A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

If you're a professional proofreader or copyeditor, you probably already think Word's styles function is one of its best functions. Styles save us so much time!

​We used to be able to grab styles from one project and use them in another (by creating Style Sets) and that was a huge time-saver.

I was sorry to lose Style Sets when I upgraded to Office 365 (for PC).

I used to create styles for a particular client, save them as a Style Set, and open them in other files as and when I needed them.

​This came in handy in three situations: 

• Proofreading and copyediting for clients who sent me multiple chapter files for a single job.
• Proofreading and copyediting for clients who sent me single files for multiple jobs, sometimes weeks or months apart.
• Proofreading and copyediting for series authors.

There is a solution for those who are editing or proofreading on a PC using Word 2016. It's a little long-winded compared with the old method, but it does the job.

Either read and follow steps 1–10 below, or watch a short video in which I walk you through the process.

​1. Open up the document you want to import styles from and save it as a .dotx (template). Close this file. Consider naming your new template such that it’s easily identifiable in the future (e.g. PublisherXStyles.dotx or AuthorNameStyles.dotx). I like to keep my style templates in a distinct folder for ease of access.

2. Now open the document you want to import styles into.

​3. Make sure the Developer tab is available on your ribbon. To do this, open Word. Choose File, Options, Customize Ribbon. Ensure that Developer is checked. Click OK.

4. Click on the Developer tab.

5. Select Document Template.

6. Click on the Organizer button.

7. Select the Close File button.

8. Now the button has changed to Open File. Click on it and browse for the template you want to import styles from.

9. After you’ve selected your file, it will show up in the Styles available in: box. In the window above, you’ll see a list of all the styles available for import (use the toolbar to scroll up and down if you can’t find what you want). Now click on the style you want to import and press the Copy button.

​If you want to copy a group of styles next to each other, use Shift-click to select. If you want to copy several styles that are not next to each other, use Ctrl-click to select.

​Bingo – your new styles will show up in the left-hand window of the Organizer box.

10. Close the Organizer pane and head over to the Home tab on the ribbon. Your imported styles will now show up in the Styles pane.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
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She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​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, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

(Disclaimer: I'm the CEO of Futureproofs so this article is doubtless biased – although it's also entirely honest!)

Regular readers may recall that, a few months ago, Louise wrote an excellent review of Futureproofs. ​

(For everyone else – Futureproofs is a web-based platform for on-screen proofreading that is designed specifically for publishing workflows. With simple markup based on the BSI or Chicago standards, collaboration to resolve queries and real-time data for project management, Futureproofs aims to provide the tools that editors, proofreaders and authors actually need.)

In her review, Louise praised many aspects of how Futureproofs works (my particular favourite was her description of our markup tools as ‘frankly gorgeous’!) but also had some absolutely legitimate criticisms. There were (and are) plenty of places where we could improve. We've been heads-down improving things in the past few months, so Louise asked me to take a look back and talk about how we've got on since her original review.

Search
This was the major area where Louise thought we needed to improve, and we've done so. From March this year, we've had a completely revamped search tool. The way this works now will be familiar to everyone who uses MS Word or Adobe Reader – every term is highlighted on the page, and you can quickly step from one to the next. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing this for a web interface was a real challenge!

Of course, we've kept the advanced search panel, too, which shows you the full context for every result in the proof. This makes it much easier to identify one particular result among many uses of a word in the book. In addition, we still provide both exact search matches and smart matches to help you find your results as quickly as possible.

Overall, search is vastly better than it was a few months ago and I'm very grateful to Louise (and many other users) who helped us with feedback and advice to get there.

Navigation
One of Louise's first suggestions for improving Futureproofs was bookmarking, and we've obliged. You can now bookmark any page in the proof within Futureproofs and name it – ideal for cross-referencing with the table of contents or the answer section of a textbook.

These bookmarks are also shared across the team – so, if one person creates the bookmarks, everyone benefits.

In addition to bookmarks, we've introduced a thumbnail-navigation mode to Futureproofs, so you can navigate visually through your book to find a particular page. Especially for books with lots of artworks, this can be a great time-saver.

Also, we've added a 'Jump back' button that returns you to the previous page you were working on. So, if you need to visit the table of contents to check a chapter title, you're just one click away from your previous page and quickly continuing with your proofread. It's a small thing but often useful!

Other things
As well as the things that Louise picked out, we've continued to improve in other areas. We now have a comprehensive Maths markup tool, for example, and it's easier than ever to collate a master proof and then to compare this with updated proofs to ensure that all corrections are made.

