Tilda Johnson – Editor

After four years at David Fickling Books, I moved to Penguin Random House Children’s, before joining the Hot Key Books and Piccadilly Press team as Senior Commissioning Editor. There I commissioned and worked closely with many debut children’s and YA authors, including Isla Fisher, Andy Shepherd, Jo Cotterill, Zillah Bethell and Sebastien de Castell. After moving to the north of England in 2017, I set up a Manchester branch of the Golden Egg Academy, running courses for aspiring writers of children's and YA fiction. I've since stepped back from this to focus on more editing, working with an array of publishers like Faber, UCLan, Usborne and Oxford University Press.

I particularly love working with writers to help them develop and crystallise their concepts and to finesse and polish their texts at a line level. I enjoy supporting authors as they explore their story worlds and I use various approaches and tools for helping writers develop different aspects of their novel, such as world building and story structure. I'm also very confident and thorough at copyediting and proofreading, and always quick to respond and communicate over email. When I produce an editorial report I will usually mark comments and notes on the text as well, so that writers can see my reactions and feedback in situ, i.e. examples of where something needs further detail or is working well.

TESTIMONIALS:

'Working with Tilda is a joy! She is insightful, patient, detailed and best of all creative in her approach to editing. She knows how to encourage the best from authors and to be a firm guiding hand without ever getting in the way of what the author wants to do.' - Sarah Odedina, Pushkin Press (former Managing Director of Hot Key Books & Group Editor-in-Chief @ Bloomsbury Children's)