Nicholas Bown - Editor

I am a freelance editor and journalist, who has worked in editorial at Faber and Faber and Bloomsbury.As an editor and reader my clients have included Faber and Faber, Bonnier, Notting Hill Editions, Orpen Press, Spitalfields Life Books, Pollinger Limited and The Susan Yearwood Literary Agency.
This year I am a first round judge for the 2015 Notting Hill Editions essay prize, and write on classical music for Early Music Today. I've been an editor and mentor with the Cornerstones Literary Consultancy since 2015. I am passionate about helping writers achieve their potential.
Being an editor is a strange job - your editor needs to understand that you are going on a creative journey, and to be someone you can trust to be your partner on that journey. My strengths include helping you craft your sentences and paragraphs word by word and line by line, but also looking at the big picture and deciding how to tighten up your work structurally and narratively. I love working on a mixture of fiction and non-fiction because they present different challenges: fiction requires your editor to have a certain emotional intelligence, and sensitivity to style, character, setting, and various other issues. Good trade non-fiction always needs to tread carefully between conveying expertise and communicating well and accessibly. I have worked on manuscripts across a range of genres from my adventures in publishing, and am comfortable advising you in the genres I have listed. At the heart of your book, regardless of its genre, you need to tell a good story, and to guide the reader through using well-formed language.
It would be my privilege to help you reach the next stage of your journey as a writer.