A common stumbling block for editorial business owners is making time for marketing. Here’s why we must make time, and some resources to help you organize your business-promotion schedule.

Read on to find out more about:
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• Why running a business means finding clients
• Working for others – being an employee
• Working on your business and in your business
• Setting up a business and marketing: The order of play
• Shifting from a no-time mindset to an all-the-time mindset
• Taking a strategic approach to marketing

Every time an editor or proofreader says they don’t have time to build and implement a marketing strategy, they’re saying they don’t have time to find work.

None of us can run a business if there’s no business to run. Editing and proofreading work is essential. Otherwise we’re nothing more than a fancy title on a business card.

​If marketing isn’t a part of your business model, it’s time either to work for someone else or shift your mindset.

There’s nothing wrong with being an employee. For some it’s a more suitable career choice. Unless you apply for a job in the marketing department, it will be someone else’s responsibility to do the company’s promotional work, to pull in the clients.
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If you want to do your own thing, however, a commitment to business marketing must be part of the mix. That’s the difference between being self-employed and self-unemployed.

Every independent editorial business owner has two jobs:

• The work they do
• And the work they do to get the work they do

There’s no way around this. The approach we use to find work will depend on who our target clients are. Think social media, content marketing, advertising, directory listings, professional membership, a visible website, letters, emails, networking, phone calls, and SEO. All or some of these will be in play.

If a no-time mindset is tripping you up, ask yourself whether you can imagine saying any of the following:

• I don’t have time to do editing.
• I don’t have time to send invoices.
• I don’t have time to check the spelling of a word in a dictionary.

Those statements sound daft, don’t they? Of course we’d make time for editing, invoicing and checking spelling! We’re professionals and we’re business owners – those things are essential.

Finding work is just as important. If we don’t, there’s no editing to do, no invoices to send, no spellings to check.
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Since we’re employers (of ourselves), not employees, we must do our own marketing, right from the get-go, and continue to do it for as long as we’re in business.

Marketing doesn’t come after we’ve set up our business. That’s a misfire. It views marketing as if it’s a separate entity.

If we spend 12 months training to be a professional editor but dedicate no time to our marketing strategy, all we’ll have at the end is a skillset that’s invisible to everyone but us.

I know how to make lasagne, change a tyre, and remove a thorn from a Labrador’s paw, but those skills in themselves don’t mean people are offering me work as a chef, a mechanic or a veterinary nurse. Why would they? No one but me, my husband, my kid and my dog know I can do that stuff. I’ve not promoted those skills or set up a business around them (nor do I plan to, just in case you’re wondering!).
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If you’re serious about becoming a professional editor, so much so that you’ve invested your hard-earned cash in a high-quality training course, start working on your marketing strategy at the same time so that you don’t end up as a professional thumb-twiddler! 

Whatever marketing approach(es) you choose, do them regularly so that they’re a normal part of editorial business ownership.

Invoicing and tax returns are my least favourite aspects of running a business but I do them anyway. I have to. We all do.

Same thing with marketing. You don’t have to love marketing. You don’t even have to like it. Just do it anyway, all the time. Dedicate time in your business week to the task.

​Every time you’re tempted to use that slot in your schedule to do something else, remind yourself that you don’t want to be self-unemployed, that you do want to earn a living from your editing business, and that when the client cupboard is bare it makes you feel miserable and stressed.

Here are three things every editor needs to recognize about strategy:

• ‘I'd better do a bit of marketing because I’ve got no work lined up next month’ is not a strategy. It’s an emergency.
• ‘Great! I just got some work for next month so I don’t have to do any marketing for a while’ is not a strategy. It’s a recipe for a future emergency.
• ‘I’ll accept that horrible low-paid job because it’s better than nothing’ is not a strategy. It’s a business model that puts others in control.

A long-term marketing strategy is planned, targeted, and implemented continuously. That’s what keeps the cupboard full of good-fit clients, and what gives us the power to decide a project’s not a good fit, the price isn’t right, or the scheduling’s too tight.

If you’re already marketing your editing business, fantastic. If you’re not, start now and don’t stop!

You don’t have to do your marketing the way I do my marketing. The foundation of my strategy is content marketing, but that’s because I work exclusively with independent authors in a specialist genre, and want expect those authors to find me via Google.

Your marketing strategy should reflect the best method of being visible to your ideal clients. That might mean sending emails, making phones calls, engaging in a group or forum, or advertising in a particular space.

And even if you don’t like marketing, make it part of your business practice anyway. Place it alongside the other aspects of your business that you’re obliged to do but would rather not. Why? Because marketing can mean the difference between working and walking away. If you’ve already invested your energy and money in training, that’s a waste of your valuable skills. You deserve more than that.

And who knows? You might even enjoy promoting your business once you start reaping the fruits of your labour! 

Check out these additional resources about building a sustainable editorial business:
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• Blogging for Business Growth (course)
• Branding for Business Growth (course)
• Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
• Marketing resource library (books, booklets and blogs and podcasts)
• Marketing Toolbox for Editors (multimedia course)
• Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business​ (book)

Find out how to choose a name for your editing or proofreading business with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle.

• Brainstorming a list of possible business names
• Considering your target clients
• Identifying your core brand values
• Using a business name to tell the client what's on offer
• Checking the name is available
• Does the name reflect your brand identity?
• How findable and SEO-friendly is the name?
• Will the name stand the test of time?

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle share 3 more tips about how to beat the overwhelm that can come with making your editing and proofreading business visible.

• Why everyone has something to shout about, even if they think they don't
• Why some editors appear to do more marketing that is humanly possible, and why that shouldn't deter you
• The tricks those busy editorial marketers have up their sleeve and how you can mimic them
• Managing marketing by thinking in ones

'Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Every professional editor is a business owner, and that role requires us to track the health of our businesses from one year to the next. Managing and analysing all that data can be a burden, especially if you’re more interested in words than numbers!

Fellow editor and Excel authority Maya Berger has created a tool that will make life easy. It’s called The Editor's Affairs (TEA).

All the data in one place
When it comes to keeping an eye on the health of my business, simple has always been my goal. I’m an editor, not an accountant.

Essentially, I want as much as possible in one place:

• Project schedule
• Project data
• Business income
• Business expenses

And when it’s time to submit a tax return to (in my case) HMRC and evaluate how things are going, I don’t want to be faffing around with several different apps and spreadsheets.

Instead, I want to see the core data at a glance … data that will tell me the following:

On a project basis:

• Hourly rate
• Start and end dates
• Fees – quotes, paid, pending and overdue
• Baselines data – word count, hours worked
• Client name, project title, how they found me

On a business-health basis:

• Which clients I earn the most money from
• The worth of each client as a percentage of my total income
• Which months are the most lucrative
• Average hourly rates
• Average speeds
• Comparison of data with the previous year
• Income to declare
• Allowable expenses to offset

I don’t want to spend ages collecting and collating this data so it’s easy to access. I want summaries that give me a number – automatically generated by the data I’ve inputted throughout the financial year.

Then, when it’s time to review my business and submit my return to the tax authorities, the numbers are ready and waiting for me.

I’ve been tracking my data for years, and while I’m fairly proficient with Excel, I’ve been aware that there’s more I could do to fine-tune my process. However, like many editors, I have neither the time nor the will. So when Maya asked me to take a look at TEA, I jumped at the chance.

The Editor's Affairs (TEA)
So what is TEA? It’s a one-stop-shop Excel spreadsheet with lots of built-in jiggery-pokery that does all the tricky formula work for you. All you need to do is input the project (and expenses) data as it comes in.

Below are examples of some of the project data an editor can input, and the received data from TEA.

Examples of data the editor can input

• Invoice number
• Start date
• Finish date
• Date of completion
• Payment due
• Payment date
• Client name
• Notes about the job
• How the client found me
• Total word count
• Estimated words per hour
• Desired hourly rate
• Actual number of hours worked
• Amount invoiced
• Amount received

Examples of received data from TEA

• A status alert if the invoice is overdue
• An estimate of actual words/hr
• An estimate of how many hours I’d have to work to achieve my desired hourly rate
• My actual rate per hour
• My actual speed
• My actual rate per 1,000 words
• The amount I need to quote to achieve my desired hourly rate

5 reasons why TEA is worth it
So why is it worth investing in TEA? I identified 5 standout features that I believe make this a must-have tool.

NOTE: The numbers and client information below are for the purposes of illustration only. I made them up because my business affairs are of no concern to anyone but me!

1. Making informed decisions when quoting
TEA allows you to see the impact of the data you’re inputting on your business, and make informed decisions about how you should quote. Let’s take an example:

John Smith asks me to line edit a 100K-word novel. I estimate I can edit at a speed of 1,750 words per hour, so I input that information along with the word count.

• TEA tells me I’ll need to set aside just over 57 hours for the project.

I decide I want to earn £40 per hour. I add that data to the row.

• TEA tells me my estimated rate per 1,000 words will be £22.86.

Now I can build my quote. I type 57 into the hours-worked cell.

• TEA tells me I need to quote £2,285.71.

