Here's how to organize your best proofreading and editing resources so that they're visible to and usable for your ideal clients.
Learning centres for proofreaders and editors
I have two learning centres on my website, one for authors and one for editors. Each topic has an image. Clicking on that picture takes the visitor to a section further down on the page that contains useful relevant content. Maybe it's a blog post, a Word file, a PDF booklet, a video, podcast or an Excel spreadsheet. Most of that stuff is on my blog too, so why did I create dedicated pages to curate it? Here are my 8 reasons: 1. Learning centres help visitors find your useful stuff It's much easier for a visitor to navigate from one resource to another when you offer clearly titled images in one place than it is to find what you want in a search bar or blog archive. And if they get distracted, it’s easy to start the content review process all over again back in the centre. That might not be so easy if they’re on a 7-year-old blog with several hundred articles on it, especially if the ones they want to read sit in different subject- or month-archives. Your visitor can also bookmark a learning centre on your site. They can’t do that with a list of results generated by your search bar. They can probably bookmark an archive, but that will only show the first article or two on your blog, not a chunk of your core resources at a glance. 2. Learning centres keep your visitors on your site for longer because there’s more to engage with The more goodies you offer visitors, the greater their engagement. That’s good for obvious reasons – you’re helping your clients, showing them you’re engaged with their problems, and are willing and able to solve them. But there’s another important reason. The longer someone sticks around on your site, the more likely they are to hire your editorial services. It’s no surprise, really – I don’t stick around in a high-street shop, desperately trying to find that one thing I want, if the overall feel of the place and the products it’s selling don’t feel like me. But if I keep finding things that grab my attention, I’m much more likely to walk out of the door with something nice. Editorial websites are no different. If your learning centre makes potential clients drool because you’re offering them a lot of free, helpful, valuable content, if it makes them feel that you get them, and that you’re a good fit for each other, you have a much higher chance of persuading that person to ask for a quote or a sample edit/proofread. 3. Learning centres reinforce your brand Learning centres are perfect for reinforcing your brand identity because you can create a uniform look and feel by theming your images with consistent brand colours, fonts, and design. Include a few lines of text at the top to explain who your resources are for, and what problems they’ll solve – your mission, so to speak. Here’s a partial sample of the image in my author resources page.
And here's a partial shot of John Espirian's library. John's learning centre has a very different feel to it, and so it should. His brand identity is built around a different set of skills, services and target clients.
4. Learning centres demonstrate your expertise and arouse clients’ emotions
With a learning centre. you can offer a chunk of accessible information that solves multiple problems. That presents you as an expert who sees the big picture. It’s not a labyrinthine process of discovery that involves extensive scrolling or putting the right keywords into a search box. Rather, you hit them in the heart with a message that you’re on their side and have their backs. It’s about arousing powerful emotions. In episode 3 of Content Mavericks, pro content marketers Andrew and Pete argue that high-arousal messages like awe, excitement, relief, and love are much more likely to generate engagement than lower-arousal messages like contentment. ‘When we care we share … Figure out a way to make people care about your message or your offering.’
If your learning centre can generate excitement in your potential client – make them feel that they’ve found an editor or proofreader who’s completely on their wavelength, someone who’s demonstrably in touch with their struggles, and is offering resolution – that’s a powerful message.
And it’s one that’s more likely to get your visitors telling others about who you are and what you’re up to, and have them clicking the Contact button. 5. Eye candy I cherish my blog. I’ve lovingly filled it with articles on a weekly (mostly) basis since 2011. But things can get messy. There’s a sidebar with a subscription button, an RSS button, a search box, an archive by subject area, an archive by date, some links to my books, and more. Plus, I love to write meaty posts. Most of my articles are at least 1,500 words long. And while I do include images and header stamps that summarize what’s included in each post, there’s an awful lot of text. That’s not all. There’s a lot of scrolling to do if someone wants to glimpse what’s available on one page of the blog. A learning centre is much easier on the eye and allows my author visitors to see at a glance what’s on offer. 6. Segmentation Back in the day when I worked exclusively for publishers, my blog posts were aimed at my colleagues. These days I work exclusively for indie authors, and now I’m creating content for them, too. So I have two audiences, and two types of content. It’s about a 50–50 split. Creating learning centres helps me to segment my website so that the right people can find the relevant content. This is particularly important for my author audience because most of them don’t yet know me. They’re less likely to bounce around in my blog, diving from one archive to another in a bid to find what they need. Many of my colleague visitors do know me, at least in an online capacity. And so they have a little more patience because I’ve already built a trusting relationship with them. They’re more likely to spend time rooting around the blog for what they want. Still, I've created an editor resources page for them because I want them to find stuff easily. Show off what you’ve got planned What if you have a ton of great stuff in your head or on a to-do list? Perhaps it's already in production, out with the proofreader, or scheduled for publication sometime in the next few months. None of that stuff is visible on your blog. Your blog only tells people about what’s available. What’s coming might be equally appealing. They might be more likely to get in touch if they can see exciting things in the pipeline. In that case, upload an image with a 'forthcoming' caption.
8. Learning centres encourage ‘you’re worth it’ moments
Certainly, a great resource library will increase the likelihood of your visitor hitting the contact button, but not everyone will be ready to make that commitment. That’s why building a mailing list is a great way to keep in touch with potential clients who are thinking: I’m interested in you and like what you’re doing, but I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to hire you as my editor or proofreader. Still, it seems like everyone and their aunt has a mailing list or newsletter these days. And if you’re going to persuade someone to allow yet another email into their already crowded inbox, and make them want to actually open it, displaying a library of gorgeous resources might just be the tipping point – the thing that makes them think you’re worth it. Make sure your hub includes a way of signing up to your mailing list, and a clear call to action that tells the visitor what you want them to do, and why.
Summing up
Make your wonderful editorial content easy to access. Whether it’s a blog, a vlog, a podcast, or something else, help your potential clients navigate their way around your resources and show them all the marvellous stuff on offer. Tell them who and what it’s for – how it helps, which problems it solves. And make sure it's designed uniformly (Canva is your free friend – trust me!) so that the resources look like they're part of a stable. That way it’s not a hotchpotch of stuff; it’s valuable, client-focused content that represents you, your editorial business, your professional values, and your mission – your brand identity.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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Pro small-business marketers Andrew and Pete discuss the power of video marketing for editors and proofreaders.
When Louise asked us to write a guest blog for proofreaders, we thought to ourselves: ‘Editors, they love words, right? Hmm ... we know ... why don’t we write a blog about why they should all stop writing stuff and start creating videos instead?’
WHAT. A. GREAT. IDEA. Deep breath ... ... Here we go. Should you all start video marketing? Excusing the dramatics at the start of this article, let’s talk seriously for a moment about why video marketing can’t be ignored when it comes to marketing your proofreading business. We aren’t saying stop writing, period. We do think blogging should be a key part of your marketing mix, but our aim in this article is to make the case for bringing some elements of video into your content marketing strategy. Remember, you may like to write, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how all your customers want to consume their content. Reason number 1: Consumers are switching to video content With faster internet connection both at home and on mobile, video content has been opened up to the masses, and more and more people are turning to video content over written blogs. This may be the case for you, too! Think about how many videos you’ve watched online in the past 7 days compared to the amount of blogs you’ve read. Chances are the former is higher; and if it’s not, you’re in the minority here. Why is this happening? Well, other than the tech allowing it in the modern world, people are becoming highly trained multi-taskers. We’re used to triple or quadruple screening with our devices – watching TV while checking our phones, scrolling through Facebook on our tablets, and maybe even taking a fourth glance at the smart watches on our wrists. A lot of the content we’re consuming is video because, actually, it’s less effort. Reading generally requires our full focus on 1 screen. In fact – especially on social – video is being watched with the sound off more often than with it on! Crazy, right? (Rev.com is your best friend for subtitling, btw.) So, if we want to get people’s attention, if we want to educate them, entertain them, or even SELL to them, video is the best way to get that all-important attention. At least today, anyway.
Reason number 2: Video builds trust, something that’s lacking
Once we have the attention, the next thing we need is trust. In 2015, we attended talk by our marketing hero Seth Godin, who painted the picture of the modern business landscape. He argued that the businesses that are going to win are the ones with attention and trust.
Trust is lacking nowadays. It’s never been easier to start a business – the internet has allowed for that.
We’re sure you’re running a legitimate business, but there’s no denying the number of charlatans out there as well as the people who – let’s be honest – have no clue what they’re doing. But all you need is a website and BOOM! you’re in business. Because of this, trust is falling … fast. People don’t really know if you’re an experienced proofreader, if this is your first time at the rodeo, if you’re doing this to put yourself through an English degree, or even whether English is your first language. We have to earn that trust before somebody parts with their cash. Yes – nice websites can do this, as can client testimonials, a nice logo and an about page that says you’ve been doing this since Andrew and Pete were in diapers. But if you want to go from being a stranger, or a faceless logo, to earning trust to the extent that somebody will actually hire you, video wins the day. Why? Because people still trust a friendly face. Add a face to your brand and you’re getting somewhere. Add a talking face and you’ve hit the money. Let’s be honest – we need to know, like and trust our proofreader. If we don’t, we might as well check our own stuff. But if you can show your expertise and let people get to know you through video, you speed up that know–like–trust factor tenfold. Reason number 3: It can be a more effective way to communicate Marketing is basically communication. Whether we’re looking at blogs, home pages, print, sales copy – whatever – we want to communicate a message in the most efficient way possible, and in a way that people remember. Video allows for that. Studies have shown that on average people remember 20% of what they see; or 30% of what they hear, BUT A WHOPPING 70% of what they see and hear! It seems a lot but it makes sense when you think about. Reason number 4: Social media marketing and video are a match made in heaven Being a proofreader, you can work from wherever you like, at whatever time you like – whether that’s the cupboard under your stairs or a beach in the Seychelles. Because of that, you can’t ignore using social media to find clients and network with people all over the world. The majority of the social networks are pushing users towards video, and because of this they’re giving preference to it in feeds. You’ll see a significant increase in reach online when using video content natively on a platform, compared to links or plain-text updates. Side note: ‘natively’ means uploading the video direct to that platform, rather than linking to, say, a YouTube video or similar. The only exception is the classically late-to-the-party LinkedIn, where video can’t be uploaded natively, yet (for the general user at least). We’d place bets on them catching up soon. Video comes in different formats depending on the platform. Whichever platform you’re focusing on, try adding video into the mix. Reason number 5: Stand out from the crowd and show your brand personality
Everybody wants their businesses to stand out from the competition, but only a few are willing to take the action to do something different. Video probably isn’t the norm for proofreaders, so it’s therefore a great way to stand out from the crowd and show your brand personality.
We’ve talked about trust and attention already, and this increases tenfold if you show some personality in your business. We aren’t saying you have to be funny, or crazy, or unprofessional, but rather know what your brand personality is. By the way, if you aren’t sure what we mean by brand personality, check out Creating a Brand Identity, a video we created ;) Once you know your brand personality, you have to show it! Yes, you can do this with the written word (we’d like to think this article gets across some of our personality), but oftentimes this can be much easier with video. So don’t go with the flow. Be different and you’ll get attention.
Using video in your marketing
Okay, hopefully we’ve set the scene for incorporating some video into your marketing. The next thing is getting going with it. The first thing people tend to jump to is the sales video – the videos for your home page, services page, about page, etc. This is cool – you can create these to help people through the buying process – but we also want you to use video for content marketing. Just like you might write blogs to educate, inspire or entertain, make videos for the same purpose. And, importantly, be consistent so that you build your brand awareness over time and max out the 5 reasons we covered earlier in this article. Remember, just because you’re creating video it doesn’t mean that you can’t write as well. Feel free to embed your videos on your blog and write, too, like we do on the Andew and Pete blog. Here are 3 main styles of video you could implement:
You don’t have to do all three! Find out what works best for you, and stick with it! Final thoughts Thank for reading this article. We hope it’s got you thinking twice about using video. Our own marketing efforts improved significantly when we switched to video. Our only regret was not doing it sooner! Let us know how you get on, and if you need any help don’t hesitate to ask. Written by Andrew and Pete
Andrew and Pete run an award-winning content marketing company called Andrew and Pete, where they help small businesses builds brands people love.
They have been featured on Social Media Examiner, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur on Fire, and are the authors of The Hippo Campus and Content Mavericks. You can find out more about them at www.andrewandpete.com.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. Can you become a proofreader even if you have no publishing experience? That's what a reader wanted to know. Here's my answer. Amanda is a UK-based primary-school teacher. She says: ‘I have zero experience in publishing. However, I have a first-class degree in Education Studies and enjoy reading and grammar. I've been reading your blog recently and have thought of qualifying as a proofreader but appreciate how competitive it is. What is the likelihood of me obtaining work based on my background?’ Many thanks for your question, Amanda! So, the short answer is, there’s a strong likelihood if you get your marketing head on. Because, essentially, this is a marketing issue. Here’s my current favourite mantra: We have two jobs: the work we do, and the work we do to get the work we do. In your email to me you talked in terms of ‘qualifying’ so you’re clearly prepared to embark on professional training – a wise decision. It tells me you’re prepared to make yourself fit for practice – the work we do. Now let’s look at what you could do to get that work. 1st-stage marketing (pre-qualification)
These are the basics, but they’re enough to give you a solid set of standard online profiles that represent you and your proofreading business, and that will enable you to connect with like-minded professionals – old hands and new. In reality, your potential client base is rather wide, but I believe that in the start-up phase, when you’re building a proofreading business, it makes sense to target publishers. That’s because:
2nd-stage marketing (post-qualification) So why would a publisher be interested in you, Amanda? Here are some reasons:
And who are those education publishers? Google is your friend here, but here’s a short list of publishers in the UK who have education lists or imprints. In your position, I’d start by getting in touch with every single publisher you can find in the UK who publishes education content.
My bet is that most (many, certainly) academic or scholarly publishers in the UK will have books, journals and electronic products in the field of education at some level. Find out who’s in charge of hiring editorial freelancers. Email or post a cover letter and CV. Be sure to emphasize your training, background, society membership and subject specialisms. In the early stages, education will be your core specialism but, honestly, if you can proofread an educational research book, you can proofread a politics book or a social theory book, so you might decide to expand your list of interests to education, social sciences and humanities. Or you might talk in terms of education teaching, theory, practice, governance, and research, and other key related terms. It’s something to think about. When you start looking at what else all those publishers with education books are putting out to market, you’ll get a sense of how you might customize each contact letter/email so that you really engage with each press’s list. 3rd-stage marketing As you build up your publisher list, your portfolio of completed works, and your testimonials from all those satisfied in-house production editors, you can really start to make your online presence stand out. Perhaps you now meet the criteria to advertise in the SfEP’s online Directory of Editorial Services. This is one way of making yourself visible to clients outside the publishing industry – I’m thinking here of master’s and PhD students preparing dissertations and theses in the field of education and beyond; academics (particularly those whose first language isn’t English) preparing articles for journal submission); independent non-fiction authors, and so on. For a broader look at different marketing approaches, check out the Marketing archive here on the Parlour, or my book Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business. If accessing a market outside the mainstream publishing industry is something you’re serious about, start your content marketing as soon as possible. I have a wee primer that will give you the basics. If you want to get serious, visit the Andrew and Pete website. I bang on about these two all the time, but they know their stuff. I wish I’d known them 10 years ago. Unfortunately for me, they’re a fair bit younger so were probably doing their GCSEs when I started my editorial business! But I’m using them now to help me get the very best I can from my marketing. Summing up So, yes, I think you can obtain work if you are practice-fit and ready to plant a big marketing hat on your head and really commit to it! The fact is, it’s noisy out here, and getting noisier. But the market is bigger too – global, in fact – so there’s more competition, but more opportunities too. Another mantra – be interesting and be discoverable.
