About Us
Built by Publishers.
Not by AI Vendors.
We know how books are read, reviewed, and sold
— because we've been doing it.
The Human Edit was founded by Michail Kollewijn and Valentina Foppa, the team behind PublishMe — an international publishing partner that has delivered translation and market expansion projects for USA Today and Amazon bestselling authors across multiple language markets.
The idea emerged through repeated conversations with clients who had experimented with low-cost AI-based translation services and found themselves facing inconsistent quality, stylistic issues, and reader-facing problems that required correction before publication.
We didn't build The Human Edit because AI translation impressed us.
We built it because we watched what happened when it wasn't done right: manuscripts returned for correction
reader reviews citing translation quality
authors who had invested in market entry only to see their rankings eroded by errors a structured editorial process would have caught.
Every project we take on is assessed against the same standards we apply to the books we publish ourselves.
Our background is in publishing, not technology. That means we evaluate translation quality the way publishers do — by how it reads, how it performs, and how it holds up across the full length of a series.
Founder
Michail Kollewijn
Entrepreneur with over a decade in Senior Management
Michail Kollewijn co-founded The Human Edit after years running PublishMe, where he saw firsthand how AI-only translation breaks down for long-form fiction — losing voice, rhythm, and reader trust. He built The Human Edit's hybrid workflow, pairing DeepL's raw speed with structured AI revision and human editorial passes, to give publishers the speed of AI without sacrificing the quality readers expect from a traditionally published book.
Director & Co-Founder
Valentina Foppa
Marketing Specialist with over 5 years in the Localization Industry
Valentina Foppa co-founded The Human Edit to solve a problem she kept seeing in localization: AI translation that reads "correct" but never quite right. Drawing on a background in International Relations and years specializing in translation and localization, she helped design the service's structured, multi-stage editorial process — ensuring every AI-assisted translation still passes through genre-trained human eyes before it reaches readers.
Our Belief
AI translation tools are improving, but they still fall short of the quality readers expect from published books.
In published books, quality is not measured by speed or cost efficiency, but by how a translation reads, feels, and performs in the market.
Poor translation quality carries real consequences:
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Lost reader trust and reviews
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Weakened store rankings
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Reduced recommendations and referrals
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Missed long-term revenue