Your editor is your best reader.
My Golden Rule:
It’s your book. Your voice. Your story. My job is to help you get your manuscript where you’ve always wanted it to be.
Rob Bloom is…
The books and amazing authors I’ve worked with have landed on many end-of-year best of lists, and have been reviewed, interviewed, and profiled in major print, radio, and television media across the country. Every book I work on is new experience, and the challenge—and my goal—is to tailor my approach to help each author solve the issues unique to their books, and help them reach their goal on the page.
I live in Brooklyn with my wife and our two boys, who do much of the bouncing these days.
My parents immigrated to the States from South Africa just before I was born, and for my first six years we bounced from Ohio to Canada to finally Texas, where I grew up as the only Jew I knew. I got my BA from Reed College and continued the tradition of bouncing around the west coast and southern Mexico before getting my MFA from LSU Baton Rouge.
I came to New York in 2007 to find work in publishing and hopefully stop bouncing around. I was fortunate to find a job at Doubleday (Penguin Random House) where I spent sixteen years. I published books spanning thrillers, crime, horror, literary, memoir, experimental, satire, and anthologies (and a few that are tricky to categorize). They included New York Times bestsellers, Good Morning America Book Club selections, Indie-Next picks, Edgar nominations, Amazon Best Book of the Month, and B&N Discover picks.
“Rob Bloom is that editor: the kind who helps you say what you want, only better.” — Edgar Cantero
Books edited
MY Approach
Writing can be a maddening and solitary journey. Working with an editor is a collaboration. I listen. I read. I ask metric tons of questions. I give boat loads of suggestions. Together we’ll find the problems areas and identify concrete paths to solving them.
If you are writing fiction or non-fiction, I can help. My strengths are in narrative—whether or not you are inventing. I’ll make sure you’re telling your story in the most compelling/dynamic/authentic/provocative way.
I have the experience to help you bring your book to the next level.
There are two basic services:
01. Global Edit
The first step in the editorial process is the global edit.
This is where I read your manuscript very closely. I’m a broken record but every manuscript, and every edit, is different. What I find always changes, but what I look for does not. I look for dissonance. I look for cohesion. I look for consistency in characters. I look for surprise in characters. I look for character arcs and I look for themes. I look for realism, if that’s what you are going for. Or maybe it’s absurdity. Maybe it’s both. I’m here to help you make it intentional, confident, and to make it count.
I’ll give you tons of notes in the margin of your manuscript. You’ll also get an in-depth editorial letter in which I’ll address your concerns for the overall shape of the narrative and tone, along with an analysis of character, themes, pacing, momentum, tension, and any number of questions particular to your manuscript.
This is where we identify that one passage that perhaps you hope no one will notice, or that scene you don’t want to make eye contact with—and more often than not, we’ll find that a solution has been there all along. (Seriously.)
After you get the editorial letter and notes, we’ll have a final call/zoom to discuss how best to navigate your revision.
02. Line Edit
The nitty gritty. Once you’ve addressed structural issues in your global edit, it’s time to examine the language line-by-line and get granular.
That means we’ll look at the transitions and pacing of each scene, focus on hitting dramatic/comedic/emotional beats, and drill down on the elusive flow and language tics that make up your voice.
Whether you’re writing memoir, literary fiction, horror, crime, narrative non-fiction, or any unique cocktail you’ve invented, this stage is essential.
This is where we make your manuscript bulletproof.
TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE WRITING.
My rates depend on the project’s needs, and yours.