One of the things new entrants to the field of editorial freelancing want to know is: What’s a good rate? Here's how to work out what's a good or bad fee for the job.
Terms like good, high, fair, low, poor and predatory are problematic because they’re used by individual freelancers to reflect their own experiences and circumstances, which are often very different.
Rate talk can trip us up if we're not careful. And while it can be interesting to listen to colleagues’ opinions of whether a fee is low or high, their views might not be in any way useful for us because we need to make decisions based on our circumstances, not someone else’s.
One of the first potential trip-ups occurs when the conversation takes place between colleagues from different countries. This issue is one of currency, particularly fluctuations in the exchange rate.
Proofreader A lives in Oxnard, CA, USA. She tells her colleagues in an online forum that she’s accepted an offer from an agency to proofread 4,000 words for US$25. The job is budgeted to take one hour. Some of her US colleagues say that the rate is unacceptably low; some even believe that she’s encouraging a race to the bottom by accepting such a fee from an organization whose rates are clearly unfair. Meanwhile, Proofreader B, who lives in Manchester, UK, is reading the forum thread.
Proofreader B needs to earn a minimum of £20 an hour to meet her needs.
Conversations that include blanket terms such as high and low therefore don’t help Proofreader B. Because the exchange rate fluctuates, so do her perceptions of whether a price is good or bad.
It’s not just currency fluctuations that affect our perceptions of good, high, fair, low, poor and predatory in relation to editorial rates. Circumstances muddy the waters too.
Proofreader C lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She tells her colleagues in an online forum that she’s accepted an offer from an agency to proofread 4,000 words for £16. The job is budgeted to take one hour. Some of her colleagues say that the rate is unacceptably low; some even believe that she’s encouraging a race to the bottom by accepting such a fee from an organization whose rates are clearly unfair. Meanwhile, Proofreader D, who lives just down the road from C, is reading the forum thread.
Proofreader E lives to the west in Strabane.
Proofreader F lives next door to E.
So, conversations that include blanket terms such as high and low don’t help Proofreaders D, E and F either because although they’re all operating within the same geographical region and the same currency market, their circumstances are all very different. Deciding what rate works for you If you want to work out whether Agency X, Publisher Y or Packager Z’s rates are acceptable, you need to know what good, high, fair, low, poor and predatory mean to you based on your situation – not anyone else’s. The same thing applies to deciding what price to set with clients who come directly to you. Consider the following:
That data – as it applies to you, not your colleagues – will give you a useful initial benchmark with which to evaluate whether a fee is low or high. Your colleagues’ opinions are interesting but your colleagues are not responsible for running your business or your home, so their opinions should not be used to determine whether you accept or decline work at a given price. *** While I don’t believe that colleagues should be the sole determiners of the fees we accept or offer, I do think they’re the go-to people for many, many more types of information. See this post on the value of networking – both online and offline.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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Just becoming editors doesn’t bestow special privileges upon us that are not available to other types of working people. Being editors doesn’t mean we’re entitled to be commissioned. Nor does it mean that we’re entitled to earn what we’d like to earn.
Why entitlement won't work for the self-employed
Entitlements are the domain of employees. Freelance editorial pros aren't employees of businesses; they're the owners of those businesses. Work has to be found, which means clients have to be found. We don't live in command economies where the State hands out jobs and you take what you get. We've chosen to run businesses so we have to find a way to make them function successfully. The alternative is unpalatable. In a global market, where clients come from all over, and have different budgets, requirements and expectations, what those clients will be able or prepared to pay will vary enormously. Consequently, of all the clients we find via our extensive marketing efforts, only some will be a price match for us. For that reason, we need to be visible to as many as possible, because the bigger the pot the greater the chance of a conversion. To recap, just being an editor in itself will provide us with neither work nor the money we expect to be paid for the value we believe we bring to the table. Doing visibility is the key to cracking the problem.
Imagine being a teacher ...
Do you know a teacher? Does that person have a paying teaching job? How did they get that teaching job? Are they happy with their salary? If not, ask them what they would have to do to solve the problem. I know a teacher. She trained for the role. After her training was complete, she didn't have a job. So she had to find a job. She didn't sit there and say, ‘I'm a teacher. Where's the work?’ She went and searched for the work. She did loads of research, applied for tons of jobs, reviewed the packages on offer, prepared for a stack of interviews, attended them (which was stressful), filled in her spare time with voluntary work in the education sector to make her CV sing, and finally found a school who wanted her and for whom she wanted to work. For a few years the package worked for her, and then it didn't. She didn't say, ‘This school is predatory.’ She said, ‘I need to find a new job.’ So she did a lot more work. Now that she was more experienced and had higher expectations, it was tricky to find a good match. It took a lot of time, a lot of hard graft, a lot of research, but I never heard her moan. I'd ask how the job search was going. ‘Ticking along. No news yet but I'll know when I find it. The current post isn't perfect but it's better than being unemployed. You hear about Si? He’s been made redundant. Nightmare. He's really down in the dumps.’ My friend did secure a better teaching post. She worked her backside off to find that job. It would've been nice if it had landed in her lap, but that’s not how the teaching sector works. And it's not how the freelance editing sector works either. We have to work our backsides off to find the work we want to do and that pays the fees we want to earn.
Feeling ripped off?
If you're feeling ripped off, that's okay. We’ve all done work that made us feel undervalued and underpaid. That's kind of how my teacher friend was feeling. Time to replace that rip-off work with a better package. Be aware, though – this won't happen overnight. If you're not visible to those offering better-paying work, you'll have to make yourself visible, which takes a lot of hard graft. It took my teacher pal a couple of years to replace her employer with one offering the package she wanted. It might take you a couple of years to make yourself visible to the clients you want to work with. This could mean you have to stick with the current client while you're working your backside off to find a new and better-paying replacement.
The client under the microscope
In the meantime, take a good hard look at the client. If you're feeling ripped off, it can be useful to examine not just the deficiencies but also the benefits. This kind of exercise can shine a light on some of the value you might have overlooked, value that you may not have costed into your analysis. Turnover So the work isn't paying you what you'd like to earn, but is there a lot of it on offer? Every time you receive an email that offers you work on a plate, you get to fill your schedule with absolutely no effort on your part whatsoever. Some people have a few regular clients who provide 90% of their work. Others have a few regular clients who provide only 20% of their work; the other 80% is new business. New business needs to be found and converted into a working relationship. Which leads us to marketing … Marketing If you fill your schedule with a lot of work from one agency (or publisher or packager), and you think said agency is ripping you off, ask yourself how come they've got so much work that they can fill 80% of your schedule and the same percentage of many of your colleagues’ schedules. Is it because they’re marketing their backsides off? Then ask yourself whether you're prepared to make the same investment, because that's what you'll have to do. You'll have to do all the hard graft yourself. Marketing an editorial business isn't just a cute little hobby you dip your toes into a couple of times a year. Well, actually, it can be if you get someone else, like the agency, to do the graft for you (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but there'll be a cost to it because they'll take a cut of every penny you earn. And that's fair enough because there is a cost to finding clients. Marketing takes time, and time is money. So if you don't want to lose a cut, you have to fork out for the marketing investment. In other words, we don't get to have it both ways. We can't expect someone else to find our clients for us and expect to earn as much as if those clients were coming direct. If we did expect that, who'd be ripping off whom?
