About Jerry Smith

I started writing for money in the early 1980s when an editor asked me for a story to go with some photos I had taken at a motorcycle race. A stint of freelancing led to a staff job at Rider, a monthly motorcycle magazine in Southern California. From there I moved to Cycle Guide, and when that title closed its doors I was hired at Motorcyclist.

By mid-1988 I’d had all the Los Angeles I could stand. I packed up my motorcycles, my dog, and my computer and moved to Oregon, where I’ve been a full-time freelancer ever since. Now, instead of splitting lanes on a five-day-a-week 120-mile motorcycle commute, I walk twelve steps down the hall to my home office, and in the afternoon take a 30-minute drive to the coast where I drink coffee and walk my dog on the beach. 

My freelance career is now more than 30 years old. In that time I continued to write for motorsports magazines, and developed other income streams. I edited thirteen books on technical subjects ranging from dragsters to tractors to locomotives for CarTech, a publisher in Minnesota. Grudgingly recognizing print was losing the battle with online journalism, I started contributing to Jalopnik.com, an automotive and motorcycle website. More recently I edited several non-fiction books and collections, and squeezed in a couple of books of my own, a collection titled Missed Shifts, and a novel titled Dents. Currently I'm semi-regular contributor to Common Tread.

I offer a variety of editorial services to new and established writers, from simple copyediting (making sure your copy is clean, grammatical, and consistent) to helping you take the initial idea for a book from a concept to a finished product. I also work closely with a designer who can format the interior copy, design covers, and prep those files for submission to Amazon's print-on-demand self-publishing platform. 

If you have questions about me, my work, or my editorial services, shoot me an email here.  Check my blog regularly to see what I'm working on.