Get your training and your marketing licked and there’s no reason why you can’t create a successful proofreading business. It will take time and hard graft, but it’s perfectly doable for those with the right mindset. Hope that helps! If you have additional questions, just pop them in the comments below. Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Georgia got in touch with a training query. She’s asked to remain anonymous in order to not jeopardize her existing client relationships. I’ve therefore changed her name and removed all the details from her email that might enable colleagues or clients to identify her.
She’s based outside the UK. She has only two clients, both of which I believe are exploiting her. One pays months late on a regular basis, though it expects its freelancers to meet its tight deadlines; the other (more recent) expects her to wear far too many editorial hats given what she’s being paid for each project.
Although Georgia has several years’ copyediting experience, she has no formal training and feels that scope creep has exposed gaps in her professional knowledge. These are proving to be a challenge in her current roles. Georgia’s budget is limited (not a surprise given that she’s not being paid in a timely manner). She asks: ‘Could you suggest further steps for me? Are there any reputable online training courses you would recommend that would advance my skills and that would not be too expensive?’ So, what should she do? Training and beyond So, Georgia, first of all, I’m really impressed that you’ve focused on upskilling rather than complaining. Few editors and proofreaders know everything about everything; there’s always more to learn! Of particular interest to me, though, was the fact that you framed your query purely in terms of skills gaps and training solutions. Actually, I think there’s a bigger issue at stake: your limited choice. Your current clients expect you to be able to carry out more levels of editing than you feel capable of. And yet there are plenty of clients in the world who would benefit from – and be glad to hire you for – your existing capabilities. However, they can’t find you. With that in mind, I’m going to break down my answer into several parts:
And if that sounds like I’m looking for an excuse to bang my marketing drum yet again, I won’t apologize! The fact is that the work we do and the work we do to get the work we do are connected. Having appropriate skills is of course the foundation of good practice, but it’s next to useless if we’re still rendered vulnerable to clients who expect the earth, and believe they can ask us for it, because we have nowhere else to turn. But let’s deal with the training issue first, since that’s what you asked me to address ... Online training So the bottom line is that, as far as I’m aware, there are no ‘cheap’ distance-learning courses that will provide you with the baseline skills that mainstream publishing houses and university presses will expect from a copyeditor or proofreader. You get what you pay for when it comes to professional training. Of course, what’s cheap to you might seem pricey to me, or vice versa. Given that the pound is rather weak as I write in June 2017, perhaps some of the UK online training courses I’m about to recommend might be well within your budget today even if they wouldn’t have been three years ago! The two institutions I’ve worked with, and so can vouch for with confidence, are as follows: Bear in mind that if you decide to do proofreading training, the proof-correction markup language taught (BS 5261C: 2005) on UK distance-learning courses will differ a little from that used where you live, so there’ll be some tweaking to do when you apply the training to your practice. Below, in the comments, my colleague Corina Koch MacLeod kindly posted some additional links to online courses (see Professional Studies at Queen's University, Canada). They're open to anyone, anywhere.
Books Online proofreading and copyediting courses are superb options because of the flexibility they offer and, in some cases, the available feedback from a tutor (that's one of the reasons why they're not the lowest-cost option). Given that you’re on a budget, though, you might want to consider books, too. Here are eight to think about:
These books most definitely aren't up-to-date in terms of technology (the on-what issue), but the best-practice elements are still spot on. The fourth edition of Butcher's is also pricey. Second-hand versions of the third edition are going for a song on Amazon, though. If you find that some of these books are out of print, ask in editorial forums if anyone has copies they’d be happy to pass on. Mentoring: formal and informal Another option is to seek either formal or informal mentoring. I don’t think you should feel embarrassed about explaining to colleagues in editorial forums that you’re looking to raise your skills to meet publishing-industry standards, and asking whether anyone would be prepared to mentor you. I'm impressed when even the most experienced editor or proofreader asks about CPD. Some may expect a fee, others will do it for free, though there might well be a wait list. Moving beyond mainstream publishers Mainstream publishers, as you know, tend to have rather rigid definitions of what a copyediting or proofreading job entails. Editorial freelancers who specialize in working for these clients do have a smoother ride if they’ve formally trained because that training accords with industry expectations. Things take a different (though not always easier!) turn when working with independent authors, students, businesses, and so on. I would not be at all surprised if the experience you’ve already acquired with your two mainstream clients means that you're more than capable of working with many non-publishers effectively. So let’s say you offer copyediting. While a publisher might expect you to edit the index or the bibliography as standard, you could decide to exclude these from your service for non-publishers. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that many non-publisher clients come to me, and thousands of my colleagues, looking for so-called proofreading services. What they’re actually asking for frequently falls under the rubric of what we'd call copyediting (correcting the raw-text files) rather than annotating final page proofs. You're in a position to support this market given that you’ve already demonstrated your capabilities with several years of successful practice. See the following for more on the tangled world of non-publisher proofreading and copyediting:
A key issue for you to consider is therefore how you are going to make yourself discoverable to those types of clients. Make sure your website, social media profiles and directory entries are bang up to date and presenting you as a compelling prospect for potential clients. If you’re not advertising in the key industry directories, then that’s something you can fix immediately (whereas making your website visible is a more complex and slower-burn solution). Think internationally. If you can access key industry directories, do so. You’re not a member of the CIEP, so you wouldn’t qualify for entry in its Directory of Editorial Services, but you might be eligible for other national societies listings (see this list of national editorial societies). Then there’s findaproofreader.com, which is very reasonable. Consider other online business directories in your region, too. If their advertising rates are affordable, test them for a fixed period so you can evaluate whether they’re working for you. One channel is rarely enough for any of us. Make yourself visible on multiple platforms so you can see what drives clients your way most effectively. To make your editorial more visible to clients searching online, I’d recommended a content-marketing strategy. This requires consistency, creativity and commitment, but it is an effective strategy if you're prepared to work hard at it. I won’t use this Q&A session to delve into the issue because there’s far too much to say. If you want a taster, read my Content Marketing Primer for Editors and Proofreaders. (I also have a more general book on marketing an editorial business that might be of interest: Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.) But, first, head over to the Andrew and Pete blog (two excellent content-marketing coaches, and my top recommendation for anyone wanting to dig deep and do it properly) and watch this short video: WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING? (IN 15 GIFS). Honestly, no one makes the task as fun as these two do!
Summing up
So, Georgia, there you have it – 2 online proofreading and copyediting training options, 8 paperback alternatives, 1 brief mention of mentoring, and my thoughts on promoting yourself into a position whereby you get to define the scope of your services rather than being forced into wearing hats that aren’t made to measure! Good luck with the next steps! Louise
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here's why new freelance editors and proofreaders need to commit to marketing, rather than relying on word of mouth to grow their businesses.
In 'When one client isn’t enough – emergency marketing for editors and proofreaders', I offered an emergency marketing plan for proofreaders and editors who’d either lost their sole source of income or ended up in a situation where they were reliant on one client.
The first stage of the marketing plan asked for a commitment to active marketing. If you’re simply waiting for a solution to present itself, you’re merely involved. And that’s a very different proposition from being committed. I love this quotation from Martina Navratilova: The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.
Editorial freelancers, especially new starters, need to be the ham. Committing to marketing as soon as we set up our businesses ensures that we’ll never be client-reliant or, worse, lose our sole source of income.
Acquiring work: commitment versus involvement Involved: being passive Most experienced editorial freelancers take advantage of passively acquired work. I have a number of repeat clients who fill some of my schedule. If you’re highly visible, experienced, trusted and respected, this strategy could well be effective for you. For the new entrant to the field, though, it’s a non-starter. That’s because these opportunities are a consequence of active marketing. Passively acquired work might come through a variety of channels. Here, for simplicity, I’ve focused on three:
Committed: being active Active marketing is the work you do to generate these passive opportunities. Here, again, I’ve focused on three: A. Networking with colleagues and clients (e.g. on editing forums, at conferences, professional society meetings, social media platforms). This kind of marketing leads to an awareness of what your specialist skills are. If a colleague needs to direct a client or prospect to someone with skills or availability that he or she doesn’t have, you’ll be in the running (see 1, above). B. Cold-calling and writing letters/emails to target clients (e.g. publishers, packagers, businesses, marketing agencies). This is direct marketing and if you do it extensively you can quickly build a solid list of similar client types. If the clients are satisfied with the work, they’ll rehire you, which leads to repeat work (see 2, above). C. Just creating online profiles in itself is not enough to make you discoverable. Action that maximizes the visibility of those profiles in the search engines is key. This is where content marketing comes to the fore – creating and distributing (via your online platforms) advice, knowledge, tools and resources that your colleagues and clients will find useful, valuable. Examples include blogs, booklets, video tutorials, checklists and cheat sheets. High-quality content offers solutions to problems and makes your online profiles more findable (see 3, above). In a nutshell, being active enables you to reap passive rewards later (if your office buddy will give you the space, that is).
Why word of mouth (WOM) is often misunderstood
‘But my colleague said that all her work is via word of mouth.’ I don’t doubt it. But if she’s been running her business for 20 years and has a portfolio and client list as long as your arm, she’s not in the same position as the new entrant to the field. She’s benefiting from 1, 2 and 3 because she invested in A, B and C. New starters should indeed commit to WOM marketing. What they shouldn’t do is assume that it’s a passive approach that requires no effort. Nor will there be short-term results. Top-notch WOM marketing requires an intense level of commitment to action and an acceptance of slow-burn impact. Awareness and trust aren’t built overnight, especially in our field. Editorial freelancers aren’t selling a product that promises something that swathes of people have wanted forever – an anti-aging cream, a painless leg-waxing treatment, a broadband connection that never, ever buffers even if you live out in the sticks and there’s more chance of getting a wi-fi signal on Mars. Our services have to prove their worth. For the editorial business owner, WOM marketing is like creating a garden from scratch. If you’re proactive, it will take many months to knock it into shape. If you hold back, it’ll take years. If you’re passive, the garden will remain barren. WOM and colleagues There are a lot of us, and many have already developed niche networks of friends and colleagues to whom we refer work. When an editor or proofreader ends up on my radar, it’s because they’ve instilled trust in me.
WOM and clients As for client A telling client B about you, you’ll need a lot of mouths to share the good news if you want to have a full schedule! That’s not where you’ll be if you’re a new entrant to the field, not because you’re not an effective editor or proofreader but because you don’t yet have a large enough bank of clients. Effective WOM Find out which networks (online and offline) your clients and colleagues recommend and join in the discussion. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions but be prepared to offer solutions too. Even new editorial freelancers have specialist skills and background experience that are relevant and valuable to the debate. In 'Why word of mouth marketing is the most important social media', Kimberly A. Whitler, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, breaks down WOM marketing into the three Es:
Action first, passivity later Clients can come via active and passive marketing strategies. It’s not a case of the right strategy but the right order. If you’re a new starter, make active editorial business promotion a standard part of your working life, just like copyediting or proofreading, invoicing and updating your software. Assign space for it every week so that it becomes commonplace rather than a chore or, worse, something to be feared. Be active. Be committed. Be the ham! Once your business is established, you’ll be able to take advantage of the passive benefits that result from your effort. Just take care not to hand over the chill space to your Labrador!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. In my latest guest article for the BookMachine blog, I take a look at how publishing professionals, from the freelance editor to the mainstream publishing house, can stretch their marketing budgets by repurposing one in-depth piece of amazing content. The fabulous Gordon Graham, otherwise known as That White Paper Guy, was my inspiration, and I'd recommend you take a look at his guidance on ways to create brilliant resources to make your clients' lives easier. Click on the stretchy guy to read the article in full! Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
Maya has a PhD in social anthropology, and is an experienced editor and proofreader. She’s in the process of expanding her editorial business while continuing to publish academic research. She wants to know how to focus her marketing strategy.
To date, she’s focused on acquiring work through a freelancing website, but the work flow is unpredictable and she’s not convinced it will supply her with a viable income stream in the long term.
She’s created a website but recognizes that it’ll take time to become visible to potential clients, and to earn their trust. She asks: ‘There are a couple of other freelancing websites that look promising, as well as academic editing agencies. Does it make sense to try to sign up to those as well, or is it better to focus on one thing at a time? I'm planning to blog and make YouTube videos about academic writing on top of these things. But is this a case of "less is more" or "more is more"? I’m an experienced editor but completely new to marketing!’ Great questions, Maya. Two things to consider There are two different elements to your strategy here:
Both approaches are important in the editorial industry, so hats off to you for recognizing that even though you’re new to marketing. You’re doing brilliantly! The reason why both approaches are important is because directories and agencies have already done the online visibility work on your behalf. By using them to make your business visible now, you’re freeing up your marketing hours to focus on the longer-burn stuff – your blog and videos. Broadly speaking,
I’ll explain why further down, but first I wanted to ask you whether you’ve considered approaching publishers too. You didn’t mention it in your email so I think it’s worth my taking the time to discuss it here. Publishers and freelance editors – a gift Directories, agencies and content creation are all great ways to acquire clients, albeit over different time frames. The biggest problem the editor faces, however, is getting the client to raise their hand in the first place. ‘I’m interested in you, Maya!’ is what your directory entry, agency listing, blog article or YouTube video needs to make your audience member feel compelled to say. That means working hard to create stand-out information that sets you apart from the competition surrounding you. Furthermore, in the directory and agency fields, there will always be a group of clients looking for cheap rather than brilliant. And in the marketplace more generally, there are potential clients who don’t even realize they need you, or, if they do, which of the different levels of service will be the most appropriate. But here come the publishers! (Sing it, like the Boots ad!) We’re in a rather privileged field of having a core client group who understands exactly what we do, why we’re necessary, and the value we bring to the table. We don’t have to get them to raise their hands; their hands are already in the air! Some publishers will take the time to scour the SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, but to my knowledge the single best way to get noticed by a production manager is still to go direct. Email, letter, phone call – whatever you prefer. I worked almost exclusively for publishers for the first half of my freelance career. I had about 10 publisher clients who kept my schedule as full as I needed it to be. Feast and famine? Nope, just feast. Like you, I have a background in the social sciences, so that’s where I focused my initial wave of inquiries. You mentioned in your original email that you’d 'bought my marketing books', so you’ll find more information on how to tackle that in Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business. Publishers, like agencies, will give you regular work, and that means you can focus all your marketing juice on creating compelling blog posts and irresistible YouTube vids. Publishers are a bit of a gift like that – while their rates aren’t always top-notch, the time they free up for you by handing you a steady supply of work certainly is. And creating valuable, usable, accessible content does take time. Directories and agencies: more is more Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration! By more is more, I’m not saying you should sign up with 20 directories and agencies; you’ll spend more time being busy creating the entries than you will being productive finding the work! I do think, though, that you needn’t limit oneself to one. If you identify a group of, say, four or five that are used by your core clients to find people like you, I’d recommend you sign up. More is more, as long as you’re selective. There are SEO benefits, too. For certain medium-tail keyword searches, I rank first on page one of Google – but it’s not my website showing up. It’s my SfEP directory entry. And, anyway, you’re in control. You get to accept work, or decline it – whatever suits your needs. The key thing to remember is that if you get too many requests to quote from the directories and agencies, you can always trim and focus on those that deliver the best-quality clients to you. Plus, you’ll never know what’s working if you don’t test in the first place. Testing is something else you’ll see me bang on about in my books, but only because it’s the foundation of any solid marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you try something, and that something doesn’t work. You’ll still have learned something, and having learned it you can make an informed decision about what to do next. Otherwise your marketing is just guesswork – which is exhausting at best! So, yes, go ahead. Sign up for a few more and find out what works for you. Evaluate in a few months’ time. Then leave behind the ones that don’t work out and try something else instead. Now let’s deal with the content strategy. Creating delectable content! Less is more (sort of) When I say less is more, I’m talking about platforms, not the actual content itself. This isn’t just me banging my drum. The professionals emphasize this. My own content marketing coaches Andrew and Pete recommend focusing on one or two platforms, and really honing them. Plus, I’m halfway through the online conference Summit on Content Marketing, and speakers Rand Fishkin, Ilise Benun, Dave Jackson, and Stoney deGeyter agree: concentrate on what your core clients are using – in other words, choose the platforms your customers prefer, rather than the ones you prefer. So, you’re planning to use a blog and YouTube to deliver your advice on academic writing. If those are platforms that your core clients like using, then go ahead. And stick to those two – really craft them into something special, something compelling. Some quick tips (you might know the following already but other readers might not, so bear with me!) … Quality Make sure your content is really useful so that it offers solutions for your potential clients. Don’t sell – just solve. I used to call content marketing ‘value-added marketing’ (see the marketing book you’ve bought). Seriously, I didn’t know ‘content’ marketing was a thing until a year ago! I still think it’s an oddly bland name for such an exciting strategy. Anyway, I don’t get to make the rules, so content marketing it is! Focus on value above all else. Value trumps everything (unless your great writing is so blurred as to be unreadable, or the audio quality of your video so poor as to make it unwatchable). If you create a beautiful video, or a blog post with loads of fancy pictures, but the story you’re telling your viewers or readers is of no use to them and doesn’t help them, you won’t grow that audience. But if your video is a little flawed, or your blog post a little ugly, you’ll still grow your audience and build trust and relationships if you’ve made someone’s life easier. It’s no different to friendship. I don’t pick my mates because they look gorgeous – it’s all about the relationship and how we make each other feel. Content marketing’s no different. I’ve tried hard to make my blog look prettier this year. But you know what? Some of my most popular posts are still those I wrote years ago – posts with really long paragraphs of dense narrative – 1,500 words of me telling people what publishers think about proofreading training courses, and another 1,500 of me on how to upload custom stamps of PDF markup symbols. No pictures. No clever SEO titles. Just loads of text. But it’s text that answers the questions that (some) people are asking. Consistency Be consistent with how often you deliver your blogs and videos. The expert view is this: whether you post twice a week, once a week or once a month is less important than choosing one of those and committing to it. That way your readers and viewers get into the routine of engaging with you. Furthermore, if you commit to once a week, but you don’t have enough content to fill that schedule, you’re more likely to feel deflated and stop. Which would be a huge shame! It's better to excite an audience by raising your game than disappointing them by going backwards. Quantity If you write great blogs that are 400 words long, perfect. If you need 2,000 words, perfect. If your videos need to be 5 minutes long to solve your client’s problems, make them 5 minutes long. If they need to be longer, and that’s what your audience wants, make them longer. Just make sure that every word and every minute is full of value. I know I’m a right old rambler so I struggle to make every word count. Let’s just call me chatty! Delivery Think about how you’ll direct people to your blog and YT channel. I post to Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn to make editors and writers aware of what’s new on my blog. I’ve also recently created a mailing list for writers to enable me to alert them when new self-publishing resources are available. And, these days, Google Search is working wonders for me. In time, it’ll work for you to if you commit to creating all that delicious stuff for your potential clients! If academic writers are also using Twitter, FB and LI to get their updates, those are the channels you should use to direct them to your blog and video platforms. If they’re using some other channel to get their news, that’s where you should be. Again, it’s about what your listeners and readers want, rather than your own preferences Hope that’s helped, Maya. Thanks so much for asking two great questions.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this Q&A, I look at how to set up a proofreading business, how to acquire clients and how to handle payments.
