Home - Austin's Writer's Workshop

Editing

Editing for the full spectrum of editorial services.

Development: What goes in the book?

Line editing: How do we best say this?

Copyediting: What's incorrect or puzzling?

Proofreading: What did we miss before publication?

Evaluations of drafts, full or partial, or your synopsis. Query letter reviews. Market-competitive rates with multiple-round discounts. Send your sample for a free test edit.

Coaching

As your book coach in regular meetings, I’ll help you develop structure and theme, tune up your storytelling and writing skills, plus keep you on course to complete your project.

Author coaching nurtures your best work and strong habits to help you produce pages, chapters, and books. We craft a course of action that leads to a complete draft and a revision ready for editing. Capture the meaty insights of characterizations as your book takes on a new depth.

Publishing

Authors publish with expertise, using the latest techniques and digital tools, backed by industry experience. Take your book into the world with a strategy for Real Self Publishing.

Launch your book for discovery, using wide distribution, Marketing Architecture, and Editorial Marketing processes. From the minutia to the magnificence of publishing, give your books every good chance in today's lively, bustling marketplace of publishing.

Workshops

Attend Finishing School to build productivity and confidence. Join Zoom sessions to meet comrades and extend your community.

Learn Scrivener, the powerful revision and structure tool, in a personal workshop.

In virtual sessions, meet one-to-one for custom tutorials, using the latest digital tools to capture lessons, insights and instruction. Develop specialized skills and training. Create a class to lift your talents.

Build your best book

from the ground up.

Authors grow books for publication at the Writer’s Workshop. The bedrock is editing: the evaluation, revision, and development to write the best book possible. With so much of publishing outside our control, creating what agents call a great read is within our grasp. It starts with the text and moves onward to professional services for discovery by readers, publishers, or agents.

With my help and your good work, agents request your pages. Editors ask for your manuscript. Also, authors publish themselves for maximum control — and so their books need to be discovered, savored, and recommended. We build and refine the book with key services:

Editing manuscripts on three levels, from development to line editing to copyediting
Author coaching to create books while learning and practicing skills
Production editing that publishes completed books for print and ebook editions — including promotion and media plans

You can rely on my 40 years of publishing experience. Together we'll shape your book to entice, entertain and inform readers. When you add a professional to your team, storytelling leads to discovery.

Make your book the best it can be. Get personal editing with professional results. Polish, present, and publish.

— Ron Seybold, Director

Let's get in touch. My contact page sends messages straight to me.
Call me at 512-657-3264, or you can text me.
You can DM me on Twitter @ronseybold or at ron_seybold on Instagram.

"Ron is much more than a master of grammar. He digs into story, plot, and characters like an archeologist uncovering buried treasure. He climbs out with questions, suggestions, and encouragement. In every case, he helps me find a better way to tell my story. And when Ron offers encouragement, I can tell it’s not just lip service. Ron believes in me."
— Rob Witherspoon, author of conspiracy parodies
The Square Root of Texas and Deus Tex Machina
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"Ron kept me on track with detailed editing as I wrote. He knows how to support writers. I highly recommend him as an editor."
— Brenda Vicars, author of
Polarity in Motion (YA) and Faking Lucky (Romance)
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"The best novels are revised and massaged until they produce the best work a writer can create. An editor’s eye for detail should be a given, but Ron’s ability to offer advice and direction below the surface is a tremendous value,"
— Bill Ottinger, The Last Van Gogh, Shadows of Leonardo (Thrillers)
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"This book got 100 percent better after Ron Seybold became its editor. His masterful hand made my writing feel stronger and simpler to me. I benefited from his encouragement and wise suggestions."
– Walter Polt, author of the psychology
self-help groundbreaker From Anger to Power
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"Ron is a superb editor. Not only does he have an amazing eye for detail, a terrific set of professional ethics, and great editorial instincts, he's also able to offer advice and direction below the surface. I look forward to working with him on my future projects.”
— S.A. Asthana, The Final Wars trilogy (SF) and the short story collection Beyond the Edge
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"It's really rewarding to have someone who I can take the work to. I'm always looking for expertise that makes all the difference. I can go off doing something over for years and I don't know if I'm making it better or worse. And now I can feel the difference."
— Carol Milberger, Molded (Memoir)
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"Professional athletes have coaches — writers can, too. I have gotten so much from working with Ron. Having him as an author coach keeps me focused on the project. Then, while I write, Ron helps me think about things like pacing, delivery, and balanced narratives. He keeps me on track and helps me make my stories be the best they can be."
— Earnie Painter, author of cat-fancy novella Carmella’s Outside
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"Ron digs into story, plot, and characters like an archeologist uncovering buried treasure. He climbs out of the hole with questions, suggestions, and encouragement. In every case, he helps me find a better way to tell my story. And when Ron offers encouragement, I can tell it’s not just lip service. Ron believes in me."
– Rob Witherspoon, author of the conspiracy satire romps
The Square Root of Texas and Deus Tex Machina
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Author Insights

Deep-third person is POV magic

Making your storytelling invisible and powerful is not easy. Not all at once, anyway. You can be invisible, but there's no power. Academic writing walks that tightrope. You can be powerful but not invisible. That's the realm of melodrama. To be both these things at once in fiction, try the deep-third point of view.

Real Self Publishing

Go beyond produce. Publish.

It's like a moon shot, where the launchpad comes first and the planetary landing is second. Don't launch your book into the empty reaches of Amazon's outer space. Publish it after you produce it.