The Begin Self-Publishing Podcast is dedicated to sharing tools, tips, advice and ideas about self-publishing from industry specialists.
The BSP host, Tim Lewis, kindly invited me onto the show to talk about fiction editing. Tim and I discuss the following:
You can listen to the full episode here: Fiction Editing with Louise Harnby Previous episodes have addressed non-fiction editing (with my friend and colleague Denise Cowle), business tips, marketing advice, social media promotion, cover design, interior formatting and publishing services. For more information, or to subscribe, go to the Begin Self-Publishing Podcast.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
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My friend and colleague Denise Cowle is a specialist non-fiction editor who works with a wide range of businesses, so she understands the pressure to publish better than most. Here's her expert advice on when good enough is acceptable ... and when it's not.
Perfection and the pressure to publish
When you write for your business, is it perfect? Should it be? Small businesses without the benefit of a dedicated marketing department are increasingly recognizing the power that quality content has to raise their profile, connect with their potential clients and ultimately drive sales. However, the focus on publishing content regularly can pile on the pressure to get something – anything – out there, to keep up with the publishing schedule for your blog, or to update your web copy and marketing materials to reflect the latest developments in your field. Does this writing have to be perfect? Should we expect everything that people produce to be error-free? If you pay too much attention to the Grammar Police, you’ll be paralysed with fear that a misplaced apostrophe or misused word will bring your carefully constructed business crashing down around your ears. There’s no excuse for poor grammar, they’ll bellow, caps lock on, from behind the anonymity of their screens. Ignorance of correct spelling is the scourge of society, they’ll mutter, labelling you as feckless, careless and lazy, without knowing anything about you or your business, other than the fact you typed except instead of accept. But as an editor, and advocate of content marketing, I beg to differ. I think there are occasions when it’s OK to put out content with errors. Shock! I know! Am I doing myself out of a job here? Not exactly.
This is not permission to abandon all standards
Before you go rushing off to dispense with the services of your freelance editor and disable spellchecker, let me explain. I’m not for a minute suggesting that you should take this as permission to abandon all efforts to produce great, error-free copy. I’m working on the assumption here that you’ve taken time to make your copy the best it can possibly be within your time and budgetary constraints. I’m assuming you’ve used the tools and techniques available to you; you’ve run the inbuilt spellchecker or other software, read through your text carefully, and used a dictionary when you’ve been unsure. But sometimes, despite all your efforts, errors remain, either because you’ve missed them or because you don’t actually recognize them as errors in the first place. You go ahead and hit the publish button, and your mistakes are out there for all the world to see. We’ve all done it, but it’s rarely the end of the world. When is it OK to publish content with errors? In my view, it’s forgivable to have the odd mistake in content that:
It comes down to the purpose of the content, the medium you’re using, and the value your audience places on it. Your reputation will survive a typo in a tweet signposting your latest blog (I’ve done it myself and lived to tell the tale). Unless, of course, the typo is so unintentionally funny or rude that it goes viral! And even then, is there such a thing as bad publicity? It depends on your business, and what the error is. If you’ve created a free email course as lead generation I’d expect it to be error-free. However, the odd missing apostrophe or spelling mistake may not be a deal-breaker for your audience if the content is amazing and provides lots of value.
When is it not OK to publish content with errors?
It’s not OK to publish content with any errors if:
If you’re an editor or proofreader, to my mind this is a no-brainer. Your clients are looking for perfection, or as near as dammit. There is no margin for error here. And don’t think you can get away with proofreading your own writing because, let me say this clearly: You. Will. Miss. Things. Who wants to hire an editor with spelling or grammatical errors in their copy? The answer should be: no one.
Banish procrastination and publish!
No one wants to see any writing, however fabulous the content, strewn with spelling mistakes and grammatical blunders. But I’d much rather see you sharing your content with the world than keeping it in a draft folder because you’re worried that it might contain errors. Don’t allow fear to prevent you from publishing. Do your due diligence – run spellchecker, follow my tips on how to proofread your own writing – and get it out there! The world doesn’t stop turning because of a couple of typos, and you owe it to yourself and your business to write that copy, making it as good as you can. Should you hire someone to edit/proofread blog posts or other content? Rather than slogging over copy like it’s your overdue English homework, you might recognize that your time is better spent elsewhere and free yourself from the burden. If writing isn’t an enjoyable part of your work, wouldn’t it be better to outsource all or part of the process? Giving yourself permission to do this acknowledges that your time is a commodity in your business, and you have a responsibility to spend it wisely. You should consider this option when:
Is good enough, enough? Not everyone is blessed with the ability to write well and consistently, but I believe that everyone can improve with practice. Learning from mistakes is a crucial part of the process, and that can only happen when you write your web copy or publish your blog and allow other people to read it. Good enough can be enough when it’s on the road to even better.
Denise Cowle is a copy-editor and proofreader for non-fiction. She works with educational materials, reports, marketing copy and blogs. Her blog focuses on helping you to be a better non-fiction writer. Denise is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
Further reading from Denise
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly. Slipping into character – understanding the impact of narrative point of view (Sophie Playle)7/9/2017
Point of view can be difficult to master if you've not studied novel craft. My friend and colleague Sophie Playle has. She's an outstanding developmental editor who knows how to help writers get the big-picture stuff right. Today, she takes you through the fundamentals of narrative point of view so you (and your reader) know who's telling your story.
Over to Sophie ...
As an author, you have a lot of decisions to make when it comes to putting the ideas you have for your novel down on paper. Where should you start the story? Which characters should you focus on? Should you write in past or present tense? Third or first person? The possibilities are overwhelming.
It seems counterintuitive, but narrowing your options can be quite freeing. Once you’ve eliminated the paralysis of infinite choice, you can focus your creativity. Choosing the viewpoint from which you tell your story is one decision you should certainly consider. It doesn’t matter whether you think about this before you start writing or during the redrafting stage. Either way, by deliberately and purposefully aligning your narration with a particular character, you’ll be able to:
When a novelist hasn’t considered the point of view from which they’re telling their story, it makes things a lot harder for the reader. The story might lack focus, the characters might feel at arm’s length, and the writing style could fall flat. If you struggle with any of these issues, considering point of view could be the answer.
What is ‘point of view’ in fiction?
Let’s start with the basics. When we talk about point of view in fiction, we’re talking about the position from which the events of the novel are being observed or experienced. It’s essentially where you’ve decided to place the lens through which a reader accesses your story. [My writing] students talk about 'point of view' […] as if it were mechanical, when in fact it refers to the hardest and most thrilling thing we do—becoming someone else, becoming that person so thoroughly that if we’ve decided the person is nearsighted, we’ll imagine the room in a blur as soon as she takes off her glasses; if we’ve made him so jealous he can kill, we’ll feel mad rage down to our tingling fingertips when his girlfriend looks at another man.
Alice Mattison, The Kite and the String
But before we get into the details of slipping into character, we should back up a little. There are many narrative layers to a novel, and it’s useful to understand them.
Narrators, not authors, tell stories.** The difference is subtle, but important. If the author tells a story, the reader knows it’s made up. But if the narrator tells the story, it’s much easier for the reader to willingly suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in what the narrator is saying. When you write, you – as the author – should disappear. Instead, you channel the narrator. The narrator can either be a character in the story or a disembodied observer. Either way, you see what they see, hear what they hear, and smell what they smell as they experience the events of your story. And depending on the type of narrator you’ve chosen to use, the narrator can also slip in and out of the perspective of your viewpoint character (or characters), experiencing the world through their body and mind, expressing those experiences using their language and style. I admit, it’s a little confusing to wrap your head around. So let’s take a quick look at the most common types of narration and the implications each can have on your writing, and hopefully all will become clear.
The different types of narration
FIRST PERSON First-person narration is when a character is telling the story from their own perspective and uses the pronoun ‘I’. Unless the character is telepathic, they will only be able to express the events of the novel from their own point of view and have knowledge of things only they have experienced. If they learn things from other characters, this knowledge will be filtered through (and potentially distorted by) their interpretation. Pros
Cons
EXAMPLE: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
THIRD PERSON OBJECTIVE
Third-person narration refers to characters as ‘he/she/it’. Third person objective is used when the point of view from which the story is told is like a floating camera following the characters around. The narrator is almost invisible as it won’t express any thoughts and emotions and can only report on sensory experience – what could be seen, heard or smelt by any onlooker. There is no direct access to the thoughts and emotions of the characters, other than what can be interpreted by their dialogue and actions. This viewpoint isn’t normally used over the course of a whole novel, and it can be blended with third-person subjective (see below). Sometimes new writers will inadvertently use this viewpoint if they’ve taken the advice ‘show, don’t tell’ to an ill-considered extreme! Pros
Cons
EXAMPLE: Spade rose bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken armchair beside his desk. He was quite six feet tall. The steep rounded slope of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical—no broader than it was thick—and kept his freshly pressed grey coat from fitting very well. Miss Wonderly murmured, “Thank you,” softly as before and sat down on the edge of the chair’s wooden seat.
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
THIRD PERSON SUBJECTIVE (OR LIMITED)
Unlike with third person objective, the reader has access to the thoughts and emotions of the viewpoint character. The story is told only through one viewpoint character’s perspective at a time. We see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think what they do; the narrative is written in the character’s voice; and the reader can know only what the character knows. Third person subjective narration can be blended with third person objective narration to varying degrees. If the narrative is slightly more objective, the character’s direct thoughts might be made visually distinct from the main narrative by either being presented in italics or quote marks; if the narrative is very much subjective, separating direct thoughts isn’t necessary because the whole narrative is written from the direct perspective of the character. Jumping from one viewpoint character to another in close succession is known as head hopping and can be very confusing for the reader. It’s advisable to stick to one viewpoint character at a time. Pros
Cons
EXAMPLE: It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice.
-- Lois Lowry, The Giver
OMNISCIENT
With omniscient narration, the narrator knows everything and isn’t limited to the viewpoint of any single character. An omniscient narration could be written in present or past tense, and use first or third person; they could be a character in the story (like a god or an enlightened person), or they could be an observing nonentity. Completely omniscient viewpoints are difficult to pull off well and have fallen out of fashion. Pros
Cons
EXAMPLE: Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. Fifteen-year-old Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt ... Elizabeth – or Beth, as everyone called her – was a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful expression, which was seldom disturbed ...
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Omniscient narration is quite complex, so let’s go into a little more detail. Omniscient narration can never truly be all-knowing because of the limitations of the nature of writing and reading: words must be read in order, so experiences must be felt in a linear way, which is not the same as having all knowledge in your head simultaneously.
Because of this, as with all writing, the issue is that of choice: what information does the omniscient narrator choose to divulge at any given time and, more importantly, why? Jumping from one viewpoint character to another (head hopping) should still be kept to a minimum to avoid confusion, and using an omniscient narrator is not an excuse for using this device in an uncontrolled way!
How to choose the right viewpoint for your novel
Choosing which type of narration to use will depend on the kind of effect you want to create, and the kind of knowledge-handling your plot requires. When deciding which point of view to choose, ask yourself the following:
These might not be simple questions to answer, but if you can figure out which answers are most important to you, you should be able to decide which narrative form and which character’s or characters’ viewpoints will allow you to tell the type of story you want to tell. How to control the POV in your story Once you’re aware of the issues of point of view, it’s surprisingly easy to control it and avoid confusion and inconsistency. All it takes is a little logical thinking, depending on your answers to the following questions:
Once you’ve answered these questions, it should be simple to use your chosen viewpoint in a consistent and focused way. How to handle multiple viewpoints Should you have multiple viewpoints in your novel? It’s really up to you – and will depend on the type of story you want to tell and the effects you want to create. The main advantage of sticking to one viewpoint is that it allows you to explore it in greater depth; the main advantage of using multiple viewpoints is that it allows you to explore the events of the novel in greater breadth. Switching the POV often makes it harder for the reader to really get to know a character. It’s the equivalent of going to a party and talking to a different person every twenty minutes. My advice is to keep your number of viewpoints to a minimum. Use only what the story needs – not what you feel like writing. If you have two narrators or characters telling the same story, you need a very good reason for it. When using multiple viewpoints, it’s imperative to make the switch between them seamless and clear. It’s best to start a new chapter or scene when switching viewpoints; at the very least, start a new paragraph. Whichever method you choose, keep the pattern consistent. Don’t just have one chapter in which there are multiple switches when all your other chapters stick exclusively to one viewpoint. Summing up The way you chose to narrate your story will have an impact on how your story is read. Different narrative styles allow you to create different effects. Choosing viewpoint characters brings focus, tension and originality to your writing. Controlling the point-of-view elements in your novel and learning to slip into character is one impactful way to become a better writer and write better books.
Further reading from Sophie
* One crucial thing you probably didn't realize about point of view ** Whose story is it anyway? How to choose your narrator
Sophie Playle runs Liminal Pages, where she offers editorial services to authors and training to fiction editors. Want a freebie with absolutely no strings attached? Sure thing. Click here to download ‘Self-Editing Your Novel’.
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Should you invest several hundred pounds in professional proofreading and editing training when there are free online courses available? A reader asked me whether the freebies are worth their salt …
Malika asked:
Hello Louise. Your blog has helped me with a lot of things. However, I am currently doing a BA. I want to learn editing and proofreading side by side. I wanted to ask whether the websites providing free online courses on editing and proofreading are reliable. Thanks for your question, Malika! Foundational English-language skills First, I always recommend that those considering a career in this field focus on their language skills before they embark on professional editorial training. Professional proofreading and editing courses teach the practice of how and when to amend or annotate. They assume an existing above-average knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar that accords with English-language convention.