And we've just released a new way for designers to work within Futureproofs, too – to review corrections on the master proof, to check them off as they're done, and to raise queries about anything that's not clear. We're really excited about this because it supports a full 360º workflow, helping everyone involved to work within Futureproofs.

The bottom line is that we're hugely grateful for all the feedback we get from our users – ​especially when they point out where we're getting things wrong. We're always looking to improve Futureproofs, and there are several big things coming later this year that could make a real difference. (Let's just say that the poor quality of many ebooks really annoys me!)

John Pettigrew is the CEO & Founder of We Are Futureproofs – a company dedicated to making editors' lives better by creating software that is designed for the jobs they actually do. Before this, he headed up the editorial team for International Education at Cambridge University Press, survived as a freelance editor for six years, and has created both leading print books and acclaimed iPad apps.

Connect with John on Twitter and LinkedIn.

In Part 1, I looked at the benefits of contact forms, and provided a case study based on my own recent data.

In Part 2, I consider the challenges of contact forms.

​Why is it that they sometimes fail to engage potential clients, and what can we do to prevent this?

​Too many hoops
As I mentioned in Part 1, relying solely on a contact form is not advisable. Your contact form is likely to deliver messages to your email inbox via both your internet service provider and your website host. If something goes awry on your host’s server, there will be a delivery delay.

In addition, if you tweak the CSS code of your website, this could inadvertently affect your contact form. I was in just such an embarrassing position a few years ago. For a month, none of the messages from my old contact form were being delivered. I had no idea that anything was wrong because I was fully booked up with publisher work. Then, during a coffee break, I pondered the fact that it had been a while since anyone had used the form, which seemed strange. I took the time to send a few test messages, and discovered there was a problem with delivery. I’d tweaked my CSS code and it had caused a snag in the original template. This put me off incorporating a contact form on my website for several years.

The lesson is this – if you do have a contact form on your website, check your dashboard regularly, just to make sure that delivery to your email inbox is working as it should be.

Marvin Russell (‘5 Reasons Your Visitors Don’t Fill Out Your Contact Form’, mysiteauditor.com, 2013) and Jane and Scot Noel (‘Make Your Contact Form a Success’) identify several additional problems with contact forms that could put off potential clients.

Form-filling fatigue​
Some clients don’t like filling them out. According to Noel and Noel, ‘While there is no perfect rule for every form, short is best, and ask for as little personal information as possible, just enough to get back in touch with them. After all, if they make contact and you start a conversation, you can find out everything you need in a more personal way later.’

Customers don’t like being asked for information that isn’t necessarily relevant (such as phone numbers), nor having to take the time to provide it. Consider asking only for information that’s absolutely necessary at this stage of the process – that way your client won’t feel as though you’re fishing for marketing information. It’s clear that the form is all about them.

Do, however, read the comments in Part 1. They demonstrate that one size doesn't fit all. What works for you may not work for me. Katherine Trail asks for more information on her contact forms than I do, but she offers a more complex and specialized service. John Espirian points out the value of using simple-to-use protection mechanisms to minimize intrusion from spam bots. Ultimately, we want to create balanced contact forms that support our business goals and engage our potential clients.

Unappealing wording
Consider the confirmation message and the submission button.
Test different wording on the submission button, for example, try changing ‘Submit’ to ‘Send email’, ‘Email [Name]’ or ‘Send your message’.

Also test more friendly confirmation messages such as ‘Thanks for contacting me about your proofreading project. I’ll be in touch shortly!’. Noel and Noel call this ‘leverag[ing] your “thank you”’ so that it acknowledges that your potential client has taken the time and made the effort to enquire about your service.

There aren’t enough forms
Don’t necessarily limit the contact form to one page. I have one on my Contact page, my Get a Quote page, and my Proofreading Bundles page. Each has a different name. That means that when I visit my website dashboard I can see which forms are most popular. Currently, it’s pretty much even. Again, this is something to test. Russell has incorporated multiple contact forms on his site ‘for years and found that very often our visitors will fill out a contact form because it’s right in front of their face’.

No call to action
Noel and Noel also argue that, all too often, people fail to tell their potential customers to use the form: ‘If you don’t ask your web visitors to do something, don’t expect them to do it.’