For argument’s sake, let’s say I know that my client’s budget is £2,000. I can temporarily add this to the amount-received cell.

• TEA tells me my rate per hour would be £35.09.

If I’m happy to work for £35.09 rather than £40 per hour, I’m good to go. If I don’t, I can negotiate with the client. The point is, I can play with the data I’m inputting and see the impact. And that means there are no surprises. I’m making informed decisions.

2. Collecting data for the future
Less experienced editors might not yet have enough older data to know how long a particular type of editing will take, or whether Client A’s work tends to be speedier to complete than Client B’s. TEA helps us build that knowledge via accrued data that we can use later on. Another example …

In April 2019, Jackie Jones asks me to proofread her 30,000-word novella. I have no clue how long it will take so I estimate a speed of 5,000 words an hour. I’m grateful for the opportunity because my business is new. I decide I’ll be happy earning anything over £20 per hour.

TEA tells me my rate per 1,000 words will be £4 and it’ll take 6 hours, so I bill for £120. I get the gig and do the work. In fact, it takes me 10 hours. I input the new data.

• TEA tells me I’ve actually achieved only 3,000 words per hour and that my hourly rate was £12, not £20.

But I’ve learned something. And when Jackie comes back to me three months later with another job with the same word count, this time I can input more accurate data, meaning I’ll earn my desired rate of £20 per 1,000 words.

3. Saving time and protecting the data
At no time am I messing around with a calculator. All I do is input the raw data and review what TEA’s analysis cells tell me.

That saves me time because TEA’s doing the maths for me.

Plus, I can’t break the spreadsheet! TEA’s analysis cells are locked so I won’t inadvertently alter the complex formulae within.

4. Client analysis
Some editors work for repeat clients – an agency or publisher, for example. In those cases, we’re not always in control of the price, and yet those clients can still be valuable because of the amount of repeat work they send us and the percentage of our overall income their business accounts for.

Knowing who our most valuable clients are is essential if we’re to avoid knee-jerk reactions to rates of pay.

If Publisher A pays me an hourly rate half that of Agency A but gives me five times as much work, I’ll want to think very carefully before canning that client because I don’t like their pricing structure.

TEA’s Client Summaries Table does what is says on the tin. It’s here that we can see a list of our clients, the percentage their business contributes to our overall income, the number of hours’ work we’ve done for them and the total income received.

Time for another example …

Let’s say I’m scowling at the row on the Income sheet because I’ve yet to crack £15 per hour from Romance Fiction Press. Just above is an entry for John Smith, the indie author from whom I earned £40 per hour.

Terrible rates, I think. Exploitative, disrespectful, unfair. I’m about to head off to a Facebook group with 10,000 editor members and have a bit of a rant. Then I’m going to tell that press where to stick it.

But hang on a mo! What does TEA have to say?

I nip onto the Summaries sheet and take a look at the Client Summaries Table.

• TEA tells me that work from Romance Fiction Press earned me £11,000, which accounts for 54% of my annual income.
• John Smith is responsible for £2,285.71, or 11% of my annual income.

Yes, John Smith is a more valuable client on a project-by-project basis but he’s not giving me anywhere near the same volume of work as Romance Fiction Press.

Instead of ranting on Facebook, I need to use that time to plan a strategy that will bring in more John Smiths or better-paying publishers and agencies. Once done, I can phase out Romance Fiction Press. That might take a couple of years of intensive marketing. Until then, the press will stay.

Perhaps I can negotiate a raise with them. Maybe there are efficiency tools I can introduce to increase my speed when I’m editing for them. And they pay on time, are pleasant to work with, and have given me loads of fodder for my portfolio that I can leverage on my website and in future marketing.

The work is regular, too, and lands on my lap without my having to promote myself to get it. And that time saved is worth something.

5. Making tracking and tax less taxing
There are two additional and extremely useful summary tables in TEA:

• The Monthly Summaries Table shows income, hours worked, expenses and charitable donations compiled from basic data the editor places in the onboard income and expenses sheets. You can see which months are most lucrative. TEA gives you a sense of the degree to which your work is seasonal, and that helps you to plan ahead and promote your business appropriately if you want to fill some gaps.
• The Allowable Expenses Table has an itemized breakdown of what you can offset against your income.

The totals are the figures you’ll report to the tax office. They’re right there in front of you – no hunting around in different apps and other spreadsheets. All the data filters through from easy-to-fill-in Income and Expenses sheets accessible via TEA’s tabs.

How do I find out more about TEA?
Isn’t the name adorable? Using TEA is like having a cuppa! And it’s all about the editor’s affairs – our business affairs.

The data the editor has to input is basic stuff that all of us have access to or can estimate with every new job or expense that comes in.

The data TEA gives takes the stress out of scheduling, accounting and analysis. 

Every editor needs to understand the health of their business so that they can make informed decisions about who they work with, how much they charge and where the value lies. 

When accessing that data becomes burdensome, the temptation is to wing it. TEA means you don’t have to.

Maya will be making TEA available for purchase in May 2020. For introductory rates or to learn more about customized versions for more complex accounting and analysis, check out whatimeantosay.com/tea.

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NOTE: I have no commercial stake in TEA, though I was given a free copy to experiment with in return for feeding back my experience of using it.

Every editorial report we write for our authors should achieve 7 goals. Some benefit us, some benefit our clients, but they’re all connected. If you feel your report-writing skills could do with a boost, use this goal-based framework to pep things up.

Let's look at the goals in brief; then we'll dig deeper.

Goals that benefit the editor

• Create the report efficiently
• Demonstrate editorial excellence
• Build trust
• Compel future commissions and recommendations

Goals that benefit the client

• Offer a comprehensive learning tool
• Take a mindful approach
• Provide a solution-based critical review

Efficiency means achieving the three goals that benefit the client without compromising on one iota of quality and without damaging our productivity. We are in business, after all.
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Creating detailed editorial reports can eat into an editor’s hourly rate. It’s easy – even for experienced sentence-level editors – to omit the time for report-writing when creating a quote; I’ve done it myself. We focus on the number of words per hour we edit, based perhaps on a sample.
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Or perhaps we have included the report-writing component in our calculations but the author wants to negotiate on price. Every efficiency we incorporate allows us greater choice about whether to accept or reject a client’s proposal.

Our second goal is to demonstrate editorial excellence. Those of you who are members of a national editorial society might well be bound by a code of practice that demands this.

That’s the case for members of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), which says in its CoP: ‘Good communication between client/employer and freelance/employee is essential.’

Editorial excellence isn’t just about being an expert in typo hunting, grammar correction and stylistic revision. 

Neither does it end with clarity on the project brief or issues of privacy, confidentiality and security. ​

​It’s also about communicating the why of our edits. Comprehensive editorial reports are the perfect communication tool, and the reason why we shouldn’t skimp.

When we communicate the why of our decisions, we build trust.

If a client is anxious about how we’ve edited their work because they don’t understand the changes we’ve made and/or because we’re new to them, trust is low.
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Part of our job is to earn it. A comprehensive editorial report that demonstrates a deep knowledge of our craft creates author confidence. And that’s the key to a healthy business relationship.

​A client with a detailed editorial report that demonstrates excellence and builds confidence in your ability is more likely to do the following:
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• Come back to you with their next project
• Wait for you if your schedule is full
• Accept your price
• Recommended you to their friends, family and colleagues

Now let's look at the benefits for the author. 

​Our fifth goal is to provide our authors with an outstanding learning tool, rich in problem/solution-focused detail, which they can use to hone their writing craft. 

The independent-author market is huge, and many in the community lack experience – they’re right at the beginning of their writing journey. They might well have talent by the bucket load but the line work we do is nevertheless extensive.

An editorial report gives us the chance to offer our guidance in a format that’s accessible and clear. And because it’s separate from their book file, they can refer to it time and again.

A comprehensive learning tool includes strengths, too. Writers can learn as much from knowing what they’re doing well – and should continue doing – ​as from knowing how they can up their game.

Our penultimate goal is to show mindfulness. As editors, we can never forget that every one of our author clients has a choice – and they chose us. They also have a passion – their book. 

It takes commitment to write a story, and sometimes not a little courage to place it in the hands of a professional editor, particularly one they haven't worked with before. That decision comes with risk.

For the editor, being selected is a privilege rather than an entitlement. We must respect that choice, the risk taken, and their investment (time and money).

Yes, we should report on weaknesses; that’s how they’ll improve their sentence-level craft. But we must do so gently and respectfully, and complement that analysis with reflection on their strengths.

Many indie-author book files end up in our editing studios without having been evaluated by a developmental editor, a critiquing editor, an experienced beta reader or even a colleague or friend in a writing group.

Our reports need to offer a critical review that explores the book’s sentence-level strengths and weaknesses.

What’s essential is that we offer solutions to any weaknesses we identify. Without those, we risk creating a shopping list of what was good and what wasn’t. That kind of analysis won’t help the author grow as a writer. Neither will it reflect our editorial excellence.

Want to learn how to do it, and love it?
If you’re a sentence-level editor and think your reporting skills could do with a boost, or a new editor who wants to nail it from the start, take a look at my new course, How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report.