Proofreading and copyediting – what do those terms mean?
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of your question, I’d like to talk about what’s meant by the terms ‘proofreading’ and ‘editing’. The terminology is often tangled. I define the various stages of editing as follows:
The training we do (whether it’s free or charged for) needs to reflect the skills needed to carry out these levels of editing. At the end of this post I've provided a PDF that offers more detail about the problems proofreaders and editors aim to solve at each stage.
Reliability, promises and intention
Now to your query. I think that an evaluation of a course’s reliability needs to ask two questions:
EXAMPLE The course:
Your intentions:
The course has been designed to help Purdue students with the thesis-writing process, not train proofreaders to professional standards. The course is reliable in the context of its intention. It’s just not a good match for you or anyone else seeking to set up an editorial business.
Client perceptions and expectations
There’s a marketing issue at stake, too. However ‘reliable’ the free course is, it’s worth asking yourself whether it has the potential to enhance or damage your trustworthiness. Here’s the problem – there are thousands and thousands of editors and proofreaders online. The market is global, too, thanks to the internet. If a client finds you and five others, how will they decide who’s worth getting a quote from? Imagine your home needs rewiring. You’ve already had one small electrical fire and want to avoid a future catastrophe. Who do you hire? The professionally accredited electrician or the spark who did a free tutorial on YouTube? People searching for editorial services are just as discerning. They’re handing over hundreds, even thousands of pounds to a stranger. They want a professional who’s passionate about their business, takes it seriously enough to invest in high-quality training, and knows how to fix what’s wrong to industry-recognized standards. If you can’t demonstrate that you’re that person, you won’t be able to compete effectively. Some client types, publishers for example, expect an editorial pro to have completed courses from specific training providers. Others will focus on your successful completion of a test. To pass the test, you’ll need to know your stuff. If your free course doesn’t provide you with the required knowledge, you’ll come unstuck.
Ask colleagues, clients and professional organizations
Some years ago, I asked a group of UK publishers about professional training. You can read what they said in ‘Does training matter?’ (see ‘Further reading’ below). If you’re based outside the UK, call a few publishers and find out what professional training they recommend. Your national editorial society will also have guidance. There’s a list of worldwide national editorial societies in the ‘Further reading’ section, too. Practising editors and proofreaders will also have opinions. Ask in online forums about any free course you’re considering, and how it stacks up against paid-for options. Here’s one editor’s opinion: I recommend the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) for UK editorial training. That recommendation is based on my experience (I’ve not done any free editorial training) but it’s an opinion, not the law! My colleagues will have their own preferences, some of which will be based on where they live.
Pro training courses – what’s on offer
Compare any free course’s syllabus with that of an industry-recognized course. Let’s take a look at the CIEP's proofreading training: Proofreading 1: Introduction (online £103) Time: 10 hours ‘This course is suitable for beginners contemplating a career as a proofreader and for those who need to proofread as part of their job but have had little formal training. [It] teaches the very basics of proofreading; on its own it does not provide the thorough grounding needed to work as a professional proofreader. Apart from introducing the basics of proofreading, the course is designed as a taster to answer the question “Is proofreading for me?”’ You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 1: Introduction; it includes:
Proofreading 2: Headway (online £156) Time: 20–25 hours ‘This course is for people who have some knowledge and experience of proofreading and would like to learn more. It […] builds on the basic skills you already have to improve your concentration, focus and judgement.’ You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 2: Headway; it includes:
Proofreading 3: Progress (online £156) Time: 20–25 hours ‘This course guides you through more complex general and specialised material, including texts with illustrations, tables, notes and references.’ You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 3: Progress; it includes:
This is staged professional industry-recognized training that aims to make you fit for purpose and ready for market. It’s not cheap, nor should it be given that it’ll take a minimum of 50 hours to complete. No one gives away 50 hours of anything for free! If you find a free online proofreading course and it doesn’t include the content covered by the full staged CIEP syllabus outlined above (or an equivalent professional association’s course in your own country), ask yourself whether the material is sufficient for your learning requirements. When free is great – the springboard That’s not to say that freebies aren’t valuable. However, we need to recognize that, usually, what’s on offer is a glimpse, a taster. That taster might well offer insights, knowledge, tips and tools to start us on our journey. Freebies are a springboard. I use them to gauge my fit with what’s on offer. I chose to invest in professional marketing coaching earlier this year. But first I signed up for some free stuff to see whether I liked the hosts and their training methods. I provide my own freebies – my website is packed with them … PDFs, ideas, advice, booklets. These are snippets; people have to pay for my substantive books. Many editors offer free sample edits to give clients a taster; the full editorial service costs. And so it is with editorial training. The PTC offers a free taster programme for its flagship distance-learning proofreading course. The CIEP offers a free proofreading test. Will either make you ready to offer proofreading services to clients in the open market? No. Will they act as signposts for what kinds of issues you need to look out for and whether a proofreading career is for you? Definitely. But you get what you pay for!
Being a professional
Editorial work is no different to accountancy, social work, teaching, graphic design, building, or electrical engineering … you can do it well and to professional standards, or you can do it badly. If you do it well, you’ll be able to give your clients excellent customer service. They’ll use you repeatedly and refer others to you. They’ll give you testimonials that will build your social proof. If you do it badly, you’ll let your clients down. If you’re lucky they’ll only complain and ask for their money back. If you’re not, they’ll tell others how awful your work is – a PR disaster. Any courses that promise miracles for very little to no money and time need to be viewed with caution. Use them to evaluate whether a professional editorial career is right for you. Beyond that, financial investment will be necessary. I hope that helps you, Malika! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Knowing when to intervene and when to leave well enough alone is something most of us struggle with at the start of our editing and proofreading careers. This reader question highlights another dimension, that of concern with damaging authorial style in fiction. Here's my take ...
John says:
I am struggling with repetition versus an author’s style. Is there a section in New Hart’s Rules about this? Is there a golden rule that should always be followed? Is it necessary to point out repetitions if there are only two or three in a text of four pages, or if they’re in different paragraphs or in the same sentence? Thanks for your question, John. Broadly speaking, I think that as soon as something has a negative impact on the reader’s ability to navigate the story, we’re into the territory of finding solutions rather than respecting style. But more on that below. First, a caveat … The difference between voice and style You didn't ask about this, but it's something that beginner fiction writers and editors often struggle with so I decided to provide an overview here. Voice and style are often presented as the same thing in discussions about writing and editing. Actually, it's more complicated because there might be multiple voices in a novel, but one authorial style. Consider the example of a crime novel: Thinking about voice(s) In this example, the story is told through multiple points of view, though only one POV is presented per chapter – so we might follow the action through the eyes of Simon Smith in Chapter 1, and Nicole Jenson in Chapter 2, then back to Simon in Chapter 3. The narrative is written in the third person, so the voice is that of the narrator, though we will also hear Simon's and Nicole's voices through their dialogue. Still, the narrative voice should be consistent in both chapters. Overall, though, there are multiple voices in the novel – the characters’ and the narrator’s. Thinking about style Let's imagine that the author prefers short, choppy sentences to convey drama, tension and fear. Omits pronouns to keep things lean. Sometimes. He often uses contractions (I’m, we’d, you’re) to aid flow and mimic informal, natural speech patterns. And to convey emotion, he leans on dialogue rather than detailed description. All of this is his authorial style. It's present throughout the 10-book series and pulls it together. Readers can identify the books as having been written by the author in part because of the consistency of style. Now that we've made a note of that, let's return to the problem in hand ... Style versus poor writing The fiction editor needs to be aware of the difference between a style choice and a readability problem. Consider the following: 1A: She always named her cats after favourite aunts; this one was called Molly. 1B: She always named her cats after favourite aunts. This one was called Molly. 2A: He looked over his shoulder and almost felt the arrow as it whistled past. 2B: He looked over his shoulder. Almost felt the arrow as it whistled past. 3A: They walked to the end of the long hallway. At the end of the hall there was an open door beyond which lay three more hallways. They chose the left one and continued towards the interrogation room, no one said a thing as they walked. 3B: They walked the length of the hallway in silence. They reached an open door, and took a left towards the interrogation room. In 1A there’s a style choice regarding semi-colon use, and I’d respect this unless the author had specifically asked me to omit semi-colons (in which case I’d amend to 1B). In 2A there’s a style choice regarding sentence length. I’d use my judgement here. I might suggest 2B, explaining in a comment that I felt it conveyed a sense of tension more in keeping with the scene and the author’s usual style. Or I might offer two options: 2B and an alternative: He looked over his shoulder, almost felt the arrow as it whistled past. In 3A, there are multiple problems – chiefly repetition, poor flow and a comma-splice. I don’t want to rewrite the book for the author – that’s not my job – but I can’t leave this as it is. I need a sensitive recast but I need to work with what I have. I might suggest something on the lines of 3B. And that’s the difference. In 1A and 2A the readability isn’t impaired. In 3A it is. If an author’s style is to write poorly, the editor must intervene. Readability trumps poor style. Our job when line editing and copyediting is to smooth and correct when things are rough and wrong. To leave as is because ‘it’s the author’s style’ cannot be justified. To do so would render the role of the editor obsolete. We’re hired to sort out problems, and attend to them we must. Golden rules, or lack of them When it comes to line editing fiction, there’s no rule book (New Hart’s or otherwise) that will tell you what you must fix and how you must fix it. Each project's different, each brief’s different, and the style and voice(s) in the text will be different. Above all, it’s intuitive. It takes into account the tension, pace and mood of a scene, and whether the repetition is obvious and makes the writing look amateurish, or whether it’s necessary and key to the novel’s trajectory. You need to feel your way into the story, get under the skin of the writing, and make sure the reader can move forward without stumbling. And how you, John, approach it might not be how I approach it because we're two different people and our impressions are subjective. Furthermore, whether and how you deal with repetition problems will depend on frequency, proximity, what you’ve agreed with the author, and whether the amendments are essential, preferred, or, rather, gentle improvements. Different line editors would handle 3A in different ways. Some would flag the problem; some would flag and explain it; yet others would flag, explain and suggest a solution. My preference is for the latter (unless I'm proofreading). Assuming we need a recast to avoid repetition in 3A, we could do one of the following:
The approach you choose should be based on what you’ve agreed with the author beforehand. I work with some authors whose novels require heavy line editing. To keep costs down, we agree that I’ll amend the text directly rather than commenting excessively. In such cases, the authors have decided they trust me to intervene in a way that’s sensitive to their style and the voice(s) in the book. I have other clients who prefer deeper recasts to be offered in the comments. If you’re not sure how to solve a problem, or you think there are multiple solutions to dealing with repetition, the query trumps the amendment every time. I do have some 'rules'! These are not about the what but the how. Perhaps they’ll help you communicate with your author about the repetition problems in a productive way. The mindful rules of fiction editing
What’s the brief? One thing you didn’t’ mention in your query was what level of editing you’d been commissioned for. It takes time to sort out sentence-level problems such as 3A. Correcting the comma splice is a quick fix and takes a second. Creating a recast that’s emotionally responsive to the author’s style and the voice(s) in the narrative and dialogue is a different kettle of fish. Correcting the comma splice falls within my definition of proofreading – the final quality-control or verification process. The recast absolutely does not; it’s deeper sentence-level editing and has to be priced as such because it takes longer to fix. Frequent repetition problems are usually evident in a sample chapter, so the editor should be able to see whether the level of edit requested is appropriate. If you’ve been commissioned to proofread and you find yourself dealing with a few issues of repetition here and there, it’s unlikely to impact on your hourly rate; just make a gentle note in your handover report. If the file is littered with repetition that renders the work unpublishable, and this wasn’t evident in the sample you were sent, you’ll need an emergency discussion with your author to explain the problem and come to an agreement as to how to proceed. Summing up I hope this has helped. The key is first to focus on the reader’s experience. That will be your best guide as to whether the repetition needs attending to. Then focus on your relationship with the author and let that guide you as to how best to communicate the problem via direct amendment, commenting or a mixture of the two. And don’t forget the mindful rules! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
What's different about fiction editing, and is it for you? This post explores emotional responsiveness, mindfulness and artistry.
To keep things tidy, I'm talking in the main about line editing and copyediting because I specialize in sentence-level work, but some of the key principles will apply to developmental fiction editing too.
Why fiction editing is a different kind of artistry Have you ever tried something for the first time and found it difficult? Did someone review your initial effort? Did they outline problems before celebrating your achievement? If so, how did you feel? I suspect most of us have encountered this scenario at some time or other. I have, and it feels just awful. A review of anything that focuses only on the negatives – however kindly those negatives are offered – is a poor review. It matters not whether you’re an editor, a business executive, a marketer, or a parent; if you can’t find a single good thing to celebrate in the work in front of your nose, then you’ve not done the job properly. When editing fiction, the ability to celebrate first is critical – more so, I think, than with non-fiction. Note that by non-fiction I’m referring to academic, technical and journalistic works, not narrative non-fiction (sometimes called creative or literary non-fiction) such as memoir or biography, where I think the editing challenges are similar to the fiction specialist’s. In a nutshell, editing criminology requires a different touch to editing crime fiction.
