CARLY CANTOR is a publishing industry veteran who has worked in-house at a New York publisher as an acquisitions editor and is a two-time published author (history books). Most recently, she has worked as an independent consultant and project editor for Random House, Prentice Hall, and  iUniverse. She also represents authors as an agent with a well-established NYC agency. Her extensive experience includes critiquing, organizational and development editing, and line editing of fiction and nonfiction projects. She is a meticulous hands on editor who “becomes one” with every project, paying close attention to both the big picture and the small details.

She has often worked with academics, psychologists, and medical doctors on high-level material in the social or life sciences and has helped them make their writing more accessible to a trade audience. One thrilled client, a doctor, said of her, “She is a consummate wordsmith, with the facility of not only understanding and integrating scientific and technical material but also illuminating arcane and otherwise opaque descriptions. She expertly shapes the structure of a presentation for better narrative flow, simplifying complex material to make it reader-friendly.” 

Carly also edits fiction, with an understanding of the importance of subtlety and nuance. She approaches fiction with an appreciation for how the brain works and for the idea that a reader likes to pick up clues and figure some things out for himself rather than be told everything directly about how characters are thinking and feeling. One novelist client said, “I have been guided by a number of different editors throughout my career. Without any hesitation, I can say that [she] is the best editor I have ever worked with.

Services offered:

• Manuscript evaluation / critiquing
• Development editing
• Line-editing and writing assistance

Articles

• Editing Fiction
• Editing Nonfiction

 “Carly was indispensable for the birth of my memoir. She helped me to not only tighten my writing but also improve the structure of the narrative to make it more thrilling. I found a very effective, inspirational guide in her ability to culturally translate my experience in Korea for American audiences.”
—Jid Lee, author of To Kill a Tiger (Overlook, 2009)

“My personal experience in working with Carly has been very rewarding. She has the grit to drill down into the material so that nothing is taken for granted. She also demonstrates an intuitive skill to help add an overarching structure to the work that helps expand its scope, further increasing the book’s accessibility to those audiences we wish to reach. Her persistence in getting the content to seamlessly flow from one technical subject to the next is a true gift.”
—John W. Cassidy, MD, author of Mindstorms: The Complete Guide for Families Living with Traumatic Brain Injury (Da Capo Press, 2009)

more