Projects – Chrys Buckley

Portfolio

This is the home for my digital portfolio. You’ll find samples of copyediting, developmental editing, interior book design, cover and jacket design, reader reports, accessible EPUBs and work on digital accessibility.

My areas of specialization within the Book Publishing master’s program at Portland State University are Editing and Design. In addition to those two fields, I managed the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press during my final year of the program, focusing on accessible ebooks, audiobooks, and digital accessibility. You might say I’m a generalist.

I’m including samples of work for classes in the Book Publishing grad program, work for Ooligan Press, and outside freelance work for individual clients and for publishers like Wandering Aengus Press.

Keep checking back, as I’ll continue to update this page. Keep an eye out especially for audiobook-related updates that are in the works but not yet shareable.

Write to me via my site’s contact form if you’re interested in my editing, book design, ebook, audiobook, or digital accessibility work.

I hope you enjoy these samples!

Echoes of the Lost – Accessible Ebook – Mystery

One of my last acts as manager of the Digital department at Ooligan Press, along with training my successor since I’ll be graduating soon, was making the ebook for Echoes of the Lost.

Of course, for the full ebook experience, you can always purchase Echoes of the Lost on bookshop.org or any other bookselling website and choose the ebook version. Echoes of the Lost launches on May 12.

Since this fully accessible ebook is reflowable, its appearance will adjust to any changes in typeface, font size, or any other parameter that someone makes in their e-reader, so this is just one view.

Here is a peak inside the ebook via images from Apple Books:

This is a really fun book, both cozy and gritty, and I’m really excited for it to be out in the world a week from today!

Here’s the cover, designed by my Ooligan Press colleague who taught me everything I know about ebooks, Madelynn Sare. Again, I did NOT design this, but wanted to include it for the visual element of the cover, as well as to plug Madelynn’s work!

book cover for Echoes of the Lost: A Mystery by Cindy Brown. The title is in large red words over a background image of a bridge in Portland.

The Abbey of Saint Zosimos – Focused Developmental Editing Letter and Manuscript Markup – Cozy Fantasy

The Abbey of Saint Zosimos by Anna Shomsky is Ooligan Press‘s latest acquisition. It should launch in winter 2028. One of the people in my cohort described it as “a funny silly goofy good time,” and that description has stuck. It takes place in an abbey of magicians on Vashon Island who use spells and potions for such serious business as changing the color of slugs and elongating nose hairs.

For the developmental edit, we were divided into teams and asked to write letters of only 1-2 pages, focused on our specific focus. So, this is (much) shorter than a full DE letter.

Here’s my focused DE letter about Narration (POV) and tone:

DE Letter – Abbey of St Zosimos – Tone and Narration – Buckley Download

Along with the letter, we each marked up a full manuscript with focused developmental editing comments. Many of mine centered on tracking the POVs in each chapter and noting when they shifted, briefly or for longer stretches. I also included tone comments.

Here’s a sampling of my manuscript markup:

Pages from DE_Abbey of Saint Zosimos_Buckley Download

This book likely won’t get a cover for quite some time, given the long publication timeline, but when it does I’ll come back and add that and link to the cover designer.

A Broken Russia Inside Me – Memoir Interior Layout and Design

Much of what I’ve posted in this portfolio relates to my work at Ooligan Press or for classes in the Book Publishing master’s program at Portland State University, and this post is a bit different. Once my own book, Invisible Violets, was acquired by Wandering Aengus Press and I did the interior design for my own book (more about that here), the Wandering Aengus Press publisher, Jill McCabe Johnson, hired me to do the press’s book interiors as well as some book jacket work for both WAP and its imprint, trail to table press.

So, here is a sampling of some pages from my first Wandering Aengus Press book interior, for A Broken Russia Inside Me by my pressman A. Molotkov. A Broken Russia Inside Me launches on October 27th at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland. In addition to the interior book design, I also get to be the conversation partner to A. Molotkov at the launch event!

Pages from ABrokenRussiaInsideMeInterior04012026 Download

I’m so excited about this book, and when it gets a bit closer to launch date, I’ll come back and include the cover and links to the book for those who want to pre-order!

Developmental Editing Letter – Literary Fiction

Here is a sample of a full-length developmental editing letter for a literary fiction novel, as part of the Developmental Editing class for the Editing track of my grad program in Book Publishing.

I’ve anonymized the author’s name and the book title and a few other things for the sake of privacy for the author.

DE Letter Literary Fiction Download

Harnessing the Power of Museums – Developmental Editing (3 Rounds) – Academic Nonfiction

It has been my absolute joy to work with Dr. Elizabeth Lahti and Lisa Abia-Smith on their forthcoming book from Bloomsbury later this year, Harnessing the Power of Museums: A Guide to Programs for Well-being. Not only are Elizabeth and Lisa a pleasure to work with, but their book is also a balm for so much of what feels off in the world. This book centers creativity, attention, art, and connection and includes moving essays on a variety of universal themes. Every time I work on the book, I’m reminded of what actually matters over the long-term. I also feel hope every time I work on (and thus read) this manuscript, which is in very short supply these days. I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world.

This project came to me in three stages so far—a fourth is in the works!—so this portfolio post will also have three parts to represent each round of developmental editing.

Round 1 Developmental Editing

The first phase occurred last spring, when Elizabeth and Lisa hired me to give their manuscript a first pass. It had a different title then, and a much different structure from its final form.

