editorial consultingStarting in the spring of 2025, I’ll be available to take on a limited number of fiction and nonfiction manuscript consultations each season. Based on the scope and state of your project, we’ll come up with a customized plan based on one of two processes, or “packages,” as I’m calling them, which are outlined below. My goal as your editorial consultant is to help you meet your project on its own terms and showcase the areas in which it shines. I don’t believe in rushing the work of writing and revising; you can expect that if we work together, we’ll likely do so over the course of at least a full season so that we each have the intermittent space from the manuscript necessary in order to see it clearly, and in full.
I offer a combination of broad developmental edits, close line edits, and media lists meant to help you identify work that’s in conversation with your own. I can also help you to generate query letters, pitches, excerpts, and statements of intent that can strengthen how you communicate about your work with agents, editors, and artist residency/MFA admission committees.
A little bit about my editorial experience: I’ve worked professionally as a developmental editor in academic publishing and e-learning for over eight years. I’ve taught writing at a few different stages of my career: first at The New School, then through The Adroit Journal’s summer mentorship program, and most recently most recently with Jericho Writers. For several years I was the fiction editor at Triangle House Review. My fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have been published widely over the last decade, and as such I’ve been through editorial processes of all stripes at major magazines and indie publications alike. I hope to share with my clients the most helpful lessons I’ve learned about thoughtfully pitching, submitting, editing, publishing, and promoting both shortform and longform work.
I believe financial transparency’s important, and my rates are outlined and explained below. If these fees present a financial barrier, please reach out anyway—we can endeavor together to come up with a rate that will work for both of us.
I also offer gratis consultations in the areas of short fiction and nonfiction development (for pieces <6,000 words), query letters, and artist residency/MFA applications to emerging writers from underrepresented backgrounds who haven’t yet been contracted to write a full-length book.
Package OneFor edits focused on structural development, I charge $55/hr at a minimum of 5 hours and a maximum of 35 hours.
I recommend this option for full-length manuscripts that are still in-progress or newly completed, or for short-form fiction or narrative nonfiction pieces under 6,000 words. That way, we can customize a plan focused on what you need most to bring your project over the finish line: structural suggestions, line edits, accountability check-ins, editorial conversations, etc.
These hours can be purchased and then spent however you choose: for example, you might ask for a 10-hour commitment, with seven of those hours dedicated to editorial work and three of them dedicated to hour-long meetings at the beginning, middle, and end of the process, so that we can review your manuscript together. Or you might purchase 20 hours and ask to send new pages along every week over a period of, say, 10 weeks, asking that I spend an hour a week reviewing and editing them, and an hour a week on a call or Zoom with you to “workshop” them.
Package TwoFor close and intensive line edits completed throughout the entirety of a finished manuscript, as well as
a detailed letter outlining the manuscript’s strengths and areas of potential improvement,
a customized reading list of comparable titles, and
two hour-long calls to discuss the manuscript at the start and at the conclusion of the editorial process,
I charge $0.04 per word at a minimum of 40,000 words and a maximum of 120,000 words.
I recommend this option for projects or manuscripts that have been through at least a draft or two and now need pointed feedback, stylistic notes, beat-by-beat edits, and query- or submission-ready polishing.
I’ll also consult with you on next steps for your project; we can discuss querying agents, writing and pitching short material that’s tonally or ideologically in conversation with your manuscript to websites or magazines, and more.
“Some people read and give opinions about a story; Alex reads and finds its beating heart. Without her generous insights, so much of my work would still be stalled in first-draft-land, and it would be far less fun. The way she sees my work is thrilling—like permission to keep going, with more buoyancy, and a much better idea of where to go.”
“Alex is an extraordinarily astute and sensitive editor. Working with her was a joy— she helped me both get closer to my intentions for the writing and to see new possibilities. She’s so generous with her time and energy, funny, and warm. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor.”
“ Alex is an incredible reader and a phenomenal editor. She is absolutely adept at seeing not just what a manuscript is, but what it could and should be, and she is sensitive enough to gently shepherd the writer along the path they need to be on.”
get in touchtestimonialsprocessSend me a note at alexandrabrooketanner@gmail.com to discuss project proposals or any questions you might have about working together.
If you’re submitting a project for consideration, please make certain your subject line contains your full name, your project’s title, the genre you’re working in, and your current word count. In your e-mail, tell me a little bit about how you came to the kind of work you’re doing, where you feel your project currently stands, and what your goals for revision look like. Feel free to include a short bio, links to thematically-similar work you’ve published in the past, etc.