In this post, I outline the start of the author–editor relationship – from first contact, to initial discussion, to booking confirmation. My process is personal to my business but it gives you an idea of what to expect.

1. The author makes contact
Clients are welcome to contact me via email, social media, telephone or my contact form. Most use the latter.

My contact form is basic because I want authors to be able to start a conversation with me as easily as possible. The biggest stumbling block is usually the time frame because I’m booked up months in advance. Establishing when they’d like the editing or proofreading carried out is therefore essential, as is the word count. It’s those two pieces of information that will guide me on best fit at this point.

I include a dropdown menu so that authors can quickly choose the service they’re looking for: a full line and copyedit, a mini line critique or a proofread.

I ask for a little information about the project, too. This is where an author can tell me about the genre of their novel and provide a brief summary of the project.

I also ask for a name and email address – nothing more in terms of personal details. An underpinning principle of GPDR compliance requires business owners to collect only necessary data. For me, the name and email is enough to enable me to reply to the query. 

2. The project discussion
Now the author and I begin to talk. The focus at this stage tends to be on time frame, the type of editing required, and the price (subject to seeing a sample). There might be a little back and forth as we get to know each other and agree the terms of the editing project.

If the author sent a sample with their email, I’ll review it before responding. This is the perfect opportunity for me to check that the service they’ve asked for is a good fit for what I think the text requires. It also gives me a chance to get a feel for the writing style ... to see whether I can get under the skin of the novel and give the story the sentence-level pop the author’s seeking.

A sample helps me work out how long the editing will take too. With that information, I can determine the fee. If you want more information about samples, Denise Cowle and I cover this topic in Episode 6 of The Editing Podcast.

I sometimes include links to useful resources on my website if I think they'll help the author decide whether I’m a good fit for them.

You can access everything on offer via my Author Resources page but the 3 tools I most often refer to during this discussion phase are:
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1. Submitting to agents and working with editors (blog post and booklet)
2. How to prepare your book file for a fiction editor (blog post and video)
3. Which level of editing do you need? (booklet)

3. Booking the editing project
Once the author and I have decided we want to work together, and agreed a price and completion date, it’s time to confirm the booking.

​I ask them to read my terms and conditions (which are designed to protect us both), then fill in the booking-confirmation form (scroll to the bottom of the T&Cs web page if you want to have a look at it).

Receipt of that form triggers me to send an invoice for the booking fee that will secure the author’s slot in my schedule.

4. Preparing for the edit: styles and files
There’s an Author Style Preferences form next to the booking-confirmation form in which clients can register any decisions they’d like me to adhere to during the editing or proofreading process. These aren’t set in stone and can be changed at any time before the editing begins.

Authors are welcome to send me their book file at any time once the booking has been confirmed. My only stipulation is that it arrives 24 hours before editing begins. This gives me time to check that the file can be opened and edited.
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I hold the files securely in my Dropbox account, which is protected via two-factor authentication.

5. Reminding the author about the start date
I like to give my authors a little nudge at least a week before the start date. Editing will usually have been booked many months earlier and I might not be top of mind if the client is busy with other commitments. A nudge costs nothing and is invariably appreciated by time-poor authors.

If I’ve already received the book file, the reminder is simply a courtesy to let them know I’m about to start working on their project, and to check that the file hasn’t been revised in the meantime. Otherwise, it’s a reminder of the date by which the author needs to deliver the file.

Summing up
Editors work in a variety of ways. The process I’ve outlined here might look very different to my colleagues’. Still, it gives you an idea of what to expect when you get in touch with me. 

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line. In the meantime, help yourself to the freebies. You don’t even have to hand over your email address to access them – just click and grab.

Here are 5 things you can do in the year ahead to put a shine on the way you run your editing and proofreading business,

1. Be the editor who says, ‘It’s down to me’
Editors who work in-house edit. As for the other stuff, someone else does that for them – marketing, accounting, branding, heating the building, providing a good-quality office chair ... all of it.

Employee editors can say, ‘It’s not my job.’ Independent editors can’t. Most indie editors don’t have assistants, in-house accountants, IT managers, marketing departments or ready-made brand strategies. 

All of those things are down to us. If we don’t make them part of our job, we risk not being able to put food on the table, not paying our bills, breaching our legal responsibilities, working in an environment that’s physically unfit for purpose and, worst of all, having no clients. And we have to buy our own chairs.

Chairs aside, having no clients means we’re not independent business owners. It means we’re unemployed.

There are bits of my job I’d rather not do. You’re probably the same. I happen to love the marketing side of things but I have friends who loathe it. One of my editor pals gets a kick from using gadgets and spreadsheets that help her manage her invoicing; I find it a bore. That’s fine – we’re different. However, we both must find clients and track our financials, whether we struggle with these tasks or relish the challenge.

Being an editor is not enough. Being an editor is the work we do. Everything else is the work we do to get the work we do and operate in a professional manner.
​
Editing is only one part of being an editorial business owner. For our businesses to thrive, we must do all the parts. We can’t afford to say, ‘But I don’t like marketing’, ‘I’m not good with spreadsheets’, ‘I’m not interested in the business end of things’, or ‘I don’t have time to learn how to do those things’, because we’re not employees.

​We have to say, ‘It’s down to me.’

2. Make changes
No one gets it perfect right from the get-go. Running a business is about testing and tracking so that we discover what works and what doesn’t. If things aren’t going as we hoped, we need to be ready to invest in change.

• If our schedules have lots of gaps in them, our marketing needs work.
• If we’re not attracting the clients we want to work with, our branding needs attention.
• If we’re not earning enough to make ends meet, we need to find new clients or tweak our fee structure.
• If we’re attracting clients who let us down, we need to tweak our contracts and terms.
• If our scheduling is muddled, our time management needs fixing.

​Easy to say, harder to do, I know. But change we must. The responsibility lies with us.

3. Don't measure your own success against other people’s raw data
Track your own data and use it to assess the health of your editing business. Your colleagues’ metrics don’t matter because those relate to their businesses, not yours.

And there’s another problem – it’s often like comparing apples and oranges. Here are two examples:

• The data picked up by Google Analytics varies from website host to host. That means any comparison of my Weebly site with a colleague’s Wordpress or Wix site is pretty much meaningless.
• Even when you look at your own data, you’ll get different figures depending on the analytics program you’re using. I access analytics data using StatCounter, Google Analytics and Weebly. None of the numbers are the same, and I don't mean a little bit not the same; I mean a lot not the same. It’s not that two of those programs are wrong but that all three are recording different things.

Does that mean you shouldn’t look at analytics? Not at all. But instead of looking at just the raw numbers, think about longer-term patterns in the data and outcomes (bookings/sales).

​How does this financial quarter compare with the previous one, or this year with the previous one? Have you made changes either on your website or elsewhere that might have influenced your analytics?

We must keep our attention on the end goal. Visitors, page views, shares, likes, follows, comments, connections etc. are only starting-point visibility indicators.

To be meaningful, they need to be considered over time and evaluated within the context of, and measured against, business goals: e.g. requests to quote, confirmed bookings, quality of clients, income, and the length of your wait-list. Otherwise, they’re nothing more than vanity metrics.

As for other people’s raw stats, they tell you nothing about your own business’s needs and goals. Don't spend valuable time worrying about them.

4. Track, plan and schedule
Like all sole traders, independent editors have to do everything themselves, unless they contract out services to, say, a VA, a marketer or an accountant, any of which will incur costs.

We can find ourselves being asked to carry out impossible feats of juggling – too many activities and not enough time to do what must be done. The solution could lie in improved scheduling:
​
​(1) Track how much time you spend on social media during work hours and check that all of it is relevant to your business. Be strict with your social engagement – schedule it, and stick to that plan. You’ll save time and be more productive.

(2) Schedule all tasks, not just editing. Invoicing, marketing, replying to requests to quote, and dealing with queries can cause problems when they’re not scheduled. If you have 7 hours a day available for work, allot some of that time to stuff that enables you to run your business.

​That might mean you only have 5 hours a day available for editing, not 7, which means you’ll need to assign a longer period of time to complete each project. If you need to shift things around, fine – there’s a big difference between drinking your tea at a different time and forgetting to switch the kettle on.

5. Create templates and information resources
Templates make life easier and help editors work faster. They can be customized, of course, but the underlying framework is in place, meaning we can focus on tweaking the nitty-gritty so that what we’re creating is specific to the recipient. The following all lend themselves to templating:

• Style sheets
• Editorial reports
• Replies to requests for information
• Invoices

When we find ourselves explaining the same problem to different clients, it’s time to create a resource that we can use indefinitely.

For example, if you’re a developmental editor you might have written numerous reports and queries in which you describe the fundamentals of narrative point of view. Instead of repeating yourself, create a document that outlines the principles in detail.

The initial work will take you time, but once done you can use it over and over.
You can also place that information on your website and use it as a promotional tool. 

Summing up
If you’re looking for ways to make your business life run more smoothly in the next 12 months, perhaps some or all of these 5 tips will help you to save time, increase productivity, and take action.

