Making Words Count
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Betty Kelly Sargent

 
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Betty Kelly Sargent

bettysargent@me.com

I’ve been a book and magazine editor for more than thirty-five years and now write a monthly column for Publishers Weekly called “Ask The Editor.” Several years ago, I founded www.BookWorks.com: The Self-Publishers Association, an online community of authors who want to learn more about self-publishing in general, and about how to find the best book publishing service providers. I have co-authored eight traditionally published books. I edit both literary and commercial fiction as well as general interest nonfiction such as biography, memoir, and books of special interest to women. Recently, I've become the exclusive editor for Danielle Steel.

What do I love? Finding, analyzing and evaluating and working closely with each manuscript to help the author make it the very best it can be.  In my thirty-five-year plus career in book and magazine publishing I’ve been: Editor-in-Chief of William Morrow; Executive Editor at Large at Harper Collins; Fiction and Books Editor at Cosmopolitan; CNN Sunday Morning Live, Book Reviewer; Senior Acquiring Editor, Delacorte Press; Senior Editor, Dell Books; The New Yorker (typing manuscripts).

 

 
Betty is an incredibly insightful and thorough editor who possesses a unique ability to see both the big picture issues at work in an early draft of a manuscript as well as the smaller details that need attention. She approaches every page—and every sentence!—with the utmost care and attention, all with the goal of helping her writers shape a manuscript that is flawless and captivating and ready for a wide readership.
— John Searles, bestselling author of Strange But True