April Kelly
Editor, ghostwriter, and the person who will notice that your protagonist’s eyes changed color in chapter nineteen.
I’ve been editing professionally for sixteen years, which covers everything from quality assurance at a book publisher to fifty-plus bestseller credits to the manuscript that arrived last month from a first-time novelist in Australia. The work hasn’t really changed across any of it, because the job is always the same job: finding out what the writer was going for and then helping them get there.
Most of my editorial work comes through Reedsy and through authors who found me because someone else told them to. I edit fiction across genres, with a soft spot for science fiction, fantasy, and anything with a body count, and I edit nonfiction for people who know their subject cold and need help making a reader care about it.
I also ghostwrite, mostly books for executives in cybersecurity and AI, which lives on a separate site because it’s such a different service. If you came here looking for that, follow the link.
How I work
I’m not a heavy-handed editor. If your manuscript is internally consistent, I’ll usually defend your choice rather than replace it with mine, and everything I do change goes into a style sheet so you can see the reasoning. I comment where a reader is going to stumble, and I stay quiet where the prose is already doing its job well.
I’m also honest about scope. If you ask me for a proofread and what the manuscript actually needs is a developmental conversation, I’ll say so before you pay me, which occasionally costs me the job but has never once cost me a night’s sleep.
Credentials, briefly
- Sixteen years of editorial experience, with fifty-plus bestseller credits
- Former Quality Assurance Coordinator at Scribe Media
- Roster ghostwriter with Gotham Ghostwriters and the Association of Ghostwriters
- Credited co-author on The Digital Samurai, publishing September 2026
- Chicago Manual of Style, with a working knowledge of AP and house styles
- Based in Colorado Springs, working with authors everywhere
What I’m reading
Straight off my Goodreads shelf, which runs to client manuscripts that made it to print, craft books I argue with, and the occasional novel I read purely because I wanted to.
There is more than one April Kelly on Goodreads, and at least one of them writes books I had nothing to do with. I’m this one.