There are some free templates and other resources in the Further Reading section below. Help yourself.

Happy New Year!
 
Further reading

• How to become a better editor while secretly promoting your business (blog post)
• How to increase your productivity ... the AIR way (blog post)
• How to minimize cancellations and non-payment for editing and proofreading services (blog post)
• Invoicing: Excel template (free: scroll through the resource gallery)
• Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action (blog post)
• Free scheduling template
• Free style sheet template
• Marketing and branding courses and books for editors

Every professional editor and proofreader wants to attract best-fit clients who are prepared to commit to a contract of editorial services. For the most part, bookings go smoothly – cancellations, delays, and failures to pay are unusual. Still, editorial business owners need to protect themselves ... just in case.

This article doesn’t seek to offer you a model contract or set of terms and conditions (T&Cs), though you’re welcome to look at mine for inspiration: Terms and conditions.

Instead, I want to explore some ideas about how to develop your spidey sense, and use language and tools that will repel those who’d let you down.

What does ‘delay’ mean to you?
The concept of the delay is nonsense to an editorial business owner.

If a client asks you to proofread a book, tells you the proofs will arrive with you on 10 May, and requests return of the marked-up proofs a week later, and you agree to take on the job, those are the terms: proofread to start 10 May; delivery 7 days later.

You’ll schedule the project accordingly, and will decline to work for anyone else from 10–17 May. If two weeks ahead of the start date you’re told ‘there’ll be a delay’, you’ll likely have no work for 10–17 May unless you can fill that space at the last minute. Moreover, you will be booked for another project during the period when the project will become available.

To my mind, that’s not a delay. You can’t magic additional hours out of thin air. That’s a cancellation of the project terms that were agreed to by both parties.

Make sure your T&Cs reflect this. Don’t use the language of delay if it means nothing to you. Have a cancellation policy and make it clear that confirmed bookings are for an agreed time frame, and that failure to meet the agreed date will invoke that cancellation policy.

You might decide not to invoke it as a courtesy, but having it could reduce the likelihood of having to make the decision.

Is ‘deposit’ a strong enough term?
The word ‘deposit’ should be strong enough as long as the refund terms are clear. Still, you might want to couch your language along the lines of what editor and book coach Lisa Poisso calls ‘real money’.
​
I don’t refer to deposits in my terms and conditions. I call them booking fees. A fee is a payment. It’s the language of money. ‘Deposit’ as a noun has a broader mass-of-material meaning; as a verb it means to place something somewhere. Maybe, for some people, it has a softer feel to it.

Of course, anyone required to pay a deposit knows full well that the financial definition is being referred to. Nevertheless, using the language of money – a fee – might well encourage time-wasters to think twice.

The following might also work for you:

• down payment
• advance payment
• prepayment

What you charge upfront is up to you. Some editors charge a 50% booking fee rather than a flat rate. Some require one third to secure the booking, another third just before editing starts, and the remaining third upon completion of the project. You can define your own model.

Do you have a booking form?
You and a client can agree to your providing editorial services via email, and emails count contractually. But how about requiring a specific additional action, one that reinforces a sense of commitment?

Asking someone to fill in a booking form that confirms they have read, understood and agreed to your terms and conditions, including your booking fee and your cancellation policy, means they have to make a proactive decision to commit.

When it comes to filling in a form and ticking boxes, a non-committed client is less likely to feel comfortable than a good-fit one because it feels more formal.
​
You can create a PDF booking form that you’ll email manually, or create the form on your website. My choice is the latter. I include it below my T&Cs. That way, the booking and the terms are closely linked.

Here’s a screenshot of mine. Notice the boxes that must be checked in order to confirm the booking.

Is ‘booking form’ a strong enough term?
Even if someone is prepared to fill in a form and check some boxes, agreeing to a contract might make them think twice. That has a more legally binding feel about it; it’s more formal. And it might be the thing that repels someone who’s going to let you down.
​
My T&Cs state that the booking-confirmation form is an agreement to the contract of services between me and the client, and the phrase ‘Contract of services agreement’ is the heading is what appears when the click on the booking-confirmation form button.

Are your terms and conditions detailed enough?
In the main, your website should be client-focused. It should make the client feel that you understand their problems, are able to deliver solutions, and understand what the impact of your solutions will be.

Your brand voice should sing out loud. In my case, for example, that means using a gentle, nurturing tone.

However, when it comes to your terms and conditions, forget all the touchy-feely stuff – this is where you and the client get down to business. It’s in everyone’s interests to know what’s what.

That might mean that your T&Cs are rather dull and boring. No matter. It’s the one place on your website where you’re allowed to be dull and boring!

I feel like chewing my own arm off when I read my T&Cs but I don’t want any of my clients in doubt about what I’m offering and what they’re getting.

Think about the following:

• How much do you charge for a booking fee or advance payment?
• What are the penalties for cancellation and when do they kick in?
• Is final payment required before the edited project is delivered to the client?
• If you’ll deliver first, will payment be required immediately? Within 7 days? Within 30 days?
• Are there penalties for late payment of the final invoice?
• Does your booking form require confirmation that your terms have been read, understood and agreed to?

A non-committed client will be repelled if your terms put them at risk. A good-fit client will feel reassured that they’re dealing with a fellow professional who takes the editing work as seriously as they do.

Are the basics front and centre?
Many editors place links to the detailed contractual stuff in their website’s footer, which means the T&Cs are almost invisible. Even a good-fit client probably won’t see or read your T&Cs during their initial search for editorial services.

That’s the case on my website. If it’s the same for you, consider placing the basics front and centre.

I’ve created a box on my contact page that spells out the non-refundable booking fee I charge.

Will it put off some potential clients? Absolutely. But if someone can’t afford that booking fee or doesn’t dare take the risk of making a payment because they’re unsure whether they’ll honour the contract, they’re not the right client for me.

Spotting red flags
Developing your spidey sense can reduce the likelihood of becoming entangled with those who’ll back out of confirmed bookings or fail to pay.

Though there’s no foolproof way to protect yourself from non-committed clients, there are red flags you can look out for:

• The person tells you they want to go ahead and hire you for a specific time frame but doesn’t fill in the booking form, or you have to nudge them several times. This could indicate that they’re not yet committed to working with you.
• The person fills in the booking form but fails to pay your booking fee. This is a strong indicator that the funds are not in place, and might never be.
• The person fills in a booking form and pays the fee but seeks to change the terms they booked under. This is a strong indicator that they’re not in the right mindset to commit to your editing services.
• The person is consistently slow to respond to emails during the initial discussion phase, and needs frequent nudging about the state of play. This might indicate that they don’t take your business offering seriously.
• The person gives you conflicting information about what’s required, or repeats questions about money and dates that you’ve already answered. This indicates they’ve not read your correspondence properly, which could lead to problems later.
• The person hasn’t begun the writing process, or has but isn’t sure when they’ll finish. If you don’t keep in regular touch with the client to check the project’s on track – which is time-consuming – the project could go off the rails and you’ll be none the wiser.

Summing up
I hope these tips help you avoid non-committed clients and safeguard your business. Even if you implement some of my ideas, there are no guarantees unless you ask for 100% of your fee upfront. However, rest assured that most clients are honest, committed and trustworthy individuals who are a pleasure to work with.

As for those who blow you out, a few are scoundrels. Others aren’t but are thoughtless and haven’t taken the time to understand the emotional and financial impact of cancellations and non-payment. Others have got cold feet. And some have been struck by unusual or extraordinary circumstances like bereavement. Most don’t mean to cause distress or place editors in financial hardship, even though those are two very real potential outcomes.
​
By using real-money language and action-driving tools, we can build stronger bonds of trust with those who are serious about working with us, and repel most of those who aren’t.

More resources

• How to Develop a Pricing Strategy (book)
• Resource library: Money matters

Here’s how to build a knockout editing portfolio page even if you’re relatively new to the field.

Deciding what to include, what to omit, and how to lay it out so that it grabs a potential client’s attention can be tricky. If your business is new you might not have a lot to shout about. If you’re established, you might have too much.

One thing’s for sure, though – an editing site without a visible portfolio is at a disadvantage. It’s the next best thing to the social proof of a testimonial because it demonstrates that you practise what you preach.

Using stories is a method every editor can use to bring their portfolio page to life.

Moving from mechanics to emotions
Stories are lovely additions to any portfolio page because they give us the opportunity to take our potential clients behind the scenes ... to show them how we helped and how the project made us feel.

That’s important because it shifts the attention away from mechanics and towards emotion.

Those of us who work with non-publisher clients such as independent authors, academics, businesses and students are asking our clients to take a big leap ... to put their project in the hands of someone they’ve never met, and pay for the privilege.
It’s a huge ask and takes not a little courage for some. Think about it from the client’s point of view:

• An indie author has put their heart and soul into a work of fiction. It’s personal. They’ve used their own experiences to give life and depth to their characters.
• An agency has developed a series of advertisements for a big-name corporation. It’s not just the agency’s rep on the line. There’s a global brand at stake.
• An academic whose first language isn’t English is submitting their research to a peer-reviewed journal. Getting published could be career-changing for them.

