Hi. Welcome to MeghanH Editing. For those of y’all who don’t know me, I am Meghan. You can read a bit about me in other places on the website, and on my book blog page, but I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself before I started my first blog post here on MeghanH Editing. (We’ll talk about that in a minute.)
I have been professionally editing since April 2013. Since that time – the day I began Hyde ‘n’ Seek Editing, which I then rebranded a few years ago to the current MeghanH Editing – this has been a culmination of a lifelong dream. See, I read a book when I was very young that didn’t quite “sound” right, and that day I told my mom I was going to get paid to read (and fix the issues I found in books). And here I am… getting paid to read (and fix the issues I find in books).
Now, there was editing before the beginning of Hyde ‘n’ Seek Editing (which feels like forever ago) – high school newspaper and literary magazine, college newspaper, editing for my mom when she went back to college (and then her classmates, and mine, while I was in both high school and college), and even editing for two professors I had while I was in school – but this was the big dream. THIS was what I wanted to do. And with this, I could focus on the smaller names, the people who self-edited or who went through smaller publishing companies, the new writers who wanted to learn and grow in their craft.
As the company grew, so did the interest from elsewhere…
In 2015, I began my first stint working with a Big 5 publisher. I learned a lot working there, while still running Hyde ‘n’ Seek Editing, and now have even more experience under my belt. It was definitely something I loved, and a Bucket List fulfillment, but it bothered me that I couldn’t focus as much on the people that I wanted to focus on… the indie authors.
In 2017, I worked for a year with a now defunct smaller publishing company behind the scenes as the last set of eyes before an anthology or collection came out.
Also in 2017, I began working for another Big 5 publisher, and with this one I chose to be more focused on the editing aspect rather than being focused on the project management side of things.
In 2019, I had the chance to go back and work further with the first Big 5, but this time working on a contract by contract basis. This allowed me to give more time towards the authors who were choosing Hyde ‘n’ Seek Editing, and to be more one-on-one with the authors who I was working with at the Big 5. (The difference between my company and working with the bigger companies was that I like to be very hands on, phone conversations and texts, emails, etc. with my authors, while with the Big 5s, I don’t often get the chance to have a one-on-one conversation where we can discuss the book, etc.)
In 2020, the second Big 5 decided they wanted me to work on further projects with them after I edited for one of their romance authors. (And anyone who knows me well will laugh at that because they KNOW how much I am not a fan of the romance genre.) The author was someone who I had spoken to several times before, who was actually a follower of my book blog, and because of this, decided that she wanted me and only me. Her and I worked on a project she was doing away from that Big 5, and she adored working with me so much that she told the Big 5 she would work with no one else. After several of her romance author friends asked that I edit for their books also, I began contract working for them as well.
Over the last couple of years, I have taken on a few authors here at MeghanH Editing, but have focused mainly on that contract work. I’ll be honest – I had grown slightly frustrated with being a small-time editor. The well of authors needing an editor had dried up, either because of the current mindset that editors are not needed (I don’t know who started that rumor, but they are wrong, and I can give you book after book as evidence that we are a very necessary aspect of publishing) or because of the fact that people are choosing authors to be their editor (ranting and raving about how well their books were edited, after they hired an editor) instead of editors that have worked through school to be educated on the subject. And I can see why people want to be an editor – it’s a FUN job and you get to meet a lot of authors and read a lot of books – but it is not as “easy” as some decide it is. It takes a lot of work, and you can tell the difference between a book that has been edited professionally and one that has just been edited. My job is to edit it professionally, and I continue my education monthly to make sure that I know the very latest in how things are done because I am a professional and I want to do the best job I can for my authors.
Today I sat down at my desk and sort of glanced the big white board I have out of the corner of my eye. I sit at my desk every day, and usually just avoid the white board, but something today made me look at it, something told me that today was the day I needed to sit down and write this – my FIRST blog post on MeghanH Editing. I can’t even tell you how I’ve had this site for two years and not written even one blog post. It’s not that I don’t have ideas – my white board is COVERED in blog post ideas – and I have lots of half-written blog posts in my “Drafts” section. I just haven’t felt… ready. (If that is even the correct word.) Today I feel ready to tackle all of those blog post ideas that just sit collecting dust on my white board (on the side of my bookshelf, on the front of my file cabinets, on the framed picture of penguins that is hung next to my desk, on my closet door – there are a LOT of ideas between my three blogs that don’t get touched). The doors of MeghanH Editing have been unofficially closed long enough…
TODAY, MeghanH Editing is open for business!!
If you are looking for an editor, or know someone who is, click on the Contact Me tab and let’s talk about your project.
MeghanH Editing 