Rachel Dennis – Editor

In October 2016, I moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, and a few months later began working as a freelance editor. My biggest client currently is HarperCollins Publishers, Australia, but I hope to be able to help more international clients in the near future.

As an editor at HarperCollins Publishers, I was responsible for project-managing titles from manuscript stage to the printed book. While this of course involved editing and proofreading, it also included a myriad other tasks that can go into making a book, including picture research, liaising with Design and applying for permissions.

At HCP, we were fortunate enough to work across all lists -- fiction, non-fiction and children's -- though I did have a special aptitude for non-fiction and specialised in works such as memoirs and cookbooks. I also thoroughly enjoyed working on young adult and children's fiction. In August 2015, the company decided to split the editorial department into divisions, and I began working exclusively with ABC Books, which solely publishes non-fiction.

One of the last books I worked on for ABC Books, and one I am particularly proud of, is Penguin Bloom by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Grieve. This became a bestseller in Australia, and the movie rights to the book have since been bought by Reese Witherspoon and Naomi Watts.

As a publishing assistant, I provided administrative and editorial support to the Non-Fiction Publishing department. In this role I liaised with just about every department in the company -- Contracts, Marketing, Publicity, Design, Production, Finance -- which gave me a very good overall understanding of the publishing industry, and the many factors that go into creating a successful book.