Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing

Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Award and The Non-Obvious Book Award

Wedding toasts, website copy, social media posts, even holiday cards—you’ll become a sharper everyday writer with this witty and comprehensive guide to clearer, better communication.

You’ll never write an email the same way after reading Everybody Needs an Editor, a game-changing guide to sharp, attention-getting writing. The authors use their decades of real-life journalism and marketing expertise to demonstrate the WTFF technique: Writing, Topping, Formatting, and Fixing.

You’ll learn how to eviscerate your own writing—and enjoy doing so. You’ll learn to create must-click subject lines, cut jargon, and write emails that people will actually read and remember.

If you’ve ever felt nervous to hit a “submit” button, this book is for you.

Melissa Harris is the founder and CEO of M. Harris & Co., a Chicago-based marketing agency. She spent fifteen years as a journalist at the Orlando Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun, and Chicago Tribune. She serves as an entrepreneur in residence at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago and on the governing board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Jenn Bane is an author, producer, and the creative director of M. Harris & Co. Her first book, Friendshipping, is a feel-good guide to making friends as a busy and anxious adult. Previously Jenn was the first-ever hire at Cards Against Humanity where she earned a Clio Award for Excellence in Advertising, a fact she intended to omit from this bio but added it because coauthor Melissa Harris ordered her to.

Mark Jacob, a former Chicago Tribune metro editor, edited the columns that won Mary Schmich a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Everybody Needs an Editor is the ninth nonfiction book he has coauthored, with a tenth soon to come, a biography of Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters. Mark’s articles have been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, Library Quarterly, Chicago magazine, and Chicago History magazine.