It’s personal
Every writer’s book is their baby, and most writers will infuse their tomes with their own experiences. But when those experiences concern matters of love, grief, sex or despair, the process of writing – and of being edited – takes on a whole new level of intimacy. I’ve lost count of the number of authors who’ve told me they felt physically sick at the thought of contacting an editor, never mind emailing me the file. Many feel vulnerable, exposed, embarrassed. And why wouldn’t they? Imagine handing over hundreds, even thousands of pounds to a stranger to look at an image of you and suggest how to make it better – not just any image, mind. You’re naked in this one. For many, that’s what it feels like to be edited. And so the fiction editor is charged with a responsibility. And it’s huge.
Best versus best fit
Put 10 fiction editors in a room and ask them to work on the same 2,000 words. You’ll likely come back with 10 very different samples. That’s because fiction editing is subjective. It’s not that the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation don’t apply. It’s not even that they apply less rigidly. It’s rather that they apply differently. Just a single change to a punctuation mark can affect tension, pace, mood. One of my regular authors has a mantra: ‘Louise, as always, keep it lean and mean.’ He’s a crime writer. It’s high-octane stuff. Low on adverbs. Low on conjunctions. Short, choppy sentences. The protagonist looks over his shoulder a lot. And if the punctuation is sympathetic, the reader looks with him. Compare this with another recent project. It’s essentially a love story – a woman’s search for her exiled family. The tale is one of heartbreak, abandonment, reconciliation and redemption. The author’s style is more fluid, prosaic. The protagonist isn’t looking over her shoulder but searching her soul. Every change needs to reflect this. How I go about reflecting these authors’ intentions will not necessarily be the same as one of my colleagues. It’s not that one of us is better at editing than the other. Rather, it’s how we interpret those intentions – and seek to mimic them – that’s different. We’re not talking about who’s the best, but who’s the best fit. That’s something the author must decide. And it’s tricky. How does a writer search for best fit on Google, or in an editorial directory, or on social media? How do they find that elusive emotional responsiveness to their writing?
Gauging emotional responsiveness – the sample edit
Fiction editors don’t have a monopoly on sample edits, but there is, I believe, an added dimension here in which samples really come into their own. Physically working on a piece of text helps every editor get a sense of the writing style, where the problems are and whether they’re capable of solving them, how long the job will take and how it should be priced. For the fiction editor, there’s something else, though – the feel of it. It’s our first opportunity to find out whether we can get under the skin of the author. And if we can’t, it might mean walking away. If we can’t respond emotionally to the author’s intentions – feel our way through the words and into the characters and the world they inhabit – the edit could be impaired. You can’t mimic an author seamlessly if you’re unmoved by what you’re reading. There’s a lot of talk about authorial voice in the editing world. In fiction editing, the concept can be a tad limiting.
A sample edit has its limitations, of course, by virtue of size. But it gives the author and the editor a glimpse of whether that emotional responsiveness is present and how it’ll be managed on the page such that the fit feels right. Ultimately, fiction editing is as much about the heart as the head.
The mindful rules of fiction editing
Once the author and editor have found each other, the mindful rules of fiction editing will come into play ... during the edit, and in the post-edit summary or report. Here are mine:
Fiction is a specialism
Fiction editing isn’t for everyone. If you’re keen to specialize in this kind of work, ask yourself where you lie on the empathy scale. Many specialist fiction editors I know describe themselves as being a little on the oversensitive side. Terms such as introspective or contemplative are never far away. I cry at some adverts, so it’s no surprise to me that I ended up in this line of work! This emotionality can serve the fiction editor well, but it’s not something that can be learned on a training course. That’s not to say that specialist fiction editorial training isn’t worth doing – far from it. But mindfulness is your friend, too – don’t be afraid to embrace it in your editorial practice!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
How does one go about building a written-communications business from scratch? The person who got in touch is looking to break into a sector that I have almost no experience of, so I wondered whether it might stump me.
However, it soon became clear that the problem is not the sector itself but the challenge of being visible in that sector.
Those of us who started out by targeting the publishing industry know that there’s an advantage – that sector knows who we are, what we do, and why it needs us. But what do you do if your target clients are corporates?
Jo says:
Firstly, thank you so much for your extremely helpful articles. They’re all I seem to read at the moment. Secondly, a question! You kindly offer to help people solve their business problems, so here’s mine. I recently set up a communications business offering copywriting, proofreading, editing and social media services. I have a professional background in science, business and education, but not specifically within the communication arena. My last role, as a communications manager, was my first within this sector. I’ve spent 15 years helping my partner with his communication requirements, from proofreading and editing to copywriting, so I feel as experienced as I can in this field without having any ‘official’ training. Now comes the hard bit! I am spending each and every day at the computer, emailing companies that I hope will be able to utilize my services, and the one question I keep hearing, time after time is ‘Can you please send me examples of your work?’ Herein lies the problem. Even though I have worked for many years with my other half, I haven’t built a portfolio of any kind, let alone kept any of the work I contributed to. I’m stuck in that cycle of no provable experience so no work, but no work so no way of demonstrating what I can do! Tricky! How would you suggest I get around this? Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for your insightful advice!
Hi, Jo, and thanks so much for your question!
Your problem is essentially one of visibility, competition, and the lack of a stand-out brand identity. Your website looks lovely, but that’s no longer enough to get you found or noticed. Written-communications businesses are ten a penny, so you’re operating in a marketplace that’s highly competitive. You’re also up against specialist editors (like me) and specialist copywriters (like my pal John Espirian), and a ton of big-brand agencies who offer service packages to corporates (your target market). Currently, despite your pretty website, you’re basically an unknown supplier writing to companies who’ve never heard of you and have no way of working out why you’re special, why you’re different, why they should pick you over anyone else. And none of that is a reflection of your capability. It’s simply a reflection of the fact that you can’t prove it. The consequence is that, at the moment, your message is all about you. You’re not the first supplier to be in the position of having a small or non-existent portfolio. Many of my colleagues have to sign non-disclosure agreements that preclude them from advertising the fact that they’ve worked for corporates. And while my fiction writers are more than happy to make it known that they’ve hired me, I’d never send another author a sample of the work I’ve done on behalf of a former client. It would be a breach of confidentiality. Becoming visible and standing out So what to do? My view is that you need to commit to a content marketing strategy that will build trust and get attention. The briefest definition of content marketing I can give you is this: Creating useful stuff that solves problems … and giving it away. That’s because when you help people, you get noticed. You know this is true because that’s why you contacted me! Let me quote you; ‘Thank you so much for your extremely helpful articles. They’re all I seem to read at the moment.’ Think about it … you’ve never met me or seen a sample of my editing work, and yet you devoured my blog and sent me a long email outlining your problem in the hope that I could help you. Then you agreed to let me publish your name, your question and my response in a public place. Somewhere along the line, I made you trust me. And that, Jo, is what you need to mimic with your own business. You found me, which means my clients can find me. Now you need to enable people to find you and make them want to engage with you and your written-communications business. We’re already 690 words in and I haven’t even got started on the nuts and bolts of content marketing, and there isn’t room to do it justice here. But here are the basic principles. My basic principles of content marketing
When you create solutions to people’s problems – based around these principles – you begin a journey that puts you top of mind and top of the search engines. Changing the focus of the message Remember above how I talked about your message being all about you? When you start content marketing, the message becomes all about the client – their problems, their challenges, their business. And when you offer solutions to those problems via your content marketing strategy, you present yourself as the expert you are – someone with 15 years’ experience of working with a corporate. No one will be looking at your sparse testimonials page if they’re too busy drooling over the free resources you’ve offered them. Then, when it comes to the stuff they can’t do themselves, you’ll be ready to help with paying work. It’s hard graft, make no mistake. There are no quick fixes or overnight solutions. The strategy requires commitment. The principles I outlined above are from my Content Marketing Primer for Editors & Proofreaders, which I wrote at the end of 2016 and published in January 2017. I stand by everything I wrote in that ebook, but I’ve learned a whole lot more since, because I decided to get help from the pros. After all, I’m a professional editor not a professional marketer! And if you want to get serious and make inroads as quickly as possible, you might decide to go for the pro option, too. An example of how content marketing worked … on me The story of the pros I chose provides an example of great content marketing in action. I was looking for free online help with branding and design. I came across a couple of guys on Twitter who were creating video tutorials about how to do just that. They were fun, young (younger than me, for sure!), seemed friendly … and their stuff was brilliant … and free. I watched one vlog after another, and signed up for their mailing list so I’d know when something new was out. For about three months, I took all that free guidance and implemented it. And then I bought from them. Just a book at first. It cost about a tenner. And all the time, I kept thinking: if the free stuff is this good, and this cheap book is this good, what must their membership group be like? By the time April had come around, resistance was futile. Like the Borg. And I joined.
So, you see what happened? They gave away a load of stuff that I found useful, and it got my attention and persuaded me to trust them. And then I became a client because when it came to making the big decision about whom to choose, they were top of mind. They'd blown everyone else out of the water.
So who are they? Regular readers of my blog will be bored rigid of hearing me talk about Andrew and Pete, and their group Atomic, but I won’t apologize because they’ve made a difference to me. What they teach works. If you decide to go down this route though, do your own research first and make your own decisions. Find what’s right for you. An example of a colleague’s content strategy My colleague Natalie Hailey owns a digital marketing agency called Hot Content. And she uses content to drive her marketing strategy, just like I do, just like you can. Natalie has a blog, a vlog and a newsletter through which she’s building an audience of business owners who are interested in her services – her solutions. But she’s not just creating visual and written online content. She’s also delivering those solutions face to face – by speaking at regional events (via her local chamber of commerce) – and by hosting live training sessions and workshops in her area that focus on helping, educating, building relationships and engaging with local businesswomen. She focuses on a core audience and makes sure that the content she creates and delivers speaks to that audience at every touchpoint of her business – from the font she uses for her logo to the colours she chooses for her blog images; from the way she dresses at speaking engagements to the gentle warmth of her voice when she vlogs; from the tone of her blog posts to the way she engages in forums. Those are the things her potential clients focus on. And, ultimately, they choose to engage with her because she makes them want to. And why on earth wouldn’t they? She’s nothing but helpful.
Back to you ...
I think you can do what I do, what Natalie does, what John does, and what Andrew and Pete do, so that you and your written-communications business stand out. By focusing on your target clients, what their problems are, and how you can solve them, and in a way that’s based purely on being helpful, by making them ‘feel smarter or happier’, as Andrew and Pete put it, you can move out of the catch-22 you find yourself in. That’s because this type of marketing is about relationships rather than résumés, about problem-solving rather than portfolios, about answering with solutions rather than asking for work. It’s not that testimonials, portfolios and experience aren’t great. They are. They’re wonderful. But, as you know only too well, they’re what you get at the arrivals gate. Content marketing is the departure point. Do it yourself, do it with books, or do it with pros. But do it. (Gawd, I sound like a Nike advert!). Then you'll be irresistible too. Like the Borg. Good luck!
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths about ‘rules’ in writing. Sorting out what’s right or wrong versus what’s preferred or asked for can be tricky for the inexperienced author. In this article, I offer some guidance.
Writing well means understanding the difference between a rule and a preference. In the world of the written word, these two things often become confused.
How do you sort out the rules from the preferences?
There is a difference between choosing where to place an apostrophe and choosing how to spell ‘focused’. You can get the first one wrong because different placements will create different meanings. You can’t get the second one wrong, but you can be inconsistent; ‘focused’ and ‘focussed’ are simply variants of the same word and both are correct in British and American English. So, how do you work out what’s a rule and what’s a choice? Check a good-quality dictionary or reference manual if you’re unsure. Oxford Dictionaries Online is a great place to start because it shows spelling variants – e.g. whiskey/whisky, organize/organise, centre/center – and explains whether these are equally acceptable across different regions, more likely to be used in one particular part of the world, or distinct to a particular area. Refer to a style manual. A good-quality style manual should distinguish between a rule and a preference. Which one you choose should be relevant to your audience. If you’re working with a publisher, the press will probably have its own house style, or refer you to a preferred guide like New Hart’s Rules or The Chicago Manual of Style. If you’re a self-publishing author, you can create your own, though a professional editor and proofreader should offer this as part of their service. Creating your own style sheet enables you to record decisions about hyphenation, numbering, capitalization, spelling variation, punctuation style, etc., and enforce common-sense consistency without becoming bogged down in overly prescriptive ‘rules’ taught to you by someone who thought they knew better. You can find a free template for a style sheet on my Self-publishers page. Check online resources from grammarians and linguists to help you separate the good sense from the nonsense. That way, you can defend your decisions. Consider your audience. Certain types of writing (and those who will be reading it) bend more easily to particular style choices.