One of the blog's readers, Charlie, got in touch with several questions:
Phew! That’s a lot of questions so I’ll only be able to scratch the surface, but I’m confident I can point you in the right direction, Charlie. First things – going deeper Here are four resources that dig deeper into all your queries , though you’ll have to cough up a few quid for them!
They’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about starting out and keeping going. Might I also suggest you join the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), the UK’s national editorial society? The forums provide a warm and supportive environment for old hands and newbies alike. How will clients pay me? A better question might be how would you like to be paid? For example, I accept cheques (reluctantly!), PayPal (convenient for international clients), and direct bank transfer (easy-peasy). Other options include Stripe, TransferWise and CurrencyFair. I send an invoice as soon as a project’s complete, but some of my colleagues prefer to do all their invoicing for the month in one fell swoop. It’s a matter of personal choice and what works for each business owner in terms of efficiency. You can download an invoice template from my Other Resources page. How do I register with HMRC and what do I need to tell them? Quite honestly, the easiest way to deal with HMRC is to give them a call. I found them incredibly helpful when I first started my editorial business. Believe me, they’ll put your mind at rest. Sue’s book (mentioned above) has lots of information about dealing with HMRC. My primary piece of advice is to keep a record of what you spend and what you earn in relation to your business. There’s an accounting template on the Editor Resources page that shows you what I record for each project. How do I keep track of the hours I spend working? I record my hours in the accounting template. That way, everything’s in one place. I keep track of time the old-fashioned way – with a pen and a piece of paper! Other colleagues use various time-tracking tools and widgets, e.g. Toggl. Keeping track of how much time you spend on a project is important for gauging how efficient you are. Bear in mind, though, that not all clients will be prepared to pay you for the hours you work. Rather, they’ll pay you for the hours they think the job should take you. This is often the case with publishers and packagers. When you’re in control of the setting the price of a project (e.g. with independent writers, students, businesses etc.), you’ll need to assess how long the project will take and how much you want to earn from it. This comes with experience; it’s likely you won’t hit the mark in the start-up phase of your proofreading business. Don’t fret about this, though. You’ll get better at estimating over time. And by tracking how long each project takes to complete, and what you earned, you’ll get a sense of what’s possible in an hour or per 1,000 words. How much should I charge? Take a look at the following articles here on The Editing Blog:
What you charge will be determined by your particular needs, your ability to access clients who’ll meet those needs, whom you’re working for, and what you’re doing. If you work for publishers and packagers, they’ll control the price – you’ll be a price-accepter. If you work for businesses, independent authors, academics, and students, you’ll offer a price in the hope that they’ll accept – you’ll be a price-setter. If the second option sounds a better financial option, bear in mind that, even if it is, it’s harder work! Publishers and packagers do all the client-acquisition work on your behalf, while acquiring clients for whom you’re a price setter means you need to actively promote your business on a regular basis so that you’re interesting and discoverable to clients across the platforms they’re using to find people like us (e.g. Google). How do I acquire assignments? My line on this is: when you set up your own business you’ll have two jobs:
I’ve shared all my experience of editorial business promotion in these resources:
What I’ll say here is that there’s no single way to go about it, not least because different client types use different platforms to find their proofreaders and editors.
For example, content marketing is not the most efficient way to go about acquiring publisher clients – honestly, just get on the phone or write a letter/email instead. If you want to work for independent authors, though, it’s one of the most powerful methods of being discoverable. Conversely, phone calls to publishers will reap results (if you make enough of them), but for indie authors this method will take you into Ghostbusters territory – who you gonna call?! My advice is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask:
Can I use my prior career experience? Absolutely – it will be one of your unique selling points. For example, I’d worked for a social science publisher for many years prior to starting my business, This, along with my politics degree, helped to make me an interesting prospect for social science publishers with politics lists. Wordsmith Janet MacMillan is a former lawyer – now her client base includes legal publishers, legal students, academics and law firms. Both of us understand the language our respective disciplines, and that means we’re more likely to spot errors in related texts than someone with, say, a nursing background. My advice to new starters is: always specialize first in what you know. Later, if you wish, you can diversify, or transition to another specialism (I’m now a fiction copyeditor and proofreader). So, in the start-up phase, use your career experience to help you determine which core clients you’re going to target. Then think about how you'll communicate with them in a way that makes them want to consider you as their proofreader. Here are two resources to help you think about how to create a stand-out brand identity using a client-centric approach:
Do you accept volunteers or offer apprenticeships? I don’t, Charlie – sorry. I’m a one-woman show. That’s critical to my business model. My clients hire me and only me to work on their books. That doesn’t mean that mentoring programs aren’t a superb option. Time to think about training! I’d strongly recommend you do some professional proofreading training to prepare yourself for market. It’ll show you where your strengths are, and help you fix your weaknesses. Training has three core benefits:
TheChartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and The Publishing Training Centre are my recommendations … purely because I have personal experience of their courses on which to base an opinion. There are other options available, though. The CIEP runs a mentoring programme, too, though you must have completed some initial training beforehand. Last things That’s it, Charlie – a whirlwind tour of how to set up a proofreading business! I hope you find the guidance useful. I realize there’s a lot to think about. If you decide to join the club, you’ll find a supportive community awaiting you, one that stretches well beyond the geographical boundaries of the UK. Good luck!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. How to make a living from self-publishing fiction This week's post is a cracker. Self-published author Jeff Carson has kindly agreed to discuss his writing journey.
This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #81
Jeff's a mystery and thriller writer from Colorado. Writing is his full-time job and he makes a living from his self-published series.
That's a dream for millions of independent authors; below, Jeff shares 11 tips on how he turned that dream into a reality. If you're at the start of your self-publishing adventure, this is definitely for you!
My name is Jeff Carson and I’m the author of a series starring David Wolf, a cop living in the fictional town of Rocky Points in the Colorado Rockies. Right now, I’ve written ten books in the series.
When I first started out writing, I remember being tormented at night by questions swimming in my head (and by mosquitos … at the time, we were in Italy for a year, and they were thick that summer, I tell you). Questions like: Can I really do this? Can I make a living at it? Is this just a waste of my time? What if everyone hates the books?
By finding a few people online who’d made a success of becoming a self-published author, I was able to get a lot of my questions answered and some inspiration that propelled me towards making a living as a fiction writer. I despise playing the guru, and I’m cringing a little as I write this, but I have accomplished the goals I laid out five years ago. So I have to say that I feel l’ve succeeded in the self-publishing realm. There are others, many others, who would scoff at my level of accomplishment, but this blog post isn’t for them. This is for those who are in the position I once was, in that sweat-soaked Italian bed. Here are 11 things that have helped me succeed as a self-published author. 1. I want to make a living doing this That’s been the over-arching goal from the beginning. I wanted my paycheck to come from writing. I wanted to make money twenty-four hours per day from people reading my books. I’ve met many people who approach writing as a therapeutic tool for their lives. That’s fine. But 100% of people who write get the therapeutic benefit. One only makes money from it if it’s a goal. You don't wake up with a horse one day by random accident. There’s a lot of intention and action that goes into suddenly having a hay-eating animal roaming around in the back yard. Same thing goes with earning a living from writing. 2. I wrote a book series I learned that if you want to make money from writing fiction, the odds of success go up dramatically by writing a series. Since my goal was to make money with this gig, naturally I wrote a series. Harlan Coben is the exception, not the norm. On this note, I learned the hard way to not leave books ending on a cliff-hanger. I'd done this with book one and received a lot of negative reviews. I’ve since fixed the novel so that all story goals are resolved and it ends completely. In my series, my characters grow and their lives change from each book to the next, but I try to make each book a stand-alone. This helps with marketing, too, since anyone can pick up one of the David Wolf novels at any point in the series and feel grounded and up to speed. 3. I over-estimated, or realistically estimated, the level of work it would take to achieve my goal (of making a living writing) I knew that one book in a series, the first book I’d ever written and published in my entire life, would make no money. Pessimistic? It’s not. First, I was learning how to write a story. Second, I wasn’t expecting to gain a wide audience with a single book taking up a single slot in the vast Amazon universe. I knew book one was the hook – the mouth of a funnel – that would lead to the rest of the books in the series. In fact, I knew I was probably going to offer the first book for free. I needed multiple books in multiple categories grabbing people’s attention, all of them leading readers to the other books sitting in other categories. The series would act as a big net. I figured that after three books I’d be making some ‘extra money’. I hoped that after five I’d be making enough money to quit all other work and concentrate on writing only. Then I doubled that number. Therefore, I created a goal of writing ten books; then I’d judge the venture one way or another. In reality, after five books I was able to write full-time and make a full-time living wage. Now that I’m on book eleven, my goals, expectations, and earnings have elevated.
At the beginning, I felt that if I set my work expectations too low, I’d become discouraged, and fast. Because if after, say, four books I was still irrelevant and making nothing, then my hopes would be dashed.
Some people would call a ten-book ‘realistic expectation’ pessimistic, but in my mind it’s the reason I kept going when, after three books, I’d known months that wouldn’t have paid for a week’s worth of groceries. 4. I concentrate on what I want every day I’ve filled two college-ruled notebooks with lists of my goals. Every day (or most days) I open up a notebook, list the writing goals/life goals with specific deadlines, such as when I’ll finish the first draft and when I’ll publish, and then I get to work. I learned this technique by reading this Brian Tracy book on goal-setting: Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. That book definitely changed my life. I'd never even had goals before reading that book. Now I always set goals. Deadlines always get pushed back, which would be depressing if I let myself to think about it. But the system doesn’t allow for that. Each day is a new sheet, and a new list of goals with either the same deadlines or adjusted deadlines. Looking back on previous lists of goals is not permitted. 5. I read the bad reviews This is a biggie. I’ve heard some authors say, ‘I just ignore the bad reviews.’ I adopted that stance for quite a while, actually. But there’s always something to learn from a bad review. In fact, I think it’s dangerous and irresponsible if you ignore the one- and two-star shellacking some people take pride in giving out between hangover-induced trips to the bathroom, the sons of bitches. Some people get specific – ‘Nice try. A Sig Sauer P226 doesn’t have a safety! Amateur writer at best. I will not be reading another piece of filth by this author.’ So, fine. You skim past the amateur comment and go fix the book so that the special agent DOESN’T flick off the safety as she steps out of her SUV. I think my books are orders of magnitude better because of the bad reviews. I figure that if somebody came up to me on the street, pointed, laughed, and criticized my outfit, I’d shake my head and move on, not in the least worried about that person a few steps later. But if her criticism is, ‘Your fly’s down … oh, yeah, and your pants are on backwards. Idiot,’ well, then, I want to know that. 6. Screw it. I don’t need social media Early on, I adopted the stance that I needed to write my way into relevance as a writer, not tweet, post, or whatever my way into it. Once I adopted this mindset, a weight lifted off my back. I hated it for some reason. I couldn’t get a grasp on social media, so I just let go of it. My investigation leading up to my decision showed a correlation between how much an author published books and how successful they were, between how many positive reviews a book had and how successful it was. I could check an author’s success by looking at the rankings of their books on Amazon and other market places. There was no correlation, however, between how present people were on social media and their book rankings. In fact, more often than not, I saw that people who were successful had all but abandoned their social media accounts. In contrast, there were people all over Twitter and Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of friends/followers, and books lost in obscurity. Clearly there are exceptions, and some people have great success with social media, but my reasoning was: you write your way into being a writer. I rarely post on Facebook, and when I do, it’s usually a link to my new books – classic poor social media behavior. Screw it. I don’t care.
7. I am accessible
I respond to every communication sent to me. I think this is huge as a writer, or as a person in general. Nothing irks me more than somebody simply not responding to something. The most surprising thing about writing, and that I sometimes get all teary-eyed about, is the amount of love people will send your way after they’ve read your novel. People will click on the email address (which I put in the back of the book) and contact me, telling me how much they like my book. For me to not say thanks is plain psycho. Plus, it’s just good business. People who like you are more likely to share the news about your work. 8. I have a newsletter email list This is one of those things I heard people preaching – you have to have an email list of readers – but never did anything about. It took me four freaking books to finally put my email list in place. But I finally did, and that’s when I was finally able to write full time. It only took two days to write and publish a short story, which I give away on my blog as a thank-you if somebody signs up for the new-release newsletter. Now, when I have a new release, I launch the book to thousands of people, versus dropping it into a field of crickets. 9. I write in sprints first, edit later This is one of those huge game-changers for me. I was getting upset sitting in front of the computer every day but only coming out with one or two thousand words. Now, I write in sprints, which means I write in thirty-minute blocks, take a five-minute break, and then do it again. Using the backspace button is not allowed (a rule I break all the time … my OCD won’t allow David Wolf’s name to be Wols for more than a few seconds). It took me six or so books to employ the sprint tactic, and now I’ll never write any other way. 10. I have a self-editing PLAN After tapping out a real crappy draft of a terrible book, then going back through a few times, editing, ironing out inconsistencies, tightening up descriptions of dead bodies, etc., I have in the past simply read and re-read the book, then tweaked until I felt it was ‘as good as I can get it’. I’m ashamed to say, it’s only been recently that I’ve implemented a self-editing plan. The plan is something like …
11. I hire an editor who does it for a living, for a rate that allows her to do it for a living After seven books, going through three editors, and becoming frustrated with the service I was getting, I realized that I needed to hire an editor who was an editor and only an editor, and who charged a rate that clearly allowed her to feel properly compensated. The alternative is hiring somebody who does the work on the side for cheap. They’re pressed for time. They’re secretly (I imagine, because I would be) pissed off about being underpaid for a job that deserves more money. The equation adds up to a poor editing job on the finished product … suspicious stretches of pages – five, ten at a time – without a single mark on them. The saying goes, ‘You get what you pay for,’ and it can get tricky when paying for editing services. For years, I tried to get away with paying less. And I definitely got less. ... In today’s publishing environment, I know that, for me, every bit of advice helps. I hope at least one of the tips above helps you on your journey to becoming a successful self-published writer.
Where to find Jeff and his books
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
This article is for editorial folk who currently choose to operate their businesses in isolation. There's nothing wrong with that at all if that's your bag, but I hope this will show you just some of the benefits of networking.
In ‘The rates debate’ and 'The highs and lows of editorial fees', I argued that colleagues shouldn’t be the primary determiners of the price we set or accept for editorial work.
They are, however, our go-tos for much else, and the professional editor and proofreader would be bonkers not to take the opportunity to exploit the myriad learning opportunities on offer from those with different skills, levels of experience, subject specialisms and environments! Rather than just writing a list, I thought it might be more interesting to give you a few examples of how some of my colleagues have helped me to develop my editorial business. The list isn’t exhaustive – it would be a book if it was – but it should give you a flavour of what’s on offer.
Learning a new macro
I like to consider myself pretty strong on the editorial tech-tool front. And yet I’d lost count of the number of times I’d forgotten to switch Track Changes back on after I’d toggled it off. I needed a solution – some sort of visual or audio reminder. My pal Gordon Hooper came to the rescue. Gordon’s a fellow member of the Norfolk SfEP local group. Turns out that my other colleague Paul Beverley had already tackled the problem with a macro: if you fancy trying it for yourself, you can read about how it works and how to install it at ‘How to never forget you’ve switched off Track Changes!’.
Tightening up my marketing message
Last year, I spent some time thinking about how I could better present my services so that they reflected the reality of what I spend most of my time doing – proofreading and copyediting for indie authors. I understand perfectly well the traditional definitions of these skills but in the real world they’re rather tangled (see, for example, ‘The proofreader’s corner: Untangling proofreading’). Again, it was my professional network that came to the rescue.
Understanding another skill
Development editing isn't a service I offer. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in learning about it, though. I've started to expand my knowledge via colleagues who have experience in this macro level of editing.
Using Word more efficiently
In the past 18 months, two editorial colleagues have written blogs that have had a significant impact on how I use Word.
Using a gadget
One of my bugbears has always been having to use hyphens for en dashes on my iPad and iPhone. A discussion on the SfEP forum, started by Lisa Robinson, showed me that Apple has provided en and em dashes – I just hadn’t realized that if you hold down the hyphen button a small window opens and you can slide your finger to your preferred dash. I was delighted, and I wasn’t alone! That thread was full of useful tips. If you’re an SfEP member, you can access it via ‘Dashes’.
Discovering new tools
I love any editorial tool that can increase my productivity or enhance my professionalism. Colleagues alerted me to two particular favourites.
Maxing out an existing tool
I hadn’t been getting the best out of PerfectIt, even though I’m a long-time user. At another SfEP Norfolk meeting, Mary Sheridan and Sarah Patey taught me how to use the wildcard function more effectively. This, combined with Jack Lyon’s Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, has been a real productivity enhancer. PerfectIt tends to handle wildcards a lot better than Word when Track Changes is switched on, something else Sarah taught me via Facebook!
Quoting mechanisms and publicizing rates
Pricing issues affect every editorial freelancer, and although fee setting needs to be done using a deeper level of analysis than just following what colleagues are doing, there’s still a lot a colleague can bring to the table.
These two examples proved to be excellent reminders that testing is essential for the editorial freelancer who wants to learn whether a colleague’s way of doing things is appropriate for their own business.
Making friends
My colleagues can do something a book or a course can’t. They can become friends. I’ve made so many edi-buddies that I can't even begin to list them all. What I can say is that Kate Haigh's campsite spag bol borders on legendary; the AFEPI crew at last year's SfEP meeting almost made me want to emigrate. I wish Sophie Playle still lived in Norwich because I miss having coffee with her. I wish Rich Adin lived in the same country so that I could have just one coffee with him. Nick Jones has made me laugh via Facebook Messenger too many times. Janet MacMillan's soup ... You get the point.
Sourcing professional help
I decided to hire a couple of proofreaders for my blog in 2016. When I’m writing, I don’t behave like a proofreader. I have my authorial head on. That means I’m too close to my own words to spot all my errors. I bit the bullet and decided to work with some fellow professional proofreaders. Whom to pick though? I needed some recommendations. John Espirian, in his capacity as guardian of the SfEP directory, had a couple of names up his sleeve and they haven’t disappointed. Cally Worden and Anna Black are my go-tos. They’ve done a fantastic job for me and I wish I’d sourced them years ago. Of course, I still have to upload their gently edited work to the Parlour, and, I’ll be honest, sometimes I just can’t help making a little tweak here and there, post proofreading (I know, I know!). So if a typo has slipped through, it’s my fault.
Finding your tribe
There’s a tonne of other stuff that colleagues can help with – I’ve only scratched the surface. If you’re reading this and you’re not connected, consider the benefits of changing the situation.
Ultimately, editorial freelancing is about running your own business, but there are plenty of people who’ll support you in its growth if you find a comfortable space in which to meet them!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Part of my mission with this blog is to help new entrants to the field understand the challenges and benefits of editorial freelancing, and to assist them as they navigate the early stages of their careers. There's no one way to build a business and one's background and preferences will influence the path taken. That's why, from time to time, I like to feature colleagues, particularly those who have a different skill set or career background to mine.
With this in mind, I'm delighted to welcome technical editor Peter Haigh to the Parlour. Peter discusses how he took a strategic approach to developing his editorial business, using his career specialism as a springboard ...
Hello. For those who don’t know me, I’m Peter Haigh and I used to be an electrical power systems engineer. Since November 2015 though, I’ve been a freelance copy-editor and proofreader.
This article is a little bit of a retrospective of how I went from being an engineer to being a proofreader and copy-editor and how I used my specialism to help with this. First, a little background and then I’d like to explore a few truths and myths about 'specialist proofreading' and share my experiences of getting started and then beginning to mature in the world of freelance proofreading/copy-editing. Why the move into proofreading and copy-editing? So, there I was, happily playing with spreadsheets and algorithms (specifying harmonic filter requirements for offshore windfarms) and one day I thought, 'I know, I want to be a proofreader.' Really? No, not really. Then why? It was all part of a deliberate plan to adopt a location-independent lifestyle. I work from apartments near beaches, forests and cities around the world and when I get bored I (along with my companion, Kate of kateproof) simply move somewhere else. That, coupled with the joys of setting my own work hours and leaving corporate quirks behind, was more than enough reason for a complete change of direction. Further details available here. What did I do to get started? Well, I kind of cheated. Having a wife that is now seven years into her freelance career – her empire is now established: an Advanced Professional Member of the SfEP with plenty of queries coming in – was a massive help. The Proofreader's Parlour (thanks, Louise) was also a mine of helpful resources and advice on a breadth of topics, marketing in particular. I did some basic online training and read some books and did their exercises, but I also benefited greatly from having a live-in mentor and trainer. How did it all evolve? The basic flow was: launch a website, do some training, practise on badly written work, build a web presence, do more marketing, develop confidence in my skills, win some good clients, keep them and then look for more! I confess: I still get about 50% of my work in the form of referrals from my wife. The other 50% comes from my website or from an agency that I signed up with last year. How did I market myself as a specialist proofreader/copy-editor? The first steps were made before I left my engineering job. I gathered together all of the business cards I’d collected throughout my career and I connected to as many people as I could on LinkedIn. I told my colleagues about my plans. I hoped that it might lead to work. So far it has led to copy-editing a colleague’s PhD thesis and I continue to edit for a CIGRE working group on a pro bono basis. Maybe one day it’ll pay off, most likely via word of mouth: I left on good terms. How did the client base evolve? To begin with, I sought out power system engineers and power engineering consultancies to scout for work. From this approach, I got one repeat client but on mates’ rates so it paid quite badly. Then, I spanned out via LinkedIn to say hello to various consultancies from all sorts of fields: environmental management, mechanical engineering, pretty much anything where I could connect with someone at a suitable level and very briefly introduce myself and my services. I think it was this that led to me winning what is still one of my best clients: an engineering consultancy, though nothing to do with windfarms or electricity. Another great client I found this way is a financial algorithm developer. How much does the specialism help me? This is something I ask myself sometimes, particularly when clients contact me specifically because of my specialism. With the advantage of hindsight, I sit on the fence a little and say, 'it depends'. When getting started When I set out, I was confident that I could find work in my specialist niche. I guess I did find a little bit of work, but then it’s a highly specialized niche and so naturally the opportunities are limited. I also discovered that large companies have well-defined processes for recruiting freelancers and tend to prefer dealing with large agencies or subcontractors. I remember battling with procurement restrictions from my days of engineering: it doesn’t matter if you are the best proofreader in the world, or how cheap you might be; if you’re not Achilles-registered then you will struggle to work for a utility. (And you don’t even want to know how hard – and expensive – it is to get registered.) To sum it up, I’d say that it helped a little bit. It gave me focus for my marketing, somewhere to start, and in an area where I had a clue about what made the clients tick and what the fancy technical words meant. It felt like I had a USP. Nowadays These days I have ditched my low-paying client from within my niche and continue to look for clients from a far broader range of fields. Most importantly, I have redefined what I think my specialism is. I am no longer a specialist in proofreading/copy-editing power system engineering documents. I’m not even an engineering specialist. I am someone who specializes in improving technical, numerical and scientific documents. Does my specialism help the client? My honest answer: my specialist power systems knowledge does not help them at all. However, at the more general level of being comfortable working with equations, tables, graphs, variables, and other forms of scientific text, I would say that this helps with a wide range of clients. From financial algorithms to social science surveys, knowing your natural log from your base 10 and spotting an unbalanced equation can earn some brownie points at times but, the thing is, that really isn’t proofreading as I know it. I’d say that as you move up the scale towards developmental editing, it becomes more important that you have some appreciation of the subject being worked on. For proofreading it doesn’t help much at all. In fact, here’s a geeky graph to illustrate this:
*Note: I made the numbers up.
Do qualifications and experience help? I think that at any stage in a career, it is possible to rest on one’s laurels. When starting out, they may be the only support available, so I’d recommend using them as a springboard, along with any specialisms, and growing from there. I certainly set out to build on my specialist experience at first, then sought ways to hone my skills, grow capability and branch out into new fields of experience. Hang on, I can feel a pie chart coming on!
Let’s take a look at each slice of pie.
Degree qualifications I am yet to work on anything related to my philosophy degree (past life) – other than a blog article on the philosophy of proofreading – but it did expose me to lots of books, and I wrote lots of academic essays, dissertations etc. I’d say this helped me a little bit. My engineering degrees exposed me to lots of technical documents, maths and other science stuff, as well as helping my confidence when setting up as a proofreader/editor by giving me a USP. Specialist experience My work experience as an engineer helped expose me to writing, editing and reading lots of technical academic journal papers. This is now something that I edit a lot of, and feel that I am good at, so I guess that helped quite a bit. Formal training I did a basic grammar course (Gpuss), read Barbara Horn’s Copy-editing book and did the exercises and also had access to Kate’s PTC course notes. All of this helped me quite a bit, but was not as helpful as seeing some of Kate’s work (with her clients’ permission, of course) and asking her 'why?' all the time, not to mention Kate checking my first few projects before they were returned to clients. Training on the job My editing and proofreading experience is 60% of the pie for me. Learning on the job was what helped me most and, to begin with, it was a case of working for mates’ rates to get experience. It also helped me to start off by working on, dare I say, badly written documents. The end product would be unrecognizably better, even if some of the finer points were not 100%. Then I kept looking for ways to learn and improve. Editing for an agency helped because, particularly when I first started, their quality control editors reviewed and critiqued my work. This was great because they showed me where I had missed something and made helpful suggestions. They also gave me positive feedback when the quality controllers were happy and now don’t seem to check my work much at all. Summary Hopefully I have given a bit of an insight into what it was like for me transitioning from an engineering specialist to a proofreader/copy-editor and how my specialism has helped me to make that transition. I’ll attempt to leave with some wisdom from my experiences of making the transition:
Peter Haigh is a professional proofreader and copy-editor and a Chartered Engineer. He specializes in improving technical, scientific and numerical documents.
Visit his business website at Technical Editorial or connect on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Just becoming editors doesn’t bestow special privileges upon us that are not available to other types of working people. Being editors doesn’t mean we’re entitled to be commissioned. Nor does it mean that we’re entitled to earn what we’d like to earn.
Why entitlement won't work for the self-employed
Entitlements are the domain of employees. Freelance editorial pros aren't employees of businesses; they're the owners of those businesses. Work has to be found, which means clients have to be found. We don't live in command economies where the State hands out jobs and you take what you get. We've chosen to run businesses so we have to find a way to make them function successfully. The alternative is unpalatable. In a global market, where clients come from all over, and have different budgets, requirements and expectations, what those clients will be able or prepared to pay will vary enormously. Consequently, of all the clients we find via our extensive marketing efforts, only some will be a price match for us. For that reason, we need to be visible to as many as possible, because the bigger the pot the greater the chance of a conversion. To recap, just being an editor in itself will provide us with neither work nor the money we expect to be paid for the value we believe we bring to the table. Doing visibility is the key to cracking the problem.
Imagine being a teacher ...
Do you know a teacher? Does that person have a paying teaching job? How did they get that teaching job? Are they happy with their salary? If not, ask them what they would have to do to solve the problem. I know a teacher. She trained for the role. After her training was complete, she didn't have a job. So she had to find a job. She didn't sit there and say, ‘I'm a teacher. Where's the work?’ She went and searched for the work. She did loads of research, applied for tons of jobs, reviewed the packages on offer, prepared for a stack of interviews, attended them (which was stressful), filled in her spare time with voluntary work in the education sector to make her CV sing, and finally found a school who wanted her and for whom she wanted to work. For a few years the package worked for her, and then it didn't. She didn't say, ‘This school is predatory.’ She said, ‘I need to find a new job.’ So she did a lot more work. Now that she was more experienced and had higher expectations, it was tricky to find a good match. It took a lot of time, a lot of hard graft, a lot of research, but I never heard her moan. I'd ask how the job search was going. ‘Ticking along. No news yet but I'll know when I find it. The current post isn't perfect but it's better than being unemployed. You hear about Si? He’s been made redundant. Nightmare. He's really down in the dumps.’ My friend did secure a better teaching post. She worked her backside off to find that job. It would've been nice if it had landed in her lap, but that’s not how the teaching sector works. And it's not how the freelance editing sector works either. We have to work our backsides off to find the work we want to do and that pays the fees we want to earn.
Feeling ripped off?
If you're feeling ripped off, that's okay. We’ve all done work that made us feel undervalued and underpaid. That's kind of how my teacher friend was feeling. Time to replace that rip-off work with a better package. Be aware, though – this won't happen overnight. If you're not visible to those offering better-paying work, you'll have to make yourself visible, which takes a lot of hard graft. It took my teacher pal a couple of years to replace her employer with one offering the package she wanted. It might take you a couple of years to make yourself visible to the clients you want to work with. This could mean you have to stick with the current client while you're working your backside off to find a new and better-paying replacement.
The client under the microscope
In the meantime, take a good hard look at the client. If you're feeling ripped off, it can be useful to examine not just the deficiencies but also the benefits. This kind of exercise can shine a light on some of the value you might have overlooked, value that you may not have costed into your analysis. Turnover So the work isn't paying you what you'd like to earn, but is there a lot of it on offer? Every time you receive an email that offers you work on a plate, you get to fill your schedule with absolutely no effort on your part whatsoever. Some people have a few regular clients who provide 90% of their work. Others have a few regular clients who provide only 20% of their work; the other 80% is new business. New business needs to be found and converted into a working relationship. Which leads us to marketing … Marketing If you fill your schedule with a lot of work from one agency (or publisher or packager), and you think said agency is ripping you off, ask yourself how come they've got so much work that they can fill 80% of your schedule and the same percentage of many of your colleagues’ schedules. Is it because they’re marketing their backsides off? Then ask yourself whether you're prepared to make the same investment, because that's what you'll have to do. You'll have to do all the hard graft yourself. Marketing an editorial business isn't just a cute little hobby you dip your toes into a couple of times a year. Well, actually, it can be if you get someone else, like the agency, to do the graft for you (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but there'll be a cost to it because they'll take a cut of every penny you earn. And that's fair enough because there is a cost to finding clients. Marketing takes time, and time is money. So if you don't want to lose a cut, you have to fork out for the marketing investment. In other words, we don't get to have it both ways. We can't expect someone else to find our clients for us and expect to earn as much as if those clients were coming direct. If we did expect that, who'd be ripping off whom?
Still want an exit?
Fair enough. Start actively promoting so that you can phase out the lower-paying client(s) and replace them with new customers who'll pay what you want to earn. Plan for this to take time and a lot of work. If you don't fancy the transitional approach, you can wave goodbye to the work immediately. If that's the case, you either live with someone who can pay all your bills (quite possible, and good for you), you have a trust fund (less likely, but wow), or you're happy to be partially unemployed for a while. As you can probably tell, I favour the transition method! That's because my family situation means my income, although the secondary one in our family, is essential. When I was starting out, I couldn't afford to turn down work on principle while I was finding better-paying alternatives. I had to use a phasing-out approach (if negotiation wasn't on the table). Of course, it may be that you already have enough higher-paying clients to cover the lost income from the existing customer, but if that's the case you probably nailed your marketing strategy years ago!
We're responsible
No one else is responsible for the rates we earn, the clients we find (or whom we enable to find us), the tools we use to make ourselves visible, the equipment we buy, the tax returns we file, the colleagues we talk to, the meetings we attend. It's all down to us. We're not entitled to have anything land in our lap. As business owners, we reap all the benefits, but we have to do all the work. Every time we hand over some of that graft to another entity (finance to the accountant; client-finding to an agency; fee-handling to a money-transfer organisation), we see a cut in profits. That's not being ripped off; it's a cost of business. If you don't want to bear the cost, you have to do it yourself. Being an editor isn't enough when we're freelance. If we're not wearing the many hats required for business ownership (or we resent bearing the cost of someone else wearing them for us), we need to take a step back and consider whether it’s time to make some changes. What we are entitled to What we are entitled to do is to make our own decisions. We’re entitled to choose the clients, the rates, and the types of work that suit our needs. So if you want to work for a packager or an agency that pays less than a colleague thinks is acceptable, but there’s value in it for you and your business, that’s fine. If you want to decline the work and source your own clients direct, that’s fine too. Me? I’ve done both in my time because it was right for me. You’re entitled to the same choice. Good luck!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. What's a fair price for proofreading or editing? One of my concerns when discussing rates is that the value of a particular client to the freelance editor or proofreader’s business is sometimes overlooked.
Deciding not to accept a particular editing rate might be the right choice for me but the wrong choice for you, or vice versa. That’s because our circumstances are different and because businesses aren’t static.
Terms such as ‘too low’ or ‘race to the bottom’ can be problematic because they’re used as if editorial business ownership is taking place in the now – as if the business, and the fees which that business owner accepts, are absolutes and somehow unrelated to what’s gone before or what will happen in the future. I believe that business ownership is a journey – that the work I do, and the marketing I carry out to acquire that work, is fluid. The decisions I made and the actions I took three years ago affected the work I was doing and the fees I was charging/accepting at that time; but they ALSO affected the work I’m doing and the fees I’m charging/accepting now. This fluidity means that the way we find value in a client extends beyond the rate. Time for a case study to nail things down … Case study: The packager and the proofreader 2012 Ellie’s a proofreader. Work: She’s completed her training and become a member of her national editorial society. She’s technically excellent at her job, but she has no clients and very little experience of paid work. Marketing: She has a website but the portfolio and testimonials pages are sparse. And, anyway, her SEO is, as yet, so undeveloped that she’s barely discoverable online. She gets in touch with a packager who regularly hires proofreaders who are members of her national professional society. Clients: To the packager, she’s a great fit. She has the skills they want and she has the space in her schedule. To academics, students, businesses and independent authors searching for a proofreader, she’s invisible. Even if she were visible, she appears less experienced (less interesting, we might say) than other proofreaders touting their services. Rates: The agency offers regular work, and the rate is £13.50 per hour. ‘That rate is woeful,’ says one of the more experienced colleagues in her network. ‘That’s so low it’s an insult,’ says another. ‘Accepting that is encouraging a race to the bottom,’ says yet another. Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she has a cunning plan! 2014 Ellie’s still a proofreader. Work: In the past two years, she’s done a book a month for that packager. Now, from that packager alone, she has 24 academic book titles in her portfolio – all of them published by international scholarly publishers, and some of them authored by big names in the academic community. She’s also contacted several academic presses whose rates are a little higher than the packager’s, but only by a few pounds. Marketing: She’s been busy over the past two years.
Clients: Two years ago, Ellie wasn’t discoverable to anyone but the packager and the publishers. Things have changed, though. It’s been a slow burn, but her down-the-road thinking has led to a larger number of direct hits on her website. There’s still a long way to go, but when clients visit her website now, they see the following:
Rates: A few of the clients who’ve found her direct have accepted the rates she offered. These are sometimes as much as double the rate she’s earning from the publishers and packager. This inspires her to continue her marketing activities and increase her visibility to these client types so that she might shift her customer base as her business develops. Ellie’s still not visible enough to fill her schedule with these better-paying clients. She continues to accept work from the publishers and the packagers. ‘Those rates are an insult to someone with your experience,’ cry some of her colleagues. Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she’s not phasing out the publishers and the packager until she’s phased in enough higher-paying clients to replace the workflow and the income it provides. 2016 Ellie’s still a proofreader. Work: Over the past two years, she gradually reduced the work for the packager, finally stopping it altogether at the end of 2015. She’s still taking some work from her early publisher clients, though much less than in 2012–14. That’s because she’s been working for four better-paying presses whose rates are what she’d define as ‘middle-of-the-road’, though nowhere near as high as the fees she can set when she works directly for authors and students. Her increasing visibility has put her in a position where she receives several direct requests to quote per week. She’s noticed that some academic publishers are even asking their authors to source and pay for their own proofreading, so she’s glad she’s focused on making herself discoverable to these clients. Marketing: Even though Ellie’s had a full schedule for several years, she’s continued to focus on what she wants down the road in terms of client types and income. The bread-and-butter work provided by the publishers and the packager have enabled her to concentrate large chunks of her marketing time on what she wants in the future without having to worry excessively about where today’s work will come from.
Clients: Ellie appears to clients as an experienced proofreader with professional qualifications. They think she’s on their wavelength because of the valuable resources she provides for free. The fact that she’s worked for international academic publishing houses gives them confidence that she knows how to follow a brief and work on complex materials to a high standard. If she wasn’t capable, those presses wouldn’t have hired her repeatedly, would they? Rates: Ellie no longer accepts work below £20 per hour, although she aims to earn an average hourly rate of £28. She can afford to make this decision because of the balance between her later-acquired, medium-paying publisher clients (who provide her with a stable workflow) and the higher-paying independent clients who contact her direct. On an online forum, a new entrant to the field posts that she’s been offered proofreading work from a packager at a rate of £15 an hour. Does Ellie say, ‘That rate’s woeful. It’s an insult. Accepting it would be encouraging a race to the bottom’? Nope. She says, ‘Is there value in this work beyond the fee being offered?’ She goes further:
The business journey Ellie’s business in 2012 looks different to Ellie’s business in 2016. Her client base has shifted, her income has shifted, the base price she’ll accept has shifted, her work stream has shifted and her visibility has shifted.
There is value beyond the rate. Whether you take advantage of that value will depend on your particular circumstances, of course. My advice to new starters is to be cautious when listening to the rates debate. It’s easy for seasoned professional editorial freelancers to advise against accepting this or that fee simply because they’re in a position to command better fees. In fact, offering advice on what’s an acceptable price is almost impossible unless we understand an individual freelancer’s circumstances, requirements and access points to the industry. Fees, like any other aspect of a business, need to be considered in the context of an overall business plan, and over a time frame that extends beyond the now. More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Are you thinking of switching careers and becoming a proofreader or copyeditor? I have 7 tips to help you decide whether it's right for you.
At the time of writing, I’ve had 5 requests in 5 days for advice on transitioning to a proofreading/copyediting career.
Self-reflection isn’t uncommon at the turn of a new year – we use the time to think about what the future might bring and what changes we can make to achieve our life goals and business objectives. Here's a summary of the advice I offered my five enquirers based on the questions they asked. This brief article only scratches the surface, but I hope it gives those who are considering a new career some food for thought. 1. Do I have the right background?Probably! See how I answered that without knowing a thing about your educational and career experience? Here’s the thing – if you want to specialize in medical editing for publishers and you have a degree in economics, a rethink’s in order. Social science publishers, though? That’s more like it. Ultimately, it’s about aligning your experience and skills with those who speak the same language.
So, yes, you do probably have the right background to enable you to transition to a proofreading or copyediting career. Just make sure you focus (initially) on targeting clients to whom you have the best chance of offering an exemplary service – clients who’ll think you’re interesting and hireable because you’re comfortable with the language of their subject. That doesn’t mean you have to specialize forever, or stay with the same specialization over the course of your career. When I launched my editorial business, I worked almost exclusively for social science publishers. These days, I work mostly on fiction, specializing in proofreading and copyediting for indie authors. A lot can change in a decade. 2. Is training necessary and worthwhile?In a nutshell, yes. Why?
Take advice from your national editorial society on the most appropriate training course. The list I’ve linked to includes organizations in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. 3. Where’s my market?Perhaps a better question is: Where isn’t my market? Most proofreading and copyediting is done onscreen these days. Even traditional page-proof markup, using proof-correction symbols, is increasingly taking place in a digital environment. That means geography is not the barrier it once was. Thirty years ago, an author from Colorado wouldn’t have hired me to proofread his crime thrillers – not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t find me. Now, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, he can and he has.
If you live in Dublin, your market is people who want to work with someone who lives in Dublin, and people who want to work with someone who lives in Ireland, and people who don’t care where you live but believe you have the skills to solve their problems. Same kind of thing applies to the Tromsønian and the Panxwegian. It’s not always about where you live or where your clients live, but whether you can find each other, and whether, once you have, you can instil a belief in those clients that you’re the right person for the job. 4. Will the pay be enough to earn a living wage?This question gets rehashed over and over. There’s no quick answer. Here are some thoughts:
5. Do you think I’ll be able to find clients?Yes, if you’re prepared to be an active marketer. Don’t wait – start thinking about your marketing strategy as soon as you can. Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable. If you’re not interesting, it won’t matter who finds you because they won’t feel compelled to hire you. If you’re invisible, it won’t matter if you have a wardrobe full of USPs because no one will know you exist.
If you’re not ready to do what’s necessary to make yourself visible to good-fit clients, you’re probably not yet ready to run your own editorial business. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are best suited to employment rather than self-employment. If you think that word of mouth will be enough at the start of your editorial career, think again. I do have a few colleagues who’ve relied, successfully, on that but they’re few and far between, and they have a lot of experience (and clients to spread the word). Being active puts you in a position where, over time, you acquire choice. Choice is the road to alignment – where what you need to earn, what you want to earn, how much time you have available to work for those earnings, and what the clients who can find you are prepared to pay all come together in a way that works for you and your business. 6. What kind of information is relevant?It’s always about the client. When you’re creating content, put yourself in your client’s shoes and ask, ‘If I were searching for a proofreader, what would I want to know and what problems might I have?’ Some experts would say that my website has too many words and too many pages, that the portfolio is too cluttered, that there’s too much information below the fold, that my blog titles are too long ... I do break some of the ‘rules’ of online promotion; I also follow many of them. I’ve tried and tested different ways of doing things and found what works for me. Next year, I might be doing things differently. Nothing’s set in stone. If you’re struggling to organize your message, ask yourself the following questions. If the content you create answers them, you’re on the right track.
7. But will it be lonely?If you’re still excited about building a freelance editorial business, then there’s an international community of colleagues waiting to welcome you. Thirty years ago, freelancing could be a lonely business. In 2017, independent proofreaders and copyeditors chat, ask for advice, share knowledge and expertise, and learn … together. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and editorial-society forums provide just some of the online spaces that editorial pros use to connect with each other. We work solo but the digital watercooler has never been busier. See you there!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Today's article is all about optimizing your proofreading or editing business website so that it works for clients using different device types.
My website is the single biggest driver of my proofreading and copyediting work. It’s therefore essential that it shows potential clients my best face.
I’ve spent years tinkering – tweaking current content, adding new information and removing text and images that have outgrown their usefulness.
Weebly, like many web-hosting services, allows me to optimize my website for mobile devices.* It takes my chosen desktop theme and adapts the design for optimal viewing on a smaller device such as a tablet or mobile phone. This function has been available for several years. I can’t remember when I became aware of it, but I figured it made sense to switch it on because I couldn't imagine anyone with a smart phone having the patience to navigate through my content if it wasn’t mobile friendly. I congratulated myself on being so forward-thinking, and carried on as normal. Note: If you're unsure whether your website is mobile friendly, it's easy to find out. My colleague Averill Buchanan alerted me to Google's Mobile-Friendly Test site. Is it pretty, or pretty awful? Most website-hosting services help non-designers like me to make our websites look pretty. They give us dividers, shaded boxes, spacers, columns, textboxes and image placers to enable us to put our content exactly where we want it. The result is that on the desktop version, at least, everything looks just so. You might be the kind of person who likes to keep things simple – you might have opted for minimal text on your site, and the text you have placed might not be broken into separate textbox elements. To date, I’ve not been this kind of person. I’ve overly complicated things, and, I might add, it hasn’t done me any favours. Here’s just one example. This is the contact information on my site:
Now, back in 2011, when I first typed this information into my contact page, I didn’t like the vertical alignment of the information after the colons. Weebly doesn’t allow tabbing, so I created two textboxes (below, outlined in red) and placed them next to each other in two columns.
Okay, so it was never going to win a design award, but I’d achieved my goal. However, there was a problem – it looked perfect in the desktop view, but the mobile layout was a disaster:
This wasn’t Weebly’s fault, it was mine. Weebly’s mobile optimization tool was working perfectly logically – finding content in a single textbox and ensuring that said content remained unbroken.
The solution was simple – I had to restore my original layout, putting all the text back into a single box – but the impact was huge. It did mean sacrificing the alignment issue that I’d had a bee in my bonnet about, but it was worth it. Now my mobile display looks like this (on iPhone 6):
It’s not perfect (there are unsightly end-of-line breaks on smaller mobile screens), but it’s a far more sensible and logical design for my mobile visitors. I’ll shortly be making decisions about how to reword this information so that I can remove the unwanted wordbreaks – it needs some care because I don’t want to compromise the design of the desktop view.
What devices are my visitors using? The crux of the matter here is that I want to put myself in my customers’ shoes. I need to bear in mind the following:
A webpage that looks perfect on a mobile might be less pleasing to the eye on a desktop screen, and vice versa. I’m under no illusion that I can optimize my design for every potential client all of the time. But paying attention to the mobile display has been a learning experience for me. I’ve discovered that I’ve not been showing my best face, and that’s simply not an option in the current market. I know this because my data tells me so. Looking at the data Honestly, I’ve only recently started looking at data about which devices my visitors are using. The following was taken from one of the analytics programs I use, StatCounter.
The above image shows two days’ worth of data (8–10 October 2016). A whopping 30% of my visitors used mobile phones and tablets to access my content.
Some tablet screens are big enough to make browsing my website in desktop view perfectly palatable, so some of the visitors using these devices may not be looking at a mobile view. Here’s the thing, though – I don’t know which view they’re seeing and it’s not under my control. It’s therefore important that I do what I can to put my best face forward, just in case. Even one lost customer who searched and found me via their mobile, and then dismissed my services because my content was illogically presented, is something I want to avoid. The view from an expert My friend Andy McNair, who’s forgotten more about website analytics than I’ll ever know, pointed out that two days’ worth of data could be horribly skewed by a range of factors. He prompted me to dig a little deeper using my Google Analytics historical data. Says Andy in relation to industry at large: In 2016, 1 in 5 visits to corporate communication sites are made on smartphones. Tablet has been static at 1 in 20 for the last 3 years. Desktop is still the most important group so don't cripple your user experience there.
I followed Andy’s advice and compared data in four quarters (August–October) from 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
This rather basic analysis supports Andy’s industry view and has encouraged me to continue to work on my mobile optimization to ensure that it’s user-friendly, while respecting the fact that desktop visitors are still the most important group. Therefore, mobile responsiveness mustn't come at the expense of the desktop-user experience. When thinking like a editor isn’t enough This exercise has shown me how, until recently, my website design was dominated by two modes of thinking:
I now know that I need to think less like an editor and more like a designer and a potential client when I’m building webpages. Taking the long view Keeping an eye on user behaviour is a work in progress, but I'm on the case. Four years ago, mobile usage mattered less. Now, to me, it matters twice as much (though the desktop-user group is still by far the most important). So, take a look at your analytics to assess what devices your visitors are using. If mobile has become more important and your website host allows you to easily optimize your design for mobile devices, without compromising your core visitor group, do use the function. But check that the results are showing your best face. A few small tweaks could make a very big difference. More importantly, they could turn a closed page into a closed deal.
* If you’re a Weebly user, and you’re not sure whether you’ve optimized your website for mobile devices, open up your dashboard, go to your site, click on the Settings tab on the ribbon, scroll down to Mobile, and make sure the ‘Display the mobile-optimized version of this website when someone visits from a mobile device’ box is ticked.
To take a quick look at how your content is being displayed on mobile devices, choose the Build or Pages tabs from the ribbon, and click on the Device Switcher icon (also on the ribbon). A word of caution: I’ve found that after toggling back and forth between the desktop and mobile views in Device Switcher, I have problems making some types of amendments to my content (for example creating bullet points, italicizing and moving textboxes). Don’t worry if this happens to you. Simply exit Weebly and reopen; you’ll be able to amend as required.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Here's Part 2 of my series on why you must market your editing and proofreading business.
In Part 1, I considered the problem of low rates and some potential solutions:
The alternative is premised on the idea that you can market yourself into a position of choice. Here in Part 2, I take a closer look at the benefits of proactive marketing. I position this within a framework of business ownership that takes responsibility and shuns entitlement. Generating interest and discoverability Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable. If enough potential clients can find you (i.e. you’re discoverable) and are persuaded to contact you (i.e. you’re interesting), you can, over time, put yourself in a position whereby you can turn down the work that doesn’t fit (because of the fee or otherwise), and accept the work that does – and have a full schedule to boot. One fictive example, with a bit of maths! The following is based loosely on my particular situation – I’m a proofreader who works on relatively uncomplicated book-length projects that take around a week to complete. I do take on shorter pieces of work and fit them around my larger projects, but, for the most part, it’s a project-in/project-out workflow. I specialize in working for independent authors, academics, students and publishers. I do a little bit of work for businesses and marketing agencies on occasion, but these clients don’t make up the bulk of my working week. Let’s say that 90% of the new clients who contact me want to pay less than I want to earn. That means that only one in ten jobs will pan out. For simplicity, let’s give each month twenty-two working days (I like to take weekends off). Let’s also say that I can fit in roughly one book-length job in five working days, plus perhaps one or two smaller jobs if required. The reactive marketer Let’s imagine that I’m not as interesting and discoverable as I could be, and am not being found by potential new clients on a regular basis. I receive ten offers of work every two months. Given that 10% of the jobs will pan out into work that pays what I want it to pay, that’s one hit in that two-month period. I consider the remaining nine jobs to be poorly paying. However, because I’m not being found and asked to quote as often as I might be, I don’t have any other hits in the bag. I don’t want to be without work for the bulk of those two months, so I accept the nine lower paying job offers, and feel a bit sorry for myself, consoling myself with the thought that at least I’m being paid something. Then I go and get myself that extra-big hug from my partner and wait for my sympathetic friend to say ‘poor you’. The proactive marketer Now let’s imagine that I actively market my business on a regular basis. I receive an average of thirty offers from new clients every month. As before, only 10% pan out into confirmed work that pays what I want it to pay. That’s fine, though, because that 10% is enough to fill my schedule when taking into account offers from existing well-paying clients. Those existing clients are paying us what we want to earn – they’re people who have already discovered us and considered us interesting enough to hire and rehire. They provide an additional safety net that enables us to make choices. The point is that the more offers you receive, the stronger your position. You can afford to say no. Any percentage of a big number is a very different proposition from that same percentage of a small number. Proactive marketing gives you the numbers. Bigger numbers mean you have a higher chance of more hits (confirmed work that fits your financial needs). If you’re in a situation where you’re being forced to accept work that doesn’t pay what you want to earn, you need to increase your discoverability, or improve your interestingness, or both. My colleague Rich Adin sums it up rather nicely: 'The primary difference between proactive and reactive marketing is that proactive marketing makes sure you can say no while enjoying the higher rewards when you say yes, whereas reactive marketing ensures that you will never be able to say no and will always “enjoy” low rewards that force you to constantly say yes when you want to say no. No is empowering and proactive is empowerment' (Adin, personal correspondence, 2016). ‘But my work is different to yours’ I acknowledge that some editors’ workflows will look very different to mine. You may be someone who works on complex long-term projects that take weeks or months to complete. The project fees will run into thousands rather than hundreds of pounds. This kind of specialist work may mean you are always going to be dealing with a smaller pot of hits and misses than a proofreader with a more straightforward workflow. For you, the numbers will look different, and negotiation may play a larger role when considering how to handle fee issues. The principle stands, though – however different your business model is to mine, if you aren’t getting enough hits, then you will still benefit from marketing yourself so that you increase the size of your pot and, thus, the proportion of confirmed jobs that pay what you want to earn. Who’s responsible? Expecting others to take responsibility for the success of my self-owned editorial business is a path to failure. My colleagues are obliged to look after their interests. My clients (and potential clients) are obliged to look after their interests. I’m obliged to look after mine. Even established editorial business owners should be actively promoting because they can’t predict how the market will shift over time. A profitable client today could be a loss-making client tomorrow. Ultimately, expecting clients to fall in our laps because we’ve decided to go freelance is employee-like thinking, not business-owner thinking. Considering rates in terms of what’s fair, and what’s respectful is unhelpful. It shifts the freelancer’s focus from one of professional business-ownership to one of entitlement. When you’re self-employed there’s no room for entitlement. Big-brand practice If you’re still not convinced about the value of marketing, think about some of the TV, radio and direct-mail advertisements by well-known brands that you’ve recently encountered. They haven’t stopped marketing their products and services because they already have lots of buyers. Rather, they’re still looking for new customers who value what they offer. So should we. Looking forward rather than feeling aggrieved Sometimes the potential client and I will find a place where we’re a good fit, but often we won’t. That’s fine. I don’t begrudge those potential clients who offer me jobs with fees that I think are too low, or those who ask me to quote but choose to go elsewhere (perhaps they like someone else’s price better, or they think someone’s a better project fit) because that’s their informed choice. If I market my business effectively, their choices won’t affect me because I’ll have enough offers of work that are a good fit from elsewhere. Being discoverable to a bank of potential clients who are prepared to pay you what you feel you are worth enables you to take a positive and forward-looking view of your business, rather than expending negative mental energy on how you’re worse off in real terms than you were X number of years ago. Summing up Being the owner of an editorial business means building regular marketing into the foundations of running that business. When we do things to maximize our discoverability and interestingness, we work towards choice. Regular, proactive marketing gives you a bigger pot from which to pick a smaller number of well-paying, schedule-filling hits, some of which will turn into repeat clients. No choice, on the other hand, means settling for what’s on offer. Just remember that those extra-big hugs and sympathetic ‘poor you’s aren’t billable.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this two-part series, I take a look at how regular business promotion can put us in a position to decline work that doesn't meet our expectations and aspirations.
So you’re a copy-editor, and one of the clients you’ve been working for over the past seven years has, yet again, failed to increase their hourly rate. You’re worse off in real terms than you were last year, let alone in 2009. Ugh.
Or perhaps you’re a proofreader who’s paid on a flat-fee basis by another publisher. The fee is based on the number of pages per book. Over the past six months, you’ve noticed that the typesetter has been squeezing another 100 words on a page by reducing the font size. Over the course of a 250-page book, this amounts to you having to proofread an additional 25,000 words for no extra cash. Given that you proofread for this client at a speed of around 5,000 words per hour, that’s an extra five hours of work that you’re no longer being paid for. Ouch. A self-publishing romance writer tries to haggle you down to £4 per 1,000 words for a 100,000-word book. She wants the fee to include a copy-edit AND a ‘quick follow-up proofread’. She feels that your fee of £9 per 1,000 words is way too high and out of line with what other editors are charging. You thought you were giving her a fabulous deal, given that she’s getting two different and separate editorial passes from you for £900! Headdesk. A PM agency with whom you’ve worked in the past asks you to do a top and tail of a PDF with some Q&As. They also want a basic howler check and a layout review. It’s a sort of semi-proofread. There will be other similar jobs over the forthcoming weeks. They estimate that each job will take two hours. They offer you a flat fee of thirty quid for each job. £15 an hour for your level of experience? Sob. So what can you do?
Holy moly, you say, this editorial freelancing lark is becoming a joke. Negotiating If you have regular clients who are offering, say, complex projects worth several thousands of pounds, it may, indeed, be well worth your while to enter into extensive negotiations so that it’s clear to the client why what they’re offering is unrealistic and unacceptable. The time you spend on these negotiations could turn out to be worth the investment if you can find some acceptable middle ground. If, however, you’re dealing with projects worth a couple of hundred quid or less, negotiating may not necessarily be the best use of your time. Instead, you could use it to find new, better-paying clients. Speed How about working more efficiently, using tools such as macros? If you’re not already using these tools, then introducing them into your workflow could help tip the situation back in your favour. If the client is offering a fixed fee, but with more words per project, speeding up could even increase the amount you earn per hour, never mind maintaining the rate you used to earn. If, however, you’re already macro-magnificent, ReferenceChecker-resplendent, PerfectIt-pretty and wildcard-wonderful, this isn’t going to provide you with a solution. Changing industry policy How about lobbying the industry? You could ask your professional editorial society or freelancing union to step in. But let’s be honest – the mainstream publishing industry is global and consists of hundreds of separate businesses operating under capitalism. It would be a tricky job for the society/union in a command economy, but in a capitalist one? Don’t hold your breath! As for all the other clients – independent authors, businesses, students, charities and schools, for example – they don’t make up a unified industry. Who are you going to lobby? Getting emotional So how about feeling upset, disgruntled, undervalued and disrespected? By all means, go ahead. It won’t change anything, though you might get an extra-big hug from your partner and some sympathetic ‘poor you’s from your best mate. An alternative – wave goodbye What if there was another option, though? How about if you just politely waved goodbye to the project offer that doesn’t meet your financial requirements, confident that you can fill that job slot with something else – something that pays you the rate that you want to earn? After all, you’re not obliged to accept the work. Self-employment obligations and responsibilities Not being obliged to do a particular piece of work for a price set by someone else is one of the joys of successful freelancing and a key element of being self-employed. If you work for a publisher, magazine, charity or school (or any other business you care to name), part of the deal is that you may well have to undertake types of work at times and places that you don’t like and that aren’t convenient, things that are not written into your contract and that, officially, you’re not being paid to do. But you’re an employee and you don’t get to bargain over your salary every time something comes up that requires you to give a little extra for the sake of goodwill and a comfortable appraisal. Your employer is in charge and in control. Perhaps your efforts will be rewarded further down the line – you might be promoted or given a bonus. It’s not guaranteed, though, and you’ll rarely be in a position to force the issue. Being employed often means making do – the benefit is that, unless you’re on some dreadful zero-hours contract, you get paid even on a slow day, or when you’re ill or on holiday. Importantly, your employer will take responsibility for sourcing customers. But me and you? We’re the owners of our businesses and so it’s up to us to do the work we like, at the times we like, for the pay we want. Holidays and sick days don’t pay. We do, however, have the right to decline a job. And because we own our own businesses, it’s not X University Press’s responsibility to pay us a fee that’s good for each of our business models. XUP’s responsibility is to pay us a fee that’s good for its business model. We, and only we, have responsibility for deciding whom we work for and which projects we accept or decline. Importantly, we have to take responsibility for sourcing customers – there’s no one else to do it for us. We’re in charge and in control. That’s where marketing comes in … and in Part II, I take a closer look at the benefits of proactive promotion.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
This post explores the disadvantages of ballpark pricing for editors and proofreaders.
Part 1 discussed the advantages of ballpark pricing. There are, however, some valid concerns about the ballpark quotation that need to be considered before rushing into offering such a service. Disadvantage 1: Wrong focus – money over value … The argument goes that ballpark quotes focus on the money rather than the value that editorial professionals bring to the table. When we offer ballpark quotes, it’s just a figure. Says Celine Roque: ‘It’s incomplete. Your quote is just a number. Your clients can’t surmise all the information they need from that number. Apart from the primary services you provide, you should also give them your advice. Oftentimes, what a client really needs is different from what they think they need. In this case, an assessment of a client’s business and project, followed by a proposal, is the better approach’ (‘Why You Shouldn't Just Give a Quote to Potential Clients’, Gigaom, 2008). Regarding Roque’s concerns, giving advice takes time (see Part 1). Furthermore, what a client needs is not always the same thing as what a client wants. Giving advice to someone who actually just wants a price isn’t good customer service (even if we know that our advice, value, etc. would, in reality, be in their best interests). It’s just aggravating. There are ways to give advice that aren't invasive:
Disadvantage 2: Missing the opportunity to add value …
In ‘Sales 101: Don’t Get to Price Too Early, Even If You’re Asked to “Ballpark”’ (Sexton Group Ltd, 2015), Steve Payne discusses ‘the number one rule of quoting prices’: ‘Don’t quote a price – any price – before you have sold the client on your ability to do the job. If you haven’t convinced the client that it’s you they want to work with, before you quote a price, it’s like you are swinging at a baseball too early. In the case above, you made no effort to tell the client, through testimonials, through photographs, through stories, about your firm. How it operates. What makes it different. How delighted past customers have been with your work. How you have many repeat clients who will never work with another contractor as long as you are in business.’ In other words, you’re potentially shutting the door to negotiation, especially if your price is perceived as too high. Payne’s point about using value to make you a more hireable prospect is excellent, but I still believe that when a potential client asks for a price, we need to listen to that request and act on it. No one wants to hire an editor who can’t follow a brief. If we can’t listen to a client’s request at the very first point of contact, how can we expect them to trust us to listen further down the line? To ameliorate this, consider other ways in which you emphasize your value at the point where clients are likely to contact you.
Disadvantage 3: Poor accuracy
Rich Adin (personal correspondence) pointed out that accuracy can be a huge problem for some editorial freelancers when it comes to ballpark pricing. One simply cannot offer anything like a realistic price without seeing at least a sample of the work. For those editors who offer complex services to clients, this is a valid criticism of the ballpark mechanism. The kinds of projects that Adin is often asked to quote for include ‘2,800-page biology text[s] with thousands of references’; require various levels of editing; involve various subjects; and require the handling of multiple references and reference styles. A client asking for a ballpark figure for editing one of Adin’s ‘13,000-page medical manuscript[s]’ might fail to mention that they need the project completed in an eye-watering ten weeks, or that all 5,000 references are in a mish-mash of citation styles. For that reason, Adin doesn’t offer ballpark quotations because, without knowing the detail of what’s involved, it’s impossible to build a price, or justify it, in ways that make sense to, and can be respected by, the client. Says Adin: ‘Even if after a detailed explanation I do not get the current project, I do not consider having given the detailed explanation a waste of time because the client can see that I have reasons for my positions and am willing to offer solutions. Clients are also made aware that there needs to be a balance between schedule, fee, and quality. Based on past experience, I will be asked to undertake a future project, perhaps even one where the client has already preapplied my analysis’ (‘The Business of Editing: The Standard Editing Workday & Workweek’). Editors therefore need to consider whether there are parts of the editorial service they provide, or particular client types with whom they work, where fewer complexities are involved, making them more appropriate for testing ballpark pricing.
Testing ...
You may be enthusiastic or concerned about offering ballpark quotes. You may have fifty colleagues who offer ballpark quotes, seventy who steadfastly refuse to, and twenty more who are thinking about the issue. All of that will be interesting and help to guide your thinking. Ultimately, though, what’s good for you will not necessarily be good for me or any of those 140 colleagues who have already made their own decisions or who are in the process of making those decisions. The only way to know whether ballpark pricing is good for your business is to test it. Design any ballpark pricing test in a way that, to the best extent possible, ameliorates some of the concerns you have. Then track the results and see how the experience works out for you. You’re in control so you can end the test whenever you wish. Consider tweaking the following:
Other colleagues will have opinions, and those will be useful – not in regard to whether you should or shouldn’t offer ballpark quotes, but in regard to the issues you consider and the challenges you prepare yourself for should you decide to undertake the test itself.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
This post explores the advantages of ballpark pricing for editors and proofreaders.
What's a ballpark quote? Ballpark pricing is that which gives the client an initial and fast indication of what a project might cost. There's no project evaluation involved, which means the editor's working with numbers based on average speeds, and the client's working with word counts or some other given element (e.g. a web page of up to X words; a publishing 'page' of 250 words; X hours of the editor's time, etc.). Ballparks can be provided on rate cards, web pages, via online instant-quote widgets, or via email or phone. Ballpark prices don't suit every editor Spark up a conversation with fellow editorial professionals about providing quick-quotes and you won’t find a consensus on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea. Certainly, not everyone in our profession is prepared to offer ballpark quotations, and some even consider the decision to do so as controversial. So how do we know whether it would be good for our own business if there’s no consensus? The best way is to test it for a fixed time period and evaluate the impact.
Advantage 1: No time-wasting
Some years ago, I arranged for a sales rep to visit with a view to securing a quote for some new windows to be fitted. I took the rep around our house and showed him which windows needed replacing. Then I sat through a 45-minute pitch about the company and the quality of its products. I was frustrated after five minutes and couldn’t wait to get the guy out of the door. While quality is important, and the fine detail might have been useful later, I didn’t want to spend my valuable time listening to someone selling a product to me that ultimately I couldn’t afford. I wanted a ballpark price upfront. Many of our clients are no different. If a self-publishing customer has a figure of £400 in her head for an 83,000-word proofread, and my ballpark quotation is £500, we’ll probably continue the discussion because the gap between what she wants to pay and what I want to charge is bridgeable. If my ballpark quotation is around the £1,500 mark, it's a different story. That’s nearly quadruple what the client hoped for. I’m certainly not going to come down by 70%, and I doubt they'll go up by 375%. My public rates are created by estimating the time it will take to complete an editing project and pricing that time in such a way that I earn what I want and need in order to make my business sustainable. My client’s preferred price is based on ... actually, I have no idea what it’s based on. And it doesn’t matter what it’s based on. All that matters is that neither of us has wasted each other’s time having a lengthy email discussion about the value I bring to the table set against the financial pressures they're under when, in fact, we’re just not a good financial fit for each other at this point in time. My time has a cost to it. My customer’s time has a cost to it, too. The ballpark figure allows both of us to move on quickly and spend our time in ways that are more appropriate to each of us. Says freelance copywriter, trainer and speaker Ed Gandia: ‘As a freelance professional, your most valuable non-renewable resource is time. You must use it wisely. So when you spend two or three hours “educating” a prospect on the value of your services (and why you’re a much better option than someone charging one-tenth of what you charge), you’re using up valuable billable time. [...] There are enough prospects who understand the value of what you offer to save you from wasting time with those who don’t. [...] Yes, it’s hard to see a potential client walk away because you won’t budge. But, let’s face it. If his budget is 75% less than your absolute minimum fee … what’s the point?’ (‘Why You Must Quote a Ballpark Figure’, Freelance Folder, 2010). Copywriter Steve Slaunwhite concurs: ‘What if a prospective client is cheap and not willing to pay professional rates for professional work? Wouldn't you rather find that out right away instead of wasting an hour or two (or even longer) preparing and submitting a formal proposal?’ (‘Should You Give the Client a “Ballpark” Price Before You Quote the Project?’, American Writers & Artists, Inc., 2011). And here’s another supporter, my colleague Adrienne Montgomerie. Montgomerie has a widget on her website than enables potential clients to ‘watch the time and cost estimate build before your eyes’ (‘Stop Wasting Time On Estimates’, Right Angels and Polo Bears, 2014). Montgomerie’s instant estimator is based on an average, ‘the mean of all projects I have ever worked on’. To offer a confirmed price, Montgomerie, like most editors, would need to understand the guts of the project – which means seeing a decent-sized representative sample and knowing the full word count, the subject matter, what rounds of editorial intervention the project has already been through, the deadline, and so on.
Advantage 2: Engaging with the client
Some customers simply want to know the price quickly. It’s not that they're trying to get our services on the cheap, or that they don’t value what we do for them. Rather, they want to be able to plan their budget as quickly as possible. Consider, again, the author mentioned above. They have an 83,000-word novel that needs proofreading. She has no idea what proofreaders charge, but she does want to hire one and is prepared to find the funds necessary to secure the services of a an editor who instils confidence in her. She’s looked online and found a few whose websites she liked and who made her feel like she’d be in safe hands with them. To some extent, the value those proofreaders will bring to the project has already been acknowledged. At this stage, she wants to get a feel for what her investment will likely be – will she need to save up or does she already have the funds in place? Acquiring a ballpark figure prior to having a lengthier discussion about the proofreading process will help her to get the ball rolling. In some cases, the ballpark price enable us to engage with the customer and nail the deal before they’ve had a chance to search elsewhere. Here’s Slaunwhite again: ‘[W]hen you quote a ballpark price, some clients will be satisfied and give you the go-ahead right away. [...] I've had many projects where I quoted a ballpark price and the client said, “Yes, that sounds fine. When can we get started?” After that, the formal quotation I send later on is just that: a formality. The project is already mine!’ (‘Should You Give the Client a “Ballpark” Price Before You Quote the Project?’).
What a ballpark isn't
Ballpark prices should be as realistic as possible. It's not a trick price to lure a client into a conversation, only for us to turn around and say, ‘Sorry, it’s going to be double the fee I quoted earlier.’ Rather, it's meant to facilitate a conversation that enables us to cut to the chase and decide as quickly as possible whether we’re a financial fit. There will be times, of course, when the ballpark and confirmed quotations are far apart because, following an assessment of the project, the level of intervention required is either beyond our skill set or requires more time. Hitting the mark comes with experience and data.
Tracking and reviewing data
Here’s Montgomerie again: ‘Of course, the reason I can ballpark with confidence is that I have kept detailed records of my pace over the years. It also helps to work on the same kinds of projects again and again. And some types of projects are more consistent than others. I’m sure there are a thousand other reasons pessimists think this won’t work. But I guarantee you, it’s worth a try. If you know assignments typically pay $5000, there’s no reason wasting everyone’s time when the budget only allows for $500’. By tracking our data, we can learn approximately how long it takes us to proofread or edit different types of material, written by different client types with varying levels of English fluency. And by recording different variables, we can, over time, extrapolate information that enables us to build a picture of where the financial value lies in our client base. The fact is this: None of us knows whether our business is sustainable if we don’t know what an hour of our time costs us, or is worth to us. Taking account of project variances … When thinking about a pricing structure, consider the type of editing you do and the projects you'll be quoting for. Ballpark pricing might be less suitable for structural editing and project editing, but effective for line editing, copyediting and proofreading. Still, that doesn’t mean that every client type will be priced equally. Ballparks might vary per 1,000 words or per hour for the following reasons:
In Part 2, we'll look at some of the disadvantages of ballpark pricing.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
This article considers the importance of testing in an editorial business marketing strategy.
If you're building a marketing strategy for your editing or proofreading business, you probably have a ton of questions. Some of those questions might look like this:
They’re perfectly good questions and our colleagues usually have some excellent answers. There’s nothing wrong with asking more experienced professionals for advice on how to go about promoting one’s business; indeed, I’d recommend it as one tool for deepening one’s marketing knowledge and stimulating one’s creative juices. However, it’s important to remember that ‘advice’ is just that – guidance and recommendations for action; advice is not a rule of thumb that needs to be followed without consideration of our own individual business goals, target clients groups, and required income streams. We all, too, have our own voices – some people shine when promoting their businesses face to face or over the telephone; others make more of an impact using their written communication skills. In brief, the marketing tools that work for me might not work as well for you, and vice versa. That’s why we need to incorporate testing into our marketing strategy. Testing involves experimenting with particular marketing activities over a fixed timescale, and evaluating the results. Testing allows you to discover which promotional activities are effective for generating business leads in particular segments of the editorial market. The results may well match the experience of many of your colleagues, but don’t be surprised if they differ too. Before you start … Before you begin testing, it’s crucial to consider what you are trying to say and to whom. Spend some time reviewing your business plan so that you have the following in mind:
A fictive case study Let’s return to just one of the questions that I posed at the beginning of this article and consider how testing offers a constructive approach to acquiring market knowledge that complements the advice gleaned from colleagues. ‘Is [directory name] worth advertising in?’ Ash is a recently qualified proofreader. He’s considering advertising his services in his national professional association’s online editorial directory. The cost would be $300 per annum, which is a big chunk of his marketing budget. He asks 3,000 of his fellow association members whether the directory has proved successful for them. He receives 30 responses, which at first sight is useful, but when he reads the replies in full, the advice is mixed.
Despite the mixed responses, there is some really useful information to be gleaned. Ash considers the following:
Ash reviews his business plan (including the skills he has, his career and educational background, the editorial training he’s carried out) and concludes that, although he has little experience, publishers are a good fit for his business model. The price tag of $300 is a little on the steep side for him, but he wants to acquire experience from publisher clients. Publishers seem like a core client group for the directory, though Ash is cognizant of the fact that he only has feedback from a small percentage of the society’s membership and he’s unsure whether their views are statistically significant. He decides to test the effectiveness of the directory for 1 year. He constructs a listing that is designed specifically to appeal to the publisher client group. In 12 months’ time he will evaluate the results. If the listing has generated his required income-to-cost ratio, he can continue investing in this marketing activity, confident that his money is well spent. If the listing doesn’t generate the desired results he will have two choices: (a) test a reworked version of the advertisement or (b) abandon the directory and explore other methods of making himself discoverable to publisher clients. Whatever the outcome, Ash’s test will provide him with evidence that he can use to make informed and confident decisions about how best to market his editorial business. What should you test? What you should test will depend on what you want to know. Here two tests I've carried out. Advertising with Reedsy I wanted to know whether creating a profile on Reedsy would make me more discoverable to independent fiction authors. It costs nothing financially to generate a listing, although Reedsy takes a percentage of any income earned. Feedback within the UK and the international editorial communities has been mixed. In May 2015, I decided to carry out a test over a 12-month period so that I could evaluate the potential benefits for my own business. Early results were positive – I picked up a high-value client within only a few weeks and completed several projects for him. The process was smooth and payment was timely. I continued to advertise on the platform and monitor the results. As of 2018, I receive requests to quote on a weekly basis. The test proved to me that Reedsy is a valuable lead generator for my business. The only way to find out if it works for you is to test it too. Adding video into my marketing mix I wanted to know whether videos would offer my clients and colleague-customers a valuable alternative way of consuming my written blog content. Would there be SEO benefits? Would the project generate sufficient additional high-value work opportunities and book/course sales to make the investment in time worthwhile? I began creating video content in 2017. As of 2018, my written content still drives more traffic to my website than my video content. However, certain videos, such as the 'Hello' one on my home page, a free webinar for colleagues on emergency marketing, and some tutorials on using Word's styles palette, have been popular. The emergency-marketing video led to a spike in sales of my books, and several clients have commented on how much they like being able to see the editor behind the website. The test leads me to believe that, in the main, I'm more likely to gain traction from videos that have a teaching or welcoming element, so I've decided to focus specifically on tutorial-based video content for now, and only as a supplement to my popular written content. Don’t mix things up Take care when carrying out more than one test. Multiple tests on one marketing tool are problematic – it won’t be clear why any changes to response rates, either positive or negative, are occurring. For example, if I decided I wanted to find ways of increasing the speed at which I receive payment, I might consider tweaking my invoice as follows:
It’s crucial that I test each of these things separately; otherwise, 12 months down the line, I’ll have no idea which of these tactics is working (or not working). It could well be that the message and emoticon are just as effective as the 5% discount. Unless I identify this by carrying out the tests separately, I’m needlessly throwing money out of the window. Tests can, of course, be carried out separately but simultaneously by dividing similar clients into groups, with one tweak applied to each group. So, in the invoicing case, I might divide all my publisher clients into three groups and send out invoices with the late-penalty payment info highlighted to group A, a 5% discount for early-bird payment to group B, and a thank-you message and emoticon smiley to group C. Then I would track the results for each group. Track the results Make sure you track test results. If, for example, you’re mailing your CV to a large number of publishers, and testing different designs, or different wording in the accompanying cover letter, make a note of who was sent what. That way you’ll be able to identify whether a particular test is generating a higher response rate. Codes can be a useful way of collating data if you’re want to work out where your best leads are coming from. Many editorial freelancers receive emails and phone calls from clients who don’t identify how they discovered them. Adding a distinct code to each call to action on your website’s Contact page, leaflet, business card, or advertisement helps you to distinguish the results of your marketing efforts. Likewise, if you are testing different pricing models with, say, students (e.g., a flat fee vs. $X per 1,000 words), you might issue them with different ordering codes if they decide to commission you (FF2015 for those offered a flat fee vs. PK2015 for those offered a price per 1,000 words); this would enable you to track which test generated the best likelihood of being hired. Summing up
An earlier version of this article was first published on An American Editor. More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
An in-house editor sheds light on his experiences of in-house editorial production, including how freelance editors and proofreaders are selected.
This editor's contributions are from the point of view of a publishing professional, broadly speaking. So while some of the things he has to say are informed by his experiences within the UK company for which he works, his residency there is not in the capacity of a representative of that particular publishing house.