Privacy concerns
Finally, some potential customers might worry that the information you capture via the contact form will be used for marketing purposes. Noel and Noel recommend explicitly stating your privacy policy so that you make it clear that all the information provided is relevant. Harking back to the ‘too long’ issue above, keep your contact forms concise and consider adding a message below each one along the lines of ‘I respect your privacy. The information you’ve provided will be used solely by me to reply to your query’.

Test it!
If you’re not sure whether the contact form is the right way to go for you and your customers, the easiest way to find out is to test it.

• Add the contact form(s) to your website – make a note of the date on which this happens.
• Keep your current methods of contact – email, phone number, Skype, etc. – on the contact page, so that your potential clients have a choice.
• Every time someone contacts you, make a note (perhaps in a spreadsheet) of which method was used and the client type (e.g. colleague enquiry via email, student thesis enquiry via contact form, indie author via text message, etc.).
• After six months, review your data. Who is contacting you, and how are they doing it?
• If your contact form is redundant, consider removing it (though see the cautionary note below). If some clients are using it, then keep it.
• Try simple A/B testing – for example, test different calls to action, CAPTCHA mechanisms for spam protection, thank-you messages, submission-button messages and forms on different pages. Track the results to see if you can determine that certain messages are more effective.

Caution: it’s all about the client
Even if your data tells you that, during the test period, your potential clients did not use one particular method of contacting you (e.g. the contact form or your phone number), this only tells you what happened in the past. It doesn’t tell you anything about how a new lead might prefer to contact you in the future.
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For that reason, I’d recommend removing particular contact tools with caution. It’s better to offer a range of tools that will cover all your clients’ preferences, rather than losing a great lead because you didn’t make it as easy as possible for your customer to get in touch with you in the way they wanted to.

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.

In my guest article on The Book Reviewers, I take a look at how independent authors can make their mark in the publishing world by branding themselves as professional writers.

The article includes a real-world case study featuring the creator of the Nathen Turner supernatural thriller series, Andrew Langley – ‘an independent author who exemplifies professional independent publishing practice’.

To read the article in full, visit ‘The marks of a professional independent author’, The Book Reviewers.

​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.

Having traditional proofreading skills isn’t just a business asset when it comes to working for the mainstream publishing industry. It’s a valuable service that we can offer independent authors, too.

Note: ​If you fancy giving your eyes a rest, get yourself a cuppa and listen to the podcast instead. Scroll down to the bottom of the article and click on the image.

This article discusses the differences between proofreading (or proof-editing) directly in Word and proofreading post-design page proofs.

​When I set up my business back in 2006, I was strictly a proofreader and most of my clients were publishers. For the most part, they expected me to annotate paper page proofs.

As time went on, many of the presses for whom I worked shifted to digital workflows. Proofreaders are still required to annotate page proofs, but they're using a PDF editor’s onboard commenting and markup tools or digital proofreading stamps (see, for example, the free set of downloadable stamps that I’ve created for use in the likes of Acrobat and PDF-XChange; these comply with the British Standards Institution’s BS5261C:2005 proof-correction marks).

What are traditional proofreading skills?
Here, we’re checking the page proofs to ensure not only that the spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct, consistent and in line with the client’s brief, but also that the layout conforms to industry-recognized standards.

In order to carry out these checks, proofreaders need to know not only what to look for, but also when, and when not, to intervene so that they do no harm.

Checks include, but are not limited to, ensuring that running heads match chapter titles; chapter titles match entries in contents list; design of the various text elements is consistent; chapter title drops are consistent; text on facing rectos and versos is balanced; odd page numbers always appear on recto pages; bad word breaks are flagged; part titles appear on new rectos.

Proofreading ­page proofs
In case you’re unfamiliar with the terminology,

​Proofreading ­raw text
Proofreaders don’t just work on page proofs, though. Increasingly, we’re asked to work on the raw-text files (usually in Microsoft Word).

A core market for the twenty-first century proofreader is the self-publishing client. For most of us, that means that an author will ask for their book to be ‘proofread’, even though what they want is a light edit of their Word document.

Here, the proofreader is directly amending the text, usually with Track Changes switched on so that all the amendments can be reviewed.

The line between copy-editing and proofreading is blurred, and the level of intervention will vary from client to client. The term ‘proof-editing’ is sometimes used within the professional editorial community to describe this tangling of what, traditionally, were two quite distinct services within the publishing industry.

Are the old skills redundant?
Most of my self-publishing clients ask me to work directly in Word. Given that all my work now comes from this sector, are my traditional page-proofreading skills redundant or am I still glad I took the time to learn them?