Still want an exit?
Fair enough. Start actively promoting so that you can phase out the lower-paying client(s) and replace them with new customers who'll pay what you want to earn. Plan for this to take time and a lot of work. If you don't fancy the transitional approach, you can wave goodbye to the work immediately. If that's the case, you either live with someone who can pay all your bills (quite possible, and good for you), you have a trust fund (less likely, but wow), or you're happy to be partially unemployed for a while. As you can probably tell, I favour the transition method! That's because my family situation means my income, although the secondary one in our family, is essential. When I was starting out, I couldn't afford to turn down work on principle while I was finding better-paying alternatives. I had to use a phasing-out approach (if negotiation wasn't on the table). Of course, it may be that you already have enough higher-paying clients to cover the lost income from the existing customer, but if that's the case you probably nailed your marketing strategy years ago!
We're responsible
No one else is responsible for the rates we earn, the clients we find (or whom we enable to find us), the tools we use to make ourselves visible, the equipment we buy, the tax returns we file, the colleagues we talk to, the meetings we attend. It's all down to us. We're not entitled to have anything land in our lap. As business owners, we reap all the benefits, but we have to do all the work. Every time we hand over some of that graft to another entity (finance to the accountant; client-finding to an agency; fee-handling to a money-transfer organisation), we see a cut in profits. That's not being ripped off; it's a cost of business. If you don't want to bear the cost, you have to do it yourself. Being an editor isn't enough when we're freelance. If we're not wearing the many hats required for business ownership (or we resent bearing the cost of someone else wearing them for us), we need to take a step back and consider whether it’s time to make some changes. What we are entitled to What we are entitled to do is to make our own decisions. We’re entitled to choose the clients, the rates, and the types of work that suit our needs. So if you want to work for a packager or an agency that pays less than a colleague thinks is acceptable, but there’s value in it for you and your business, that’s fine. If you want to decline the work and source your own clients direct, that’s fine too. Me? I’ve done both in my time because it was right for me. You’re entitled to the same choice. Good luck!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. What's a fair price for proofreading or editing? One of my concerns when discussing rates is that the value of a particular client to the freelance editor or proofreader’s business is sometimes overlooked.
Deciding not to accept a particular editing rate might be the right choice for me but the wrong choice for you, or vice versa. That’s because our circumstances are different and because businesses aren’t static.
Terms such as ‘too low’ or ‘race to the bottom’ can be problematic because they’re used as if editorial business ownership is taking place in the now – as if the business, and the fees which that business owner accepts, are absolutes and somehow unrelated to what’s gone before or what will happen in the future. I believe that business ownership is a journey – that the work I do, and the marketing I carry out to acquire that work, is fluid. The decisions I made and the actions I took three years ago affected the work I was doing and the fees I was charging/accepting at that time; but they ALSO affected the work I’m doing and the fees I’m charging/accepting now. This fluidity means that the way we find value in a client extends beyond the rate. Time for a case study to nail things down … Case study: The packager and the proofreader 2012 Ellie’s a proofreader. Work: She’s completed her training and become a member of her national editorial society. She’s technically excellent at her job, but she has no clients and very little experience of paid work. Marketing: She has a website but the portfolio and testimonials pages are sparse. And, anyway, her SEO is, as yet, so undeveloped that she’s barely discoverable online. She gets in touch with a packager who regularly hires proofreaders who are members of her national professional society. Clients: To the packager, she’s a great fit. She has the skills they want and she has the space in her schedule. To academics, students, businesses and independent authors searching for a proofreader, she’s invisible. Even if she were visible, she appears less experienced (less interesting, we might say) than other proofreaders touting their services. Rates: The agency offers regular work, and the rate is £13.50 per hour. ‘That rate is woeful,’ says one of the more experienced colleagues in her network. ‘That’s so low it’s an insult,’ says another. ‘Accepting that is encouraging a race to the bottom,’ says yet another. Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she has a cunning plan! 2014 Ellie’s still a proofreader. Work: In the past two years, she’s done a book a month for that packager. Now, from that packager alone, she has 24 academic book titles in her portfolio – all of them published by international scholarly publishers, and some of them authored by big names in the academic community. She’s also contacted several academic presses whose rates are a little higher than the packager’s, but only by a few pounds. Marketing: She’s been busy over the past two years.
Clients: Two years ago, Ellie wasn’t discoverable to anyone but the packager and the publishers. Things have changed, though. It’s been a slow burn, but her down-the-road thinking has led to a larger number of direct hits on her website. There’s still a long way to go, but when clients visit her website now, they see the following:
Rates: A few of the clients who’ve found her direct have accepted the rates she offered. These are sometimes as much as double the rate she’s earning from the publishers and packager. This inspires her to continue her marketing activities and increase her visibility to these client types so that she might shift her customer base as her business develops. Ellie’s still not visible enough to fill her schedule with these better-paying clients. She continues to accept work from the publishers and the packagers. ‘Those rates are an insult to someone with your experience,’ cry some of her colleagues. Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she’s not phasing out the publishers and the packager until she’s phased in enough higher-paying clients to replace the workflow and the income it provides. 2016 Ellie’s still a proofreader. Work: Over the past two years, she gradually reduced the work for the packager, finally stopping it altogether at the end of 2015. She’s still taking some work from her early publisher clients, though much less than in 2012–14. That’s because she’s been working for four better-paying presses whose rates are what she’d define as ‘middle-of-the-road’, though nowhere near as high as the fees she can set when she works directly for authors and students. Her increasing visibility has put her in a position where she receives several direct requests to quote per week. She’s noticed that some academic publishers are even asking their authors to source and pay for their own proofreading, so she’s glad she’s focused on making herself discoverable to these clients. Marketing: Even though Ellie’s had a full schedule for several years, she’s continued to focus on what she wants down the road in terms of client types and income. The bread-and-butter work provided by the publishers and the packager have enabled her to concentrate large chunks of her marketing time on what she wants in the future without having to worry excessively about where today’s work will come from.
