Due to time constraints, my editorial work is on pause.
Editorial Services and Rates
See Reedsy for market rates. My rates are on par with the market rates.
Copy Editing
Copy editing improves the meat of your story and includes line-by-line editing for consistency, word choice and use, tense, punctuation, grammar, and clarity. Rates range from 15-16 cents USD per word, depending on quality of the manuscript.
Proofreading
Proofreading happens at the end of your editorial review and catches typos and other problems not caught during copy editing. Rates are 1-2 cents USD a word. Mary prefers that proofreading and copy editing are done by separate editors. The more eyes, the better!
Other Types of Editing
Mary does not normally do content or development editing, which involves a creative editorial review deeper than line-by-line reading, delving into fact-checking, structure, content, and overall organization of the manuscript. However, if there is time in Mary’s schedule, she can talk about these services and establish a rate.
Marketing Evaluation
Mary does not offer market evaluation of manuscripts and is not a publishing agent.
Website Creation and Editing
Mary offers basic website creation (WordPress install preferred) and content editing services. Please contact Mary for rates.
Experience
Mary has more than twenty years of editorial services, beginning with her first job out of college back in 1993. Mary graduated with two BAs from Purdue University (English and anthropology). She immediately was hired at the Indianapolis-based Sams imprint of Prentice-Hall (and later Macmillan) Publishing, editing programming and new technology books. She began as a copy editor and quickly was promoted to production editor. Before moving across the country, she became a managing editor and championed/development-edited a book about digital publishing. Mary moved to California and continued to freelance for Sams until she accepted a position at what was then Core, Inc., in Irvine, California, as a documentation specialist. Her editorial work extended to technical writing and documentation.
During this time, she also worked with American poet and musician Michael Rothenberg to open the online journal Jack Magazine, which published art, fiction, and poetry in an arc from the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance era to modern times. Mary, as founder of Jack, republished works by Ira Cohen, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, and others. One of the features of the journal was nature writing and art. The project went on for a decade and is partially preserved at Stanford University. After closing down Jack, Mary opened Moon Willow Press, initially a place to publish authors from Jack Magazine. Though the press is still open, it is no longer accepting submissions and is working with Stormbird Press, in Australia, which is acquiring some of Moon Willow’s older titles. Mary opened Dragonfly Publishing to continue publishing her own writing.
Mary moved from Core, Inc., to several temporary technical writing assignments as she took some time helping with her ill father, before moving to Canada to be with her new husband. Once in British Columbia, she volunteered for a few environmental organizations and was offered a job at Riverkeeper, where she had many responsibilities: website work, training volunteers, organizing events, and office management. When that job closed, she worked at British Columbia Institute of Technology for eight years in the role of program assistant, where she once again had a multitude of responsibilities, including the organization and editing of departmental documentation on an internal Sharespace and on the web.
Mary’s work in nature writing and website-building continued with Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores world eco-fiction. Mary got back into her documentation and archiving roots as she began to curate novels and other fiction about climate and ecological change. The site opened in August 2013 and, according to Mary, is an indefinite volunteer project. Mary has created a database of hundreds of eco-fiction stories and has interviewed some of the major authors in the field, including Jeff VanderMeer, Marian Womack, Wu Ming-Yi, Helon Habila, Omar El Akkad, Lorna Crozier, Julia Phillips, and David Brin.
Check the other writing and projects page to find more of Mary’s work.
Mary recently moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and is returning to her editorial work during what looks like a long period of quarantine and social distancing.