Andy Blitzer – Editor

I help experts and ambitious writers turn what they know into a book a general reader will finish.

For ten years, I acquired and developed nonfiction at W. W. Norton and Oxford University Press, working with authors including Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Susan Neiman, Bart Ehrman, David Chalmers, Peter Pomerantsev, Agustín Fuentes, Jeff Sebo, and Barry Lam. I have taken scores of books from first conversation through publication.

What I actually do on a manuscript: find the argument and make the structure serve it; fix the pacing so a reader keeps going; work line by line on voice and rhythm; and tell you honestly what is working, what is not, and what a reader will make of it. I am especially good at the hardest move in nonfiction — helping a specialist write for a general audience without flattening the ideas.

I also read proposals. If you are aiming for an agent and a trade publisher, I can tell you what's missing, because I sat on the other side of that desk and said yes or no to hundreds of them.

I am in New York and work with authors anywhere. Send a sample and tell me what you are trying to do, and I will tell you straight whether I am the right editor for it.