Services

Is it your dream to publish a kids book, but you’re not sure it’s ready?

You have concerns about the voice, or the pace, or wonder if it sticks the landing?

Totally over it and can’t look at it one more time?

You’re in the perfect place.

I specialise in middle grade and young adult manuscripts.

My services are listed below. If your project is somewhere between stages, or you’re not quite sure what it needs, please contact me for a chat.

Sample edit

Because every editor works differently, a sample edit is a useful way to see whether we’re the right fit.

$100 for up to 1,000 words (deductible from full quote if you go ahead to book a service with me).

Manuscript assessment
(Big picture)

peachy solid.png — “I came to Jessica for a manuscript assessment for a YA novel I had been working on for a few years. I wish I had done it earlier! She
was able to offer carefully considered suggestions for character arc and plot issues I had been struggling with.”

Hannah Forrest, writer

Send me your Word document. I’ll bring my fresh eyes to it – and I’ll be gentle, but honest.

I’ll look at the ‘big picture’ of the work and write you a report assessing the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of narrative arc, character development, plot, voice, pace and style, and where to from here.

When you receive this report, you’ll get to see your draft with fresh eyes again. There may be new possibilities you hadn’t thought of before – a spark of inspiration. You will have clear recommendations of what to do next to make this book the best it can be.

Investment:

20k–30k words: $580

30k–40k words: $705

40k–50k words: $830

50k–60k words: $950

60k–70k words: $1080

70k–80k words: $1200

As a guide, the average middle grade novel is about 35,000 – 50,000 words, and young adult novels can go up to 80,000 words.

Copyedit
(Line by line)

If your draft is structurally sound (in terms of big picture issues like plot, character, point of view etc), it’s ready for me to dive in for the line-by-line edit.

By the end of this stage you’ll have a solid draft that reads like a book and that’s ready to be typeset (how exciting!)

Investment: Starts at $AUD 0.05 per word. In order to give you a personalised quote that is fair for both of us, I need to see the manuscript first.

Please contact me to discuss your project.

Proofread
(Final polish)

Your manuscript is back from the designer and looks like a book! It has a cover, a blurb and typeset pages in the font of your dreams.

It’s now ready for a final check, because little errors can slip through the copyedit stage and can even be introduced during design. As well as running a fine-tooth comb through the text, I’ll check your contents, page numbers, headers and footers, and I’ll triple-check the spelling on the front cover (you’d be amazed…)

At the end of this stage – guess what – it’s ready to be sent to the printer. Get pumped for that heart-stopping ‘press print’ moment.

Investment: Starts at $AUD 0.03 per word, but just like the copyedit, I really need to see the manuscript first to give you a fair quote. Please contact me.

Popular package:

Manuscript assessment + first 10 pages copyedit

Inclusions:

Full read through of your manuscript, start to finish

‘Big-picture’ manuscript assessment of your draft with recommendations for next steps
Copyedit of first 10 pages to bring sentence-level suggestions to your attention and give you an understanding of craft issues and how to correct them. You can then apply this knowledge to the rest of your draft, and it’ll save you money on editing later.

Investment: I’ll need to know the total word count and see the first 10 pages before I can put this quote together for you.

As an estimate for a 50,000 word manuscript, this package would work out about $1,000.

Please contact me.

Note: all fees are in Australian dollars (AUD).