​I think the twenty-first century proofreader who doesn’t have this knowledge is missing an opportunity.

Print isn’t dead
Self-publishers don’t just publish electronically. Many make their books available in print via platforms such as CreateSpace, Lulu, BookBaby and Ingram Spark. That means they produce designed page proofs – just like mainstream publishing houses.

And just like publishing houses, these independent authors need proofreaders with traditional skills that go well beyond checking spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax. Rather, we’re talking about also carrying out the same layout checks that our proofreading colleagues from 40 years ago undertook.

If you’re offering traditional proofreading services to independent authors, and you aren’t familiar with the mainstream publishing industry’s conventions in regard to page layout, you won’t be able to carry out the aforementioned checks with confidence.

That means you won’t be fit for purpose to offer this service to your clients, which means you’re missing out on a potential work stream.

Understanding traditional production standards
Certainly, there’s no law when it comes to layout, and none of us wants to interfere with books that have been deliberately designed in a creative way. However, many self-publishers are looking to mirror the production standards that a traditional publishing contract would have provided them with.

​Part of that process involves ensuring that their printed book looks like it belongs on the shelf on the high-street bookshop.

Some readers will have in-house publishing experience through which they’ve learned about layout conventions; others will have acquired this knowledge via formal editorial training.

If you’re a proofreader who isn’t familiar with layout standards, Joel Friedlander’s free Printed Book Design 101 is a short but useful primer. The next stage is to follow up with more detailed guidance provided by an industry-recognized style manual (e.g. New Hart’s Rules or The Chicago Manual of Style).

Ultimately, though, I’d strongly recommend sourcing appropriate training from your national editorial society so that you learn how to manage page proofs effectively while doing no harm.

Doing no harm
The proofreader will need a little artistry and a lot of common sense when it comes to managing the potential problems in page proofs. Consider the following examples of harm:

The three examples above illustrate why formal proofreading training is advisable. Learning what to look out for on page proofs is a lot easier than learning how to properly manage any problems you find.

When you understand not only what to mark but also the consequences of those marks, you’re fit for purpose.

Proofread like it’s 1976, and offer multiple passes
Yes, it’s 2018 at the time of writing, but being able to proofread like it’s 1976 allows you to offer multiple passes to those clients who want to publish digitally and in print.

Knowing how to proofread (or proof-edit) in Word enables you to correct language problems. But if you also know how a book page works, and how to mark up page proofs so that they conform to publishing industry-recognized standards – in a way that does no harm – you can provide your author with the same high-quality proofreading service that those with mainstream publishing contracts have access to.

That’s good news for your client and your business.

The podcast version! Click to listen

In this two-part essay, I consider how offering relevant additional services to existing clients can increase the editorial freelancer’s income-per-client in a framework of high-quality customer care.
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Part I defines up-selling and cross-selling, discusses the why these strategies are key to an effective marketing strategy, and tackles freelancer fears of appearing sleazy when offering add-on services that haven’t been directly requested.

In Part II, I consider how the editorial freelancer might create relevant up-/cross-selling bundles that are “wins” for both parties. I’ll also offer a short case study on how I up-sold my proofreading service to an existing client — a bundle that was affordable and valuable to him, and profitable for me.

To read the article in full, head over to Rich Adin's An American Editor blog: The Proofreader’s Corner: Offering Additional Services to Existing Clients — Up-/Cross-Selling (Part II)

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also 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.

So, a potential client has found you. They’ve looked over your website and like what they see – enough, anyway, to think about getting in touch.

​How will you enable them to make contact with you? Email, phone, text message, contact form?

Deciding what to offer is perhaps not as simple as it first seems.

It’s not just the ‘what’, but the potential consequences of that ‘what’ that need to be considered. If you offer a telephone number, will it increase the number of calls from people who are trying to sell you something, rather than trying to buy your service? If you offer a contact form, will delivery of your messages be impacted by a rare problem with your website host’s server?

It’s also about the ‘how’. If you publish a telephone number, will it be a landline or a mobile? If you use a contact form, what wording will you use?

All these issues need to be considered so that the ways in which you are contactable maximize your engagement with those you want to communicate with (potential clients) and minimize engagement with those who are possibly wasting your time (sellers of unwanted SEO services, double-glazing, solar panels … the list goes on).

John Espirian took a good look at telephone contact in his recent article on the Espirian blog ‘Call me – maybe’ (2016). Here, I’m going to consider the contact form.

