Gresham Manuscript Service

Ghost. Develop. Edit. Proof.

Ghost

From even the kernel of an idea, we help you realize your project with as much or as little writing from you as you’re comfortable with. Interviews, transcriptions, sifting through your archives, and making sense of it all are our starting points; from there we walk you from a table of contents to a final draft. It’s your book, but we take the guesswork and legwork out of the process.

Develop

The house specialty. You wrote a book, but it doesn’t feel quite right. Or you’ve got part of a book, but you’re not sure what happens next, or why, or in what order . . . We tease out what’s working, what’s standing in the way, and how we can help you produce the best possible manuscript. English not your mother tongue? English is hard! We have smoothed out publications for countless novelists, scientists, and scholars who feel more at home in other languages.

Edit

Your manuscript is complete, and it’s time to put it through its paces. Spelling, grammar, readability, continuity, sensitivity, and citation conformity are scrutinized line by line by our crackerjack team. No doubt your book is already great—but it will be tighter and righter after a trip to the spa.

Proof

Is that comma italicized? We comb your PDF with the finest of teeth and leave notes using Adobe Acrobat’s proofing tools. Whether you hire us to do it or not, don’t skip this step!

Photograph

Author headshots, cover images, interior images, website content, and public reading shoots—all yours without licensing headaches.

View more examples on Instagram at @tunneldunker

GMS has had the privilege of touching millions of pages of brilliant and important writing-in-progress. We could never name every project, but here’s a quick hall of fame off the top of our heads. There are at least two Nobel winners, a state rep, the mayor of Reykjavik, and a MacArthur genius in here. Plus Bowie!

The Parks of Nashville: A History of the Board of Parks and Recreation (1984-2024)

On July 4, 1984, Nashville celebrated Independence Day at Riverfront Park for the first time. Richard Fulton was mayor. The only Athena statue in the Parthenon was four feet tall. Fort Negley was a neglected ruin. Nobody had ever heard of a greenway or a dog park.

Within a decade, Nashville’s greenways initiative would begin sewing the city together with threads of green; another decade and the entire park system would be unified by a sweeping master plan; another and the seeds for massive regional parks would be planted in the far reaches of Davidson County.

This is the story of the growth, controversy, and endurance of Metro Parks in the momentous forty years between 1984 and 2024. All proceeds benefit the Nashville Parks Foundation.

Book Details

Published by Metro Nashville Board of Parks and Recreation.

About the Agency

Since 2012, Gresham Manuscript Service has prepared, enhanced, and fine-tuned thousands of monographs, novels, articles, memoirs, interviews, translations, atlases, whitepapers, cookbooks, and edited collections for an international clientele of trade, scholarly, periodical, scientific, and non-profit publishers and authors. Our work has been published by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Princeton University Press, Penguin Random House, ACCESS Health International, HarperCollins, Third Man Books, Lapham’s Quarterly, Melville House Books, Dalkey Archive Press, Amplify Publishing, the Wall Street Journal, Forefront Books, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Penn State University Press, Harvard University Press, Catapult, Counterpoint Press, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, the Nashville Scene, and many more.

Every book, like every author, is a unique puzzle with unique solutions. For that reason, every GMS quote is bespoke. Hit us up here so we can chat about your project.