Jillian Bray

Jillian Bray – Editor

Experienced grammar fiend specializing in children's and lifestyle nonfiction. Reliable, professional, and meticulous.

Overview

You’ve devoted countless hours to your craft. You've sacrificed and overcome obstacles, and it's all culminated with a manuscript you've proudly published for the world to see. Congrats! Just one thing: you accidentally typed "poop" when you meant to spell "pop." Facepalm.


Sound familiar? Don't let this happen to you. Instead, prevent such a faux pas from happening by partnering with me.


Clients benefit from my:

*Breadth of experience,

*Hawkish attention to detail,

*Relentless pursuit of errant punctuation and grammatical mistakes, and

*Unwavering resolve to submit projects ahead of deadline.


For 12+ years I’ve worked with publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Capstone Publishing, Skyhorse Publishing, W. W. Norton & Co., and ABDO. I've copy edited and proofread for #1 New York Times bestselling authors such as Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. David Agus, Sheila Johnson, Michael Uslan, and more to ensure their published manuscripts are worthy of readers’ eyes. I endeavor to do the same for you.


I've provided top-tier editing services on more than 1,000 projects, including memoirs, guidebooks, picture books, and more. And I’m a pleasure to work with, or so I’ve been told:


"Thank you so much for all your great work over the last few years, and for being such a pleasant, flexible, professional person to work with." — Yvette Grant, Simon & Schuster (previously at Penguin and Skyhorse)


Ready to put the finishing touches on your manuscript? I am. Let’s connect!

Services
Non-Fiction
Children’s Non-Fiction Health & Wellbeing History Self-Help & Self-Improvement Sports & Outdoors Travel
Fiction
Middle Grade Picture Books
Languages
English (US)
Certifications
  • Certificate in Editing - University of Washington

Work experience

Self-employed

Jun, 2012 — Present

As a thorough, knowledgeable copy editor, my main objective is to correct spelling, punctuation, and usage and grammar issues, including subject-verb agreement, redundancy, and passive voice. For Capstone Press, I specialize in nonfiction titles for young readers. For W. W. Norton, I line edit textbooks, test banks, and instructor's manuals. I review academic manuscripts for clients such as Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, and Duke University Presses. In my role, I adhere to publisher-specific style guidelines, ensure consistency, review notes and bibliography entries for proper formatting, and code documents for typesetting.

Self-employed

Jun, 2011 — Present

As a proofreader, I exercise my innate need to polish copy to perfection. For publishing houses such as Simon and Schuster, Skyhorse, ABDO, Crabtree, Rosen, and Capstone, I read and mark up works of fiction and nonfiction for a wide range of audiences and reading levels. With an eagle eye for spelling, capitalization, and grammar, I've reliably provided fast-turnaround services on hundreds of manuscripts. As standard practice, I cross-reference and reconcile front and back matter against main texts; inspect for bad breaks, widows/orphans, and word stacks; and check running heads and feet for accuracy, including pagination.

Self-employed

Jun, 2016 — Present

Through contracts with Capstone Press and Abdo Publishing, I have published two juvenile nonfiction titles: Famous Ghost Stories of Asia and Komodo Dragon: Toxic Lizard Titan, respectively. On the digital front, I compose 500-word blog posts for clients on a monthly schedule and craft effective SEO content for new Web pages.

Portfolio

World War C

Sanjay G.

CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, MD, offers an accessible, data-packed answer to our biggest questions about Covid-19: What have we learned about this pandemic and how can we prepare for—or prevent—the next one?As America’s favorite frontline Covi... read more

Jillian has 47 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Mike S.

Mike S.

Sep, 2023

I think the stars sufficiently reflect my perception of Jillian's performance. As I indicated, very professional, polite... the changes she suggested made sense to me. For what I paid (am I allowed to write that here?), I feel like a received a very fair, if not more so, amount of labor in return. Happy writing y'all!
Randa L.

Randa L.

Sep, 2023

Jillian was awesome work with. She was so thoughtful and had good input. I felt like her pricing was reasonable as well.
Jillian B.
I appreciate your honest, positive review, Randa. It was awesome working with you too; thanks for hiring me!
Sibylla N.

Sibylla N.

Sep, 2023

This is my second time working with Jillian, and she is wonderful. Her comments and suggestions are insightful. She stays in communication and delivers on time. I'll be working with her again, no doubt!
Jillian B.
Thank you, Sibylla. I sure hope so! :) Best wishes with publishing Wishless.
Katie K.

Katie K.

Aug, 2023

Jillian was great to work with and exceeded expectations for proofreading my children's book. She responded quickly, provided a reasonable time frame for the project, and finished ahead of schedule. I look forward to working with Jillian on future books and highly recommend her!
Jillian B.
Thank you for the kind words, Katie. It was a pleasure working with you, and I hope you'll keep writing so we can pair up again on future projects. Your picture book about adoption is delightful—I ...
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Jeanne E.

Jeanne E.

Aug, 2023

Jillian is great to work with and very professional!
Jillian B.
It was a pleasure to work with you again, Jeanne. Thanks for hiring me :)

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