Read Panda's first blog post
This is exciting! Our first blog post for our new company, Read Panda Editing. So, who are we? And why have we set up this company? Well, our names are Mike and Vittorio. We met at university in Scotland while doing our PhDs in medieval history (feel free to ask us about our subjects – we can bore you for hours!). We both decided that we didn’t want to go into academia but wanted to continue working with words and ideas while retaining the high standards and attention to detail that we learnt during our studies.
Initially, we thought that the world of mainstream publishing was our best option. We both worked for a literary agency in London. We learnt about pitching books for publication, both digitally and in-person at big events such as the London International Book Fair, and what big publishing houses are looking for (and looking to avoid).
But while we loved working with authors to help them achieve their vision, we didn’t much enjoy a lot of what being an agent involved in the day-to-day: selling, selling and more selling! To put it simply, we don’t really care how many people follow you on social media: we just care about your writing and making it the best it can be.
Editing is something both of us enjoy and are good at, and it allows us to work with words in the way that we want to. We started doing editing courses with the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (back then, the Society for Editors and Proofreaders) and worked on our editing skills in general. We each built up our client bases and honed our skills.
Fast-forward some years and we realised that with our shared history and skills, it would make perfect sense to work together. We had accumulated the experience and satisfied clients to upgrade to Professional Membership of the Institute, thus felt happy embarking on this new venture. And so, Read Panda was born! Our aim is to offer excellent author services at reasonable rates (the minimum rate suggested by our professional organisation and a special, lower one for early-career academics) so that authors of all stripes can benefit from our specialist experience.
Go ahead and get in touch if our services sound like they’d be of interest to you. We love to hear from prospective clients.