Editorial Services

“Great editing is invisible. When the reader forgets the editor exists, we’ve done our job.” – Robert Gottlieb

Creation is a very intimate process. By way of knowledge, experience, dedication and passion, I AM BOOKS exists to to help poets and authors produce the best work of their lives, from behind the curtain.

I AM BOOKS offers editorial services for printed works of all genres, but specializes in poetry and prose, collections and novels, both fiction and nonfiction. As authors ourselves, we know how much vulnerability is associated with offering a book for scrutiny. We remember anxiously waiting to hear back from presses, from publishers, from other authors, prepared for rejection, armed with hope, a belief in the art and a willingness to keep going.

Recalling those moments of our journey, we also remember to give delicate, specific and productive feedback to bear the most meaning and beauty out of a given work. I AM BOOKS offers both process and product-oriented revisions depending on the desires of individual clients.

We are fast, efficient, empathetic, attentive, and offer many levels of services—from literary fixes, to comprehensive manuscript review, to copy and line editing, coaching, craft development, process support and more.

I AM BOOKS uses standard editorial rates as set by the Editorial Freelancers Association. We remain true to our mission and flexible to help all independent writers succeed, and will work with any author in need of flexibility on their way to print. Don't hesitate to get in contact, we can figure out an option that fits you and your project's needs.

I AM BOOKS offers conferences in person (Austin, TX), on telephone, or via FaceTime/Zoom.

See the list of available editorial services below, then click the Contact button if you think we can help.

• Close readings (explication, exegesis)
• Ordering poems in your manuscript
• Detailed letter about your manuscript's ideas, themes, strengths, problems, form, structure, and tone
• Literary fixes: focussing the manuscript inward, building structures (link/chain method) using specific language, enhancing flow between transitions, charging static diction with energy
• Help bringing out the poet's best intention for the poems without imposing my own aesthetics
• Empathic inquiry into waking up all the connections between the deeper subject and feelings
• Encouraging capacity for psychological stamina after inspiration, wherein the writer nurses their strongest feelings
• Skills of deepening oneself in the writing
• Copy editing: grammar, punctuation, spelling, format uniformity
• Line editing: sentence level edits for syntax, tone, style and word choice
• Understanding navigating the self-publishing industry
• Understanding how your work is seen, received, and how it relates to other people
• Support with process: making sure the practice sits in the parameters of life
• Strategies for managing promotion and marketing

Craft issues include:

• The function of poetry, doing everything at once, context, unfolding, untrammeled, words, sentence vs. line, precedent, history / family tree of U.S. poetry from the colonial period until now, continuum, the poet in society, critique and celebration
• Metaphor, limbo, metonymy, conventional insights vs. surprising insights, risk, clarity, mystery
• Syntax, diction, rhetoric, withholding, thresholds of known and unknown, declarative sentences, parataxis, compound sentences
• Free verse, lineation, juxtaposition, inversion, clauses, phrases, predicate adjectives vs. nominative adjectives
• Rhyme, sound, rhythm, caesura, enjambment, end-stopped, masculine vs. feminine endings, fragments, couplets
• Meter, scansion, mood, pentameter, blank verse, assonance, constant vs. variant, sonnet, volta, octave vs. sestet, accentual vs. syllabic, meaning and context
• Diction, concrete vs. abstraction, tropes, figures of thought, figures of speech, symbols, simile, tenor and vehicle, metonymy, allusion
• Character, voice, psychic distance, rhetorical structure, speaker, dramatic monologue, hyperbole, meiosis
• Received forms, nonce form, organic form, method, theme, allusion, tension, restrictions
• Experiment, sound, sense, rhythm
• Creative reading, stunt doubles, intention, difficulty