Editing

Background

My background includes the editing of trade books, website content development for major websites, journalism/newspaper writing, and more. I helped to write and edit the Get Started app for Windows 10, Instant Answers for Bing, documentation for Microsoft mouse and keyboard products (including the bendable arc mouse), and script development and editing for all characters in the Microsoft Forza Horizon 4 open-world Xbox car-racing game (see video trailer, commercial, and IMDb page), as well as Forza Horizon 5. I’ve also edited content for a complete help center overhaul for the Minecraft computer game. I also won an Award of Excellence from the Society for Technical Communication for the Amazon Elastic MapReduce Getting Started Guide. I’ve edited hundreds of trade books for various leading publishers over the years, many of which have also been translated into other languages, mostly Spanish, German, and Japanese. The trade books I’ve edited, currently up to a total of 63,159 pages, have included massive, hulking hardback books such as Novell’s Guide to NetWare 5 Networks (all 1,562 pages plus two CD-ROMS) and Visual Basic 6 Master Reference (1,566 pages plus CD-ROM). Thrilling subjects, eh? Actually, they are pretty thrilling to many people. I edited these and other books while a senior editor for IDG Books Worldwide (later Hungry Minds, now owned by Wiley), the original publisher of the “For Dummies” books (I edited a second edition of the very first book in the series, DOS For Dummies). I have an MA in English, and have produced, managed, written, and edited content for Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing, and other clients.

Selected Books

See below for a list of selected books I’ve edited. This list omits dozens of technical books with exciting titles such as NetWare User’s Guide; Introducing VBScript and Active X; Linux Network Toolkit; and C++ in Plain English. I also omit many dozens of poetry books I’ve published with my own press, Press Here, and other books I’ve edited and designed for various poetry organizations. However, four poetry books that I’m particularly proud to have worked on are Fire in the Treetops, a poetry anthology I edited and designed for Haiku North America, celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary; Here, There, and Everywhere, a poetry anthology for the Redmond Association of Spokenword, for which I was editor and book designer; A Haiku Path, the Haiku Society of America’s twentieth anniversary anthology of essays, criticism, and history, for which I served as managing editor, designer, art director, print buyer, and copyeditor; and Tidepools: Haiku On Gabriola, published by Pacific Rim Publishers, which I envisioned, developed, edited, and designed. It was a pleasure to work with each of these authors and publishers.

        Some of the varied subjects and genres I’ve edited include soldering, jazz, plywood manufacturing, children’s literature, computer animation, workplace violence, travel, memoir, fiction, digital photography, textbooks, business books, dissertations, business plans, and more—mostly books about computer software. See also books I’ve published with my own press, Press Here, and my own books.

Contact Me

Please contact Michael Dylan Welch if you require editing services for your publication of any size. Services include publication management, acquisitions, developmental editing, substantive editing, copyediting, proofreading, print buying, layout and design, typography, and quality control.

See also Grammar and Punctuation Peeves, What Makes a Great Chapbook, Writing Tools, Style Guides, and Top Ten Edits to Academic Book Manuscripts (which also apply to most other books).       +       +

Editora image courtesy of Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.