and editing services, I will offer one call up to 30 minutes, so we can meet each other and determine if we would be a good fit. After that I will charge $30 per 30-minute call. (In my experience, however, my editor’s letter or other forms of communication are so clear that no further calls are needed.)
What kind of books do you edit?
I have a soft spot for memoir or self-help/memoir hybrids; I like to read about spiritual awakenings, sex and relationships, psychedelic drugs, redemption arcs, trauma (without traumatizing the reader), activism, and other stuff. For fiction, I love horror and dark fantasy and sci/fi.
What kind of books do you ghostwrite?
Ghostwriting someone else’s book is like caring for someone else’s baby during its formative years: It’s delicate. It’s scary. It can be really beautiful with the right partnership.
Because the Dark Night of the Soul is tough terrain to endure for someone else’s creative passion, I am very choosey about the type of books I will ghostwrite.
To get a feel for the topics I’d like to write about, these are some examples of books I WISH I had ghostwritten:
- Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Franchise Rewrote the Rules of Horror by Ashley Cullins
- Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger by Lama Rod Owens
- I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton
- Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba
- Shit, Actually by Lindy West
- Sociopath by Patric Gagne
- Humankind by Rutger Bregman
- Group by Christie Tate
- Meaty by Samantha Irby
- How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
- Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
If your book aligns with these topics, please feel free to reach out to me about my ghostwriting services. Otherwise, I will likely reject the offer and recommend you reach out for developmental editing services when your first draft is complete.
How is “developmental feedback” different from “developmental editing”?
My “Book Report” services include line-level work as well as detailed developmental feedback. While your manuscript will include tracked changes and comments, I do not make major developmental changes in your manuscript. Instead, I prefer to empower authors to make key strategic changes based on suggestions in their detailed book report.
Why don’t you implement the developmental feedback you suggest in manuscripts?
I may suggest cutting a scene that doesn’t make sense in context to me, but you–knowing your story and your intention–could come to realize, as a result of that feedback, that you were not clear about a core detail. Instead of cutting the scene, you may decide to expand on that section.
Can we work on a style guide together before we get started?
Absolutely! I use Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Ed. to guide my grammar edits and Merriam-Webster to guide my spelling edits, but if, for example, you have special spellings for characters or new terms you have developed for your self-help book, I would need to keep that in mind during the edit.
Do you offer proofreading services?
Unfortunately, I do not at this time.
I have enjoyed proofreading in the past, but I cannot turn in a book without commenting on parts that are unclear, which kind of puts the responsibility back on the author, and because proofreading is the penultimate step before layout design, it is not fair to have a professional point out a fundamental error right before you believe you are ready to go to layout. Even if we have gone through developmental and copy editing together, I think it benefits the author to have another pair of eyes on their manuscript.
Ready to Get to Work?
What would you like to work together on?