These clients will be looking for an editor they can trust, someone who gets them, understands what their problems are and can solve them without making a song and dance about it.

Trust is something that is usually earned over time – think about your friendships and partnerships. Editors and their clients don’t always have the luxury of time. What’s needed is something that will fast-track the growth of trust.
​
Word-of-mouth recommendations are fantastic for this. Testimonials from named clients are also excellent social proof. Portfolios work in the same way. The problem is, they can be boring.

A partial screenshot of my boring but useful list!

The list: boring but powerful
I’m not going to suggest you dump your long lists. Boring though they may be, I believe there’s power in them, and for two reasons:
​

• Keyword juice: Book and article titles, and author names can be good for SEO. Some years ago, I secured a proofreading job with an academic who’d come across my website while searching for information about a social theorist. One of the theorist’s books was included in a bullet list in my academic portfolio, and the page popped up in Google’s search results.
• Demonstration of experience: Lists of completed projects can pack a punch because they show at a glance that you can do what you say on your editing tin.

So, if you want to keep your long lists, do so. I have. Make them more accessible and aesthetically pleasing by breaking them into subjects or genres.

Add thumbnails of book jackets, journal covers or client logos (subject to securing permission from the client).

Use a carousel or slideshow plug-in to show off multiple images without cluttering up the page.

Adding pizzazz with stories
​Now it’s time to add the wow factor. Stories take the portfolio one stage further. They’re basically case studies of editing and proofreading in practice. Can you recognize yourself in the following list?

• The established editor: You have a long, boring list but you want to keep your visitors awake.
• The NDA-bound editor: You’re prevented from publishing a long, boring list because of the non-disclosure agreements you’ve signed.
• The new editor: You’d love to have a long, boring list but that’s not yet your problem. Filling space is.

Stories work for all three groups of editors:
​

• The established editor: You can focus on two or three projects and talk about what the client was looking for, how you helped, what you loved and what you learned.
• The NDA-bound editor: You can omit brand names and concentrate on the client’s problems, how you solved them, and what the outcomes were.
• The new editor: Even if you’ve completed only 4 projects, you can make your portfolio page sing by going deeper into the story behind the editing project.

What to include
It’s up to you what you include but consider the following:
​

• The ideal client: What kind of voice will be most compelling to them? What’s worrying them, and how might you fix that? How do you want them to feel when they’re on your website?
• Your brand values: What do you stand for? What makes you tick? What excites you about your job?
• Problems and solutions: What challenges have you faced, how did you overcome them and what was the result?

 
​Crafting stories about relationships
​If your home page is all about the client, the portfolio page can be all about relationships. By crafting stories for our portfolios, we can invite potential clients onto the stage and let them experience – if only fleetingly – editing in action.
​
And because the case studies are real, they’re a powerful tool for knocking down barriers to trust. They show a client how we might help them, just as we’ve helped others.

If we’re serious about setting up an editing and proofreading business, free resources will get us so far, but only so far.

What free is good for
Free is brilliant when we’re starting out, particularly in the following circumstances:
​

• We’re not yet sure whether an editing career suits us.
• We’ve yet to establish where our skills gaps are.
• We need time to explore the lie of the land – what’s available, from where and whom, and how we’ll access it.
• We need time to get our finances in order but don’t want that to hold us back.

Free is equally great when we’re experienced but looking to shift the goalposts:

• We’re thinking about offering a new editing service but want to learn whether it’s a good fit for us.
• We’ve identified skills gaps but need to plan a staged approach to filling them – no one can do everything at once.
• We want to stick with the same editing services but focus on niche subject(s) or genre(s). That means exploring how we might expand our knowledge base such that we’re a more attractive proposition to potential clients.

Free stuff is about discovery, so that when the time comes to reach into the coffers we’re spending money in the right place.

​Free helps us to turn expense into investment.

What free is not good for
Free isn’t great in the long term because the offering usually comes with limitations. It will give us a glimpse, enough to help us on the journey. But that’s all.

The reason free has its limitations is because even creating free stuff and offering free help takes time, and time is money.
​
Imagine the following scenarios:

What tasters teach us ... and what they don't
In both cases, the freebies are of exceptionally high quality and Jane and Jack learn a ton from them. Creating that content must have taken time and effort.

However, free articles, blog posts and webinars are tasters. Those kinds of things help us understand the lie of the land, and give us a deeper sense of what more we need to learn.

What they won’t do is teach us everything we need to know.

We can’t learn how to become professional developmental editors from those resources alone ... any more than we could learn to cut hair or wire a house to acceptable standards without proper training and guidance.

Same goes for marketing. Take me, for example. It’s not luck and Google that made me a strong marketer. I pay a monthly sub to learn how to do it well from professional marketers, and invest time in implementing the strategies I’m learning.

If Jane wants to become a professional developmental editor and Jack wants to become a strong editorial marketer, both need to take all those freebies and use them to make informed decisions about the money they will invest to turn their investigations into reality.

Examples might include:

• A good-fit training course
• Recommended books written by experts

​
Free will help Jane and Jack make decisions. Investment will make them fit for professional purpose.

A better money mindset
It’s perfectly okay to decide that you can’t afford to run a professional editorial business ... but only as long as you decide not to run a professional editorial business.

No one on the planet owns a business that doesn’t have operating costs. Business owners have to take responsibility for training, equipment, invoicing, money transfer, software, marketing, client acquisition, office space, pension provision, taxation responsibilities, and more.

It’s true that the international editorial community is incredibly generous, which means that free resources and guidance abound on multiple platforms.

However, those who are serious about running an editorial business know they have to avoid hobbyist and employee mindsets.
​

• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I can’t afford it.’ They say, ‘I’ll work out a budget, take it step by step, and save up for it.’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I don’t know how to do it. I need someone to do it for me for free.’ They say, ‘Can someone recommend the best ways of learning how to do it?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘How do I get out of paying for X?’ They say, ‘Is that a reasonable cost of business and will it enable me to remain in profit and increase my income in the longer term?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I’m only looking for free stuff.’ They say, ‘Can anyone guide me towards some useful resources that will help me plan how to invest wisely?’

The shoe on the other foot – when you’re asked for a freebie
We can’t have everything we want when we want it. We have to make choices. Freebies help us make the right choices so that the money we spend actually increases our prospects and income in the longer term.

And imagine yourself on the other side of the fence for a moment.

A potential client calls you. They have a book that needs copyediting. ‘The thing is,’ they say, ‘I can’t afford professional editing. How can I get out of paying you? To be honest, I’m just looking for free stuff.’

How fast would you hang up?

Now imagine another writer calls you. ‘I’m in the middle of doing as much self-editing as I can using some free tutorials I found online and some advice from my writing group. There’s a fair way to go,’ they say, ‘but I figured I’d start saving now. Can you give me a rough idea of how much it might cost and how much notice you’d need? That way I can start planning my book budget.’

That’s the kind of client I’m excited about working with.

The editor with the same mindset will be rewarded with guidance and help because they deserve it. The editor who wants it all for nothing won’t and doesn’t.

By all means, grab all the freebies. The creators of those resources want you to have them. Making free stuff that’s invisible and unused is a waste of time and effort.

​Just don’t forget that free is the starting blocks. Investment is what gets us to the finish line!

Further reading

• “I want to be an editor – when will I start earning $?” and other unanswerable questions
• The cost of editorial training – are you hitting the mark or missing the point?
• The highs and lows of editorial fees (or how not to trip up during rate talk)
• Why you MUST market your editorial business. Part I
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work
• Who finds your editing and proofreading clients for you?
• PayPal fees and your right to profits (Erin Brenner, Copyediting)

Want to increase your productivity? My guest Simon Raybould has an innovative approach to organizing your work day that might just cut you some slack and help you get more done. Over to Simon ...

We’ve all done it … worked our little socks off only to feel like we’re banging our heads against a brick wall.
 
I know a few editors and proofreaders, and there’s always more for them to do – either doing the job itself or marketing the job so that there is a job to be done.
 
I assume you’re like them, so I won’t try to convince you that you’re working too hard, and that, by definition, ‘good enough’ is exactly that. Despite the logic of that statement it falls on deaf ears too often to be worth it. I’m going to pick my fights!
 
So instead of looking at how long we should work on something in total, I’m talking about how long we should work on it in any one go.
 
Rational Man
Economists (and some others) use a concept called Rational Man. Let’s call him Fred.

Fred knows everything he needs to know to make an optimal choice for every decision, and – being rational – makes it. In other words, Fred gets perfect choices each time there’s a choice to be made.

If you’re Fred, there’s a perfectly straight and positive relationship between how much effort you put into something and how much output you get out:

• If you put no effort in, you get nothing out
• If you put a little in, you get a little out
• If you bust a gut, you get lots of output

It couldn’t be simpler, could it?

But it’s not real. You know that. Imagine sitting down at your desk and being productive from the first second. Unlikely.