Clients: Ellie appears to clients as an experienced proofreader with professional qualifications. They think she’s on their wavelength because of the valuable resources she provides for free. The fact that she’s worked for international academic publishing houses gives them confidence that she knows how to follow a brief and work on complex materials to a high standard. If she wasn’t capable, those presses wouldn’t have hired her repeatedly, would they? Rates: Ellie no longer accepts work below £20 per hour, although she aims to earn an average hourly rate of £28. She can afford to make this decision because of the balance between her later-acquired, medium-paying publisher clients (who provide her with a stable workflow) and the higher-paying independent clients who contact her direct. On an online forum, a new entrant to the field posts that she’s been offered proofreading work from a packager at a rate of £15 an hour. Does Ellie say, ‘That rate’s woeful. It’s an insult. Accepting it would be encouraging a race to the bottom’? Nope. She says, ‘Is there value in this work beyond the fee being offered?’ She goes further:
The business journey Ellie’s business in 2012 looks different to Ellie’s business in 2016. Her client base has shifted, her income has shifted, the base price she’ll accept has shifted, her work stream has shifted and her visibility has shifted.
There is value beyond the rate. Whether you take advantage of that value will depend on your particular circumstances, of course. My advice to new starters is to be cautious when listening to the rates debate. It’s easy for seasoned professional editorial freelancers to advise against accepting this or that fee simply because they’re in a position to command better fees. In fact, offering advice on what’s an acceptable price is almost impossible unless we understand an individual freelancer’s circumstances, requirements and access points to the industry. Fees, like any other aspect of a business, need to be considered in the context of an overall business plan, and over a time frame that extends beyond the now. More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this article, I consider several approaches to increasing editing income and declining lower-paid work. These respect editors' differing circumstances, client bases and business goals.
How to increase editing and proofreading income
Taking annual action to increase income from freelance editorial work is simply good business practice. Earnings need to keep up with cost-of-living increases else our editorial businesses could fail. Even if they don't fail, the decline in profitability could have a significant impact on our lifestyle and well-being. What we earn is determined by the following:
Increasing our earnings is not always straightforward, though. You or I might think our desired rate increase is entirely justified (for example, because of inflation). However, what you or I think is not the issue. Any change to a pricing model must consider the client’s response for the simple reason that the client might not be prepared to pay. Remember:
Decisions about what to set or accept therefore need to be carefully planned. Avoiding knee-jerk thinking If a colleague states that they’ve decided to no longer edit for ‘low’ rates, by all means congratulate them on their business decision. Don’t assume, though, that their decision is the same one you should be making. Before you impulsively follow their lead, ask yourself the following questions:
In other words, don’t feel compelled to decline work just because your colleagues deem what’s on offer as a bum deal. Their current circumstances might be very different from yours. Not everyone can afford to be unemployed, and the choices available to a mature freelance-business owner may be very different from those on offer to the beginner. Case study – the price-accepter When you’re a price-accepter, the process for managing rates is usually one of the following:
In the first five years of owning my editorial business, I was almost exclusively a price-accepter. My main clients were publishers and packagers. Returning to the knee-jerk-avoidance issues:
During that phase, I was a negotiator and a phase-outer. I’d take the work to ensure a full schedule. I gained experience and testimonials, and I expanded my portfolio – all great marketing tools. As I acquired better-paying clients, I phased out the 15-pounder, then the 18-pounder, then the 20-pounder, and so on. It was a gradual process. In 2017, my marketing strategy has paid off. I’m highly visible. I’ve got the experience, the testimonials and the portfolio to make me interesting to enough non-publisher clients that I can decline a price and walk away. I’ve moved from negotiation and phasing-out to responding with a flat refusal. Case study – the price-setter When you’re a price-setter, the process for managing rates is usually one of the following:
In the first five years of owning my editorial business, I had few clients for whom I set the price, and I was still developing my visibility. If there was space in my schedule, I’d try to fill it by negotiating and offering phased-in fee increases for regular clients. In 2017, things have changed. I’m a flat-increaser. If the client doesn’t like the fee on offer, no problem. I thank them for their interest and wish them luck. Returning to the knee-jerk-avoidance issues:
As I hope the two examples above show, the approaches we take can vary over time and depend on individual circumstances. There’s no one-size-fits-all response. Some additional thoughts
Managing rates is a journey Increasing earnings isn’t about knee-jerk reactions. Rather, it’s a journey. Depending on your circumstances, you might handle things one way now, and another way further down the road. Whether you buckle, negotiate, phase in/out, or make flat-out decisions will be based on your circumstances. There’s no one, true way to do it and there’s no shame in any of those choices as long as they’re done in relation to an analysis of your business needs and goals. More information
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. BookMachine kindly invited me to write about proofreading and copyediting for independent authors who've already gone live with their book. In 'Post-publication editing for self-publishing authors', I discuss why some authors make the decision to work with editorial professionals post-publication, and how we might support them, all the while taking 'a tone that focuses on solutions, not criticism'. 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.
Are you thinking of switching careers and becoming a proofreader or copyeditor? I have 7 tips to help you decide whether it's right for you.
At the time of writing, I’ve had 5 requests in 5 days for advice on transitioning to a proofreading/copyediting career.
Self-reflection isn’t uncommon at the turn of a new year – we use the time to think about what the future might bring and what changes we can make to achieve our life goals and business objectives. Here's a summary of the advice I offered my five enquirers based on the questions they asked. This brief article only scratches the surface, but I hope it gives those who are considering a new career some food for thought. 1. Do I have the right background?Probably! See how I answered that without knowing a thing about your educational and career experience? Here’s the thing – if you want to specialize in medical editing for publishers and you have a degree in economics, a rethink’s in order. Social science publishers, though? That’s more like it. Ultimately, it’s about aligning your experience and skills with those who speak the same language.
So, yes, you do probably have the right background to enable you to transition to a proofreading or copyediting career. Just make sure you focus (initially) on targeting clients to whom you have the best chance of offering an exemplary service – clients who’ll think you’re interesting and hireable because you’re comfortable with the language of their subject. That doesn’t mean you have to specialize forever, or stay with the same specialization over the course of your career. When I launched my editorial business, I worked almost exclusively for social science publishers. These days, I work mostly on fiction, specializing in proofreading and copyediting for indie authors. A lot can change in a decade. 2. Is training necessary and worthwhile?In a nutshell, yes. Why?
Take advice from your national editorial society on the most appropriate training course. The list I’ve linked to includes organizations in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. 3. Where’s my market?Perhaps a better question is: Where isn’t my market? Most proofreading and copyediting is done onscreen these days. Even traditional page-proof markup, using proof-correction symbols, is increasingly taking place in a digital environment. That means geography is not the barrier it once was. Thirty years ago, an author from Colorado wouldn’t have hired me to proofread his crime thrillers – not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t find me. Now, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, he can and he has.
If you live in Dublin, your market is people who want to work with someone who lives in Dublin, and people who want to work with someone who lives in Ireland, and people who don’t care where you live but believe you have the skills to solve their problems. Same kind of thing applies to the Tromsønian and the Panxwegian. It’s not always about where you live or where your clients live, but whether you can find each other, and whether, once you have, you can instil a belief in those clients that you’re the right person for the job. 4. Will the pay be enough to earn a living wage?This question gets rehashed over and over. There’s no quick answer. Here are some thoughts:
5. Do you think I’ll be able to find clients?Yes, if you’re prepared to be an active marketer. Don’t wait – start thinking about your marketing strategy as soon as you can. Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable. If you’re not interesting, it won’t matter who finds you because they won’t feel compelled to hire you. If you’re invisible, it won’t matter if you have a wardrobe full of USPs because no one will know you exist.
