Gregory Newton Brown – Editor

For my first organized foray into writing, I smashed out a vampire romance novel where the protagonist-lovers constantly bared their fangs at each other. I was eleven years old. It was summer. I was reading lots of Bram Stoker. I was madly in love with a sixth-grade crush I won't slander here by naming.

My understanding of storytelling has come a long way since then. I promise.

Some of my past and current clients include BenBella Books, HarperCollins, Random House, Mike Diamond, Alex Hormozi, Christine Kane, John Mann, Ryan Moran, Byron Reese, and Ashley Stahl. Among those clients are several New York Times-bestselling authors, regional best-selling authors, and Amazon.com best-selling authors. I'd love to better help you tell your story, too. As an editor, I love a book that helps people (or companies) find a path towards something more, chooses human value over pure profit, and seeks to disrupt highly-entrenched trends in desperate need of change.

I'm an author as well. My debut novel, The Lowering Days, is available from Harper in the U.S., HarperCollins in the U.K., and Editions Gallmeister in France. My short stories have appeared in several publications, including Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine, where I was a winner of the 30Below Prize. I also write reviews for the NYTimes Review of Books.

I hold an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where I honed my editing skills, and an MFA in English from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where I studied fiction writing and the nuances of storytelling with some of America's finest writers, including Marilynne Robinson, Lan Samantha Chang, Kevin Brockmeier, Alexander Chee, and Michelle Huneven. ​I started as storyteller, became a journalist for a while, realized I was fiction writer at heart, and developed into an editor as I came to understand the importance of great editing in crafting great storytelling.

So, while my middle school vampire fiction never took off, I have had the good fortune of being on both sides of the publishing equation as an editor and author for the past fifteen years. My goal is always to help authors tell their stories in their voices as artfully and effectively as possible. Writing isn't just the act of composition; it's the act of connecting at both the head and heart level.

Testimonials

Ryan Moran, author of 12 Months To $1 Million, BenBella Books

"My name is Ryan Moran, and Greg Brown was my editor for my first book, 12 Months To $1 Million.

I was nervous about being traditionally published, because I feared that a publisher would edit my words or water down my message. However, my publisher tabbed Greg Brown as my editor, and he single-handedly made the deal worth it. I was shocked at how he was able to preserve my voice while making me sound better than I could on my own.

When I write my next book, I'm not sure that I will allow anyone to edit my words except for Greg. I would enthusiastically recommend working with him."

John and Ana Mann, New York Times-bestselling authors of The Go-Giver Marriage, BenBella Books

"Having Greg as our editor has been an absolutely wonderful experience. It made us both feel enormously solid to have such a thoughtful and perceptive pair of eyes on our work, and Greg’s edits and suggestions were spot on, all the way from slight sentence restructurings to several more major issues of content. It would be hard to imagine a more perfect editor for our little book."