Broadly speaking, a good piece of writing will be sensitive to its audience. Variations in punctuation style, idiom usage, spelling and grammar abound, but they are just that – variations, not mistakes. The most common myths debunked … There are plenty of excellent online articles highlighting common things that writers are told are ‘wrong’ when in fact they’re perfectly fine. I’ve provided a summary here, though if you read the linked-to articles in full you’ll quickly realize that the same sticking points arise time and again. Myth 1: Verbs with -iz suffixes are Americanisms (for example, specialise vs specialize). This isn’t true. In fact, use of the -iz form has been around for over 400 years and is a completely standard variant that’s recognized, and widely used, within UK publishing and beyond. Consistency is what you should look out for. A word of caution, though – take care not to apply the style globally to your text. There are some words that must retain their -is suffix (e.g. compromise, advertise). Oxford provides a useful list of the most common words that must be spelled with -is. If you’re in doubt, look up a word’s spelling in a good-quality dictionary that includes variants. Myth 2: You can’t split an infinitive. There are numerous online articles debunking this myth, but one of my favourites is Language Myths by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman (Grammarphobia). They write: ‘Writers of English have been merrily “splitting” infinitives since the 1300s. It was perfectly acceptable until the mid-nineteenth century, when Latin scholars – notably Henry Alford in his book A Plea for the Queen’s English – misguidedly called it a crime. (Some linguists trace the taboo to the Victorians’ slavish fondness for Latin, a language in which you can’t divide an infinitive.) This “rule” was popular for half a century, until leading grammarians debunked it. But its ghost has proved more durable than Freddie Krueger.’ Myth 3: You can’t use a preposition at the end of a sentence. This is incorrect. You can use a preposition at the end of a sentence – in fact, sometimes it’s far more comfortable for your reader. Says the OxfordWords blog: ‘Most of us learned in school that ending a sentence with a preposition was a mistake. This “rule”, however, is misguided, dating from the 17th century, when several notable writers tried to codify English to fit more neatly with Latin grammar. Clearly, there are instances where attempting to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition results in a statement that is either over-formal or simply poor English.’ Consider the following examples:
Recasting these sentences to avoid the end-of-sentence prepositions would likely render the text stilted and unrealistic. Unless you're Yoda. Myth 4: You mustn’t begin a sentence with a conjunction. This is yet another dose of hypercorrection – obviously, you don’t want your writing to be boring, so it pays to not overdo it, but there’s nothing grammatically wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction. And in some cases it can even add punch to a sentence (see what I did there?). Richard Feloni, in 10 popular grammar myths debunked by a Harvard Linguist, reviews linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (published by Allen Lane in 2014), and writes: ‘Teachers instruct young students that it is incorrect to begin a sentence with a conjunction (and, because, but, or, so, also) because it helps keep them from writing in fragments, Pinker writes, but it's advice that adults don't need to follow. Avoid writing an ugly “megasentence” full of connected independent clauses, and feel free to start a sentence with a conjunction’ (Business Insider UK, 2015). Myth 5: You must place two spaces after a full point. Actually, it's best not to – it looks awful on documents produced with modern word-processing software such as Word or InDesign. Publishers don’t do it; nor do professional typographers. When we do it, it makes the text look gappy and amateurish. You can do a quick search and replace in Word to remove double spaces (simply click Ctrl H, and then type two spaces into the Find What box and a single space in the Replace With box). This supposed typographical rule is purported to be a hangover from the days of monospaced letters on typewriters; these had only one font that gave equal space on a page to a wider letter such a ‘w’ and a narrower symbol like a full point. Whether that's true is not the point. Go to your bookshelf and pick up any contemporary, professionally published book; I promise you this – all full points will have a single space after them. Delete your double spaces and you're more likely to look like a pro! For an entertaining discussion of the issue, read Farhad Manjoo’s article Space Invaders (Slate, 2011). Myth 6: You can’t use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. This old chestnut gets a lot of peevers in a pickle. It’s a shame because it’s a rather splendid solution for those who want to write clearly and succinctly while avoiding gendered language. It’s been in use for a while too – from at least the sixteenth century. Some publisher house styles demand the avoidance of the singular ‘they’; others embrace it, given that, as Arike Okrent notes, ‘[i]t’s perfectly good English. It sounds completely natural. Great writers like Shakespeare and Austen used it’ (4 Fake Grammar Rules You Don’t Need to Worry About, Mental Floss, 2015). Oxford Dictionaries concurs. Note, though, Oxford’s follow-up caution: ‘Two things are matters of fact, however: many people use it, and many others dislike it intensely. If you’re writing something, it is therefore advisable to consider who might read it, and what their views might be.’ Myth 7: You shouldn’t start a sentence with ‘However’. You can, but getting the punctuation right is essential. (a) When it’s being used in the sense of ‘Nevertheless’ or ‘But’, it acts as a connector or conjunction with the previous sentence:
Note that when used in this sense, it should take a comma after it so as not to make your reader think it’s being used in the sense of (b), below. (b) ‘However’ can also be used to mean ‘in whatever way’ or ‘regardless of how’. In this case, I wouldn’t place a comma after it because it would interrupt the sentence.
Mignon Fogarty provides a good overview of the issue in Starting a Sentence with ‘However’: Right or Wrong?. She also provides some thoughtful advice about avoiding placing ‘However’ at the beginning of a sentence: ‘Sometimes it’s still a good idea to avoid it because a lot of people think it's wrong. I don’t advise starting a sentence with ‘however’ in a cover letter for a job application, for example. You don’t want your résumé to get dumped because someone thinks you’ve made a mistake even if you haven’t’ (Quick and Dirty Tips, 2013). Depressing, but worth bearing in mind! Final thoughts … First, consider Jonathon Owen’s reminder that good writers should never ignore register. ‘There’s a time and a place for following the rules, but the writers of these lists typically treat English as though it had only one register: formal writing. They ignore the fact that following the rules in the wrong setting often sounds stuffy and stilted. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in casual conversation will make you sound like a pompous twit’ (12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes, Arrant Pedantry, 2013). Second, bear in mind that some people’s ‘rules’ are actually just their pet peeves. Taking time to understand the difference between a rule and a preference will at least enable you to defend your choices. However, don’t be surprised if some sticklers still object to your decisions – there’s no consensus. Says editor and writer Stan Carey, ‘There are local and institutional conventions, but since English lacks an official language academy, there is no universal Standard English. Pick a version and you will find it riddled, as Geoffrey Pullum wrote, “with disorder, illogic, inconsistency, oddity, irregularity, and chaos”. Amidst such ragged variability, clarity is desirable and elegance is admirable, but while certain rules facilitate these qualities, others are misguided myths that undermine them’ (Descriptivism vs. prescriptivism: War is over (if you want it), Sentence First, 2010).
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Here's how to organize your best proofreading and editing resources so that they're visible to and usable for your ideal clients.
Learning centres for proofreaders and editors
I have two learning centres on my website, one for authors and one for editors. Each topic has an image. Clicking on that picture takes the visitor to a section further down on the page that contains useful relevant content. Maybe it's a blog post, a Word file, a PDF booklet, a video, podcast or an Excel spreadsheet. Most of that stuff is on my blog too, so why did I create dedicated pages to curate it? Here are my 8 reasons: 1. Learning centres help visitors find your useful stuff It's much easier for a visitor to navigate from one resource to another when you offer clearly titled images in one place than it is to find what you want in a search bar or blog archive. And if they get distracted, it’s easy to start the content review process all over again back in the centre. That might not be so easy if they’re on a 7-year-old blog with several hundred articles on it, especially if the ones they want to read sit in different subject- or month-archives. Your visitor can also bookmark a learning centre on your site. They can’t do that with a list of results generated by your search bar. They can probably bookmark an archive, but that will only show the first article or two on your blog, not a chunk of your core resources at a glance. 2. Learning centres keep your visitors on your site for longer because there’s more to engage with The more goodies you offer visitors, the greater their engagement. That’s good for obvious reasons – you’re helping your clients, showing them you’re engaged with their problems, and are willing and able to solve them. But there’s another important reason. The longer someone sticks around on your site, the more likely they are to hire your editorial services. It’s no surprise, really – I don’t stick around in a high-street shop, desperately trying to find that one thing I want, if the overall feel of the place and the products it’s selling don’t feel like me. But if I keep finding things that grab my attention, I’m much more likely to walk out of the door with something nice. Editorial websites are no different. If your learning centre makes potential clients drool because you’re offering them a lot of free, helpful, valuable content, if it makes them feel that you get them, and that you’re a good fit for each other, you have a much higher chance of persuading that person to ask for a quote or a sample edit/proofread. 3. Learning centres reinforce your brand Learning centres are perfect for reinforcing your brand identity because you can create a uniform look and feel by theming your images with consistent brand colours, fonts, and design. Include a few lines of text at the top to explain who your resources are for, and what problems they’ll solve – your mission, so to speak. Here’s a partial sample of the image in my author resources page.
And here's a partial shot of John Espirian's library. John's learning centre has a very different feel to it, and so it should. His brand identity is built around a different set of skills, services and target clients.
4. Learning centres demonstrate your expertise and arouse clients’ emotions
With a learning centre. you can offer a chunk of accessible information that solves multiple problems. That presents you as an expert who sees the big picture. It’s not a labyrinthine process of discovery that involves extensive scrolling or putting the right keywords into a search box. Rather, you hit them in the heart with a message that you’re on their side and have their backs. It’s about arousing powerful emotions. In episode 3 of Content Mavericks, pro content marketers Andrew and Pete argue that high-arousal messages like awe, excitement, relief, and love are much more likely to generate engagement than lower-arousal messages like contentment. ‘When we care we share … Figure out a way to make people care about your message or your offering.’
If your learning centre can generate excitement in your potential client – make them feel that they’ve found an editor or proofreader who’s completely on their wavelength, someone who’s demonstrably in touch with their struggles, and is offering resolution – that’s a powerful message.
And it’s one that’s more likely to get your visitors telling others about who you are and what you’re up to, and have them clicking the Contact button. 5. Eye candy I cherish my blog. I’ve lovingly filled it with articles on a weekly (mostly) basis since 2011. But things can get messy. There’s a sidebar with a subscription button, an RSS button, a search box, an archive by subject area, an archive by date, some links to my books, and more. Plus, I love to write meaty posts. Most of my articles are at least 1,500 words long. And while I do include images and header stamps that summarize what’s included in each post, there’s an awful lot of text. That’s not all. There’s a lot of scrolling to do if someone wants to glimpse what’s available on one page of the blog. A learning centre is much easier on the eye and allows my author visitors to see at a glance what’s on offer. 6. Segmentation Back in the day when I worked exclusively for publishers, my blog posts were aimed at my colleagues. These days I work exclusively for indie authors, and now I’m creating content for them, too. So I have two audiences, and two types of content. It’s about a 50–50 split. Creating learning centres helps me to segment my website so that the right people can find the relevant content. This is particularly important for my author audience because most of them don’t yet know me. They’re less likely to bounce around in my blog, diving from one archive to another in a bid to find what they need. Many of my colleague visitors do know me, at least in an online capacity. And so they have a little more patience because I’ve already built a trusting relationship with them. They’re more likely to spend time rooting around the blog for what they want. Still, I've created an editor resources page for them because I want them to find stuff easily. Show off what you’ve got planned What if you have a ton of great stuff in your head or on a to-do list? Perhaps it's already in production, out with the proofreader, or scheduled for publication sometime in the next few months. None of that stuff is visible on your blog. Your blog only tells people about what’s available. What’s coming might be equally appealing. They might be more likely to get in touch if they can see exciting things in the pipeline. In that case, upload an image with a 'forthcoming' caption.
8. Learning centres encourage ‘you’re worth it’ moments
Certainly, a great resource library will increase the likelihood of your visitor hitting the contact button, but not everyone will be ready to make that commitment. That’s why building a mailing list is a great way to keep in touch with potential clients who are thinking: I’m interested in you and like what you’re doing, but I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to hire you as my editor or proofreader. Still, it seems like everyone and their aunt has a mailing list or newsletter these days. And if you’re going to persuade someone to allow yet another email into their already crowded inbox, and make them want to actually open it, displaying a library of gorgeous resources might just be the tipping point – the thing that makes them think you’re worth it. Make sure your hub includes a way of signing up to your mailing list, and a clear call to action that tells the visitor what you want them to do, and why.
Summing up
Make your wonderful editorial content easy to access. Whether it’s a blog, a vlog, a podcast, or something else, help your potential clients navigate their way around your resources and show them all the marvellous stuff on offer. Tell them who and what it’s for – how it helps, which problems it solves. And make sure it's designed uniformly (Canva is your free friend – trust me!) so that the resources look like they're part of a stable. That way it’s not a hotchpotch of stuff; it’s valuable, client-focused content that represents you, your editorial business, your professional values, and your mission – your brand identity.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Another email from a reader. The answer will be of interest to anyone with similar manual dexterity issues, and who is considering a career as an proofreader.
