Jonathan Haupt – Editor

With more than 25 years of experience in publishing and nonprofit leadership, I am an enthusiastic literary matchmaker, helping writers at all levels craft and promote books that connect authentically with readers. As a small press publisher, I launched the Story River Books original southern fiction imprint (as featured in Publishers Weekly), for which I was developmental editor and chief marketeer for 22 novels and short story collections, including two winners of the prestigious Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction: One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain and The Headmaster's Darlings by Katherine Clark. As executive director of a literary nonprofit, I interviewed a who's who of authors, from bestsellers to burgeoning new voices, at literary festivals, writers conferences, bookseller trade shows, libraries, and indie bookstores. Informing my ongoing work as freelance developmental editor, my background grants me a strong sense of the importance of a well-developed writer's voice and how best to present authors and their stories to diverse audiences in fascinating and engaging ways. I am also a guest book reviewer for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, I have appeared on CSPAN Book TV and PBS's Authors By the River, and I am co-editor of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, winner of 17 book awards.

From 2016 onward, I have guided writers as an independent developmental editor and query letter consultant--primarily for literary fiction, southern fiction, historical fiction, mystery, memoir, and biography. I envision my role as advocating equally for the interests of the author and the reader as I offer editorial guidance and pragmatic approaches with voice, plot, themes, story arcs, character development, dialog, and all the essential but sometimes overlooked aspects of narrative that transform a good concept into an original and impactful work of art. I delight in the discovery of new voices crafting their debuts, but I also welcome the challenge of helping established writers achieve new levels of mastery in their craft, too. I am fluent in best practices for queries, from editorial and marketing perspectives, and I excel at helping writers highlight content with concision in pithy, marketable descriptions of their work and themselves.

What I do as a developmental editor:

1) Read your manuscript twice: first as reader, engaging with the story on the page, then as editor, advocating for the needs of author, reader, and story through in-text comments.

2) Summarize and advise in an editorial letter; minimum of 3 pages but typically 1 page per every 10,000 words of manuscript.

3) Discuss notes and next steps via Zoom for an hour and remain available for follow-up questions during revisions.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Jonathan served as editor for my novel, and that made me awfully fortunate. I consider him my first true champion. What I valued the most is the way he dialed into and honored my vision for the story and what I considered its heart."--Bren McClain, author of One Good Mama Bone, winner of 2021 French Prix Maya and 2017 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction