FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

If you think there's no place for macros in fiction editing, think again. Paul Beverley has collated a core group of macros that will have any fiction line editor, copyeditor or proofreader drooling! Self-publishing authors will love them too!

I don't use all of these (every editor has their preferences) but some of them are staples and save me oodles of time!

The macros featured in this article are designed to be used with MS Word files.

Some of them are best for when you’re looking at the whole text of a novel, while others are selective ... for use while you’re editing line by line. 

These macros are ideal near the beginning of the edit, when you’ve put together the whole book in one single file, and you want to look for inconsistencies.

ProperNounAlyse searches the novel for any words that look like proper nouns; it counts their frequency, and then tries to locate, by using a variety of tests, and pairs of names that might possibly be alternative spellings or misspellings, e.g. Jayne/Jane, Beverley/Beverly, Neiman/Nieman, Grosman/Grosmann etc.

FullNameAlyse is similar to ProperNounAlyse, but it searches for multi-part names, Fred Smith, Burt Fry, etc.

ChronologyChecker is aimed at tracing the chronology of a novel. It extracts, into a separate file, all the paragraphs containing appropriate chronology-type words: Monday, Wednesday, Fri, Sat, April, June, 1958, 2017, etc. This file is then more easily searchable to look at the significance of the text for the chronology.

WordsPhrasesInContext tracks the occurrence of specific names through a novel. You give it a list of names/words/phrases, and it searches for any paragraphs in the novel that contain them. It creates a separate file of those paragraphs, with the searched element highlighted in your choice of colour.

CatchPhrase searches your novel for over-used phrases and counts how many times each phrase occurs.

FullPoint/Comma/Semicolon/Colon/Dash/QuestionMark/ExclamationMark
These macros change
he said, you know ...
into he said. You know ... 
​or he said: you know ...
​or he said – you know ...
and so on.

FullPointInDialogue and CommaInDialogue
These two macros change
“Blah, blah.” He said.
into “Blah, blah,” he said.
and vice versa.

ProperToPronoun
This macro looks along the line to find the next proper noun, deletes it and types ‘she’. But if you then type Ctrl-Z, it changes it back to ‘he’.

MultiSwitch
You give this macro a list of changes that you might want to implement:
Jane
Jayne

Beverley
Beverly

that
which

which
that

When you click in a word, and run the macro, it finds your alternate and replaces it. It also works with phrases and can also provide a menu of alternates:

he said
he opined
he shouted
he voiced

she said
she opined
she shouted
she voiced

To access the macro scripts, check out Paul's website: Word Macro Tools.

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
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She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Learn: Books and courses
• Discover: Resources for authors and editors

If you’re feeling the pinch because publishers, packagers and agencies aren’t offering your desired fees, think about the issue from a marketing perspective.

The fees on offer from publishers and packagers are a perennial topic of conversation for professional editors and proofreaders. Some feel frustrated and anxious about the rates; others enjoy the security afforded by a stable workflow that requires no client-acquisition effort.
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It’s important to remember that not everyone’s lowest-paying clients are publishers. If yours are, it might be that you need to switch clients not types of client. Here’s my wise friend and fellow editor Liz Jones:

Here are a couple of made-up case studies. The numbers are inevitably loose – editorial earnings vary hugely depending on subject area, type of editing, country of residence, and individual experience so it’s impossible to generalize. And global comparisons are problematic because of currency fluctuations and cost-of-living variances.
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Just think of these examples as glimpses rather than universal statements of how the market is!

Joe Word-King is a professional proofreader specializing in the social sciences. He works exclusively for publishers. In the past 12 months he’s been commissioned by 5 publishers to proofread 32 books by 32 authors.

Joe’s working day
Joe starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 4.30 p.m. He takes an hour for lunch and 15-minute breaks every 90 minutes to give his eyes a rest.
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This means he has a total of 6 hours per day available for proofreading. During the breaks he does stuff like checking his emails, grabbing cups of tea and something to eat, and taking a little fresh air.

How he acquired those publisher clients
One found him in the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)’s Directory of Editorial Services. Four added him to their freelance list after he emailed them and asked if he could take their proofreading test (which he passed).
​
How the work offers come in
The publishers do the author-acquisition work. The book production managers from those presses email him to ask if he’s free to take on a project of A pages, B words, with a budget of C hours and a total fee of £D. Joe decides whether he will accept or decline the work. 

Alicia Sentence-Queen is a professional copyeditor. She works exclusively for independent fiction authors. In the past 12 months she’s been directly ​commissioned by 19 authors to copyedit 19 books.

Alicia’s working day
Alicia starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 4.30 p.m. She takes an hour for lunch and 15-minute breaks every 90 minutes to give her eyes a break.

She also spends an average of 75 minutes per day writing blog articles and sharing her content online so that her website is visible in the search engines.

This means she has a total of 4 hours and 45 minutes available per day for copyediting. During the breaks she does stuff like checking her emails and social media accounts, grabbing cups of tea and something to eat, and taking a little fresh air.
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How she acquired those self-publisher clients
Fourteen came directly from Google, three from the CIEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, and two from Reedsy.

How the work offers come in
Alicia does the author-acquisition work. She makes herself visible online so that her clients can find her. They then get in touch directly. A process of evaluation, sampling and quoting begins. Alicia offers a price for the project and waits to see whether the author will accept or decline.
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Most of the enquiries that Alicia receives don’t turn into paid work – perhaps the author doesn’t like the price, the time frame doesn’t work, or Alicia doesn’t feel she’s the right fit for the job. For that reason, Alicia needs to attract enough people for whom the price, the time frame and the fit will work.

Alicia’s heart is in copyediting and she figures that if she had a bunch of publisher clients doing all the author-acquisition work she wouldn’t have to devote 75 minutes per day to making herself visible.

She earns a minimum of £35 per hour. Given that she spends 6 hours and 15 minutes each week marketing, that time costs her £218.75. That works out at nearly a grand a month!

She and Joe are good mates so she gets in touch with him and tells him that she’s thinking about working for publishers. They chat about fees – Joe says he earns an average of £23 per hour, which is two thirds of what she’s getting from her indie authors. Given that Joe proofreads for academic presses, Alicia does a little more digging.

She talks to a few fiction specialists. The fees for trade publishers seem to be lower still, such that she could end up averaging around £18 an hour, half of what she’s earning now.
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• If she started working only for publishers, she’d have 6 hours a day available for editing, meaning she’d earn £540 (£18 x 6 x 5) per week.
• If she carries on working with indie authors she can earn £831.25 per week (£35 x 4.75 x 5).

Working for indie authors is more lucrative, but she must devote over 6 hours of her working week to being visible. That’s 6 hours she could be doing something she enjoys more – editing.

What could Alicia do?
If Alicia loathes marketing and can meet her weekly needs with £540, she could take the hit and switch to working with publishers, who will do all her author-acquisition work for her and let her concentrate on doing what she loves best. Yes, she’ll earn less but she’ll be happier.
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If Alicia loathes marketing but needs to earn at least £750 a week to meet her needs, the switch won’t work. She can’t not do the marketing because the reason why she’s able to attract the clients who are prepared to pay her £35/hr fee is because she’s visible, and being visible means doing marketing.

If Alicia’s determined to switch solely to publishers, she’ll have to make up a shortfall of £210. That means reducing her monthly spend or increasing the hours she spends on copyediting.

She’ll need to decide whether either option would add a level of stress into her life that exceeds her hatred of marketing. If it does, she’d be better off maintaining the status quo!

After chatting with Alicia, Joe feels a little strung out. Thirty-five quid an hour? He’d love to earn that. Joe’s not averse to putting in the marketing work, not if he can earn the money that Alicia’s on, but it’s not going to happen overnight – Alicia told him that it took a few years for her marketing strategy to kick in so that’s she’s never without work.

At the moment, Joe doesn’t have to do anything to find his authors; the publishers do all the grind for him. Sure, he had to get those publisher clients, and he put in a lot of effort – he contacted 70+ presses initially, most of whom weren’t taking on new indie proofreaders.

Nevertheless, having now secured a strong publisher base, he sits back and lets the work come to him. There’s a cost to this, of course – someone else is finding the authors and so they get to control the price. His only control over the rate is his right to accept or decline the work.

What could Joe do?
If Joe can introduce efficiencies into the proofreading process he’ll be able to improve his hourly rate. If he’s already as efficient as he can be, he’ll need get his marketing hat on now and start building his visibility.

Over time, he’ll be able to slide out his lower-paying publishers, confident that he’ll attract enough good-fit clients to provide him with the same income stability that the publishers currently afford him.

If he needs to maintain his current earnings, he’ll have to do the additional marketing work outside of his normal office hours. In the longer term, as the visibility strategy kicks in, he’ll be able to mimic Alicia’s model and build this marketing activity into his business day.

Joe needs to decide whether the impact on his work/life balance is something he’s prepared for. He needs to set the pressure of the additional work against the anxiety born from the publisher fees, and decide whether the change is the right move for him.

On the surface, it might seem like the Alicias of this world have a better deal than the Joes. But there’s more to running a business than just numbers. We have to take into account not just what we need to earn but also what we have to do for what we earn.

If you’re happy to be an editor and a marketer, you’ll be able to reap the benefits from wearing those two hats purposefully. If your heart lies in editing only, you have some choices:
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• Do the promotion work anyway, even though you’d rather not.
• Suck up the (sometimes) lower fees and enjoy the stability and security of knowing that someone else is doing the stuff you’d rather not.
• Negotiate with your current publishers and see if you can increase your fees. Even a marginal increase might make the rate more palatable.
• Search for new publisher clients who pay higher rates. Again, even a small increase might make you feel happier,

I worked exclusively for publishers for a good few years and at the time it suited my life very well. I had a toddler to look after and preschool trumped business promotion. Now I have a teenager and marketing trumps Minecraft!

Plus, I happen to love marketing my editorial business so it's not a stress point for me. But that might not be the same for you.

Furthermore, the editorial market isn’t binary. Joe and Alicia might look nothing like you. You might sit somewhere in between. You might earn more than them or less than them, and have a ton of demands in your life that J&A will never experience. There’s no one size fits all.

Just don’t forget that if you’re not finding your own clients, but your schedule is full, someone else is doing the job for you.

There’s a cost to that, and it’s fair that there should be.

• Bang for a limited buck: Liz Jones, Eat Sleep Edit Repeat
• How to make proofreading for publishers profitable: Digital efficiencies
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work
• The highs and lows of editorial fees (or how not to trip up during rate talk)
• The rates debate: Looking at the value beyond the fee

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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Learn: Books and courses
• Discover: Resources for authors and editors

So should you include a podcast transcript? And if you do, should you edit it? Here’s my take.

Writers don’t just listen to podcasts; they create them as part of their author-platform mix. Not all podcasters include transcripts (though I think they’re a good idea) and not all transcripts are created equally.

Some are rough and raw, some are smoothed, and some are edited to within an inch of their life so that they read more like blog posts.

​A podcast transcript is a written version of your audio file.
 
Many people glance at a transcript before they listen to a podcast because they want to know what the key discussion points are.
 
Skim reading allows us to digest large chunks of written content quickly. We get to pick and choose what to ignore and what to focus on. Skimming isn’t about deep comprehension but about getting a feel for what’s on offer.
 
People are busy. Podcasts are great because the audience can consume the content while doing other things. That’s great if the listening takes place on the school run or the dog walk.
 
However, that won’t be the choice for all your book-buying audience. Some will want to engage with your podcast, and only your podcast. Those listeners need to know whether you’re worth their time. We can’t skim a podcast (or a vlog) but we can skim a transcript.
 
The transcript is therefore more than a written record. It’s also the key that unlocks the audio engagement door.
 
Given that it’s a representation of what’s said in the podcast, should you edit it?
 
A better question is, what are the consequences if you don’t? Here are four.

If your listener is already fan, a sloppy transcript is unlikely to put them off because they probably won’t even read it – they’re there for you and your audio. But if they’re new, and deciding whether to commit to listening, the written word might well determine whether they leap on board or jump ship.
 
If the first thing someone comes across on the podcast landing page looks and reads like a dog’s dinner, what does that say about the likely quality of the audio content?
 
In reality, the audio content might well be outstanding, but the podcaster isn’t judged on that until the audience has decided to hit Play. It’s the visible content on the page that counts.

Imagine you’re doing a presentation to a roomful of your author peers. You build your presentation around the problems you’re trying to solve for your audience, create a great slide deck, and rehearse like billy-o so that you’re on top form.
 
On the day of the speaking engagement you turn up ahead of time so that you can check that all your equipment and supporting materials are fit for purpose. Before you go on stage you do some breathing exercises to relax your throat – you want your voice to be clear and engaging for your listeners.
 
You look the part. You sound the part. And you’re a writer in a roomful of writers. That’s all that matters, right? After all, it’s a face-to-face speaking engagement.
 
The problem is, you haven’t brushed your teeth for three weeks and your breath honks. If you were one of those presenters that likes to be front and centre, the first row would be in trouble. But you’re a walker. You like to engage with your audience – a little bit of up close and personal.
 
It’s not the first row that's in trouble. The whole room is at the mercy of your Wookie mouth. Shame, because no one’s interested in your stunning insights, your top tips for how to overcome writer’s block, fact check, or edit the first draft, never mind that what you tell them could make their lives a hundred times easier. All anyone’s thinking is Stay back.
 
