Joe Haining – Editor

‘I can honestly say, it has been a fantastic experience. This is my fifth book and easily the best experience. Without a shadow of a doubt, you have made the book better. Not just from a language perspective, but from some amazing knowledge that has clarified and improved the text. Thank you so much.’ — Dr Mark Doidge, University of Brighton

I am a freelance developmental and copy-editor, an Advanced Professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, with over a decade of experience across a variety of formats, both publishing and non-publishing. Having obtained a degree in English studies and spent several years teaching English to speakers of other languages, I have a passion for the language and for literature. My work has mainly been copy-editing non-fiction books within humanities and social sciences (sociology, anthropology, history, and more), as well as more personal works such as memoirs – I love helping people tell those wonderful life stories!

As a member of the community myself, I am particularly passionate about working with LGBTQ+ authors and related content. In my down-time, I am a passionate fan of sports and music, and have been delighted to bring my high level of personal knowledge in those fields to previous book projects, helping catch a few key details that authors may have missed – for which they were extremely grateful!

Working directly with authors brings me so much joy. I will help you work out what your text needs to take it to the next level – whether it's early in the process and it needs more development to shape the structure of the book and ensure the content is on track to achieve your aims, or whether it needs a final polish before going to press, to iron out those tricky points of grammar and syntax. There are always 'i's to dot and 't's to cross! I like to keep in regular contact with authors throughout my work on their text, asking detailed queries to ensure we're on the same page – in every sense! A large proportion of my editorial work has been on texts written by non-native users of English, which my background has helped me to approach with great care and understanding. And my work with non-publishing material has given me extensive experience in converting texts to make them language appropriate for different English-speaking markets (primarily the UK and North America). All in all, I love working with language and text, and I can't wait to help you with yours!

‘I am also indebted to my copy-editor Joe … for his scrupulous attention to detail, for the clarity of his advice, for the speed of his responses and for his unfailing good humour; his invaluable help, and his extraordinary eye for detail, and his valuable suggestions for improvement contributed in no small measure to making this very important part of the process pleasurable.’ — Dr John Drakakis, University of Stirling (from ‘Shakespeare's Resources’, Manchester University Press, 2021)