Rachel asks:
‘I am looking into a career in proofreading. I have multiple sclerosis and need to work from home. I was wondering if you know whether any of the online courses cover the use of things such as Track Changes. Unfortunately, I have lost almost all manual dexterity and am unable to mark up on hard copy. I am, however, able to use a keyboard and mouse comfortably.’ Thanks so much for your question, Rachel. So the good news is that because you can use a keyboard and mouse, and you therefore prefer to work onscreen, professional proofreading is certainly a viable option for you (assuming your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are up to scratch, and you're ready to market your business effectively). Furthermore, there are industry-recognized training courses and resources that will support your onscreen learning. One thing we need to look at is how different client types’ expectations of what proofreading entails present challenges for you. It’s important to me that you’re forewarned about this so that you can target your clients appropriately, and communicate your service offering in a way that makes it clear what you will and won’t do. I’ll tackle that issue first and then move on to the training options available. Proofreading – expectations and possible challenges So, you’ve told me that your MS affects your manual dexterity, but my first thought was whether it also leads to fatigue. You didn’t mention this in your email, but I think it’s worth discussing for reasons that I hope will become clear. In my first decade of proofreading practice, almost all of my clients were mainstream publishers. Now I work exclusively with self-publishers (a few businesses but primarily writers of fiction). What’s clear from my experience is that the expectations of what has to be done and how it has to be done often differ depending on client type. Furthermore, how much will be done by the proofreader is often (though not always) quite different. What and how much does a proofreader do? Traditional publishers When working for traditional publishers, a proofreader is usually annotating designed page proofs. These are the pages (either paper or digital) that are almost identical to what readers would see if they pulled a book off the shelf. It’s a quality-control check of a book that’s been through developmental-, line- and copy-editing. The author has reviewed the files at each stage. Once the team is happy that the book’s ready to be laid out, an interior designer or typesetter will format the book to professional, industry-recognized standards. The proofreader’s job is to find anything missed during an extensive copy-edit, that no errors have been introduced at design stage, and that the various elements of the book are rendered consistently, correctly, and according to the design brief. In this case, the proofreader is looking at more than just spelling, punctuation and grammar. She’s also spotting problems with page numbering, chapter headings, line spacing, paragraph indentation, running heads, image captions, table and figure numbering, widows and orphans, page depth, prelims and end matter, and more. In my experience, because most of the problems in the text have already been attended to during previous rounds of editing, there might be only a few changes that warrant querying or marking up on each page. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but, on the whole, most of a proofreader’s time is spent carefully reading and checking rather than marking up. That’s important for you because while your hand movement is somewhat impaired, your vision isn’t. And because you wouldn’t have to make thousands of changes, the strain on your hands wouldn’t be excessive or challenging. What and how much does a proofreader do? Non-publishers Outside of the mainstream publishing industry, things become a little more tangled. The role of the proofreader is not nearly so well defined. It’s not unusual for clients to ask for a service they call ‘proofreading’ but that a traditional publisher would call ‘copy-editing or even ‘line editing’. Here the raw text is amended (or suggested recasts to the text are made using Word’s commenting tool). Furthermore, it’s not unusual for the so-called proofreader to be the first professional to work on the text. And that means that the changes made might well run into the thousands. We’re not talking about a few amendments on each page, but hundreds per chapter, perhaps even per several pages. Of course, it does vary, but every change, every query, requires the use of one’s hands. So you need to be aware of the potential impact of this kind of work on your health, and think carefully about how it will affect your hands and your fatigue levels. I’m not saying that working for non-publishers isn’t an option for you. Rather, you’ll need to take your speed and fatigue levels into account and factor them into the time you assign to complete projects. If you're working in Word, I suspect that =2K–10K-word business documents, Master’s dissertations, journal articles, short stories, brochures and newsletters won't present you with the same challenges as book-length work of 80K–100K words will. How does a proofreader mark up? Traditional publishers Because the proofreader is usually providing a pre-publication quality-control check on designed page proofs, most publishers like the annotations to take the form of industry-recognized proof-correction marks. In the UK, these are BS 5261C:2005. Any decent professional training course will teach you how to use these appropriately. Traditionally, these annotations were made on paper but publishers are increasingly providing PDF proofs. This affords you an opportunity because you can use a keyboard and mouse to annotate the page proofs in a way that mirrors a paper markup. There are a few options, but many proofreaders use a combination of a PDF editor’s (e.g. Adobe Reader DC, Acrobat Pro, or PDF-XChange) onboard comment and markup tools and digital proofreading symbols (custom stamps). I supply free files of stamps that proofreaders can download and install in the stamp palettes of their PDF editors. These stamps conform to BS 5261C:2005. How does a proofreader mark up? Non-publishers Because many non-publishers supply Word files, you’ll be working directly in Word and using Track Changes. You’ll also be able to take advantage of several macro suites and find/replace strings that will improve your efficiency and reduce the strain on your wrists and fingers. That’s good news for all of us – with or without MS or other manual-dexterity issues – in terms of time, quality and consistency. Summary of what, how, and how much So, all in all, it’s worth your taking the time to think about the types of clients you’ll work for, how many changes you might be required to make, how those client types will expect you to mark up, what length the projects will be, how long it will take you to complete the different project types, and how all of those things fit in with your specific health condition. Professional training My two recommended online proofreading training providers in the UK are the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and The Publishing Training Centre. The SfEP has practical online courses on the technical aspects of professional proofreading, a grammar brush-up course, and editing in Word. Of the latter, the SfEP says, ‘It includes chapters on styles and templates, find & replace and wildcards, and macros. Guest chapters have been written by Paul Beverley on FRedit, Daniel Heuman on PerfectIt and Jack Lyon on The Editorium. All chapters contain downloadable study notes, exercises and model answers.’ The PTC offers a grammar course, and its flagship Basic Proofreading course. Before you sign up, I’d recommend you have a conversation with either or both organizations in order to assure yourself that the course materials are usable in a way that suits your needs. Additionally, there are numerous free online tutorials and screencasts on how to use Word’s Track Changes, so Google will be your friend here. Search for one that matches your own version of Word. The most important issue for any professional proofreader is understanding first what to change, and making sure that she and the client are on the same page, figuratively speaking, about what degree of intervention is expected and how it will be rendered. Online books and resources Here are some resources that should help you on your journey:
I hope this helps you move forward, Rachel, and wish you all the very best in your search for a career that will work for you alongside your MS rather than in opposition to it. Good luck! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here's another reader question about proofreading and editing ethics ...
This recent question was submitted by a colleague who wishes to remain anonymous. I’m calling him Johnny. He says:
I'm just starting my freelance copyediting and proofreading business, working with authors. My client has a publishing contract with a small independent press. He’s published three novels with them to date. My client said: ‘I always like to have an external person read my work before I submit it [to my publisher], so perhaps you could let me know what it would cost.’ The pre-submission editing work in the past was carried out by writer friends rather than an editorial professional. We’ve agreed on a price and what should be included. The price is more of a token payment because this is my first client and he's writing a series. Is this the right way to go? Why pay me to copyedit and proofread his work to make it as error-free as possible before he sends it off to his publisher? Surely they’ll want to go through a batch of revisions for which he’ll need to pay. Much as I'd like the work, should I tell him that the publisher will handle it and that he should save his money? Or am I making assumptions about the small-press publishing process that I shouldn't be? Louise, I want to do this right – he’s already agreed to introduce me to his publisher as a freelancer, whether I do the work for him or not. However, if I do a good job, his recommendation will be more qualified. So, I'm wondering what your thoughts are and what you would advise in this situation.
Thanks for your question, Johnny! It’s not unusual for an editor or proofreader to be confronted with this conundrum. Here’s my take on your situation ...
There’s quite a bit going on so I’m going to consider the following, just so you get a sense of the big picture:
The client’s preferences, motivation and knowledge One of the things that stood out when I read your email is that your client was explicit about his preference for commissioning third-party editorial work prior to manuscript submission. True, he hasn't paid for this work in the past because he's used writers rather than a professional editor. You and I both know that being a good writer does not a professional proofreader or copyeditor make! What pleases me is that he recognizes this too. I think he’s willing to pay because he believes you’ll bring additional value to the table. I think he also recognizes he’s getting a good deal here. And he is. I’ll talk about this in more detail under ‘Your token fee – precedent versus leverage’. For now, let’s accept that while this is costing him more than if he’d tapped a writer pal on the shoulder, it’s not costing him anywhere near what he’d have to pay if you’d offered him your standard fee. And that’s a motivation for him to work with you. He knows you’re new to the business and he might well have figured that he’s going to get a pro service for an amateur price. And while you're worrying about whether you’re exploiting him, he might be thinking that this is nothing short of a win for him. I’d be inclined to agree! He’s also not new to the publishing process. He has three novels under his belt with this press, so he understands how they work and what they’ll do for him. You, however, are in the dark. Which leads us nicely on to ... Editorial processes in small presses – who pays, and for what? You’re right to question your assumptions about small presses, indeed any press. Mainstream production flows tend to follow a model that looks something like this:
The larger press usually (but not always) pays for all of these levels of editorial work. Smaller presses don’t have the same economies of scale. Any of the following might happen:
No doubt there are other models, but these four give you a flavour what’s on offer. In your case, you don’t know what the deal is. Which leads us on to ... The press’s expectations Here’s a scenario (A) that would make sense in your author’s situation: The two people who run the press have worked with your author before. They know that he tends to submit files that are in good shape.
The point is that they expect to have a decent manuscript submitted. Anything else would change the terms; his publishing contract is based on an understanding that most of the work has been done prior to submission. Here’s another scenario (B) that I think is less likely but still possible, and it’s the one you’re worried about.
However, because you don’t know what the agreement is between the author and the publisher, you can’t know for sure whether it’s a good or a poor decision for him to hire you. My proposed ethical solution To give yourself peace of mind, I’d advise the following:
If he walks, you’ve still got the introduction with the publisher, you’ve upheld the terms of your professional code of conduct, and you’ve demonstrated to him that you’re trustworthy. If at some stage he decides to self-publish, or if one of his writer friends needs an editor, guess who’ll get the call? Honestly, even if you are facing scenario B, I don’t think he’ll walk because you’re a winner in his eyes – recall my comment above about offering a professional service for an amateur price! A quick word on that … Your token fee – precedent versus leverage I want to talk about this because some readers’ hackles will rise in response to your offer of a ‘token payment’. My view is that your decision is fine as long as your eyes are open, and your author’s are too.
You want to be able to leverage this lower-paid work at every opportunity so that the value you extract from it lies well beyond a number on an accounting spreadsheet or lump sum in your bank account. Publishers and indie authors value training, of course, but experience should never be underestimated. Getting that first break is one of the biggest challenges a new entrant to the editorial field faces. This could well be yours. I have no problem with a bargain being offered as long as the following apply:
If you use this book (and the series, should you get it) as a foundation for acquiring more and better-paying clients, you can view the exercise as a strategic marketing activity that will serve you well into the future. I wish you the very best of luck!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Abigail is based in the UK and has been proofreading and editing for around five years. Most of her work thus far has come via existing contacts, personal referrals, and a third-party site.
Until recently, that was sufficient. Consequently, she hasn’t spent any time thinking about a website, marketing, or other forms of outreach. Furthermore, the third-party site has changed the service-fee structure so that the work is no longer as lucrative.
She asks: ‘At the moment, I do a lot of academic work, which I love and would like to continue; I just want to secure it privately rather than through third-party sites. In addition, I would like to move away from website copy, blog posts and more generalised proofreading, and start working with publishers on longer and more interesting projects. However, I don’t know where to start, what’s required, or how to approach them. Many thanks for any guidance you can provide!’ Thanks for your question, Abigail! So, something else you mentioned in your email to me is that you’re undergoing professional training. I was really pleased to hear this because I think it’s an essential element in the mainstream publishing market. I’m going to focus on the following:
Why targeting publishers is such a good step Publishers are still the preferred client group for many editorial freelancers. There are several reasons for this:
A quick note on earnings and work stream There’s a lot of talk in the online international editorial community about publishers and low fees. The situation is not straightforward. There is no universal fee for copyediting or proofreading. I rarely work for publishers these days, but when I did I was offered proofreading fees from academic presses that worked out as low as £10 per hour and as high as £40 per hour. It depends on the complexity of the project, the press, the brief, the length, the number of authors, and a ton of other things. After you’ve done a few projects for a publisher, you’ll start to get a sense of how things work and what you can expect to earn on average. Some publishers will offer you a fee of £X per hour, and a guideline for the number of hours they expect the project to be completed in. Some will offer a flat fee for the job. Some of my colleagues (like Liz Jones: see her excellent post in Further reading, below) have successfully negotiated fees when they encountered scope creep. With some presses, I found that I could counter what seemed initially to be a less favourable fee by being as efficient as possible. You’ll also speed up as you become more familiar with a press – their house style, the format of their books, and their preferred professional style manuals and reference systems. Regardless of their fee structure, they do all the project-acquisition work for you, which means you can sit back and focus on the proofreading and editing rather than worrying that your Google Search rankings aren’t as high as you’d like!