If you’re not ready to do what’s necessary to make yourself visible to good-fit clients, you’re probably not yet ready to run your own editorial business. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are best suited to employment rather than self-employment. If you think that word of mouth will be enough at the start of your editorial career, think again. I do have a few colleagues who’ve relied, successfully, on that but they’re few and far between, and they have a lot of experience (and clients to spread the word). Being active puts you in a position where, over time, you acquire choice. Choice is the road to alignment – where what you need to earn, what you want to earn, how much time you have available to work for those earnings, and what the clients who can find you are prepared to pay all come together in a way that works for you and your business. 6. What kind of information is relevant?It’s always about the client. When you’re creating content, put yourself in your client’s shoes and ask, ‘If I were searching for a proofreader, what would I want to know and what problems might I have?’ Some experts would say that my website has too many words and too many pages, that the portfolio is too cluttered, that there’s too much information below the fold, that my blog titles are too long ... I do break some of the ‘rules’ of online promotion; I also follow many of them. I’ve tried and tested different ways of doing things and found what works for me. Next year, I might be doing things differently. Nothing’s set in stone. If you’re struggling to organize your message, ask yourself the following questions. If the content you create answers them, you’re on the right track.
7. But will it be lonely?If you’re still excited about building a freelance editorial business, then there’s an international community of colleagues waiting to welcome you. Thirty years ago, freelancing could be a lonely business. In 2017, independent proofreaders and copyeditors chat, ask for advice, share knowledge and expertise, and learn … together. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and editorial-society forums provide just some of the online spaces that editorial pros use to connect with each other. We work solo but the digital watercooler has never been busier. See you there!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here's Part 2 of my series on why you must market your editing and proofreading business.
In Part 1, I considered the problem of low rates and some potential solutions:
The alternative is premised on the idea that you can market yourself into a position of choice. Here in Part 2, I take a closer look at the benefits of proactive marketing. I position this within a framework of business ownership that takes responsibility and shuns entitlement. Generating interest and discoverability Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable. If enough potential clients can find you (i.e. you’re discoverable) and are persuaded to contact you (i.e. you’re interesting), you can, over time, put yourself in a position whereby you can turn down the work that doesn’t fit (because of the fee or otherwise), and accept the work that does – and have a full schedule to boot. One fictive example, with a bit of maths! The following is based loosely on my particular situation – I’m a proofreader who works on relatively uncomplicated book-length projects that take around a week to complete. I do take on shorter pieces of work and fit them around my larger projects, but, for the most part, it’s a project-in/project-out workflow. I specialize in working for independent authors, academics, students and publishers. I do a little bit of work for businesses and marketing agencies on occasion, but these clients don’t make up the bulk of my working week. Let’s say that 90% of the new clients who contact me want to pay less than I want to earn. That means that only one in ten jobs will pan out. For simplicity, let’s give each month twenty-two working days (I like to take weekends off). Let’s also say that I can fit in roughly one book-length job in five working days, plus perhaps one or two smaller jobs if required. The reactive marketer Let’s imagine that I’m not as interesting and discoverable as I could be, and am not being found by potential new clients on a regular basis. I receive ten offers of work every two months. Given that 10% of the jobs will pan out into work that pays what I want it to pay, that’s one hit in that two-month period. I consider the remaining nine jobs to be poorly paying. However, because I’m not being found and asked to quote as often as I might be, I don’t have any other hits in the bag. I don’t want to be without work for the bulk of those two months, so I accept the nine lower paying job offers, and feel a bit sorry for myself, consoling myself with the thought that at least I’m being paid something. Then I go and get myself that extra-big hug from my partner and wait for my sympathetic friend to say ‘poor you’. The proactive marketer Now let’s imagine that I actively market my business on a regular basis. I receive an average of thirty offers from new clients every month. As before, only 10% pan out into confirmed work that pays what I want it to pay. That’s fine, though, because that 10% is enough to fill my schedule when taking into account offers from existing well-paying clients. Those existing clients are paying us what we want to earn – they’re people who have already discovered us and considered us interesting enough to hire and rehire. They provide an additional safety net that enables us to make choices. The point is that the more offers you receive, the stronger your position. You can afford to say no. Any percentage of a big number is a very different proposition from that same percentage of a small number. Proactive marketing gives you the numbers. Bigger numbers mean you have a higher chance of more hits (confirmed work that fits your financial needs). If you’re in a situation where you’re being forced to accept work that doesn’t pay what you want to earn, you need to increase your discoverability, or improve your interestingness, or both. My colleague Rich Adin sums it up rather nicely: 'The primary difference between proactive and reactive marketing is that proactive marketing makes sure you can say no while enjoying the higher rewards when you say yes, whereas reactive marketing ensures that you will never be able to say no and will always “enjoy” low rewards that force you to constantly say yes when you want to say no. No is empowering and proactive is empowerment' (Adin, personal correspondence, 2016). ‘But my work is different to yours’ I acknowledge that some editors’ workflows will look very different to mine. You may be someone who works on complex long-term projects that take weeks or months to complete. The project fees will run into thousands rather than hundreds of pounds. This kind of specialist work may mean you are always going to be dealing with a smaller pot of hits and misses than a proofreader with a more straightforward workflow. For you, the numbers will look different, and negotiation may play a larger role when considering how to handle fee issues. The principle stands, though – however different your business model is to mine, if you aren’t getting enough hits, then you will still benefit from marketing yourself so that you increase the size of your pot and, thus, the proportion of confirmed jobs that pay what you want to earn. Who’s responsible? Expecting others to take responsibility for the success of my self-owned editorial business is a path to failure. My colleagues are obliged to look after their interests. My clients (and potential clients) are obliged to look after their interests. I’m obliged to look after mine. Even established editorial business owners should be actively promoting because they can’t predict how the market will shift over time. A profitable client today could be a loss-making client tomorrow. Ultimately, expecting clients to fall in our laps because we’ve decided to go freelance is employee-like thinking, not business-owner thinking. Considering rates in terms of what’s fair, and what’s respectful is unhelpful. It shifts the freelancer’s focus from one of professional business-ownership to one of entitlement. When you’re self-employed there’s no room for entitlement. Big-brand practice If you’re still not convinced about the value of marketing, think about some of the TV, radio and direct-mail advertisements by well-known brands that you’ve recently encountered. They haven’t stopped marketing their products and services because they already have lots of buyers. Rather, they’re still looking for new customers who value what they offer. So should we. Looking forward rather than feeling aggrieved Sometimes the potential client and I will find a place where we’re a good fit, but often we won’t. That’s fine. I don’t begrudge those potential clients who offer me jobs with fees that I think are too low, or those who ask me to quote but choose to go elsewhere (perhaps they like someone else’s price better, or they think someone’s a better project fit) because that’s their informed choice. If I market my business effectively, their choices won’t affect me because I’ll have enough offers of work that are a good fit from elsewhere. Being discoverable to a bank of potential clients who are prepared to pay you what you feel you are worth enables you to take a positive and forward-looking view of your business, rather than expending negative mental energy on how you’re worse off in real terms than you were X number of years ago. Summing up Being the owner of an editorial business means building regular marketing into the foundations of running that business. When we do things to maximize our discoverability and interestingness, we work towards choice. Regular, proactive marketing gives you a bigger pot from which to pick a smaller number of well-paying, schedule-filling hits, some of which will turn into repeat clients. No choice, on the other hand, means settling for what’s on offer. Just remember that those extra-big hugs and sympathetic ‘poor you’s aren’t billable.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here's an overview of just some of the resources available to writers in Norfolk (and East Anglia more broadly). It's quite a treasure trove, but perhaps that's not a surprise given that in 2012 Norwich became England's first UNESCO City of Literature.
