Book Coach
SWENSON BOOK DEVELOPMENT LLC can help you while you work on a manuscript as the guardian and champion for your efforts toward a book. Developmental editor, educator, mentor, book-birthing doula, and writer’s advocate. Jill Swenson creates customized coaching programs for her clients and meets them where they are on the path to publication.
Book Proposal
Whether you have a finished manuscript or the kernel of a good idea, begin the path toward publication with a plan. We can help you craft a profile to establish your author brand, identify your audience, strategize on building your platform, craft a synopsis and chapter summaries to hook a reader, analyze comparable titles in the marketplace, develop a marketing strategy, and polish your writing sample.
If you are just beginning to work on your book proposal, you may find it useful to start by answering these questions.
Writing Workshops
Jill Swenson offers occasional online writing workshops through Elephant Rock Writing Studio established by Jeannine Ouellette in Minneapolis. To learn more, click here.
Editorial Services
SWENSON BOOK DEVELOPMENT LLC offers a variety of editorial services
- Query critique – Do you need a second look at your query letter to an agent or publisher? Or someone to guide you from first draft to a polished pitch?
- Manuscript critique – Do you need professional editorial feedback and constructive criticism on your book manuscript?
- Professional assessment – Is your manuscript ready to submit for publication, and if so, what are the most likely paths to publishing?
- Developmental editing – Focus on approach, narrative arc, perspective, voice, development of characters or arguments, and other substantive editorial matters
- Structural editing – Focus on organization and coherence of the narrative, argument, or subject material
- Line editing – Focus on the flow of ideas and arrangement of editorial content. Identify content that is misplaced, missing, or extraneous. Look for errors in sentence structure, unnecessary words, spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, and usage.
- Fact-checking, copyright permissions, bibliographies
Literary Consultant
Do you want advice on the business of being an author? Do you seek guidance in finding the right agent or publisher for your project? Are you looking for a second opinion? Schedule a consultation with Jill Swenson.
Writing and Listening — an Interview with Brooke Randel
As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.” What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman’s harrowing survival, and another’s struggle to excavate theRead more…