• Do you want to learn how to fix it?
• Do you have a dynamite idea for a best seller but you don't know how to put a book proposal together? 
• Do you find writing your own author's profile the toughest thing to do? 
• Are you frustrated trying to condense your story line into a crisp, exciting synopsis that will appeal to prospective agents and publishers?
• Are you making the most of your query letters?
• Have you decided to self-publish but you need someone to edit, typeset and do page layouts before you engage a printer?

In today's competitive market, you have to polish your manuscript until it dazzles friends and family before you surrender it to the most demanding of critics ... literary agents and editors of publishing houses. They don't have time to develop your potential and only run with the writers who have both learned their craft well and created a compelling story.

When writing becomes daunting, some writers turn to peer groups or workshops where they share feedback on their latest work in progress and help each other connect to agents and publishers. There are courses, books, web rings and writers-in-residence assigned to local libraries as resources dedicated to helping new writers produce another "best seller." There is no single formula to success, however. While one person thrives on the attention of group activities, the confidence of another is stifled. Despite self-help gurus, well-intentioned teachers and constructive criticism from peers, family and friends, it's still easy to feel overwhelmed with advice and opinions. That's why using an empathetic editor to help you through difficult stages saves you time and heartache. 

When your goal is to be published, there is no feeling to equal the thrill of seeing your first book in print. It's a dream fulfilled, the ultimate reward for your persistence. If you believe in yourself and the story you want to tell, you owe it to yourself to see it through properly. 

WRITER/AUTHOR SERVICES

• MANUSCRIPT EVALUATION

After reviewing your manuscript, your hard copy will be marked up with comments in the margin about specific problems noted in tone or word choice, for instance, or language usage (syntax) and consistency. In addition, you will receive a separate report recognizing your strong points as well as areas in content that need to be improved. For example, your characters may lack depth. Your dialog may be stilted. You may need to foreshadow critical turning points you suddenly spring on your reader or rev up your pacing. Maybe the pieces of your story don't fit together logically. Maybe you are trying to do too much, and in the process making it difficult for your readers to grasp your point. One problem publishers complain about is the way writers arbitrarily switch points of view. Have you researched your material enough? Have you created powerful images? Do you capitalize on conflict? Where a problem is noted, we will cite specific passages and show you how to improve it, but we will not do substantive editing or rewriting in this report. Our purpose is to give you tips and tools to work through your own final revision.
 
• LINE-BY-LINE EDITING OR PROOFREADING

We will go through your manuscript correcting spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. We will provide you with a separate disk with our editorial changes highlighted in yellow. 
 
• SUBSTANTIVE OR CONTENT EDITING

This is a more comprehensive approach to editing where the emphasis is as much on story flow(that is theme, plot, organization,and character) and style (such as word choice, tone, point of view, transitions, or pacing) as structure and includes two readings. From beginning to end, can the reader trace the direction the story is taking? If you asked your reader, could he or she capture this purpose in a single sentence or phrase? If he can't, then your theme is not working. What about the balance between dialog and description, action and narration, characterization and plot? Are you constantly writing in a passive voice? Do you hound the reader with clichés? How vivid is your imagery? Along with your original manuscript disk, we return a separate disk with high-lighted areas in yellow and accompanying notes in pink asking you questions to help you see how you can improve your own work. 
 
• MANUSCRIPT REWRITING 

For this service, we make the editorial changes rather than guide you to make them for yourself. We provide a rewritten copy of your manuscript on a separate disk with yellow highlights to show you where we improved the content. If you prefer, you can send chapters as you complete them, but once your story is finished, it will still have to undergo a thorough revision.
 
• GHOST WRITING

If you have a story to tell but don't know how to put it together, we can work with you to write it. The best approach is to let us interview you about what it is you want to say. It is important to identify your market or type of reader. We then work from tapes of your interview to build a concept and outline to follow. We will do research as needed, write the original draft and rewrite as many times as it takes to produce an enticing powerful story.
 
• BOOK PROPOSALS

Non-fiction book proposals that make an editor want to contract your work show credible research about your topic, sound arguments that distinguish your idea from anything else on bookstore shelves, a clear understanding of your competition and market, reasons why you are the most qualified author to write your book, an appealing title, a broad overview that begins with the description of your book in one captivating sentence, a table of contents with a brief pitch on each chapter, one sample chapter, and above all, a compelling one-page covering letter. 

Sounds easy and straight-forward, right? In fact, the reason why many good authors fail to get their non-fiction works published is because they didn't provide a convincing book proposal. In fiction writing, you can let the characters drive your plot and prose, and worry about your organization after you've completed your first draft. For non-fiction, you have to draw your blueprint first.