A sloppy podcast transcript is like bad breath. It focuses your potential audience’s attention on the wrong thing and risks putting them off before the audio fun’s even begun.

Podcasts are increasingly popular tools used by business owners, marketers, writers and hobbyists to communicate with their clients, fans and friends. And a lot of podcast transcriptions are sloppy. All the effort, and the budget, goes into creating great audio.
 
In ‘How to build a web presence that outsmarts, outperforms and outlasts the search engines’ (Summit on Content Marketing 2017), Stoney deGeyter talks at some length about being excellent in everything we do so that we’re not battling with search-engine algorithms and rankings. He advises focusing on extraordinary engagement that makes our audience/customer journey as easy as possible.
 
Good advice indeed. So why not stand out and create a top-notch podcast transcription?
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• Be the one who sets the bar.
• Be the one whose transcript is as standout as the audio file so that you keep your visitors happy whether they’re skimming the script or tuning in.
• Be the one who decides that it doesn’t matter what content’s being engaged with – the page title, the audio, the thumbnail image, the resources or the transcript. It’s all good, all consumable, all engaging.
• Be the one who embraces audiences with different abilities – not only those with visual impairments, but also those with hearing loss. My colleague Debbie pointed out that cochlear implants only go so far.

 
That way you give people nothing to complain about and everything to rave about. Word of mouth is more likely to kick in. And with it, audience growth, engagement, advocacy and book sales.
 
Certainly, some people won’t care if your transcript is a mess. It’s not them you have to worry about though. It’s about those who do care, those who judge you negatively because they think you don’t give a damn. Which leads us to the biggie.

You’re a writer. Given that your podcast is part of your author platform, the last thing you want to do is give anyone the impression that your writing is poor, even if you’re using audio as an engagement tool.
 
If a famous chef was promoting her new recipe book in my local Waterstones and the canapes made me want to hurl, certainly I’m not going to buy her book. But, much worse, I’m not going to book a table at her restaurant.
 
The biggest problem for the author with a sloppy transcript is not that no one will listen to the podcast but that no one will buy her books.

It’s your choice but bear in mind that the goal is to encourage the listener to engage with the audio and buy your books. The podcasting author has to strike a comfortable balance between rigorous word-for-word accuracy and readability. Here are some guidelines:

• If it doesn’t aid comprehension, consider removing it. Examples include extraneous ums, ahs and stutters.

• Consider your author brand. If you think that under-editing will impact negatively on your writing ability, you might bend towards heavy smoothing of the transcript so that it reads more like a blog post.

• Correct all non-standard spelling (without disrespecting idiom and dialect, of course). People don’t spell incorrectly when they speak.

• Correct spoken non-standard grammar if its makes the transcript difficult to understand. Speech is often less formal than the written word – we speak in ways we might not dream of writing – but readability should trump slavish adherence to spoken accuracy. This isn’t an exercise in qualitative research methods or oral history. It’s about engagement, trust and communication.

• Introduce standard punctuation and other speech cues to aid readability. In speech, we start, stop, pause, emphasize, and interject with laughter, sighs, harrumphs and so on. Use ellipses (…) for pauses and trailing sentences, italic for emphasis, em dashes (—) for end-of-sentence interruptions, and en dashes (–) for parenthetical sentence fragments. Square-bracketed cues are perfect for oral interjections [groans] [laughs].

• Ensure the transcript reflects what was said, not what you or the transcriber thought was said. If the transcription was created by a third party, they might have made a best guess and introduced errors because the audio was unclear. If you’re unsure what was said (if you were talking to someone else in the podcast), consider a pro transcription trick – place a question mark each side of the queried word (?unnecessary?). Or ask the interviewee.

• If you’ve interviewed someone in your podcast, consider offering them the opportunity to review the transcript before it’s published. There are pros and cons. On the one hand, any misrepresentation will be corrected. On the other, the interviewee might want to use the opportunity to artificially clean up the record, which could spoil the rhythm of the interview.

Even if you don’t include a transcript, consider the following:
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• Include an abstract that summarizes the overarching theme of the episode and some information about the speaker(s).

• Create a bulleted list of the key themes addressed in the podcast.
• Add time stamps so that listeners can hop straight to the content that’s important to them.
• If there’s more than one person speaking, indicate who’s speaking in the transcript.
• Provide a summary of related episodes so that your listeners can binge listen.

And here's a cautionary note from Tim Lewis:

Tim’s transcripts are gently smoothed to aid readability, indicate who’s speaking, and include a brief content summary. He increases visual engagement by introducing eye-catching quotes from the show. 

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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Learn: Books and courses
• Discover: Resources for authors and editors