Here is my first developmental editing letter for this project:

HtPoO Editorial Letter Download

Round 2 Developmental Editing

The second round was, by far, the most intense. Because of Elizabeth and Lisa’s publisher’s timeline and my grad school schedule, I did most of this work over winter break. The manuscript was much longer at this point, so there was a lot to get through in a short amount of time. I may or may not have worked a lot of hours on this project on Christmas Day with Hulu Christmas movies playing in the background.

We did a lot of work in the document. I did a lot of developmental editing by Word doc comments, as well as copyediting, but since we were working on such a tight timeline, we were all in the manuscript via Word for Web, and we didn’t preserve any of my comments because of the live editing workflow the project needed. So, there is a lot I can’t show you, I can share my editing letter that addressed the authors’ specific questions and other developmental observations. We did this via Google Docs, so that I could get them feedback while still working on other parts of the manuscript, to accommodate time constraints. It might sound stressful, and there was time pressure, but I look back on these winter memories with fondness.

Here is the round 2 editing letter:

Harnessing the Power of Objects (Round 2) Letter Download

Round 3 Developmental Editing (Response to Peer Review)

After Lisa and Elizabeth received their first round of peer review, they asked me to go through the comments, as well as the updated manuscript, and give them feedback and suggestions. Of the three rounds, this was the lightest one. It was, once again, a pure delight to dive back into the project.

Here is the Round 3 editing letter:

Harnessing the Power of Museums Round 3 Letter Download

Stay tuned for Round 4: Indexing

I’m so excited for this possibility. Indexing is fun!

It will get its own post because indexing is a different type of work.

Promise the Sky – Heavy and Light Copyedits – YA Sci-Fi

Another upcoming Ooligan Press book that I can’t wait for everyone to read is Promise the Sky by Katrina Spillman, which we’re publishing in partnership with Multnomah County Library Writers Project. It’s a YA sci-fi space opera, and it’s awesome. Promise the Sky will release in spring 2027.

I’ve been a little more hands-on with this book than some others because we’re also going to be recording the audiobook, which falls under my department. More on that to come.

For this book, I participated in both the first-round copyedit (heavy/medium) and the second-round copyedit (medium/light), so I’m sharing samples of both.

Here’s a sample from the first, heavy/medium copyedit, which involved a lot of standardizing ellipses and capitalizations of names and terms within the world of the book (style sheets are our friends):

PTS – Heavy:Medium CE Download

Here is a sample from the second, medium/light copyedit:

PTS – Light:Medium CE Download

We don’t have a cover yet for Promise the Sky, so I’ll come back and update when we do!

A Freelance Editor’s Guide to Ethics and Entrepreneurship – Light Copyedit – Nonfiction

This forthcoming book from Ooligan Press, a collection of essays on editing written originally by and for the Editorial Freelancers Association won’t be out until February 2027, and right now it just went through the light copyediting phase of book production.

Here’s a small sampling of my light copyedit for this book:

Pages from EFA_Light-Medium CE – Buckley Download

Once the cover is finalized, I’ll come back and add it in for some visual appeal.

Surveying Press Backlist Ebooks – Digital Accessibility Project

One of my biggest projects as the Digital Manager at Ooligan Press was to make a plan to remediate our backlist. A new EU law, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has direct language about accessibility requirements for frontlist and backlist ebooks, with due dates for each. Thankfully, our frontlist is already compliant; every book from our fall 2024 release of The Pacific Northwest Disaster Guide and onward is good to go.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II is not as direct and specific about ebooks but does address materials used in educational settings, and some of our Ooligan titles are taught in classes.

So, the first order of business was to survey the existing backlist. In doing so, I made this spreadsheet to collect the info in one place. I looked at the existing EPUB files and assessed accessibility, catalogued the amount and nature of alt text needed for each backlist book, took note of special formatting needs (poetry, tables, and the like), and categorized the complexity of each ebook.

The spreadsheet was meant to serve as a resource for planning with the Publisher and as a tracking and organizing document. The Publisher and I have used this to select the first book for remediation: Cataclysms on the Columbia. It’s one of Ooligan Press’s best-selling titles, and it’s one of our most directly educational titles as it’s used as a textbook for geology courses. Next will likely be The Portland Red Guide, which is getting a reprint as well.

Echoes of the Lost – Reader Report – Mystery

Here is a Reader Report from my Literary Agents and Acquisitions class in the Portland State University Book Publishing master’s program.

A Reader Report is when someone reads a manuscript that’s been submitted to an agent or publisher and writes up an analysis. This report looks at the strengths and weakness of the story as well as how it fits in the market, then makes a recommendation for the publisher or agent to either accept or pass on the submission.

This report was on a manuscript titled Echoes of the Lost by Cindy Brown, the author of the Macdeath series. Echoes will be out on May 12, 2026, also known as the same day my graduate thesis and final portfolio are due.

I’m so excited for this book to come out. This will be the first of a handful of portfolio posts on the same book, because I took part in several stages of its editing process. It’s a great mystery, and I can’t wait to read it in book form.

Because a Reader Report is more internal to a publishing company or literary agency, rather than a pitching document from outside, and because the reader is evaluating the manuscript as a whole and passing on the most important information to the publisher or agent, they often contain spoilers, and this report does include some pretty serious spoilers. Read at your own risk, or just read the actual book!

CBuckley Readers Report Echoes of the Lost Download

Here’s the cover, designed by my Ooligan Press colleague who taught me everything I know about ebooks, Madelynn Sare. Again, I did NOT design this, but wanted to include it for the visual element of the cover, as well as to plug Madelynn’s work!