We can take the worry out of writing a winning book proposal. If you have composed a book proposal already, we will look it over and let you know if you have put together a blockbuster presentation. If it's weak, we will help you rewrite it. If you don't want to write your book proposal but believe you have a "best seller" idea, we will help you through the process of researching and structuring your project and write the book proposal, including sample chapter if needed, for you. 

Turnaround times for the above services are between three and eight weeks, except for manuscript rewriting, which depends on the amount of corrective changes required, and ghost writing — this is a long-term project.
 

CONVINCING YOUR CUSTOMER that you have the right product or service for them depends on the way you communicate. Communicating is more than just stringing words together. It's about building loyal relationships and credibility. How you talk about your company and what it does says as much about its quality as your products, services and employees. 

When the bottom line is factored in, it makes cost-effective sense to outsource your special communications projects. Say your organization wants to commemorate a significant anniversay with either a history of itself or a chronicle on the profession or industry it represents. We particularly welcome anniversary projects that require research, writing, editing and full production. Such requirements as directories, catalogues, brochures, manuals and web site content are other promotional activities that benefit from short-term expertise and prepress professionalism. 

Most challenging is proposing new ideas for content development. It's important to note that the computer screen is 75% more difficult to read than printed paper. This fact alone tells us that we have to change the way we present information on a web site. Visitors browse for information, which means they skim read. Catching their attention and keeping it on a web site requires new treatments and new attitudes. In advertising, the rule of thumb has always been to appeal to the lowest average intelligence. People using the Internet, however, are not short of brainpower. They are short of time. That’s an important difference. They are looking for information they can use immediately. Thus, the initial expectation that users would enjoy flashy colorful graphics proved faulty. No matter how slick a web page looks, if the text is sloppy and doesn’t read well, you'll lose business. Browsing prospects will move on to the next site, and your opportunity is gone. 

To gain the business and personal success you desire, we help you make information work for you, in print and on your web site.

Turnaround time depends on the size of job. Flat fees per project can be negotiated though charges are based on an hourly rate. (See rates.)

MANUSCRIPT 
Please submit one hard copy on 20-lb. white paper, 8½ by 11 inches, printed on one side only in standard manuscript text format: 

• 12-point Courier or Courier New font
• double-spaced text 
• 1¼-inch margins all around
• TWO spaces between full sentence stops for submission to agents and editors of traditional publishing houses
• ONE space between sentences for submission to "print-on-demand" or electronic publishers
• underline anything to be emphasized — NO ITALICS and NO BOLDING — in text submitted to agents and editors but check with printers for their preference for identifying special treatment of text 
• DO PUT YOUR COPYRIGHT NOTICE or SYMBOL on the TITLE PAGE in 10 pt. print under your phone number top left and centered on every page in pt. 8 print in the FOOTER of your manuscript to protect yourself from unscrupulous agents or parties who try to steal your work. Until a publisher contracts your work, which automatically protects it, or you decide to self-publish, you have to safeguard your manuscript. Another way of protecting your manuscript is to mail both a hard copy and disk with your manuscript file to yourself by registered mail. When you receive it, you cannot open the seal. If you do have to make a challenge in court, then the court will open the seal to compare the copy you are challenging with your original. 
• title page must have:
at top left, author's name, address, phone number
at top right, total word count and category (fiction genre or type of non-fiction)
at center almost half-way down, title of the work in upper case — TITLE — with the author's byline centered on the next line in upper and lower case — By Author's Name
at lower right, if author has an agent, name of agency, address and agent's phone number — see below

• each new chapter begins with the heading in uppercase — CHAPTER ONE — and starts about a third down the page
• headers are to include: 
at top left, a word or two of the title in uppercase, slash and author's last name in upper and lower case — TREASON/Toews 
• at top right, pages numbered consecutively for each page
• indents for each new paragraph must be five spaces — see below

Please save your manuscript file on an IBM formatted 3½" floppy disk. MS Word users can save in rich text format, but if you work in either Mac Word or WordPerfect, please save your files to disk in text only. It's easier to convert back and forth between your word processing program and ours. 

Before submitting, be sure to spell check and grammar check your manuscript. This will catch glaring spelling mistakes and poor grammar habits. 

We also need a brief description of the readers you hope to target and your reasons for writing this work.

ORGANIZATIONS
Phone (905) 697-7991 to discuss the best way to submit materials required to do a contracted assignment.