Manuscript Reads.
When you send me your manuscript, my first aim is to respond innocently, as a reader who might pick up your book in a shop, before I switch into editor mode and begin to analyse what may be going wrong with the Story threads and the possible reasons for thar. Although I do line-edit when I feel things are unclear, or if there are technical issues which I feel are limiting the reader’s experience, the main concentration of my feedback will be structural.
This means I will talk about the places where I feel the momentum of the story slows, or perhaps where I’m not clear what the character wants or why they are doing what they do. I will look for strands that have been dropped; I will tell you about the expectations raised in me at the start of the story, the questions I want answers to, especially if this has not happened by the end. I will look at how your characters change through the story. I will look at what has been seeded and what has not. I will set your story against structures that have been handed down ever since stories were first told.
After two weeks you receive the manuscript with my line annotations and a separate feedback report (usually around 6 pages). You can then take as much time as you want to digest my comments before setting up a meeting with me (online, by phone, or in person) in which we can discuss anything in my report, and brainstorm ideas for changes and moving forward with the work.
Costs
My fees for Manuscript Reads are dependent on word count, and I will give you an exact quote when I know the size of your work.
But to give an idea, I charge £100 for each 10,000 words, plus another £250 for the time spent writing the report and our post-feedback meeting. So that would mean the approximate fees below:
Manuscripts of around 60K-80K: £850 - £1050
Manuscripts of around 100K: £1250
I am happy to read subsequent drafts at a discounted rate. I no longer read short extracts, except in the case where I have been working with an author over a long period, as I feel I am most useful and effective when responding to the arc of a complete draft.
Submission Package Read
I am also happy to look at Submission Packages, for readers who feel ready to send out their work. This would include your query letter, a synopsis and the Sample Pages you have been asked to send by a particular agency (this can vary). I will give feedback on each of these elements, in order to make them the strongest documents they can be when it comes to giving the publishing world an enticing and accurate trailer for your story. We will look at the use of comp titles as well as how to write a pitch paragraph as well as the contrasting synopsis, an overall blueprint of your novel.
The flat fee for a Synopsis Read is £250.
