Book Coaching & Editing

A book coach nurtures a book project at three levels: the project management level, the editorial level and the emotional level. It’s different than an editor, who involves themselves only at the editorial level. These three different levels are integral to a book becoming a real thing in the world.

Book coaches have come into being in response to a changing industry. Traditional publishing houses historically have taken care of all the steps to publishing a book, and it was the editor who would walk with the writer all the way through the months and years it took to produce a book. Some editors stayed with their authors throughout their entire careers.

But that was then and this is now. Most publishers don’t have the capacity or resources to give their writers that kind of high-touch treatment. Instead, they now look for turnkey manuscripts—books that already are polished, carve a great narrative arc, and don’t need a lot of additional work. Agents know this too, so they’re increasingly inclined to only accept really strong manuscripts.

It's up to writers to get their manuscripts into top shape. The field of book coaching has grown over the past decade to address this new part of the publishing process. A book coach gives your manuscript the care and attention that it needs to be a strong contender for traditional publishing.

A book coach also fills that gap for people who are self-publishing or hybrid publishing. As the market becomes saturated with indie books, high-quality books stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Writing courses are great, and they teach essential concepts, but they’re not customized to your book project. Editors are also great to show you what’s not working, but a book coach gives you a personal tutor who will walk through your pages with you and show you how to improve your writing.

Here’s what my mentor, Jennie Nash, says about why a book coach is so helpful. This is from the Your Creative Push podcast, episode 279, at 20:12:

“A book is a massively big project. Most people don’t really understand this truth. A book is read in a linear fashion, so most people think that’s the way it gets written. But that’s not true. A book can’t be made in the way it is consumed—there are a lot of if/then propositions, a lot of logic…a lot of game theory, really. Strategy, like chess.

“Writing a book is as complex in many ways as building a house. If you look at a Gantt chart that maps the stages of a big project—building a piece of software, say, or a house—you’ll see that a book project takes the same shape and structure.

“A book coach brings a strategic mindset to tackling that project. A coach knows how to strategically approach the creative process. People tend to talk about “creativity” in hushed tones: those billowing ethereal silver mists of sombre mystery, where authors go to wrestle big ideas down from the clouds and into their typewiters. A book coach knows exactly where everything is inside those clouds. They can break down the complex creative work of ideating, drafting, revising and pitching (or marketing) a book through a replicable process. A blueprint, if you will, or a framework that leads to a tight, defined end product: a book.

“Creators get lost in ideation, and it doesn’t take much to get stuck in the weeds once the words start to flow. A book coach helps to break the disorderly creative process into orderly parts, paving the way to a linear end product.”

Fiction: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, some historical fiction, young adult (YA), middle grade (MG), elementary.

Nonfiction: leadership, mentorship, some business, nature, personal development, self-help, wellbeing, biography, psychology, Human Design.

I coach memoir, too.

I can assess whether your idea would sell in the marketplace.

I know the frameworks to help you organize your ideas.

We’ll improve your writing skills through deep practice. Flashbacks, dialogue, interiority, emotion.

I’ll guide you in creating a seamless user experience (in this case, for the reader).

I’ll show you how to design a narrative arc that’s satisfying, and if you’re writing fiction, it’ll also be believable (trickier than you’d think).

I will teach you how to develop emotionally resonant characters that come alive and grab the reader’s heart. (This is key in acquisitions these days.)

I coach you to establish writing routines that work within the constraints of your life.

I’ll help you keep the momentum once you begin drafting.

I’ll share the formula for nailing your pitch to agents, if that’s the way you want to go.

I’ll leverage my knowledge of the publishing industry to position you for your best chance of success.

Like any good coach, I’ll be in your corner cheering you on, holding your hand, drying your tears, helping you plan out your strategy…and making sure you write the best book you can write.

An editor will mark your pages up, make changes, and show you where your writing needs to improve. With an editor, you can see what you did wrong, but you might not know how to fix it. You may emerge a better writer.

With a book coach, you’re learning all the way along the journey. It’s very personalized teaching, with lots of back and forth, lots of practice, and lots of feedback. I’m an editorial book coach, which means I’m working with you not only to put a great book together and get it finished, but to improve your writing at the line level at every deadline. This improvement compounds over the course of your project. You will emerge a better writer, which pays dividends in your next book project.

A book is a very big endeavour. Typically, it takes between six months and a year for a writer to complete a draft, sometimes longer. Revision comes after.

If you’re wanting to publish traditionally, you’ll begin querying when you’ve got a good sample to show. The pitching process can take a long time—or a few weeks. No one can predict the market. The time from getting your book signed to seeing on bookstore shelves can be as long as two years.

If you’re intent on self-publishing or hybrid publishing, you can move faster. If you’re organized and disciplined you get your book out there within a year.

Yes. When a book isn’t working—you’re not landing an agent, publishers are turning it down—there’s always a reason. A book coach can quickly discern where things need to improve, whether that’s in your query, your synopsis, your sample chapters or your proposal.

All editorial problems can be fixed, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves.

This is one of the biggest benefits of working with a book coach: you’re not in it alone! You will have a planning partner, and a partner who helps you set and meet your goals. Everything is doable when you’ve got someone else working along right beside you.

If you’re looking for a traditional publisher, nothing in this world—no editor, no agent, no co-author, no book coach—can guarantee a publisher will say yes to your work. What sells is a fickle mixture of zeitgeist, a publisher’s motivations, an agent’s connections, recent trends and even world events. Working with a book coach does not guarantee your book will sell to a traditional house.

Hybrid presses are becoming more selective, too, I’ve noticed, as demand has increased, but because their business model is completely different from traditional publishers (they take on WAY less risk, as the author bears the production costs), a lot of would-be authors have a pretty good shot at getting into print.

But self-publishing? Well, that’s a wide-open blue ocean, honey. It’s totally possible to get your idea out there, build your name, and sell your books without a traditional deal.

We’ll start with a discovery call to check for fit: Do you want to work with me? Do I want to work with you?

From there, and from your questionnaire and sample pages, I’ll have enough material to determine what will help you the most, and we’ll talk about the most efficient approach.

I’m looking for people who take full responsibility for putting in the work, and getting it done without needing me to “hold them accountable”. Nagging and reminding aren’t part of my workflow. We make agreements, we set deadlines…and we complete. (Here’s an in-depth exploration of the difference between responsibility and accountability.)

I also select my writers based on their ability to write. You don’t have to be JK Rowling or Daniel Coyle, but I do require a certain base of craft for you to get the most out of our partnership. If your writing needs more training in the craft of writing than I can reasonably provide given the scope of our engagement, I’ll either build you a custom package or direct you to the appropriate courses to learn the basics.

Typically, we can figure this out with a 10-page sample of your writing.

I change my mind on this a lot. For sure I don’t want you using generative AI to write your actual pages. If that’s your plan, I’m not the coach for you. The publishing industry has made it crystal clear that no one can claim copyright if a work has been AI-generated, and most publishers aren’t showing interest in books where writers have used LLMs for anything other than helping them get their material organized. (This could change by Tuesday, so keep an eye on the Authors Guild for the latest.)

I’m fine with you using AI for research. For helping you with the Blueprint? Nope. You need to do all that work yourself, because the process is specifically designed to help you understand your own book by explaining and summarizing key parts of it in different ways. Outsourcing this to AI robs you of the deeper-level understanding that’s necessary to produce a good book.

Where ChatGPT and Claude ARE really wonderful is in helping you figure out ways to market your book. Which, of course, is 50% of the work.