Training for academic publishers – what you need to know
In order to ensure you’re fit for purpose with publishers, ask them which style guides and reference systems they prefer, and take time to familiarize yourself with these manuals. Most presses will provide you with a summary of their preferences. Your training course should draw attention to the importance of following a brief. Publishers are usually rigid when it comes to scope, and going beyond the brief without querying first could have detrimental consequences. For example, if you’re training to proofread, you’ll need to practise when to change, when to query and when to leave well enough alone – no in-house editor will thank you for recasting sentences to improve the flow in a proofread. That’s because: it’s expensive to make extensive changes on page proofs; the pagination could be affected; cross-references might be impacted; and the index could be damaged if it’s being created simultaneously. Also check that the training course you’re doing is recognized by the UK publishing industry. You won’t go wrong with the following organizations, though they’re by no means the only ones to consider: Certainly, if you want to proofread for publishers, you’ll need to be familiar with the industry-recognized proof-correction markup language (BS 5261C: 2005). Even if a publisher asks you to proofread on PDF, you might be required (or find it efficient) to use digital versions of these marks. Where academic publishers search Some publishers do search for editors and proofreaders. The SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services is one port of call. Some also attend the SfEP’s annual conference and the London Book Fair, so those two events are worthy networking opportunities to put yourself on the radar of academic presses. Recently, I was contacted by a publisher via Reedsy. It’s the first time I’ve received a request to quote from a press via this platform, and it was for a fiction title, so I’m not convinced that this would necessarily be a primary channel for you if you want to acquire academic work, but I’m mentioning it just as food for thought. Why going direct is still your best bet My top tip for getting in front of publishers is to contact them direct, by email, phone or letter. The reason why many don’t search online for editorial freelancers is simply because they don’t need to. Build a list of UK academic publishers, then find out the name of the person in charge of hiring – it’s probably someone in the production department – and get in touch with them. You already have lots of experience, and you’ll have a top-notch training course under your belt. I recommend customizing your CV and cover letter/email for each press so that your portfolio of projects sells you as a perfect fit. Read Philip Stirups’ article for more top tips (see Further reading). Don’t put all your eggs in one basket I recommend you build a bank of around ten publishers. If you stick to one or two you could end up in deep water further down the road. If one of those clients were to merge with another, you might fall off the freelance list during the transition. If your other client were to go bust, you’d be scuppered. Having a larger bank of publishers means you have a safety net. It’s likely your publisher client base will grow exponentially; each time you acquire a new client you’ll be more likely to impress another. It’s a small world, and many of the in-house staff know each other. That will work in your favour. Taking academic publishers’ tests Some publishers will ask you to take a test. There are two articles in the Further reading section that offer excellent overviews of how to approach these: ‘The Business of Editing: Editing Tests’ by Rich Adin, and ‘Test Taking Tips For Editors’ by Cassie Armstrong. Asking for testimonials and building a portfolio Are you able to ask current academic clients for testimonials? If so, do so – however embarrassing you find it! This kind of social proof won’t on its own get you work, but it’s one way of demonstrating that you’re capable of fulfilling a client’s brief. I mentioned your portfolio above. If you’ve been in business for five years, chances are you have an amazing project portfolio. Make sure your CV, LinkedIn profile and website reflect your body of completed works. Publishers love to see experience! I hope that brings you a little clarity, Abigail. Good luck with building your new client base! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here's why new freelance editors and proofreaders need to commit to marketing, rather than relying on word of mouth to grow their businesses.
In 'When one client isn’t enough – emergency marketing for editors and proofreaders', I offered an emergency marketing plan for proofreaders and editors who’d either lost their sole source of income or ended up in a situation where they were reliant on one client.
The first stage of the marketing plan asked for a commitment to active marketing. If you’re simply waiting for a solution to present itself, you’re merely involved. And that’s a very different proposition from being committed. I love this quotation from Martina Navratilova: The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.
Editorial freelancers, especially new starters, need to be the ham. Committing to marketing as soon as we set up our businesses ensures that we’ll never be client-reliant or, worse, lose our sole source of income.
Acquiring work: commitment versus involvement Involved: being passive Most experienced editorial freelancers take advantage of passively acquired work. I have a number of repeat clients who fill some of my schedule. If you’re highly visible, experienced, trusted and respected, this strategy could well be effective for you. For the new entrant to the field, though, it’s a non-starter. That’s because these opportunities are a consequence of active marketing. Passively acquired work might come through a variety of channels. Here, for simplicity, I’ve focused on three:
Committed: being active Active marketing is the work you do to generate these passive opportunities. Here, again, I’ve focused on three: A. Networking with colleagues and clients (e.g. on editing forums, at conferences, professional society meetings, social media platforms). This kind of marketing leads to an awareness of what your specialist skills are. If a colleague needs to direct a client or prospect to someone with skills or availability that he or she doesn’t have, you’ll be in the running (see 1, above). B. Cold-calling and writing letters/emails to target clients (e.g. publishers, packagers, businesses, marketing agencies). This is direct marketing and if you do it extensively you can quickly build a solid list of similar client types. If the clients are satisfied with the work, they’ll rehire you, which leads to repeat work (see 2, above). C. Just creating online profiles in itself is not enough to make you discoverable. Action that maximizes the visibility of those profiles in the search engines is key. This is where content marketing comes to the fore – creating and distributing (via your online platforms) advice, knowledge, tools and resources that your colleagues and clients will find useful, valuable. Examples include blogs, booklets, video tutorials, checklists and cheat sheets. High-quality content offers solutions to problems and makes your online profiles more findable (see 3, above). In a nutshell, being active enables you to reap passive rewards later (if your office buddy will give you the space, that is).
Why word of mouth (WOM) is often misunderstood
‘But my colleague said that all her work is via word of mouth.’ I don’t doubt it. But if she’s been running her business for 20 years and has a portfolio and client list as long as your arm, she’s not in the same position as the new entrant to the field. She’s benefiting from 1, 2 and 3 because she invested in A, B and C. New starters should indeed commit to WOM marketing. What they shouldn’t do is assume that it’s a passive approach that requires no effort. Nor will there be short-term results. Top-notch WOM marketing requires an intense level of commitment to action and an acceptance of slow-burn impact. Awareness and trust aren’t built overnight, especially in our field. Editorial freelancers aren’t selling a product that promises something that swathes of people have wanted forever – an anti-aging cream, a painless leg-waxing treatment, a broadband connection that never, ever buffers even if you live out in the sticks and there’s more chance of getting a wi-fi signal on Mars. Our services have to prove their worth. For the editorial business owner, WOM marketing is like creating a garden from scratch. If you’re proactive, it will take many months to knock it into shape. If you hold back, it’ll take years. If you’re passive, the garden will remain barren. WOM and colleagues There are a lot of us, and many have already developed niche networks of friends and colleagues to whom we refer work. When an editor or proofreader ends up on my radar, it’s because they’ve instilled trust in me.
WOM and clients As for client A telling client B about you, you’ll need a lot of mouths to share the good news if you want to have a full schedule! That’s not where you’ll be if you’re a new entrant to the field, not because you’re not an effective editor or proofreader but because you don’t yet have a large enough bank of clients. Effective WOM Find out which networks (online and offline) your clients and colleagues recommend and join in the discussion. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions but be prepared to offer solutions too. Even new editorial freelancers have specialist skills and background experience that are relevant and valuable to the debate. In 'Why word of mouth marketing is the most important social media', Kimberly A. Whitler, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, breaks down WOM marketing into the three Es:
Action first, passivity later Clients can come via active and passive marketing strategies. It’s not a case of the right strategy but the right order. If you’re a new starter, make active editorial business promotion a standard part of your working life, just like copyediting or proofreading, invoicing and updating your software. Assign space for it every week so that it becomes commonplace rather than a chore or, worse, something to be feared. Be active. Be committed. Be the ham! Once your business is established, you’ll be able to take advantage of the passive benefits that result from your effort. Just take care not to hand over the chill space to your Labrador!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Maya has a PhD in social anthropology, and is an experienced editor and proofreader. She’s in the process of expanding her editorial business while continuing to publish academic research. She wants to know how to focus her marketing strategy.
To date, she’s focused on acquiring work through a freelancing website, but the work flow is unpredictable and she’s not convinced it will supply her with a viable income stream in the long term.
She’s created a website but recognizes that it’ll take time to become visible to potential clients, and to earn their trust. She asks: ‘There are a couple of other freelancing websites that look promising, as well as academic editing agencies. Does it make sense to try to sign up to those as well, or is it better to focus on one thing at a time? I'm planning to blog and make YouTube videos about academic writing on top of these things. But is this a case of "less is more" or "more is more"? I’m an experienced editor but completely new to marketing!’ Great questions, Maya. Two things to consider There are two different elements to your strategy here:
Both approaches are important in the editorial industry, so hats off to you for recognizing that even though you’re new to marketing. You’re doing brilliantly! The reason why both approaches are important is because directories and agencies have already done the online visibility work on your behalf. By using them to make your business visible now, you’re freeing up your marketing hours to focus on the longer-burn stuff – your blog and videos. Broadly speaking,
I’ll explain why further down, but first I wanted to ask you whether you’ve considered approaching publishers too. You didn’t mention it in your email so I think it’s worth my taking the time to discuss it here. Publishers and freelance editors – a gift Directories, agencies and content creation are all great ways to acquire clients, albeit over different time frames. The biggest problem the editor faces, however, is getting the client to raise their hand in the first place. ‘I’m interested in you, Maya!’ is what your directory entry, agency listing, blog article or YouTube video needs to make your audience member feel compelled to say. That means working hard to create stand-out information that sets you apart from the competition surrounding you. Furthermore, in the directory and agency fields, there will always be a group of clients looking for cheap rather than brilliant. And in the marketplace more generally, there are potential clients who don’t even realize they need you, or, if they do, which of the different levels of service will be the most appropriate. But here come the publishers! (Sing it, like the Boots ad!) We’re in a rather privileged field of having a core client group who understands exactly what we do, why we’re necessary, and the value we bring to the table. We don’t have to get them to raise their hands; their hands are already in the air! Some publishers will take the time to scour the SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, but to my knowledge the single best way to get noticed by a production manager is still to go direct. Email, letter, phone call – whatever you prefer. I worked almost exclusively for publishers for the first half of my freelance career. I had about 10 publisher clients who kept my schedule as full as I needed it to be. Feast and famine? Nope, just feast. Like you, I have a background in the social sciences, so that’s where I focused my initial wave of inquiries. You mentioned in your original email that you’d 'bought my marketing books', so you’ll find more information on how to tackle that in Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business. Publishers, like agencies, will give you regular work, and that means you can focus all your marketing juice on creating compelling blog posts and irresistible YouTube vids. Publishers are a bit of a gift like that – while their rates aren’t always top-notch, the time they free up for you by handing you a steady supply of work certainly is. And creating valuable, usable, accessible content does take time. Directories and agencies: more is more Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration! By more is more, I’m not saying you should sign up with 20 directories and agencies; you’ll spend more time being busy creating the entries than you will being productive finding the work! I do think, though, that you needn’t limit oneself to one. If you identify a group of, say, four or five that are used by your core clients to find people like you, I’d recommend you sign up. More is more, as long as you’re selective. There are SEO benefits, too. For certain medium-tail keyword searches, I rank first on page one of Google – but it’s not my website showing up. It’s my SfEP directory entry. And, anyway, you’re in control. You get to accept work, or decline it – whatever suits your needs. The key thing to remember is that if you get too many requests to quote from the directories and agencies, you can always trim and focus on those that deliver the best-quality clients to you. Plus, you’ll never know what’s working if you don’t test in the first place. Testing is something else you’ll see me bang on about in my books, but only because it’s the foundation of any solid marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you try something, and that something doesn’t work. You’ll still have learned something, and having learned it you can make an informed decision about what to do next. Otherwise your marketing is just guesswork – which is exhausting at best! So, yes, go ahead. Sign up for a few more and find out what works for you. Evaluate in a few months’ time. Then leave behind the ones that don’t work out and try something else instead. Now let’s deal with the content strategy. Creating delectable content! Less is more (sort of) When I say less is more, I’m talking about platforms, not the actual content itself. This isn’t just me banging my drum. The professionals emphasize this. My own content marketing coaches Andrew and Pete recommend focusing on one or two platforms, and really honing them. Plus, I’m halfway through the online conference Summit on Content Marketing, and speakers Rand Fishkin, Ilise Benun, Dave Jackson, and Stoney deGeyter agree: concentrate on what your core clients are using – in other words, choose the platforms your customers prefer, rather than the ones you prefer. So, you’re planning to use a blog and YouTube to deliver your advice on academic writing. If those are platforms that your core clients like using, then go ahead. And stick to those two – really craft them into something special, something compelling. Some quick tips (you might know the following already but other readers might not, so bear with me!) … Quality Make sure your content is really useful so that it offers solutions for your potential clients. Don’t sell – just solve. I used to call content marketing ‘value-added marketing’ (see the marketing book you’ve bought). Seriously, I didn’t know ‘content’ marketing was a thing until a year ago! I still think it’s an oddly bland name for such an exciting strategy. Anyway, I don’t get to make the rules, so content marketing it is! Focus on value above all else. Value trumps everything (unless your great writing is so blurred as to be unreadable, or the audio quality of your video so poor as to make it unwatchable). If you create a beautiful video, or a blog post with loads of fancy pictures, but the story you’re telling your viewers or readers is of no use to them and doesn’t help them, you won’t grow that audience. But if your video is a little flawed, or your blog post a little ugly, you’ll still grow your audience and build trust and relationships if you’ve made someone’s life easier. It’s no different to friendship. I don’t pick my mates because they look gorgeous – it’s all about the relationship and how we make each other feel. Content marketing’s no different. I’ve tried hard to make my blog look prettier this year. But you know what? Some of my most popular posts are still those I wrote years ago – posts with really long paragraphs of dense narrative – 1,500 words of me telling people what publishers think about proofreading training courses, and another 1,500 of me on how to upload custom stamps of PDF markup symbols. No pictures. No clever SEO titles. Just loads of text. But it’s text that answers the questions that (some) people are asking. Consistency Be consistent with how often you deliver your blogs and videos. The expert view is this: whether you post twice a week, once a week or once a month is less important than choosing one of those and committing to it. That way your readers and viewers get into the routine of engaging with you. Furthermore, if you commit to once a week, but you don’t have enough content to fill that schedule, you’re more likely to feel deflated and stop. Which would be a huge shame! It's better to excite an audience by raising your game than disappointing them by going backwards. Quantity If you write great blogs that are 400 words long, perfect. If you need 2,000 words, perfect. If your videos need to be 5 minutes long to solve your client’s problems, make them 5 minutes long. If they need to be longer, and that’s what your audience wants, make them longer. Just make sure that every word and every minute is full of value. I know I’m a right old rambler so I struggle to make every word count. Let’s just call me chatty! Delivery Think about how you’ll direct people to your blog and YT channel. I post to Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn to make editors and writers aware of what’s new on my blog. I’ve also recently created a mailing list for writers to enable me to alert them when new self-publishing resources are available. And, these days, Google Search is working wonders for me. In time, it’ll work for you to if you commit to creating all that delicious stuff for your potential clients! If academic writers are also using Twitter, FB and LI to get their updates, those are the channels you should use to direct them to your blog and video platforms. If they’re using some other channel to get their news, that’s where you should be. Again, it’s about what your listeners and readers want, rather than your own preferences Hope that’s helped, Maya. Thanks so much for asking two great questions.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. How to make a living from self-publishing fiction This week's post is a cracker. Self-published author Jeff Carson has kindly agreed to discuss his writing journey.