Louise: Hi, Philip. It’s great to have you here! First, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? It would be useful to have an overview of your daily responsibilities – many of our readers haven’t worked in-house so they may be unaware of what an in-house editor does. I understand that different presses work in different ways, but it would still be handy to know what you do.
UE: Hi Louise. It’s equally great to be contributing to your blog. So, a little bit about myself. I started working in publishing straight out of University back in 2010. I studied English and German at the University of Reading – and since my passion is language, publishing seemed like a natural career choice. I have been working in the editorial department of an academic publishing house for the past five years. It’s absolutely incredible how quickly time flies. You are completely right – every publishing house operates in slightly different ways, so I can’t say the experience is representative of the role of in-house editors up and down the country. And, even after five years, I am still rather new to the industry, compared with some of my colleagues, so I don’t speak as the one true voice of experience either. So, about my role … As an editor, I am responsible for the project management of up to fifteen social science/humanities titles at any given time. My ultimate responsibility is ensuring the standards of the final product are in keeping with company and author expectations. One thing that makes my role unique is that I, as an in-house editor, am responsible for typesetting my own projects. It is absolutely fantastic to feel so involved with a project from day one to the nerve-wracking day the book is ready to be sent to print. There is nothing better than having a satisfied author! Louise: Which editorial services do you currently contract out to freelancers? Structural/development editing, copy-editing, proofreading, indexing? Anything else? UE: We have three routes to print:
Louise: Today, I’d specifically like to focus on the commissioning of new freelancers. One question that comes up a lot in the freelance editorial community is: How does one get noticed by publishers? So do you use particular directories when you’re looking to source new suppliers, and if so which ones? Or do you consider freelancers who’ve contacted you direct (by email, telephone, letter)? How about referrals from colleagues working for other presses? UE: In collaboration with my line manager, I am responsible for curating the freelancer pool and enhancing freelancer processes, so I feel I can answer this question definitively. The best way to get noticed by a publishing house is simply by finding out who the relevant in-house contact responsible for the freelancer pool is, and then sending them a quick message to enquire about the process. If you don’t ever ask, you’re never going to know. Granted, a lot of publishers have established pools of people they use. However, I feel that you can never have too many freelancers in your pool – especially law proofreaders, who understand OSCOLA referencing. A CV and covering letter is a good base from which to start, but I’ve met freelancers in person to whom I have offered work. For example, I made new contacts off the back of attending the Society of Indexers (SI) conference in Cirencester in 2014, and many more at the joint Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP)/SI conference in York in 2015. As an in-house editor, I would offer the following two key pieces of advice to any editorial freelancer:
Louise: When you read a CV and covering letter, or view someone’s listing in a membership directory, what are the key stand-out points that you're looking for? Here, I’m thinking about the skills, experience, training, and other qualifications that make you think, “Yes, that person’s someone we want in our freelance bank.” When I announced the launch of this column, two of my colleagues asked specific questions that relate directly to these issues. Just as a reminder I’ve included them here:
UE: It is a combination of different factors that determines whether a particular person is suitable for our freelancer pool. Since we have a quite full freelancer list, freelancer specialities tend to be significant. A good freelancer should be able to work on a variety of different material, but it is always good having somebody who really understands the text. Law, for example, tends to be one of those lists with a lot of subject-specific terms, and it is always good when these are understood in context. Having professional accreditation is desirable. For example, with indexing we look for membership of the SI, and with proofreading we look to the SfEP. Louise: How important is prior publishing experience, broadly speaking? If a freelancer has worked in-house, is this a strong selling point for you? Even if they haven’t worked in-house, is it important that they’ve worked for other publishers? I’m interested in your views on this because I’m often asked by new entrants to the field whether a lack of publishing experience means it will be more difficult for them to secure work with publishers. UE: In general, prior experience is important to in-house editors. If I see that a freelancer has worked for a particular client with similar lists to ours, then I will assume some level of familiarity with the subject matter. Professional accreditation is great, but experience is what can bring these qualifications to life. I understand that this is often one of the hardest things for new freelancers. They want to gain experience, but in order to do so they have to be given work. And to be given work, they need experience. You see where the problem is! I do therefore respect the fact that everyone has to start somewhere. You can often get a feeling from initial exchanges with freelancers whether your work together is going to be fruitful – call it editor’s intuition. Since all publishing houses work in different ways, it generally takes a couple of projects to get freelancers up to speed with working processes, but, by and large, the results are very pleasing. Louise: Finally, do you have any further advice you’d like to share with freelancers who want to acquire work with publishers? UE: Great question – I would say the following are points to bear in mind for anyone looking to acquire work:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
There many different and effective approaches to marketing an editing and proofreading business. There are several ways to make a hash of it too. Here are five mistakes that you should avoid, not just at launch stage but once your business is up and running.
Mistake 1: Not actually doing any marketing
Here are three ideas that I think we should embrace when launching an editorial business:
Let’s say I’ve completed the relevant training, acquired the kit I need, worked out who my target clients are, notified the tax authorities of my business plans, acquired some experience via my mentor, designed my stationery templates, created my accounting spreadsheet, and hired a professional designer to produce a fabulous logo. Now I need the clients. That means they need to be able to find me and I need to be able to find them. If ne’er the twain meet, I’m unemployed. Being discoverable is the first step to the success of any business, editorial or otherwise, because it bridges the gap between the services we offer and the people who need them. The second step is being interesting enough to retain the potential customer’s attention. Having found us, our potential clients need to feel they want to go further and actually hire us to solve their problems. No matter how much the thought of actively promoting your editorial business sends shivers up your spine, to not do so is a mistake. Marketing your business gives you opportunity and choice. It puts you in a position where, over time, you can develop the client base, pricing strategy, service portfolio and income stream that you require and desire.
Mistake 2: Stopping marketing when you have work
If the cupboard is full, this isn't the time to put business promotion on the back-burner. I know it might feel like the perfect time to take a breather, but trust me, it really isn't!
A healthy business is a sustainable business. Not knowing what's round the corner is about surviving not thriving, and that's stressful. Emergency marketing forces us to rush. We don't always make the best choices when we're anxious. Panic can even lead to inertia. Plus, we might find there's a lot to do and only a small window in which to do it. For example, one tactic for emergency marketing is contacting lots of publishers. However, gathering all the information required to do that effectively is time-consuming. If we build marketing time into our schedule when the cupboard is full, we can pace our plans so that we do a little on a regular basis rather than a lot all at once. That's a far more pleasant and productive way to tackle business promotion and helps us build a wait-list.
Mistake 3: Marketing via a single platform
Relying on only one particular channel to make yourself discoverable to your clients is better than not doing any marketing at all. But it’s hugely risky – if that platform fails, so do you. One of my most valuable marketing assets is my website. It’s my shop front and it’s the only space in which I have complete control over the content and design. I’ve put a lot of effort into making it visible so that I can be found and visited. I use Weebly as my host. But what if the folks at Weebly ran into some horrendous problem and the site was inaccessible for a few days, or even a few weeks? It’s unlikely to happen, but even if it did it wouldn’t be catastrophic because I don’t rely solely on my website for work leads. It’s simply one tool among several.
EXAMPLE
James used to work for a major academic publisher but now he's gone solo and launched his new editorial business. He asks a former colleague who works in the journal production department if he can proofread for her. She agrees. The publisher has a huge journal list and his colleague keeps him busy with as much proofreading as he needs. He doesn't solely work for this press (here in the UK, HM Revenue & Customs wouldn’t like that) but it does supply him with most of his work and most of his income. Then double disaster strikes – the press merges with a competitor, and his colleague is made redundant. She gets a job for another press, though her new role no longer requires her to hire editorial freelancers. James doesn't know anyone in the newly merged organization (though rumour has it the press is taking journal proofreading in-house in order to cut costs). Plus, his former colleague can’t take him with her to the new press. He's scuppered. James won't let that happen again. He does the following:
Even if you’ve been able to establish a couple of seemingly stable and lucrative work streams, and you’ve found that one particular marketing platform or tool works well for you, take the time to investigate other channels. At the very least they’ll provide you with a backup. Moreover, by experimenting with new avenues, you could find that clients whom you’d been invisible to beforehand now have you on their radar. That means more opportunities and more choice.
Mistake 4: Focusing attention in the wrong place
Some new entrants to the field can make the mistake of giving information that focuses potential clients’ attention in the wrong place. Instead, focus on stand-out statements.
EXAMPLE
A well-educated material scientist has decided, for health reasons, to move out of the professional lab and work from home, copy-editing written materials relevant to his scientific educational and career background.
His clients don’t need to know most of the above because most of those facts don’t represent him in the best light. Instead, he should focus on his stand-out qualities and present them in a way that's client-centric.
If what you say doesn’t make you compelling, don't say it. Show how you can solve clients' problems. It should be all about them and what you can do for them. If you lack experience and an extensive portfolio, focus instead on positive selling points that make the client feel confident about hiring you to fix what they can't. Sell your positives, not others’ negatives It’s also imperative that your message does indeed focus on what you can do for the client. Just in case you are one of the few people on the planet who thinks that highlighting a competitor’s or colleague’s mishaps rather than your own skills is a good marketing strategy (I’m sure you’re not!), then here's a quick reminder about why it’s disastrous in terms of PR.
Mistake 5: Ignoring traditional marketing methods
Before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, editorial professionals had to promote their businesses using telephone and postal services, face-to-face meetings, and onsite networking groups. These methods worked then, and they still work now – don’t make the mistake of ignoring them in the belief that they’re out-dated. Social media profiles, websites, and emails are all excellent ways to make yourself discoverable, and the twenty-first century editor should embrace them. Bear in mind, however, that from the client’s point of view they're as easy to discard as they are to access, precisely because they're digital methods of contact. Consider also the following:
Balancing immediacy and permanence is key to a well-rounded marketing strategy. By using a mixture of the two, you'll enhance your visibility and spike a client's interest. Summing up
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Whether we’re sending a letter, responding to a request for a quotation, writing website copy, designing a brochure, creating a directory listing or contacting a (potential) client via email, the call to action is always helpful but often forgotten. The best of them compel people to do something
What is a call to action?
A call to action tells your reader what you want them to do – and it does it in a nutshell, thereby creating a sense of immediacy. Even though the information the customer needs in order to respond may be included on the contact page of your website, your listing in an online specialist directory, the banner heading of your letter, or in the signature of your email, it’s always worth adding a reminder so that the reader doesn't have to spend time searching for the instructions you want them to find. What does the call to action look like? The 4C framework As with all things marketing, I prefer to avoid promoting strict rules because I worry they might impinge on the nervous marketer’s creativity. Instead, consider these 4 Cs as a framework for good practice:
Below is a partial screen shot of my home page. It shows two simple calls to action asking my readers to do two particular things: visit the author resources page and contact me. You probably use them already … Many of us use call to actions in daily situations without even realizing it. When we’re talking to friends and colleagues, it’s not uncommon to sign off with a summary sentence in which we round up what’s required, how it’s required and by when: “Right, you bring the wine; I’ll bring the cheese. I’ll see you at yours at 7pm” or “Good, that’s agreed – give me a call to confirm the meeting by lunchtime tomorrow” or "Great, send me the details by noon and I'll talk to X on your behalf." By summing up in this way, we’re informally clarifying everything that’s been discussed (perhaps at some length) beforehand, so we know exactly what action is required – who’s doing what, when, where and how. Using the same technique in our business communications works in exactly the same way. Why is using a call to action a good idea? The call to action focuses the client's attention. There’s strong evidence to suggest that whether clients are reading the information on a webpage, or scanning a letter or CV, they don’t dilly dally, and are more likely to do something when they're told to do it. Says Jakob Nielsen regarding websites: “How long will users stay on a Web page before leaving? […] Not very long. The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute” (“How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?”, 2011). And here’s Gill Wagner on the issue of letters: “[A]t most you have […] eight seconds before the decision-maker will make the first yes/no decision about whether to crumple and toss” (cited in Harnby, 2014). Nudging your client to take the action you want them to take is therefore crucial if your marketing materials (online or in print) are to have the biggest impact on time-limited readers. Solving the client's problems In “11 Kick-Ass Call to Action Examples, and Why They Work” (Word Stream, 2014), Dan Shewan takes a look at 11 very different calls to action used by a variety of businesses, including a résumé/CV builder, a credit-card reader, and a retailer specializing in products aimed at men. He shows how these businesses focus on the desires/needs of their potential customers, and how the calls to action (1) use language that reinforces those desires/needs and (2) offer the customer a solution that will lead to fulfilment. Encouraging engagement … Calls to action can say different things to different clients; they can be designed in a variety of ways; they can be placed in a variety of positions depending on the message you want to communicate and when you want to communicate it. Not everyone is a good copywriter, but that needn’t stop any of us from creating calls to action that help our busy customers navigate our marketing materials easily. Us the 4c framework to guide you.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Considering setting up a proofreading business? Or perhaps you're already on the journey. Here are 10 things you need to know and 10 more you need to do.
10 things you need to know ...
10 things you need to do ...
If you'd like more comprehensive guidance about starting a proofreading business, my books might be just the ticket. Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, these practical guides take the new starter, step by step, through the basics of planning an editorial career and marketing their services.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
You don’t necessarily need to have a legal background to proofread law books. If you’re comfortable with often dense and highly complex material, huge numbers of footnotes, and lengthy citations – and the legalese doesn't scare you to death – then this could be the work for you!
The many faces of the law
The law covers just about every aspect of human life, so the books on offer tackle a multitude of subjects. I’ve worked on legal books with a focus on public health, marine conservation, labour law, genetic resources, constitution building, piracy, family law, comparative law, European law, intellectual property rights, religion, climate change, competition law and cartelism, and environmental governance. Since I came to this work with a strong background in the social sciences, it suited me down to the ground. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the readability of most of the law books I’ve proofread. They’re often written by lawyers for lawyers (or by law professors for their colleagues and students) so you won’t be confronted by the impenetrable sea of words that often appear in legal documents. The authors aim to communicate with their readership just like any other writer. If you have experience of proofreading high-level academic books and journals, legal work shouldn’t present you with a problem.
What are clients looking for?
Rather than making assumptions based on my own experience, I asked one of my publisher clients to tell me what she looks for in a legal proofreader. Here’s a summary of our discussion:
Other points to bear in mind
Footnotes (or endnotes) tend to be lengthy. Sometimes it can feel like there’s more text in the notes than in the main body of the book.
Should you?
Actually, none of the above issues is problematic as long as you have a good concentration span and you aren’t surrounded by distractions. Distractions and proofreading don’t tend to go well together at any time, but with legal proofreading you may end up gnawing off your own arm if you don’t have the space to do the work without interruption. Working with law books is not unlike working with any other specialism (social science, STM, fiction) in that you need to be able to work within a framework of industry-recognized citation conventions, house style guides, and author preferences, while all the time employing a good old-fashioned dose of common sense. Talking to your client so that you understand what’s expected is crucial whatever kind of work you’re doing because only in that way will you understand the implications of your mark-up. When I was first approached with an offer to work in this field, I accepted it with some trepidation. A few years on, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoy it. Proofreading law books can be a rewarding and highly informative experience. As the world changes, so does the law. Globalization, public health awareness, climate change, and the birth of the internet have given rise to new dimensions within the law and I rather like getting paid to read about them.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. |
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PDF MARKUPAUTHOR RESOURCESEDITOR RESOURCESTESTIMONIALSDare Rogers'Louise uses her expertise to hone a story until it's razor sharp, while still allowing the author’s voice to remain dominant.'Jeff Carson'I wholeheartedly recommend her services ... Just don’t hire her when I need her.'J B Turner'Sincere thanks for a beautiful and elegant piece of work. First class.'Ayshe Gemedzhy'What makes her stand out and shine is her ability to immerse herself in your story.'Salt Publishing'A million thanks – your mark-up is perfect, as always.'CATEGORIES
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