How life really is
If you’re anything like me, when you sit down to work, the first few minutes of your time don’t create any output. Instead you:

• wait for your computer to boot up
• open the right programs …
• … and files
• shuffle on your seat, trying to get yourself into the groove
• sharpen your pencils (metaphorical or real)
• check your social media in the hope that there’s something else you could be doing
• desperately try to remember where you are in the project and what it’s all about
• frantically attempt to recall what it was you’re supposed to be doing next.

​Okay, so you might not be as bad as that, but you take my point. I’ve labeled this in the graph as the time between A and B.

But once you get going, warm up, well then you really hit your stride. Each minute produces not only output but more output than the previous one. In the graph, this is the time between B and C.

Eventually, of course, you start to get tired. You’re still getting things done but each minute achieves a little less than its predecessor, until you’re barely getting anything more done for each moment. In the graph, this is the time between C and D.

Here’s the rub though… most of us are conditioned to just work, work, work, work, work, and we carry on doing so until:

• we finish what we’re doing
• something stops us – a meeting or picking the kids up from school
• a publisher’s deadline jumps up and down.

Let’s be blunt – most of us work on towards E. The last time I talked about this in a workshop I was greeted by a chorus of ‘E? More like the whole damned alphabet!’

We do this out of habit because we’ve never stopped to think about it. However, I’m hoping it’s pretty obvious from that graph that common sense suggests locating the point at which we should stop if we want to be most productive.

When it’s pointed out to them like this, most people point to somewhere around D and say that’s where to stop. (Mathematically it’s C, but D is close enough.) The point is, it’s got to be before E, obviously. But it’s only obvious when you step back from the grindstone and look at it like this.

How long is your A–D?
Ah, now… that’s the question.
 
It’s different for different people, and for different tasks for the same person.
 
For example, I start to lose the will to live after about 15 minutes of proofreading. After about 20 I lose the will for anyone within reach to live, too. You have been warned.
 
By comparison, I have a member of my team (hello, Clare!) who can smell a misplaced comma in the dark, before I turn on the computer on, and at a range of over 200 miles. For proofreading, her A–D is about 90 minutes.
 
Conversely, when it comes to research I can work solidly for up to two and a half hours or so. (I spent 24 years as a university researcher.)

How should we use this?
Here’s a simple tool that will help you be as mind-bendingly productive as possible.
 
Jot down all the major things in your job – ignore stuff you only ever do once in a blue moon. And be quite crude about it if you need to. Then make your best guess of your A–D for that time.
 
I asked Louise, our host, to put together some numbers. These are crude estimates but they give you an idea.

• Editing and proofreading: 90 minutes
• Blogging: 120 minutes
• Sending invoices: 15 minutes
• Social media: 30 minutes
• Website maintenance: 15 minutes
• Responding to emails and phone calls: 30 minutes
• Recording and editing videos: 40 minutes

Remember, these are Louise’s first guesses for how long she can undertake each task until she becomes tired and unproductive, not how long she should work on any given document/book or whatever.

When you know how long you’re at maximum productivity for, block those things into your diary in time chunks that match, less about 20 minutes or so (use some common sense here for things with only a short A–D!).

Lots of people find it handy to set up an alert on their phone for the t−20 moment; when it goes off, you should ask yourself a brutally hard question – formally, consciously and with intent: Am I in the C bit of the graph or past it?

If things are good, you’re golden. If not, adjust the time in your diary and the alert on your phone. Use the new information in the future.

Back to Louise. This is what her typical working day looks like at the moment. Note that she’s only got six hours in a day, so straight away you can see that something’s got to give!

That way she’s be working at her maximum productivity for much more of the time.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if by upping how much work she can cover in a six-hour day, she doesn’t need to steal time from her husband in the evening? (Your mileage may vary of course! You might want to have the excuse!)

The downside
What’s the snag? Well, the main drawback of this is that your diary will look like an explosion in a rainbow factory and you’ll have to put some effort in to make it work. Nothing worth doing works without a bit of initial mental sweat.

Implementing this change might require a complete shift in your mindset. And for that you’re gonna need a whole lot of chutzpah. But trust me – it’s worth it.

You spend units of ‘courage’ and get back units of time.

Personal note (or bragging, if you prefer)
Still not convinced? By making sure I chopped my day up to what worked best for me, a couple of years ago, in only a three-month period I achieved the following:

• increased the amount of time I spent with my friends
• saw more of my daughters, who live at the far end of the country
• had a holiday with my extended family
• continued to run my own successful, small business and extended the amount of work we tender for
• researched and wrote a book that got to number six in the best-sellers list.

You may have detected a degree of smugness there. Sorry!

Your turn!

What do you think? How long are your A–C periods? And your C–E periods? The ratio between those two could give you a reasonable idea of how much time you’re wasting.

Let us know!

Want to know more?
Simon's a presentations expert as well as a productivity guru. If you want to get in touch, here's what you need:

• AIR | @AIRproductivity
• Presentation Genius | @presentations​

Proofreading for publishers is something every professionally trained new entrant to the field should consider. Many of my experienced colleagues work exclusively for publishers. I used to and don't regret it for a minute.

And it can be profitable, despite what you might have heard.

Just a few of the benefits of publisher work include:

• Regular commissions
• Varied and interesting projects
• Big-name authors that'll make your portfolio stand out
• Testimonials that really count
• Industry experience
• Clearly defined service parameters

Some proofreaders are finding that publisher work is not as profitable as it once was. Perhaps the fees haven't increased in real terms, or the proofreader is being expected to check more words per paid page. Being efficient has become key to sustaining these valuable client relationships.

The PDF below includes some tips and tricks on how to make proofreading for publishers (and packagers) profitable by spicing up your digital efficiency. The advice is based on my experience of working for academic publishers for over a decade.

​Click on the image to download your free copy. I hope you find it useful.

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.

• Conversations with Sophie Playle and Victoria Woodside helped me to unpick my own services and gently redefine them while staying true to my brand.
• Then John Espirian hooked me up via Twitter with marketing masters Andrew and Pete, who are helping me and thousands of others to make our businesses more engaging and visible.

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.

• At one of my Norfolk SfEP group meetings, Sarah Patey, John Ingamells and Julia Sandford-Cooke talked through what their non-fiction development editing roles involve. One of the most interesting points to come out of the discussion was not just the similarities in what they do but also the differences – demonstrating the importance of getting more than one viewpoint when you’re leaning something new.
• Then Sophie Playle recommended Nicola Morgan's Write to be Published, which I found to be a thoroughly engaging text (and I'll be posting soon about why I think its novel-craft guidance is useful for copyeditors and proofreaders even if they don't offer developmental editing services). Sophie's Liminal Pages blog is also full of interesting and accessible posts on big-picture work and well worth a read for those who want to learn more about developmental fiction editing.
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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.

• Hazel Bird taught me how to create drop-down boxes in Word (read ‘Using combo boxes in style sheets’ if you want to take advantage of her excellent advice). I used this information to redesign my style sheets so that I don’t have to retype recurring options every time I create a sheet for a new client (e.g. -is- or -iz- spelling; full points or not after Mr, Mrs, etc.). Invoice elements (e.g. settlement terms and repeat-client names and addresses) could benefit from the same treatment.
• Adrienne Montgomerie taught me how to customize Word’s ribbon so that it works more efficiently for me (see ‘Make a custom tab on Word’s ribbon’). I used this to easily run the new macro I’d learned from Gordon (see above).

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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.

• Sophie Playle used Facebook to ask whether anyone else had encountered a wee problem with Jack Lyon’s FileCleaner. I don’t know how but I’d missed out on that little gem. I went and checked it out and promptly signed up for the free trial. You can read about it on The Editorium website.
• CK MacLeod’s article ‘DIY design with Canva’ on Tech Tools for Writers was another eyeopener and got me completely hooked on Canva. This neat online graphic-design tool is a staple when I want to create icons, badges, business holiday cards, and covers for my books and booklets.
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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.
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• I’d long used a per-hour method to determine my prices, but I was open to new ideas. Kate Haigh talked with me at length about her preferred approach (quoting per 1,000 words) on several occasions over a two-year period (including a camping weekend where we met face-to-face for the first time despite being professional buddies for years!) and encouraged me to test it. It had a dramatic effect on my business. Not only did it become quicker to quote, I also boosted my earnings, increasing my average hourly rate by £8 per hour.
  
  
• John Espirian blogged about being transparent about prices (see ‘Pricing: a question of trust’). His article convinced me that a test was in order, where I would publish my prices on my website. I wasn’t entirely happy with the results of my test and unpublished my prices (though I don’t yet have enough data to be sure that transparency was actually the wrong decision for my business). Regardless, what’s important is not the result. What’s important is that I tried something new. I consider the test a success because I have confidence in my current decision to not publish my prices online.

​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.

• Your editorial society’s annual conference might be a fab opportunity. If you find the idea a little daunting, try a chapter meeting first where the numbers are smaller, or join in the discussion in an online forum.
• If you attend a course, take business cards with you so that you have something to hand out that will remind other attendees who you are.
• If you’re already a member of an editorial society but there’s no local group in your area, why not start one yourself? It could turn out to be one of the best moves you ever made!

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!

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!

