Gretchen Schmid - Editor

I'm a professional book editor with seven years of experience at a Big 5, working on a variety of fiction and nonfiction, including memoir, history, philosophy, biographies, mysteries, romance, literary fiction, and thrillers. Multiple books I've edited have gone on to be NYT bestsellers or award-winners. I'm happy to offer developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and/or proofreading for your manuscript.

I have a particular love for editing nonfiction—especially memoir, history, and anything about the arts (I'm a former dancer and musician!). I know writing memoirs can be vulnerable, and I try to approach those projects with special care.

I also have experience as both a translator (French to English) and an editor of translations (from various languages). If you originally wrote a manuscript in another language and hired a translator to bring it into English, or if you translated it yourself, and are looking for an editor to smooth out the language, we might be a great match.

As an editor, I believe it's important to tell authors what's going RIGHT in their manuscript as well as what's not there yet. I love to highlight places where their storytelling is particularly effective, and let them know when I laugh or gasp out loud. I also work hard to help smooth out and polish their writing while ensuring that it still "sounds like them," and point out any and every sentence whose meaning isn't entirely clear yet.

As a copyeditor and proofreader, I have a sharp eye for misplaced commas, improper capitalization, and spelling mistakes, as well as bigger-picture issues such as continuity errors (your character was wearing a blue shirt a few paragraphs ago, and now it's red?).

Congratulations on making it this far in your writing process! Looking forward to chatting with you.