Our fees are based on the length and complexity of the material and the kinds of services requested.

Here's how we work with authors. The first step is to evaluate your work, assessing whether we can help bring the project to fruition—that is, ready for submission to an agent or an editor at a publishing house. For an initial reading and evaluation of up to 10,000 words of a single project (fiction or nonfiction), a complete picture-book dummy, or a picture-book manuscript, we charge a nonrefundable $200 fee, payable in advance. You will receive a written evaluation, including our assessment of the viability of the project and a recommendation for how to proceed. We will try to assess your ability to execute the work, but this often requires at least one round of editorial suggestions and authorial revision, which is not included in the initial fee. Be aware that our recommendation may be not to proceed with the project. If that is the case, we will suggest ways for you to improve the manuscript and move forward with your work, but we won't continue to work with you on that project. If we feel that the project has merit and viability, we'll say so and give some suggestions for how to develop it. You can then proceed as you see fit. If you want to continue to work with us, we will discuss the next level of service, what our goal is, and what the cost will be. In some cases this might simply be a telephone conversation about the project, or it might be a complete editorial workup of the kind that an author under contract receives from her editor when she submits a draft. Services will be incremental; each level will be assessed and priced. We won't move to the next level unless we feel that the previous level was successfully achieved. The goal is not to take money for work on projects that have no potential for publication or to work beyond a substantially productive point. When we bring a project to the point that it is, in our opinion, publishable, we will give you guidelines for presenting it to agents and editors.

Caveat emptor: We will stand by our commitment to help you make your project the best you can make it. Please understand, however, that (1) projects go through several stages of development and, therefore, there may be additional costs as we proceed; (2) fees are not refundable; and (3) we cannot guarantee that any project will in the end be publishable or published.