I believe that having a contact form on my website is essential, though I think it should be only one of several options. Here in Part 1, I explain the benefits of the contact form and I provide a brief case study featuring data that I’ve collected over the past few months. In Part 2, I’ll consider some of the challenges that contact forms can present.

Customer choice
I know how my current clients want to contact me precisely because these are not new business relationships. All my regular publisher clients and independent authors hold my email address on file, and most use this method to get in touch. Because we’ve worked together before, all the parameters of our business together are, for the most part, well understood – from pricing to working hours, from editorial-service provision to the quality of writing. Additionally, they’ve learned that I check my emails regularly, and respond in a timely manner. They trust email to deliver their request directly to me.

For potential clients, the situation is different. Many of them are speculating, getting quotations from a number of different proofreaders. They’re sometimes getting in touch on the hop and on the fly. That means that being able to send a text message might be more convenient than sending an email. Some may not speak English as well as they write it. That means that sending an email or filling out a contact form may be more appealing than having a conversation on the phone.

We don’t know our potential clients’ preferences precisely because we don’t yet know our potential clients. The contact form is all about choice. To exclude it without testing it is to make assumptions about what those potential clients want that we have no business making.

Privacy and spam reduction
Some people like to include a contact form on their website because it provides a method of getting in touch that enables them to avoid displaying their email address. This is thought to reduce spamming.

Whether or not this is true is debatable. Some argue that spammers are far too sophisticated these days to be foiled by a contact form (see ‘Should I Display an Email Address on My Site or Use a Contact Form?’, Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com, 2014).

Nevertheless, the decision to not include a direct email address – for the purpose of protecting the editorial freelancer’s privacy and reducing exposure to spam – is not about the customer. Rather, it becomes a freelancer-centric decision. Do think carefully about whether you want your contactability to be about you or the client.

Many clients prefer them
This is the biggest issue for me. Putting concerns about email spamming and privacy aside, my potential clients seem to prefer the contact form over the other methods on offer.
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Several months ago, I began to test a ballpark quick-quotation service. At that point in time, the customer had the following options for getting in touch with me:

• mobile phone: call or text to request a within-1-hour ballpark quick-quote
• direct email: to request a within-24-hours ballpark or confirmed quote

There was no contact form.

The idea behind both the ballpark quote and the quick-quote service was to increase customer engagement. During the first two months (December/January) I was pleased to see that the text service appeared to be grabbing clients’ attention.
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Then, two months ago, I added a contact form. This is where it became interesting. The lie of the land shifted. People started using the contact form instead, even though I was explicit about the fact that I couldn’t guarantee a within-1-hour response unless they used the text option.

What does this data tell me? It is just a snapshot over six months, but, nevertheless, several points can be made:

• All of the contact options I offered during any of the three periods were used by clients. That makes me reluctant to remove any of them. The customer gets what the customer wants.
• The totals are not as exciting as they at first seem, and I’m reluctant to extrapolate anything from them because I haven’t kept data from previous months when I was only offering direct email and a phone number for calls.
• I also expect there to be seasonal issues at play. In particular, months 3/4 fell over the holiday period. Those who celebrate particular festivals around this time (e.g. Christmas) may well have felt that they had more important things than proofreading to spend their money on.
• Regardless of seasonal issues and totals, the data for months 5/6 is, I think, striking. Most of my potential clients chose to use a contact form over direct email. This is interesting because the contact form still works via my email system. However, in reality, it’s not quite as safe in terms of delivery. With email, there is only one hoop for the message to jump through – the internet service provider (in my case, BT); with the contact form, the message has to jump through another hoop first – the website host (in my case, Weebly). If Weebly is down, but BT is up, the message still won’t be delivered. Nevertheless, it would seem that this isn’t the client’s perception.
• The desire for a quick-quote is not as strong as I thought it might be. Most of my clients, even if they want a ballpark price, still prefer to use a contact form, and are prepared to wait longer than an hour for it.

I’m going to continue to monitor my potential clients’ preferences for contacting me over the forthcoming months, tracking the data to build up a deeper picture. I want to see whether the preference for the contact form continues, or whether it’s a blip.

​I will, however, need to bear in mind recent changes I’ve made to my website as these could skew the totals still further. For example, I recently (in April 2016) introduced a dedicated page for student proofreading (a service I’d taken the decision not to offer in previous years). Nevertheless, even if the ‘how many’ data is skewed, the ‘which method’ data will still be valid.

In Part 2, I consider some of the challenges of contact forms. Why don’t they always work, and what can we do to ameliorate the problems?

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.