Dan Larsen – Editor

I have been a freelance editor for 25 years, focusing exclusively on fiction. Over that time I have edited well over a thousand titles, most of them for top New York publishers, including three of the Big Five, and many of them (at a guess, a few hundred anyway) ending up on bestseller lists.

My past publishing clients have included Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster), St. Martin's Press, Houghton Mifflin, Time Warner, Disney, Walker, and Kensington. From 2005 until 2018 I worked with Penguin and Harlequin. I did copyediting for Penguin and line editing for Harlequin (many of the big publishers separate these two functions, although on Reedsy we combine them. See "Copy Editing" on the home page).

For the past several years I have limited my editing to working directly with authors, to help them look their best in print. I've been a Reedsy editor since 2017, and I've been with another professional editing group since 2016. On both platforms, I do developmental editing, editorial assessments, and copyediting. And with my experience, I have an insider's view on what agents and publishers want. More importantly, on what works and what doesn't work in fiction.

And if you want to self-publish, you need an editor even more than if you plan to go with traditional publishing; it's all on you to get it right. You won't have the expertise and experience of a publisher's staff of professionals to polish your work till it's marketable.