Festivals and events
Groups and organizations
Courses
Editorial support: proofreading, editing and indexing If you are looking for an editorial professional in Norfolk, you can find a qualified member by visiting the Norfolk Proofreaders and Editors Network (NPEN). Members offer a wide range of services including proofreading, copy-editing, structural and developmental editing, manuscript critique and evaluation, indexing, formatting, translation, and publishing consultancy. Independent publishers
Louise's Writing Library for Self-Publishers For more self-publishing resources, visit the library on my Self-publishers page.
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. A note from Louise: In 2013, I published my first book – an introductory editorial business-planning guide entitled Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers. I wanted to provide readers with a real-world view of what it’s like to enter the world of editorial freelancing. Three of my colleagues were kind enough to act as case studies, sharing insights into their experiences of building an editorial business: Johanna Robinson, Mary McCauley and Grace Wilson. At the time of publication, all three were relatively new to the field (their start-ups were under two years old). Each of them created vibrant, successful editorial businesses, working with a range of clients across the UK and Ireland. Their candid accounts illustrated the challenges of editorial freelancing – but also suggested how the path to success could be achieved through determination, skills acquisition, strategic planning and targeted marketing. Here we are three years later in 2016. My colleagues left behind their new-starter status a long time ago. They’re now established editorial business owners who are not only working for paying clients but also helping less experienced colleagues navigate their way through the world of editorial freelancing via training programmes and conference presentations. It’s therefore with great pleasure that I hand now you over to Mary McCauley of Mary McCauley Proofreading. Below, Mary tells us what’s changed and what’s stayed the same; how her business has developed; what she’s learned; and what her plans are for the future … It’s nearly four years since I first wrote a guest article for The Proofreader’s Parlour on how I set up my editorial business, and subsequently appeared as a case study in Louise’s debut book Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers. It feels like a lifetime ago; back in December 2012, I never imagined how my editorial journey would continue. Thankfully, it has been a good four years for me. What has and hasn’t changed since I started out in 2012 Business hours I have moved to full-time hours and my work schedule has been more or less fully booked up for the past two years. However, I no longer regularly work weekends unless I have agreed a premium rate with my client. As for most people setting up a business, the early years involved long hours of work and weeks without a break. This worked for a while, but I learned that I cannot work that way indefinitely; I need regular time away from my desk or I can’t do my best work. And as my turnover has increased year on year as my business grows, I’m now able to take proper holidays at Christmas and during the summer. Services offered When I started out in 2012, my main service offering was proofreading and a little copy-editing; now copy-editing work has overtaken proofreading. I also offer some project management services (including liaison with typesetters, designers and illustrators; picture research; and artwork coordination), as well as e-book conversion review services. Additionally, I’ve become involved in training delivery. In June 2014, I was invited to present an editing masterclass for fiction authors at our local Wexford Literary Festival. Not long after, I presented a Marketing Tools for the Freelance Editor seminar at the 2014 SfEP conference and, while it was a daunting but exhilarating experience, I learned a lot from it. Last year I was approached by Irish writer and lecturer Claire Keegan to teach a two-day course on grammar, punctuation and style to her students. It went well and we ran the course again earlier this year. The Wexford Literary Festival invited me back this summer as a panel member for an Industry Experts Q&A discussion and I’m also a regular guest speaker on my Local Enterprise Office’s Start Your Own Business course. More recently, I’m signed up as a speed mentor at this year’s SfEP conference. So through contacts and referrals I’ve slowly gained experience in editorial and editorial-business training, and I’m interested in how I might further develop it as a business offering. My clients At the start, I cast my net wide in search of clients – anything to get experience. I have since narrowed down my client base. On the fiction side, the majority of my work is for independent authors. Not all of these wish to self-publish; some are preparing their manuscript for submission to an agent, publisher or competition. On the non-fiction side, while I also work with independent authors, the majority of my clients are businesses, public sector bodies and publishers. Due to schedule constraints and short turnaround times, for the moment I no longer work for students. Continuing professional development (CPD) Investing in quality training has been a priority for me over the past four years and my short-term aim is to continue to invest in learning new skills in a bid to expand the range of services I offer. I’ve completed six editorial courses (SfEP/PTC/Publishing Ireland) since 2012. Each has directly helped pay for itself; for example, the SfEP’s On-screen Editing 1 helped me work more efficiently and thus earn a better rate, while the Publishing Training Centre’s (PTC) Rewriting and Substantive Editing course gave me the confidence to take on an well-paid editing project I otherwise wouldn’t have. Recently, AFEPI Ireland members have been able to take advantage of the PTC courses now running at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. Ireland-based editors can now avail themselves of these without travelling to the UK as many would have done in the past. The courses also have the added benefit of presenting an opportunity for freelance and in-house editors to meet. I regularly learn new ideas and tips from the AFEPI Ireland/SfEP/EAE forums and save shared links for future reference. I find these forums an invaluable source of CPD. Professional membership and networking Though it is one of my larger yearly expenses, I value my membership of both AFEPI Ireland and SfEP. The support of Irish and UK colleagues, and colleagues further afield, has been one of the most warming experiences of setting up my business. Catching up with AFEPI Ireland friends and colleagues at meetings and training courses in Ireland has been wonderful and energising, and I always come away having learned something. Attending the 2014 SfEP conference in London was an unforgettable experience and I finally understood what ‘finding your tribe’ means. Marketing I joined Twitter in 2012 and continue to find it a useful learning platform that has helped me meet and interact with publishing professionals in Ireland and abroad. When I receive business enquiries I always ask how the person found me, as I need to know which of my marketing efforts are working. The majority of my enquiries come via my website, which enquirers say they found following a Google search. My website’s probably due an overhaul but I’m pleased with how it has worked for me. I also started my own blog, Letters from an Irish Editor, at the start of 2014. I admit I really struggle to find the time to post regularly (it takes me several hours to write a single article!) but as there is always increased traffic to my website when I do, I’ll battle on. When I upgraded to Professional Member status, I took out an entry in the SfEP Directory and I’ve seen some enquiries and work from this direction. After my website, most enquiries come via my AFEPI Ireland Directory entry and from referrals from colleagues. I think my AFEPI Ireland entry is more successful than my SfEP one due to my location, both in terms of my Irish clients preferring an Ireland-based service, but also from a currency point of view. I have had a listing on Find A Proofreader since 2012; as well as receiving the regular job postings I’ve also had direct enquiries and work from it. While a lot of the jobs have too short a turnaround time for my schedule, my entry helps with my website SEO, so at the current advertising rate I find it’s worth the cost. What I’ve learned since 2012 While I’ve continued to work extremely hard to grow my business and client base, the most important thing I’ve learned is to recognise valuable clients and to pursue a client base that offers me the best rates and projects. As I’ve gained experience and undertaken additional training, I’ve become more confident in my editorial and business abilities and in the worth of my service offering when quoting to clients. I’ve come to realise that some clients cannot afford or are unwilling to pay for my services and that if I clog up my schedule with low-paying projects, I won’t have the capacity to work on a more desirable project when it presents itself. Keys to success The following are key ideas/values that I believed in and tried to pursue from the start and which have proven invaluable to my business during the past four years:
Personal highlights of the past four years
Plans for the future
Mary McCauley runs an editorial business providing project management, copy-editing and proofreading services to authors, publishers, corporate clients and public sector bodies. She is a Full Member of the Association of Freelance Editors, Proofreaders and Indexers (AFEPI Ireland) and a Professional Member of SfEP. She has taught self-editing courses as part of the Claire Keegan Fiction Clinic series, and has presented seminars at the Wexford Literary Festival and the SfEP’s 2014 conference. She is a regular guest speaker on her Local Enterprise Office’s Start Your Own Business course. Mary lives near Wexford in the south-east of Ireland. You can contact Mary at info@marymccauleyproofreading.com, through her website Mary McCauley Proofreading, or via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
In this two-part series, I take a look at how regular business promotion can put us in a position to decline work that doesn't meet our expectations and aspirations.
So you’re a copy-editor, and one of the clients you’ve been working for over the past seven years has, yet again, failed to increase their hourly rate. You’re worse off in real terms than you were last year, let alone in 2009. Ugh.
Or perhaps you’re a proofreader who’s paid on a flat-fee basis by another publisher. The fee is based on the number of pages per book. Over the past six months, you’ve noticed that the typesetter has been squeezing another 100 words on a page by reducing the font size. Over the course of a 250-page book, this amounts to you having to proofread an additional 25,000 words for no extra cash. Given that you proofread for this client at a speed of around 5,000 words per hour, that’s an extra five hours of work that you’re no longer being paid for. Ouch. A self-publishing romance writer tries to haggle you down to £4 per 1,000 words for a 100,000-word book. She wants the fee to include a copy-edit AND a ‘quick follow-up proofread’. She feels that your fee of £9 per 1,000 words is way too high and out of line with what other editors are charging. You thought you were giving her a fabulous deal, given that she’s getting two different and separate editorial passes from you for £900! Headdesk. A PM agency with whom you’ve worked in the past asks you to do a top and tail of a PDF with some Q&As. They also want a basic howler check and a layout review. It’s a sort of semi-proofread. There will be other similar jobs over the forthcoming weeks. They estimate that each job will take two hours. They offer you a flat fee of thirty quid for each job. £15 an hour for your level of experience? Sob. So what can you do?
Holy moly, you say, this editorial freelancing lark is becoming a joke. Negotiating If you have regular clients who are offering, say, complex projects worth several thousands of pounds, it may, indeed, be well worth your while to enter into extensive negotiations so that it’s clear to the client why what they’re offering is unrealistic and unacceptable. The time you spend on these negotiations could turn out to be worth the investment if you can find some acceptable middle ground. If, however, you’re dealing with projects worth a couple of hundred quid or less, negotiating may not necessarily be the best use of your time. Instead, you could use it to find new, better-paying clients. Speed How about working more efficiently, using tools such as macros? If you’re not already using these tools, then introducing them into your workflow could help tip the situation back in your favour. If the client is offering a fixed fee, but with more words per project, speeding up could even increase the amount you earn per hour, never mind maintaining the rate you used to earn. If, however, you’re already macro-magnificent, ReferenceChecker-resplendent, PerfectIt-pretty and wildcard-wonderful, this isn’t going to provide you with a solution. Changing industry policy How about lobbying the industry? You could ask your professional editorial society or freelancing union to step in. But let’s be honest – the mainstream publishing industry is global and consists of hundreds of separate businesses operating under capitalism. It would be a tricky job for the society/union in a command economy, but in a capitalist one? Don’t hold your breath! As for all the other clients – independent authors, businesses, students, charities and schools, for example – they don’t make up a unified industry. Who are you going to lobby? Getting emotional So how about feeling upset, disgruntled, undervalued and disrespected? By all means, go ahead. It won’t change anything, though you might get an extra-big hug from your partner and some sympathetic ‘poor you’s from your best mate. An alternative – wave goodbye What if there was another option, though? How about if you just politely waved goodbye to the project offer that doesn’t meet your financial requirements, confident that you can fill that job slot with something else – something that pays you the rate that you want to earn? After all, you’re not obliged to accept the work. Self-employment obligations and responsibilities Not being obliged to do a particular piece of work for a price set by someone else is one of the joys of successful freelancing and a key element of being self-employed. If you work for a publisher, magazine, charity or school (or any other business you care to name), part of the deal is that you may well have to undertake types of work at times and places that you don’t like and that aren’t convenient, things that are not written into your contract and that, officially, you’re not being paid to do. But you’re an employee and you don’t get to bargain over your salary every time something comes up that requires you to give a little extra for the sake of goodwill and a comfortable appraisal. Your employer is in charge and in control. Perhaps your efforts will be rewarded further down the line – you might be promoted or given a bonus. It’s not guaranteed, though, and you’ll rarely be in a position to force the issue. Being employed often means making do – the benefit is that, unless you’re on some dreadful zero-hours contract, you get paid even on a slow day, or when you’re ill or on holiday. Importantly, your employer will take responsibility for sourcing customers. But me and you? We’re the owners of our businesses and so it’s up to us to do the work we like, at the times we like, for the pay we want. Holidays and sick days don’t pay. We do, however, have the right to decline a job. And because we own our own businesses, it’s not X University Press’s responsibility to pay us a fee that’s good for each of our business models. XUP’s responsibility is to pay us a fee that’s good for its business model. We, and only we, have responsibility for deciding whom we work for and which projects we accept or decline. Importantly, we have to take responsibility for sourcing customers – there’s no one else to do it for us. We’re in charge and in control. That’s where marketing comes in … and in Part II, I take a closer look at the benefits of proactive promotion.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this article, I take a look at proofreading for self-publishers, and the conundrum that can arise when the author hasn't invested in previous rounds of editing.