In this article, I consider how resistance to change can stop us from learning new skills or testing new methods to make our editorial businesses more successful.

‘I’m not trying that!’
Editors, like any other professionals, can fall into the trap of resisting change – for example, not trying out a new marketing strategy; claiming they have no need for business tools such as macros; or refusing to take on work that requires using a new platform, software package, or format.

All of us have either said, or heard one of our colleagues say, ‘I don’t work in that way,’ ‘That’s a bad idea,’ ‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ ‘That’s not the way I do things,’ or ‘I just couldn’t bring myself to do that’ at some point in our careers.

We work in a highly competitive, crowded, and international marketplace. We’re business owners, not hobbyists. That means our businesses have to earn us a living. Our market isn’t static – it’s always shifting:
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• New software and digital tools are developed
• New platforms on which we can make ourselves visible emerge and expand in terms of their importance
• Our clients ask us to work in ways that colleagues in the editorial field 40 years ago likely never anticipated
• The types of clients for whom we are discoverable, and the ways in which they find us, are more varied than I expected when I set up my business in 2006.

All of that means that resisting change and failing to learn the new skills or to try new methods (whether technical, promotional, or practical) simply doesn’t make sense for today’s editorial business owner.

​If we refuse to change, we refuse to compete – and that’s a path to business failure.

Why do we resist change?
According to psychologist Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, it can be a result of ‘learning anxiety’ (Diane Coutu, ‘The Anxiety of Learning,’ Harvard Business Review, March 2002). Says Schein:

​Back in 2002, Schein discussed the issue in relation to the challenges of organizational change and transformation, corporate culture, and leadership. But that quotation can apply just as well to the editorial solopreneur in 2018.

We may be anxious about making a change for fear of not doing it well; equally, we might have heard or read negative opinions from our colleagues about using a particular technical tool, testing a new marketing effort, or changing to a new way of working – and that makes us wary of being seen publicly to be trying such things, lest they draw negative attention.

So how might we go about tackling learning anxiety so that we can embrace change rather than resisting it? There are several options:

• Plan the change so that it’s considered and systematic
• Redefine ‘failure’ as ‘lessons learned’
• Do a cost–benefit analysis

Plan the change so that it’s considered and systematic
If you think there are changes that should be made, or new skills learned, approach them as you would a business plan. By breaking the changes down into components, they will seem more manageable and less anxiety-inducing.

Redefine ‘failure’ as ‘lessons learned’
We must accept that change always brings risk. However well we plan change, however well it appears to meet our business objectives, the outcomes aren’t always what we hoped for or expected.

The key here is to redefine those results in a positive light whereby ‘failure’ becomes ‘lessons learned.’
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• What if that cold-calling session to local businesses doesn’t bring in any immediate new clients?
• What if that training course in a particular software program won’t pay for itself because no clients will ask you for that skill?
• What if some people in your social media network think that the directory you’ve chosen to advertise in is disreputable and encourages a race to the bottom, rates-wise?

All those outcomes could occur; but it’s also possible – particularly if you’ve made thoughtful, informed decisions about what changes to test – that the following will happen:

• You might acquire a new lead
• You might take on a piece of work using your software skills
• You might generate interest from your online colleagues about your marketing efforts.

And even if you do end up in the worst-case scenario, who’s to say that the changes you’ve made won’t reap rewards further down the line? Who’s to say that those colleagues who were disparaging about your efforts are correct in their assumptions?

Being prepared to try new things is how we learn. When the outcomes are not as expected, that’s not failure; that’s information on which we can make future decisions about what not to do, what needs tweaking, and what needs retrying.

Not being prepared to learn and change in a competitive market is more likely to lead to failure that trying something new. If you don’t try, you don’t know.

There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, only to find that it didn’t work. Any normal human being trying to be creative when running their business is not going to get it right every time.

And if things don’t go to plan, you’ll be in great company. Here’s Woody Allen: ‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.’ And here’s Thomas Edison: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’

Do a cost–benefit analysis
If you’re nervous about making a particular change, do a cost–benefit analysis by considering the following questions:

• What will I gain from the change?
• What will I lose if I change the way I do things?
• What will stay the same, even though I’ve changed things?
• How will the changes make me feel once I’ve completed them?

​Working through these questions can highlight benefits and challenges, and help you to think through ways to maximize the former and minimize the stress of the latter.

Early results and later changes
When I first set up this tool in 2015, the early results were encouraging. In the first month, I had around 20 enquiries via text messaging, 4 of which led to commissions to proofread or copyedit works of self-published fiction. I also acquired a small, fast-turnaround job for a business client. I turned down requests to proofread a business book and several theses, owing to the time frame.

Over the next two years the focus of my business shifted to editing exclusively for indie fiction writers. I no longer accepted work from publishers, businesses, students or academics.

Something else shifted too. The clients I was attracting weren't using the messaging option to get in touch. They were using my contact form, email or phone.

This coincided with a much tighter rebrand of my website, so I suspect I was appealing to a different kind of client ... someone who wanted to talk. I decided to remove the quick-quote messaging tool.

Still, I’m delighted that I found and tested a creative solution to my earlier resistance. I’m even more delighted that the outcome was positive for a couple of years. My fears about what I’d lose were overshadowed by the decisions I made on how to manage the service:
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• The time limit meant that I wasn't available 24/7
• The fact that I limited the service to text messaging meant I was using a device that was always with me, so there was no added inconvenience on that front
• I wasn't so inundated with requests that the service felt intrusive
• In the event that I decided to withdraw the service, I could update my website in an instant (which is what I ended up doing)

​Even more importantly, perhaps, carrying out this exercise forced me to think more broadly about how client trust relates to pricing transparency.

Taking professional responsibility
Resistance to change is a normal human emotion. However, we are business owners. We work for ourselves. There’s no one in the HR department to walk us through the changes we might need to make even though we feel nervous about them.

Change is inevitable. The fact that it can be anxiety-inducing needs to be acknowledged. The key is to ensure that anxiety doesn’t get in the way of action.

​The decisions I made about pricing transparency will not be something all my colleagues will agree with or want to implement. That’s fine – they have their businesses to run and I have mine. They make the decisions that are best for them while I make the decisions that are best for me.

Still feel reluctant to make a change, or learn something new?

• Break it down into smaller components so that it seems more manageable.
• View it as an opportunity for discovery rather than failure.
• And analyse it in terms of what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose.

Chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. Whatever happens, you’ll know that Woody and Thomas would pat you on the back for it!

This is an updated version of an article originally published on An American Editor.

An in-house editor discusses how he handles receipt of substandard work from a freelancer. Also worth noting is his advice on how a freelancer might interpret a lack of contact from an in-house editor and what to do about it ...

Philip Stirups sheds light on his experiences of editorial production. To be clear, Philip’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 currently works, his residency here is not in the capacity of a representative of that particular publishing house. Over to Philip ...

At the outset, I want to say that the majority of proofreading jobs I receive back from freelancers are good. However, in a handful of instances, a job comes back and, unfortunately, it isn't up to scratch. Problems could include:
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• The freelancer has misunderstood the brief and marked up inappropriately
• The freelancer has not followed the brief, thereby failing to carry out some of the required elements of intervention
• The in-house editor’s brief was unclear or lacking in sufficient detail to enable the freelancer to meet expectations
• The freelancer has over-marked or under-marked in relation to the in-house editor’s expectations of what “proofreading” actually entails. See my previous post on selecting new editorial freelancers, in particularly the comments; these highlight the issue of how different publishers (and freelance editorial professionals) define “proofreading” and how a lack of clarity as to what is required could lead to confusion over the level of markup required: Undercover editor: Selecting new editorial freelancers.

From an editorial perspective, this can cause an array of different problems.

First, an unsatisfactory proofread will usually lead to the in-house editor having to step in to compensate, which can in turn have an adverse impact on the book schedule.

A second problem, from an in-house editorial perspective, is even trickier: how to give feedback in an honest, yet tactful, way.

Breaking the bad news …
On the surface, the simple solution to this seems to be: "tell it as it is". However, this is easier in theory than in practice. The problem is that it’s quite difficult to convey tone via email. I want to get across what has been missed, but in such a way as not to seem condescending.

Furthermore, I don't want the freelancer to go away thinking they've done a bad job, when overall they haven’t. I could use the phone in order to avoid tone problems.

However, I believe that an email is more beneficial to the freelancer because it provides them with a written record of the issues; this means they have something to refer back to when they carry out future work for the in-house editor. 

Receiving criticism, albeit constructive feedback, can be a shock for the freelancer, and very upsetting. I don’t want my suppliers to lose confidence when I have to tell them a job didn’t meet my requirements.

Instead, I want to communicate the message in a way that enables them to move forward, strong in the knowledge that by attending to the highlighted problems our working relationship can continue satisfactorily. Email gives them the time and space to digest the feedback I've offered in a non-confrontational way.

In cases where the work continues to be substantially below expectations, the clearest feedback a freelancer will receive may be represented by them not being offered further work.

This isn't to say that, overall, they are not good at what they do – rather, each job needs to be assessed on an individual basis, and when a freelancer is unable to use critical feedback to meet the in-house editor’s needs, the editor may decide that the supplier is no longer a good fit.

