Meet The People Behind Edit 1st

Carol Taylor, a former Random House book editor, is a thirty-year publishing veteran who has worked with many of today’s top black writers. She is a freelance book editor, ghostwriter, co-writer (Ways of Grace), editorial consultant, award-winning book editor, and a bestselling author who has written 10 books. She is the editor of the 4-book bestselling Brown Sugar series and Wanderlust, and the 3-book series The Ex Chronicles. She is also a contributor to Sacred Fire.

Taylor also teaches editing and creative writing at New York University and City College. She has been featured in Essence, Ebony, Black Enterprise, BET, Heart and Soul, The Boston Globe, The Daily News, The Chicago Sun-Times and Publisher’s Weekly, among many other publications. She has also appeared on BET Tonight with Ed Gordon and ABC Eyewitness News. She is a co-founder of Edit 1st with Troy Johnson.  Read more about Carol Taylor.

Melody Guy has worked in publishing for more than twenty years, first at Simon & Schuster and then at Random House where she launched Strivers Row and later headed the One World/Ballantine imprint. Among the authors she has edited: Mamie Till Mobley, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Julian Bond, Donald Bogle, Pearl Cleage, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Nikki Turner, Travis Hunter, Shirley Strawberry, Derek “Fonzworth Bentley” Watkins, and Ice-T.

In 2011, she became a freelance editor. Since then she has worked on bestselling books by Reverend Al Sharpton, Ashley & JaQuavis Coleman, Catherine Bybee, Tracy Brogan, Angela Burt-Murray, Ernessa T. Carter, Linda Lafferty, and Rachel Van Dyken. She joined Edit 1st in 2018.

Her writing has been published in two anthologies: Where Did Our Love Go: Personal Essays on Love & Relationships in the African-American Community (Agate) and Souls Of My Sisters: Black Women Break Their Silence, Tell Their Stories and Heal Their Spirits, (Kensington/Dafina Books).

Troy Johnson, in addition to co-founding Edit 1st with Carol Taylor, is also the founder of several other sites, including the industry leading website dedicated to books by people of African descent, AALBC.com.  He is a popular speaker on the subject of independent publishing, web based technologies, social media, and search engine optimization.

Johnson has 25 years of technology experience working for large multinational corporations including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and United Technologies.  Johnson also holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University, an MS from Polytechnic University, and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

As an educator, Johnson teaches web design at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business.  Read more about Troy Johnson.