If you’re a proofreader, it’s likely that you’ve been asked to proofread for a self-publishing author who hasn’t had their work taken through professional substantive, line and copy-editing. I certainly have.
This situation may have arisen for one of several reasons:
So, if he or she wishes to, should a proofreader work with clients who fall into the above categories? Before answering that question, it’s worth considering what we mean when we use terms to describe editorial skillsets, and whether our clients have the same understanding. Redefining proofreading Says the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), “After material has been copy-edited, the publisher sends it to a designer or typesetter. Their work is then displayed or printed, and that is the proof – proof that it is ready for publication. Proofreading is the quality check and tidy-up” (“FAQs: What is proofreading”, SfEP). Of note is the fact that the proofreader is not directly editing the files; rather, we are annotating them (this applies to both paper proofs and PDFs). See “Not all proofreading is the same: Part I – Working with page proofs” (Proofreader’s Parlour) for a more comprehensive discussion of the process of traditional proofreading. However, these days, many clients such as academics, businesses and independent, self-publishing authors want something rather different. Often, they’ll supply raw-text files and want the proofreader to directly amend the text. They may ask the proofreader to format the various text elements, make the majority of style decisions, even tweak awkward sentences. This is referred to as proof-editing in some professional editorial circles. In such cases, “[t]he proofreader has to explore what is required and negotiate a budget and schedule that allow for more editorial decisions and intervention” (“FAQs: What is proofreading”, SfEP). Client understandings and usage Those of us who own our own editorial businesses recognize that the professional terminology we use to communicate how we can solve a client’s problems doesn’t always match the client's understanding and usage. Consider the following:
It’s for that reason that I don’t use the term “proof-editing” on my website to describe the service I offer to self-publishing authors, even though it’s exactly what I do for many of them. Instead, I offer them a “proofreading” service and I refer to myself as a “proofreader”. In contrast, when publishers contact me about proofreading work, I know I’m usually going to be working with page proofs and that my brief will, broadly speaking, require me to carry out the kinds of pre-publication checks that proofreading, traditionally defined, demands. Should the proofreader accept or decline non-edited proofreading work? My view is that this is the wrong question. Rather, the questions should be:
If the answer to those questions is yes, and the client and the proofreader agree mutually acceptable terms (of level of intervention, fee, schedule, etc.), I see no reason why a proofreader should not work for self-publishing authors who haven’t hired an editor beforehand. Offering a professional service Offering a professional editorial service involves:
Listening and talking to the client If the author has commissioned a structural editor and copy-editor before hiring the proofreader, is the text in better shape? Assuming these editors were competent professionals, I think that in almost all cases the answer is yes. However, that isn’t always what the client wants (and, occasionally, dare I say it, it may not even be what the client needs, though that is beyond the scope of this article). Here’s a fictive example, but one that I’m sure will chime with many of us in real-world practice.
The thing about me is that I know how to drive a car, keep it clean, ensure the oil is topped up, mend a broken headlight, and change a tyre. I also know when the brakes aren’t working properly. However, I don’t have the skill to fix the brakes – for that, I need a qualified mechanic. What do I do?
What does she do?
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a goer. I’ve made it clear what I can and can’t do. She’s made it clear what she wants. We’ve agreed terms. Will the book be as good at it could have been? No. But she knows this. This is a journey for her, a first stage, an experiment. Right now, proofreading is good enough for her. And it doesn’t actually matter whether someone else thinks she absolutely should have invested in an editor; she has the right to put her work out there anyway. She’s chosen to do so in a way that has attended to the micro issues that a proofreader deals with rather than the macro issues that an editor could have fixed. That’s her informed choice. Me? I’m delighted to have secured a new client, and to work with her in the only way I’m able to – as a proofreader. I’ve done my best to provide guidance so that she’s better informed next time around, and I’ve respected her choices this time around. It’s a win–win. This isn't always the outcome, of course. There will be times when the proofreader, after an assessment of the sample provided by the author, feels so overwhelmed by the task in hand that there is no option other than to decline the work. In this case, it is not in the best interests of either the proofreader or the client to proceed. Cost-effective client education for the editorial business owner One of the problems editorial professionals face is the cost-effectiveness of educating inexperienced authors. Time is money, and I’m running a business, not a charity. If I spend an hour providing one-on-one detailed guidance to a potential client, that time is unbillable. And if that detailed guidance involves encouraging them to commission other editorial professionals who have the appropriate skillsets, and I’m successful in my recommendations, in effect I’m paying for a colleague to be hired. That’s great for the author, and great for the colleague, but for me it’s like throwing money out of the window – I could have used that hour to do paying work. If that’s a problem you find yourself running into, consider creating generic resources that explain the issues at stake, and then refer your potential clients to them. This will enable you to reduce the amount of unbillable time that you spend on education. Placing those resources on your website will also reflect your willingness provide accessible value-added content that demonstrates professional expertise and the desire to help. Examples might include:
Summing up
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. If you're a writer or editor who says, "That's not a word!", then this useful link might make you reconsider: OneLook Dictionary Search. (Hat tip to Stan Carey on the Sentence First blog for drawing my attention to it.) Simply search for your chosen not-a-word and OneLook will provide you with a list of links to dictionaries that provide definitions according to current usage. Of course, that doesn't mean you have to like the word that you think is not a word but that actually is a word. Nor does it mean you have to use it. But not liking or not using a word is not the same thing as denying its existence! The following make for interesting and often entertaining reading (the sometimes passionate comments attached to these posts are worth taking a look at, too):
Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn. Someone recently emailed me to ask my advice about returning to the world of editorial freelancing after a break. In particular, they wanted to know whether free courses were worthwhile, and, if so, which one they should take. My answer was that the issue of free versus paid missed the point. Rather, it depends on what is required by the individual. If your skills are sound with the exception of one particular gap in your knowledge, e.g. how to use proofreading markup symbols, and you find a free course that teaches this, then it’s going to be a great course for you, one that's worth doing despite the fact that it costs nothing but your time. If, however, you need a comprehensive tutor-based course that teaches you how to use markup language, make sensible decisions about when to mark up and when to leave well enough alone, how to work with paper and onscreen files, and provide you with a solid grounding in how publishing and production processes work (and your place within them), then this free course, which only teaches you how to use markup language, will be next to useless. Of course, we all have budgets. I love a freebie as much as the next person and I've taken advantage of several free or low-cost tutoring programmes over the years. I've also forked out hundreds of pounds in the process of learning new skills. Which of those courses were the most worthwhile? The freebies or the bank-account drainers? The answer is, all of them. That's because I picked the courses that I felt would teach me what I needed to know. When training for professional business practice, the primary indicator of whether the training is worthwhile is not the price; rather, it is the degree to which the course content fills our knowledge