Things aren’t always what they seem …
Being offered no work, or only intermittent work, is not always an indication of poor fit or poor-quality work. It can often simply be, as I have often experienced, a case of there being no work available at the time.

Publishers' production workflows vary. A large house, with multiple imprints, that publishes mass-market paperback fiction may have a steady stream of projects to offer freelancers throughout the year, while a smaller independent academic press specializing in social science monographs or student handbooks may have busy and quiet spells in its production process.

It may also be that the freelancer had regularly turned down work, owing to the demands of their schedule. In this case, the in-house editor may have taken the decision to focus on other suppliers who are more often available.

It’s not a question of poor fit or poor quality; rather, the freelancer has simply slipped out of the in-house editor's mind.

If you’ve not been offered work from one of your in-house editors for a longer time than you feel comfortable with, get in touch. It never hurts to drop an editor a message to ask whether they have any projects.

The worst they can say is “no”, and even if they don't have anything to offer you now, but are happy to work with you again, you’re back on their radar.

Don’t be afraid to ask …
I cannot say there is a right or wrong way to give feedback. However, I firmly believe that openness on both sides is the key. I am willing to admit that my freelancer briefs could be improved. If you ever want feedback from your editor, just ask ...

​And remember: it is never personal; it’s about meeting a set of business requirements. We in-house editors and freelancers are on the same team.
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Exercising the right to accept or decline work is, in my opinion, one of the best things about owning one’s own business. And yet some editorial professionals feel guilty about saying no. What's to be done?

Some of us have experienced a situation where we have to withdraw from an ongoing project because of what one of my colleagues calls “scope creep”.

Here, the originally agreed terms of the work have been breached by the client, rendering continuation of the project non-viable unless new terms can be negotiated that are acceptable to both parties.

​This demonstrates why it’s important to clarify the parameters of any editorial project before an agreement is made to carry out the work. 

How to pull out of existing project work is beyond the scope of this article. Here I’m focusing on saying no to the offer of editorial work prior to commencement of the project, and how guilt should not be part of the editorial business-owner’s decision to so.

In Part I, I look at the reasons for accepting or declining work, how some editorial freelancers talk about feeling guilty, and how those statements stack up against the reality of what’s going on.

In Part II, I’ll consider some simple ways of saying no that make it clear that the project is being declined, why this decision is being made, and what the client can do to find an alternative supplier.

I’ll also explore the dangers of using an over-pricing strategy to deter an unwanted client, and consider how the guilt-ridden editorial pro might place her feelings within an adapted 10/10/10 framework in order to move forward with a decision that’s in her business's best interests.
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​I might decline a proofreading project for one, or several, of the following reasons:

• The customer wishes to pay a fee that is lower than I am prepared to accept. The fee she is prepared to pay doesn’t meet my required (what I need to earn) and desired (what I want to earn) hourly rate.
• The time frame for the project is tight, given my existing work schedule and my non-work commitments.
• I feel uncomfortable with the subject matter.
• My initial assessment of the work indicates that the project isn’t ready for proofreading; it needs a level of editing that I don’t feel qualified to provide.
• I’ve worked with the customer on a previous occasion and, based on that experience, do not wish to continue the business relationship. Problems might have included late payment, changing the terms of the project mid-way, overstepping professional–personal boundaries, untimely/erratic communication, etc.

I might accept a proofreading project for one, or several, of the following reasons:

• The customer offers an acceptable fee. Or, even if the fee is below my desired and required hourly rate, I enjoy working for that customer and can afford to accept the fee offered because the achieved hourly rate for my business as a whole is high enough to accommodate my choice.
• The time frame is tight, but I’m excited about the project and find ways to move things around in my schedule such that I can fit it in.
• I have extensive experience of working on the subject matter. Or the genre/client type may be one that I wish to gain experience of working with because I wish to expand my market. The proposed project is an opportunity to explore a new client base and build a portfolio in the sector. 
• The work has been professionally copy-edited and is ready for proofreading. The client understands the different levels of editorial intervention, and our expectations of what I will be doing with the text are mutually acceptable.
• I’ve worked with the client on previous occasions and found the business relationship to be rewarding. We both agree on the parameters within which the work will take place. The customer pays on time, behaves professionally, communicates clearly, and adheres to the original terms of the contract.

​See also Liz Broomfield’s (2013) discussion of what kinds of work you might say no to at various stages of your business’s development.

​Whether I accept or decline, the choice is mine. I’m not bound to carry out proofreading work that, for whatever reason, I don’t wish to. There’s no boss telling me that our company is contractually bound to do A or B, or that I must work for X, even though I find dealing with X stressful, intimidating, infuriating, or upsetting.

I choose the hours I need/wish to work. I choose the type of editorial work I carry out (in my case, proofreading). I choose the material I feel comfortable with. I decide whether a fee is acceptable based on my needs and wants.

Ultimately, I can decline a project for no other reason than I simply don’t fancy doing it. End of story.
​

​Despite having control over the choices they can make, it’s not uncommon to hear editorial freelancers say they feel guilty about not accepting a job:

1. The strapped-for-cash client: “I really don’t want to lower my fee, but I know the author is really strapped for cash and I feel guilty about not offering a discount. What would you do?”
   
   
2. The time-poor and emotional client: “Her supervisor says she needs to resubmit an edited version by next week. She’s in a bit of a state and has begged me to help her. There’s no way I can do what needs to be done in that time frame but she just called again and was in floods of tears. I feel so guilty. What should I do?”
   
   
3. The manipulative client: “I’ve worked with X before and it was a bit of a nightmare, but she says she trusts me and doesn’t want to work with anyone else. She had bad experiences with proofreaders before she met me and is adamant that it’s me or nobody. I feel guilty turning her down. Help!”
   ​
   
4. The inexperienced client: “The work is a mess – it needs rewriting, not proofreading. He’s new to this and I feel guilty about telling him I don’t want the job but I don’t have the time to explain to him what the problems are because I wouldn’t be able to bill him for this. Any advice, please?”

​In all of the above, the story is of the problems being faced by the client if the editorial pro turns down the work. However, we as business owners need to flip things around and look at the situation from our own point of view.
​

Now let's look at the above 4 scenarios from the perspective of the editorial business owner:

1. The strapped-for-cash client: The issue here is not that the author is strapped for cash. Rather, it’s your own cash flow and overall economic needs that need to be assessed.
   
   We’ve all been strapped for cash. Having limited financial resources means we have to forego luxuries and save up for necessities. I’m too strapped for cash to buy a Ferrari so I’ve foregone this luxury and settled for a Ford Focus.
   
   I need a new printer but the one that would best suit my needs is priced higher than my budget. I’m not asking the sales assistant in Staples to reduce the price because I’m strapped for cash. Instead I’m saving up because it’s an important requirement for my business.
   
   If your client can’t afford what you need to earn and want to earn, they need to forego your services or save up. If you want to negotiate, do so, but guilt isn't a good enough reason go down this path. Rather, it’s about making a professional decision concerning what you are prepared to accept, based on your financial requirements, for the services you offer. 
   
   
2. The time-poor and emotional client: If you can’t do the job in the required time frame because the client didn’t give you enough notice, feeling guilty won’t expand the number of hours available in a work week! You know what time you have available.
   
   Either the job is doable or it’s not. Accept or decline accordingly. Most of us find ourselves in situations with friends and family where emotional manipulation comes into play – that’s the stuff of personal relationships. Save your emotions for those you love.
   
   ​With the client, the relationship is professional, not personal. If a client tries to manipulate you emotionally, then they, not you, should be feeling guilty. If you don’t want to find a way to accommodate the client because it would have a negative impact on your work/home life, thank them for contacting you, state clearly and briefly that you are not physically able to take on the work under the time parameters offered, and close the correspondence.
   
   
3. The manipulative client: The client’s previous bad experiences are not relevant. It’s your previous experience that is relevant. One of the benefits of owning your own business is precisely the fact that, unlike when you’re an employee, there is no compulsion to work with people who make you feel as if you are being manipulated, with people whose problems become your problems.
   
   ​Guilt isn't a good enough reason to take the work. If you don’t want to work with someone, decline the project.
   
   
4. The inexperienced client: If the work doesn’t fall within the parameters of your service provision, it’s not your fault that the client doesn’t understand this. Feeling guilty won't improve their awareness. Instead, decline the work and guide the customer towards one of the many free resources available online that provide clear advice. Most national editorial societies have such guidelines.

​

​Psychologist Judith Sills (2013) argues that “No – a metal grate that slams shut the window between one's self and the influence of others – is rarely celebrated. It's a hidden power because it is both easily misunderstood and difficult to engage” and “it is easily confused with negativity”.

So, when we decline work, we need think of the decision not in terms of negative impact on our clients, but rather in terms of the positive impact on our editorial businesses. 

In Part 2, we’ll look at ways to communicate an uncomplicated “no” message, and consider an adapted version of Suzy Welch’s 10/10/10 framework that should help the guilt-ridden editorial pro to say no with greater confidence.