This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #81
Jeff's a mystery and thriller writer from Colorado. Writing is his full-time job and he makes a living from his self-published series.
That's a dream for millions of independent authors; below, Jeff shares 11 tips on how he turned that dream into a reality. If you're at the start of your self-publishing adventure, this is definitely for you!
My name is Jeff Carson and I’m the author of a series starring David Wolf, a cop living in the fictional town of Rocky Points in the Colorado Rockies. Right now, I’ve written ten books in the series.
When I first started out writing, I remember being tormented at night by questions swimming in my head (and by mosquitos … at the time, we were in Italy for a year, and they were thick that summer, I tell you). Questions like: Can I really do this? Can I make a living at it? Is this just a waste of my time? What if everyone hates the books?
By finding a few people online who’d made a success of becoming a self-published author, I was able to get a lot of my questions answered and some inspiration that propelled me towards making a living as a fiction writer. I despise playing the guru, and I’m cringing a little as I write this, but I have accomplished the goals I laid out five years ago. So I have to say that I feel l’ve succeeded in the self-publishing realm. There are others, many others, who would scoff at my level of accomplishment, but this blog post isn’t for them. This is for those who are in the position I once was, in that sweat-soaked Italian bed. Here are 11 things that have helped me succeed as a self-published author. 1. I want to make a living doing this That’s been the over-arching goal from the beginning. I wanted my paycheck to come from writing. I wanted to make money twenty-four hours per day from people reading my books. I’ve met many people who approach writing as a therapeutic tool for their lives. That’s fine. But 100% of people who write get the therapeutic benefit. One only makes money from it if it’s a goal. You don't wake up with a horse one day by random accident. There’s a lot of intention and action that goes into suddenly having a hay-eating animal roaming around in the back yard. Same thing goes with earning a living from writing. 2. I wrote a book series I learned that if you want to make money from writing fiction, the odds of success go up dramatically by writing a series. Since my goal was to make money with this gig, naturally I wrote a series. Harlan Coben is the exception, not the norm. On this note, I learned the hard way to not leave books ending on a cliff-hanger. I'd done this with book one and received a lot of negative reviews. I’ve since fixed the novel so that all story goals are resolved and it ends completely. In my series, my characters grow and their lives change from each book to the next, but I try to make each book a stand-alone. This helps with marketing, too, since anyone can pick up one of the David Wolf novels at any point in the series and feel grounded and up to speed. 3. I over-estimated, or realistically estimated, the level of work it would take to achieve my goal (of making a living writing) I knew that one book in a series, the first book I’d ever written and published in my entire life, would make no money. Pessimistic? It’s not. First, I was learning how to write a story. Second, I wasn’t expecting to gain a wide audience with a single book taking up a single slot in the vast Amazon universe. I knew book one was the hook – the mouth of a funnel – that would lead to the rest of the books in the series. In fact, I knew I was probably going to offer the first book for free. I needed multiple books in multiple categories grabbing people’s attention, all of them leading readers to the other books sitting in other categories. The series would act as a big net. I figured that after three books I’d be making some ‘extra money’. I hoped that after five I’d be making enough money to quit all other work and concentrate on writing only. Then I doubled that number. Therefore, I created a goal of writing ten books; then I’d judge the venture one way or another. In reality, after five books I was able to write full-time and make a full-time living wage. Now that I’m on book eleven, my goals, expectations, and earnings have elevated.
At the beginning, I felt that if I set my work expectations too low, I’d become discouraged, and fast. Because if after, say, four books I was still irrelevant and making nothing, then my hopes would be dashed.
Some people would call a ten-book ‘realistic expectation’ pessimistic, but in my mind it’s the reason I kept going when, after three books, I’d known months that wouldn’t have paid for a week’s worth of groceries. 4. I concentrate on what I want every day I’ve filled two college-ruled notebooks with lists of my goals. Every day (or most days) I open up a notebook, list the writing goals/life goals with specific deadlines, such as when I’ll finish the first draft and when I’ll publish, and then I get to work. I learned this technique by reading this Brian Tracy book on goal-setting: Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. That book definitely changed my life. I'd never even had goals before reading that book. Now I always set goals. Deadlines always get pushed back, which would be depressing if I let myself to think about it. But the system doesn’t allow for that. Each day is a new sheet, and a new list of goals with either the same deadlines or adjusted deadlines. Looking back on previous lists of goals is not permitted. 5. I read the bad reviews This is a biggie. I’ve heard some authors say, ‘I just ignore the bad reviews.’ I adopted that stance for quite a while, actually. But there’s always something to learn from a bad review. In fact, I think it’s dangerous and irresponsible if you ignore the one- and two-star shellacking some people take pride in giving out between hangover-induced trips to the bathroom, the sons of bitches. Some people get specific – ‘Nice try. A Sig Sauer P226 doesn’t have a safety! Amateur writer at best. I will not be reading another piece of filth by this author.’ So, fine. You skim past the amateur comment and go fix the book so that the special agent DOESN’T flick off the safety as she steps out of her SUV. I think my books are orders of magnitude better because of the bad reviews. I figure that if somebody came up to me on the street, pointed, laughed, and criticized my outfit, I’d shake my head and move on, not in the least worried about that person a few steps later. But if her criticism is, ‘Your fly’s down … oh, yeah, and your pants are on backwards. Idiot,’ well, then, I want to know that. 6. Screw it. I don’t need social media Early on, I adopted the stance that I needed to write my way into relevance as a writer, not tweet, post, or whatever my way into it. Once I adopted this mindset, a weight lifted off my back. I hated it for some reason. I couldn’t get a grasp on social media, so I just let go of it. My investigation leading up to my decision showed a correlation between how much an author published books and how successful they were, between how many positive reviews a book had and how successful it was. I could check an author’s success by looking at the rankings of their books on Amazon and other market places. There was no correlation, however, between how present people were on social media and their book rankings. In fact, more often than not, I saw that people who were successful had all but abandoned their social media accounts. In contrast, there were people all over Twitter and Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of friends/followers, and books lost in obscurity. Clearly there are exceptions, and some people have great success with social media, but my reasoning was: you write your way into being a writer. I rarely post on Facebook, and when I do, it’s usually a link to my new books – classic poor social media behavior. Screw it. I don’t care.
7. I am accessible
I respond to every communication sent to me. I think this is huge as a writer, or as a person in general. Nothing irks me more than somebody simply not responding to something. The most surprising thing about writing, and that I sometimes get all teary-eyed about, is the amount of love people will send your way after they’ve read your novel. People will click on the email address (which I put in the back of the book) and contact me, telling me how much they like my book. For me to not say thanks is plain psycho. Plus, it’s just good business. People who like you are more likely to share the news about your work. 8. I have a newsletter email list This is one of those things I heard people preaching – you have to have an email list of readers – but never did anything about. It took me four freaking books to finally put my email list in place. But I finally did, and that’s when I was finally able to write full time. It only took two days to write and publish a short story, which I give away on my blog as a thank-you if somebody signs up for the new-release newsletter. Now, when I have a new release, I launch the book to thousands of people, versus dropping it into a field of crickets. 9. I write in sprints first, edit later This is one of those huge game-changers for me. I was getting upset sitting in front of the computer every day but only coming out with one or two thousand words. Now, I write in sprints, which means I write in thirty-minute blocks, take a five-minute break, and then do it again. Using the backspace button is not allowed (a rule I break all the time … my OCD won’t allow David Wolf’s name to be Wols for more than a few seconds). It took me six or so books to employ the sprint tactic, and now I’ll never write any other way. 10. I have a self-editing PLAN After tapping out a real crappy draft of a terrible book, then going back through a few times, editing, ironing out inconsistencies, tightening up descriptions of dead bodies, etc., I have in the past simply read and re-read the book, then tweaked until I felt it was ‘as good as I can get it’. I’m ashamed to say, it’s only been recently that I’ve implemented a self-editing plan. The plan is something like …
11. I hire an editor who does it for a living, for a rate that allows her to do it for a living After seven books, going through three editors, and becoming frustrated with the service I was getting, I realized that I needed to hire an editor who was an editor and only an editor, and who charged a rate that clearly allowed her to feel properly compensated. The alternative is hiring somebody who does the work on the side for cheap. They’re pressed for time. They’re secretly (I imagine, because I would be) pissed off about being underpaid for a job that deserves more money. The equation adds up to a poor editing job on the finished product … suspicious stretches of pages – five, ten at a time – without a single mark on them. The saying goes, ‘You get what you pay for,’ and it can get tricky when paying for editing services. For years, I tried to get away with paying less. And I definitely got less. ... In today’s publishing environment, I know that, for me, every bit of advice helps. I hope at least one of the tips above helps you on your journey to becoming a successful self-published writer.
Where to find Jeff and his books
Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're an author, you might like to visit Louise’s Writing Library to access my latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.
If you’re at the beginning stages of your writing career, you’ll still be navigating your way through the world of publishing. And you probably have a ton of questions. One of those will likely be: What kind of editor do I need to help me get my book ready? The natural follow-up to that is: How do I find that person?
I offered guidance on what kind of editor to hire and when in ‘The different levels of editing. Proofreading and beyond’. Today, I’m focusing on how you should source that person.
So as not to muddy the waters, I’m assuming you’ve already decided what kind of help you want: developmental, copy/line editing or final prepublication proofreading. If you’re still not sure, I’ve included a PDF that summarizes the different levels of editing at the bottom of this article. Now let’s look at how to find the right person. My recommendations fall into two categories:
Search (1): Professional associations
Your national editorial society is a great place to start, for four reasons:
Being able to target your search means higher-quality results for less of your valuable time. Woo hoo! The UK’s professional editorial association is the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and there’s a global list here: Professional societies and associations. A limitation of national professional editorial societies is that they’re national. There’s absolutely no reason why you should source editorial help from someone in your own backyard. Many editorial pros work with clients from all over the world. Search (2): The internet The internet is the biggest and most amazing directory on the planet so it’s a brilliant place to search. Your perfect-fit editorial pro is out there, just waiting for you to touch base. There’s a problem, though: the internet is the biggest and most amazing directory on the planet so it’s a terrible place to search. Your perfect-fit editorial pro is buried, waiting for you to dig her out. Go too broad with your keywords and you might miss her. Go too narrow and … yep, you might miss her. Of course, you might find her, too. As Google sometimes prompts us: are you feeling lucky? And there’s something else to bear in mind – and I say this as someone with page-one Google rankings for the term ‘proofreader’, so it’s not a case of sour grapes – being high up in Google doesn’t mean the proofreader or editor is necessarily the best fit for you; it means they’re an effective marketer. And, conversely, just because someone’s website is ranked highly for niche long-tail keyword searches doesn’t mean that another person who didn’t pepper their website with those particular terms isn’t worth considering, too. That means you need to do a lot of Google legwork to find the best fit and to get a really good batch of potential people to work with. I’m not saying don’t use the internet. Its global nature is an appealing feature, one that the national editorial societies can’t compete with. I’m saying recognize its limitations. It’s amazing but it’s crowded, so you’ll need to invest some time to make it work for you. And that’s why I’ve given professional associations the number-one slot in this list of search options. Search (3): Your network If you’ve developed a solid network of fellow writers, that could be a super resource from which to get recommendations. Bear in mind, however, that the best fit for your writer pal is not necessarily the best fit for you. It’s a small resource given the size of the decision. You might be writing in a different genre, or you might need help with a different level of editing. Some professional editors specialize in one or two levels (e.g. proofreading and copyediting; or developmental editing and manuscript evaluation). Others offer all of the levels but still feel most comfortable in one or two. So tap your network for advice, but back it up with other searches. Search (4): Social media Social media platforms can be useful. They’re global but they have their limitations:
Again, back up with other searches. Here's a summary of the tools you might use to search for an editor or proofreader:
Now let’s take a look at how you might refine your initial searches.
You’ve found 37 developmental editors or copyeditors or proofreaders … whatever you need. All of them look great – they all have experience; can spell properly; are well educated and professional; and have a keen eye for detail and the appropriate training and qualifications. How are you going to narrow that down to something manageable? Refine (1): Genre experience One way is to look at their portfolios, which tell you whether they’re used to working with books in your genre.
