Thomas Kelleher – Editor

I want to help you write the book your ideas deserve!

I have edited expert nonfiction for 25 years, at both magazines and book publishers, lastly at Basic Books, rising to VP / associate publisher.

At Basic, books I edited won awards, including the Financial Times Business Book of the Year (Martin Ford's Rise of the Robots); Science Friday Book of the Year (Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie's Book of Why); New York Times Notable Books (Rob Dunn's Call of the Honeyguide and Robert Trivers' Folly of Fools); the John Burroughs Medal (Thor Hanson's Feathers); and the Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award (Thor Hanson's Triumph of Seeds). They were finalists for the PEN / EO Wilson Prize (Dan Flores's Coyote America) and the Royal Society Science Book Prize (Eugenia Cheng's Beyond Infinity and Matthew Cobb's Idea of the Brain). I also edited Kirkus and Publishers Weekly best-of-year books (including Kelsey Johnson's Into the Unknown and Stephon Alexander's Fear of a Black Universe), and dozens of starred books in Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.

My proudest accomplishment was publishing the same authors many times -- I published multiple books by at least 20 authors. It meant I did something right for the people who entrusted me with their work.

I offer a full range of work on nonfiction books, including big-idea business books, STEM, popular philosophy, and history titles:

* brainstorming/ideation;

* consulting on and editing of book proposals;

* book coaching;

* manuscript consultation;

* developmental editing, with the option to include primary- and secondary-source research;

* line editing; and

* publication consultation.

Testimonials:

"TJ is an incredible editor. He has an unerring sense for what will and won't work. He is willing to follow you into the weeds as a writer, and he'll always find a way to lead you out of them. He's also infuriatingly well-read, and will find connections between your manuscript and other relevant work that will make your book stronger. I can't imagine having written either of my books without his patient and thoughtful input, and I will carry what I learned from him for the rest of my writing career."

—Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever and What Is Real?

"TJ, you are unique in the universe. You are a scientist in editor's clothes, able to think like a scientist and like an editor simultaneously. You can see the bones of book, even when they are beneath layers of what, well, something else less pleasant. You can go through a book quickly and see where things should be. You have made my books so much better. You have made so many books so much better. And you do it by seeing truths, revealing truths and playing with ideas. Maybe there are/were other editors like you, but if so, they were from another century. THANK YOU for all you have done."

—Rob Dunn, author of The Call of the Honeyguide, A Natural History of the Future, Never Home Alone and more