A portfolio does not an editor make, and it shouldn’t be the sole determiner of whom you choose by any means. It will, though, give you a feel for who’s used to working with writing like yours. Refine (2): Best versus best fit – samples Best versus best fit is worth considering when it comes to choosing third-party editorial help. At proofreading stage, you need precision; it’s all about quality control. At the earlier stages of editing (e.g. copy/line) emotional engagement will come into play. It’s therefore a good idea to ask for a sample (either free or paid for). A sample will allow you to see who ‘gets’ your writing. Sentence-level tweaking is subjective to a degree (when it comes to suggesting minor recasts, for example) and it may be that five editors all spot the same typos and grammar errors but handle the wordiness rather differently. It’s not about right or wrong, but rather about responsiveness. Refine (3): Endorsements A third narrowing-down technique is to look at what other writers say about a proofreader or editor. Take a look at their testimonials. Have other writers been prepared to publicly endorse the editorial pro? Have mainstream publishers stuck their necks out and praised the work? Testimonials aren’t a foolproof way of determining excellence; like portfolios, they give you a glimpse of what the editors have done, whom they’ve worked with and the impressions they’ve made. They’re just one way of evaluating what’s on offer. So that’s it – a potted guide to finding a proofreader, copyeditor or developmental editor. I wish you luck with your search and with your writing journey! Here’s the information on the different levels of editing I promised. Just click on the image to download.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. How do mainstream publishers produce books? And should you mimic them? Help for self-publishers15/5/2017
Unsure how mainstream publishers manage the editorial process? This post provides an overview and shows you why books take so long to get to market and what some of the costs are (to the publisher and even to the author!).
A note on scheduling … and marketing
In the mainstream publishing industry, books are commissioned and scheduled for publication often up to a year and a half in advance, sometimes longer! That time frame isn’t down to the publisher being busy with other stuff; rather, it’s about giving the relevant team members the necessary time to take the book through a rigorous editing process and carry out a staged prepublication marketing campaign. TOP TIP: When self-publishing, instead of promoting your book at the eleventh hour, plan and implement your marketing campaign well ahead of launch. That way, you can create a fan base and generate excitement about your novel before it goes to market, even pulling in some pre-order sales. How do mainstream publishers produce books? Every press’s editorial production chain is slightly different but the broad principles apply.
3. Design #1 When the key members have agreed that the correction stage is complete, the raw-text files are handed over to a typesetter (if the book is to be printed). This is where the first proofs are created. The typesetter formats the book so that the layout conforms to the agreed house style and is designed so that maximum use of the page space is made. Printing is very expensive so minimizing wasted white space is a key factor in the process. The typesetter needs to balance costs against aesthetics.
This is the FIRST PROOF stage. The first proofs are essentially a first draft of what the finished product will look like when it’s picked off the shelves in a bookshop. The completed first proofs are delivered back to the production manager.
KEY MEMBERS: Author, production manager, typesetter 4. Proofreading The production manager sends the first proofs (perhaps a chunk of paper but increasingly a PDF) to the author and the proofreader (usually a freelancer). Both will check them carefully. The proofreader may be asked to proofread blind or against the original raw-text files worked on by the copyeditor (the latter is much slower). The proofreader’s job is not to make extensive changes, but rather to draw attention to any final spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency or logic problems missed at earlier rounds of editing or introduced during the typesetting stage. Every change the proofreader makes or suggests needs to be handled carefully in case it has a knock-on effect on the design, the page count and, consequently, the printing costs. It’s demanding work that requires experience and judgement about when to change and when to leave well enough alone. Some publishers even pass some of these costs back to the author – eek!
This is the QUALITY CONTROL or CHECKING stage. The proofreader does not amend the raw text but annotates the paper or digital pages, often using proof-correction markup language (a kind of shorthand that looks like hieroglyphics to the untrained eye!).
KEY MEMBERS: Author, production manager, proofreader, typesetter 5. Final revision: Design #2 Now the proofreader’s corrected file and the author’s version go back to the production manager, who has to collate all the final amendments and instruct the typesetter to make the necessary corrections. The typesetter creates a revised file and returns it to the production manager for sign-off.
This the SECOND PROOF stage. We’re nearly there!
KEY MEMBERS: Author, production manager, typesetter 6. File creation and distribution (print, digital or both) The final countdown! The production manager works with the typesetter and printer to create the final print book that will be delivered to the relevant distribution channels. In the case of e-books, the production manager will commission a digital formatter to create e-Pub files that are compatible with the market’s major e-readers and other digital devices.
This is the PUBLISHING stage. The book is delivered to market!
KEY MEMBERS: Production manager, digital formatter, typesetter, printer The elusive publishing deal and the editorial process As you can see, there are a lot of stages and a lot of people involved. And that’s why it takes so long and why it’s so expensive to publish. It also explains, in part, why writers can find it so hard to get a mainstream publishing deal; if the book bombs, there’s no return on all that investment. For publishers, novels that need a lot of work, or that don’t fit neatly into an obvious and currently popular genre, are difficult to sell (the high-street bookshops don’t know where to place them to grab readers’ attention). Should you mimic the mainstream publishing industry's editorial process? Mimicry will bring you quality – there’s no doubt about that. It’ll also require a major investment in time and money. We all have to make difficult choices about what we do to make the things we create the best they can be. But there are limitations. I’m passionate about the independent author’s right to write, and I know that your pockets aren’t bottomless. I hope this has shed some light on the mainstream publishing process! Until next time …
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re new to fiction copyediting (or proofreading), you might struggle to find the balance between changing, querying and leaving well enough alone.
Don’t beat yourself up – even experienced editors labour to find an equilibrium at times, especially those who work with a stream of new-client authors.
Here are 5 tips to help you be a query superhero! And if you fancy downloading them to your preferred device, there’s a PDF at the bottom of the post.
1. Is it meant to be real or imagined? By definition, fiction is made up. There might be people, places, landmarks, buildings, even entire worlds that rest entirely in the mind of the writer. In that case, the author gets to make the rules (e.g. on spelling, environment, even physics) and our job is to check for consistency. Sometimes, though, the people, places, landmarks and buildings exist in the real world. And when there’s a discrepancy (Obama vs Obamah; Elizabeth Tower vs Big Ben) two possibilities emerge: (1) the author has slipped up; (2) the author has deliberately decided to bend reality a little, for any number of reasons. Querying, rather than changing, is essential.
Here’s an example from one of Amy Schneider's fiction-editing master classes:
Example
Schneider tells of a book she edited where the author had included mention of a New York newspaper. She fact-checked it; it had been a real newspaper, but had long ceased to exist by the time the year in which the novel was set had come around. It turned out that this was a deliberate decision on the part of the author, who for personal reasons wanted to keep the paper going in his fictional world. Tactful querying and discussion prevented embarrassment and harm.
LESSON: There’s real, and then there’s really real! Either may be required.
2. When the facts have changed Editors have a wealth of free online research tools at their fingertips. I can’t imagine doing this job thirty years ago! Still, even if we fact-check we might not access ALL the relevant information. Again, tactful querying rather than changing is usually the best way forward. Here’s an example of how my due diligence wasn’t diligent enough. Querying rather than changing saved me:
Example
I copyedited a crime novel in which a character was arrested and his rights were read out to him by a police officer. The wording seemed off to me so I fact-checked. I found what I thought was the correct wording and suggested (rather than changed) a possible recast for the author to use if he thought it appropriate. Good job, too. The author came back to me saying that the wording of the rights had changed in 1994, and that the original was correct given the year in which the scene was set. A big whoops moment for me and a lesson learned. Still, he thanked me for asking first. I still get the shudders thinking about the harm I would have done if I’d actually amended the text directly.
LESSON: Watch your historical context – your diligence needs to be deep enough to take account of it.
3. Be a problem solver Many of my indie authors haven’t taken their books through editorial review, developmental editing and substantive line editing before the file hits my inbox. I do make it absolutely clear what’s included in my service, but sometimes a client might not realize where some of the problems are, or, even if they do, might be stuck on how to fix them. This is where the query needs to go beyond a question and offer a solution. Fiction copyeditors are a little like mechanics, though I have a car so I know what it’s like to sit on the other side of the fence. When I take my car into the garage, I don’t expect to hand over 500 quid (or whatever) in exchange for a list of what’s wrong with my car. I do want to see that list, but I also want to know that the mechanic has solved the problems. For that reason, I think it’s good practice to explain the problem and offer a recast in the comments if we come across a sentence that we feel could do with tightening up or smoothing out. That way, the author can do a simple copy and paste if they like what we’re offering. Even if they don’t like it, it gives them another way of thinking about the text and how they might revise it to solve the problem in their own way (though see ‘Consider your own voice’ below for a cautionary tale!). This example from Erin Brenner (‘Writing Effective Author Queries’), with her author’s hat on, is frightening but illuminating:
Example
'I had a lot of comments that simply said: AU: Revise? No text was changed. No specific words or phrases were highlighted. The entire sentence bore the comment “AU: Revise?” It drove me mad. Revise what? In what way does this sentence need help? For each “AU: Revise?” I had to guess what the copyeditor might have taken issue with. Was everything grammatically correct? Had I missed a style point? A usage rule? How was the sentence not right? As copyeditors, we must remember that when we query, we have a goal: to get the author to make a change we think will help the text. Some authors will easily do so, others won’t. But no author can make corrections if he or she doesn’t know what corrections are wanted.’
LESSON: Problems without solutions (or even explanations) are next to useless for the author. Avoid!
4. Or be an adviser Back to the garage. Sometimes there are problems on the list that the mechanic can’t handle. Again, the same thing can happen to fiction copyeditors whose indie authors would have benefited from developmental work beforehand. And in that case the best we can do is suggest where to go for help. Here’s another example from my own back yard:
Example
I was hired to copyedit what turned out to be the most gorgeous thriller with a generous dose of humour included. The author made me laugh out loud several times in the first four chapters, and in the fifth he made me cry (not with laughter, but because the scene was so moving). I mention this because it’s an indication of how strong the writing was. Most of my edits were mechanical – standardizing dialogue punctuation, dashes, number treatment, spelling, punctuation and grammar. But, every now and then his point of view got a little sticky. POV isn’t something that’s covered by my service and I’m neither trained nor experienced in developmental editing. Nevertheless, I was able to solve the issue elegantly on several occasions because of the context in which the problem arose. However, there were several occurrences that I couldn’t fix. All I could do was flag them up for him, explain why I thought there might be a problem, and offer advice on where to go for help. It wasn’t an ideal situation for either of us, but at least I’d offered guidance. Sometimes that’s the best we can do.
LESSON: Second best sometimes has to suffice. If you can’t fix it, suggest who can.
5. Consider your own voice Given that we’re being paid for our services, our authors need to know that we’re their advocates, and that we’re there to elevate their writing, not criticize how they write. Says Sheila Gagen, ‘… the editor’s task is to serve readability (not, as some authors might think, to hack away at text or, as some editors might think, to point out where an author is wrong). The author wrote the text; he or she must have thought that it did make sense’ (‘The Art of the Editorial Query’). Queries therefore need to have a tone that shows respect and advocacy. Gagen also makes an important point about authors’ varying preferences – how not everyone wants to be hugged and handheld. The thing is, this is tricky to manage unless you’ve worked with the client on previous occasions. Here’s her story:
Example
‘Twice in my career, authors responded to my queries with the same word: “Duh.” (One even took the time to handwrite it in all caps with a few exclamation marks.) Both of those suggested changes were valid, but the authors were sick of my queries and gave up. As a result, they didn’t just lash out at the particular remarks they didn’t like … they ignored other, indisputable edits.’
LESSON: Be an advocate and watch your manners! Choose elevation over criticism.
Gagen recommends discussing the issue before the project starts. It may be that a writer will prefer you to just go ahead and make a substantive edit to the text. Others may want a nudge. Others will prefer a more detailed explanation in the comments. And given that we’re trying to help our authors avoid reader disengagement, it would be a shame if, through hitting the wrong tone, we ended up disengaging our clients. Adrienne Montgomerie offers further food for thought: ‘When you’re worn out, incredulous, and exasperated, it can show in your queries.’ Eek! To think that, despite our best efforts at advocacy, we might have made our author feel we’re no longer on their side, is unthinkable, and yet it can happen. She offers a handy list of different phrases you might consider when querying to keep your author engaged and your tone on track (‘10 Ways to Word a Sensitive Query’). I hope you’ve found these tips useful. Here’s your PDF mini-booklet if you fancy downloading the post to your device. Just click on the image to get your copy.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re new to writing and self-publishing, I have a tip for you – one that will save you a major headache as you work through the initial writing and later redrafting stages of your novel ... Create your own style sheet!
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Substantive (aka structural, content or developmental) editing
S1: book (the big picture)
Structure: chapters and scenes help readers' understanding
Relevance to intended audience Completeness: no missing core information Plot: engaging, makes sense Characters: authentic and engaging Point of view: consistent, unambiguous and navigable Pace: comfortable reading experience Logical and coherent narrative flow: drives the novel forwards |
Line editing
S2: sentence
Appropriate paragraph and section breaks
Appropriate grammar and syntax Authentic phrasing Avoiding repetition of words or phrases Clarity of meaning Clear dialogue expression (incl. tagging) Conciseness Consistency in minor plot, timeline or character details Correct word choice Elegant sentence flow Flagging similarities in names or events Readability |
Copyediting
S3: sentence, word
Appropriate paragraph and section breaks
Avoiding repetition of words or phrases Clarity of meaning Consistency in minor plot, timeline or character details Correct word choice Correctly punctuated dialogue Flagging similarities in names or events Standard and consistent spelling and punctuation Standard grammar and syntax Standard paragraph indentation |
Proofreading
S4: sentence, word, layout
Correct word choice
Correctly punctuated dialogue Consistency in design of text and image elements Properly formatted paragraph and section breaks Removal of extraneous letter and line spaces Stacked hyphens highlighted Standard and consistent spelling and punctuation Standard grammar and syntax Standard paragraph indentation Widows, orphans and short lines flagged up |
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