gaps. 3 fictive case studies Jenny is a social worker from Dublin who is thinking about transitioning to freelance proofreading. She has no previous editorial experience, though her academic and career credentials are outstanding. As I said, she's thinking about transitioning – she hasn’t yet made up her mind whether this is the right move. She contacts the Association of Freelance Editors, Proofreaders & Indexers (AFEPI), Ireland’s national editorial society. One of the joint-chairpersons tells her that the society is running a half-day “introduction to proofreading” session. The course is a bargain at only 40 euros. She also finds a free online proofreading course that takes about an hour to complete. Are these worth doing? In Jenny’s case, they are excellent opportunities that will give her a taste of what professional proofreading involves but won't require her to invest large amounts of her hard-earned cash before she's made up her mind about her future career steps. Will they make her ready to hit the ground running in the world of professional proofreading practice? No, but that's not what she needs at the moment. Dan is former experienced and highly recommended copyeditor and proofreader from Toronto. He put his career on hold while he took on the full-time care of his partner, who'd been diagnosed with a long-term illness. Dan’s been out of the editorial freelancing world for 15 years and is now ready to re-enter the marketplace. He's no newbie but he does feel very rusty. The editorial environment has changed somewhat in the past decade and a half. More work is being done digitally than was the case when he was previously in practice, so his tech skills are out of date. His research enables him to identify the gaps in his technical knowledge. He's located a series of free online tutorials that will enable him to develop these tech skills. Dan is also concerned that because he hasn’t worked on professional material for a long time he's forgotten some of the foundational principles that underpin his practice. He decides that full Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC) certification in copyediting and proofreading might be overkill at this point. However, the Toronto branch of the EAC runs a number of brush-up seminars that will be useful to him. In addition, the EAC offers two relevant study guides for a total cost of just over CAN$100. Price-wise, the investment is not insignificant by any means, but he thinks that the curriculum covered will bring his knowledge up to date. Later, he may use this study programme to become certified. Mati is a successful London-based professional English/Italian translator. She wants to extend her service portfolio to include proofreading. In addition to working with independent authors and academics, she wishes to proofread for publishers. She decides to source an industry-recognized and comprehensive course that will train her to professional standards. She's short on money because her London flat costs her a fortune each month. She's identified a number of free online proofreading programmes, and a couple of books dedicated to the subject. None of them offer her the depth of content that she feels will give her the confidence to enter professional proofreading practice; plus, she’d really like to have a tutor for mentoring purposes. The course she thinks will be perfect for her is the run by the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) but it costs £395. The free course options or the books will solve her financial issues, but they won't give her the detail or the mentoring. The PTC option will give her the detail and the mentoring but will leave her unable to pay next month's rent. She decides to save up for the PTC course over six months. In the meantime, she continues to focus on her translation work, and uses the time she’d set aside for the PTC proofreading course to develop a marketing strategy aimed at building a proofreading client base that will complement her existing translation-client work. Curriculum before cost ... Free or cheap can be superb or it can be useless. Expensive can be comprehensive or overkill. That's because the cost of the course is not the right indicator. Rather, the content of the course, and the degree to which that content addresses a particular skill gap, is what counts. Certainly we must not ignore free or low-cost tutorials, webinars, books, courses and conferences – if they teach us what we need to know they'll be a boon for our business development. On the flip side, we shouldn’t dismiss training that we consider to be expensive if that training is what will enable us to compete in the editorial freelancing market effectively. When we find that the training we need costs more than we can currently afford, we need to develop a plan to finance that training. If I can’t afford the course that I’ve identified as the one that will fill the gaps in my professional knowledge, I might decide to save up for it, just as Mati did. Imagine that your child’s nursery teacher, your electrician or your dentist told you they couldn’t afford to do the training they'd identified as making them fit for purpose and so they’d opted not to bother, instead turning to cheaper or free courses that only taught them a few of the things they needed to know. Would you let them near your kid, your fuse box or your mouth? Our clients are no different. They want us to be fit for purpose. Curriculum is always the primary indicator that we should focus on when evaluating how worthwhile a training course is. Using content as the basis of selection will drive us into a position where we acquire the skills we need to solve our clients’ problems such that they will hire us repeatedly and recommend us to their colleagues. Some of that content will be free, some of it will cost a pretty penny, and some of it will sit somewhere in between those two extremes. Take your pick but base your choice on what you need to learn, not on what you'd like to pay. If you want advice on the editorial training that's most appropriate to your circumstances, talk to the training director of your national editorial society. Most associations offer a range of learning opportunities within different environments to suit people's varying needs, skills and levels of experience. 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.
Every writer, copy-editor and proofreader comes across words that are used correctly but spelled incorrectly (typos), but we also have to look out for words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly – this is the world of confusables.
What are confusables?
Some confusables are not only spelled differently, they sound very different too, e.g. imply/infer; militate/mitigate; reactionary/reactive. In this case, the writer might have misunderstood the meaning. Some confusables are homophones – words that are spelled differently but sound the same, e.g. rein/reign; stationary/stationery; prophecy/prophesy; loath/loathe. In this case, the writer understands the different meanings, but is unsure of the appropriate spelling. Then there are errors that are simply a result of hands moving too fast over a keyboard – the meanings and correct spellings are known to the writer, but, in their haste, perhaps they’ve transposed a couple of letters or omitted a character. Or it may be that the automatic spellcheck has kicked into gear and the writer hasn’t noticed the problem because they’re concentrating on the bigger picture. Examples might include e.g. filed/field; adverse/averse; pubic/public. Blind spots Writers aren't the only ones with blind spots. Editorial pros do too. It’s our job to spot these problems and fix them. However, we’re only human and most of us have a few blind-spot words that our eyes are, on occasion, less likely to notice, even though we do know the differences in meaning and spelling. My own blind spots are gaffe/gaff, brake/break and peek/pique/peak. I don’t know why my eye doesn’t spot these pesky confusables as readily, especially when the likes of compliment/complement or stationary/stationery scream at me from the page! However, I accept that I do have blind spots and have taken steps to ameliorate the problem with a little mechanical help – the macro. How can macros help? Using macros enables us to identify possible problems before we get down to the business of actually reading, line by line, for sense. Every time we find an error, we have to think about it and decide whether to amend. By reducing the number of interruptions, we can focus our attention on the flow of the words in front of us and increase efficiency. For this reason, I, like many of my colleagues, run my macros at the beginning of a project (though I often repeat the process at the end stage too). What’s on offer in the world of confusables? There are several free macros available to the copy-editor or proofreader who wants to tackle confusables with efficiency. See, for example, the excellent “A Macro for Commonly Confused Words” published by C.K. MacLeod on Tech Tools for Writers (updated July 2015). Another option, and the one that I’m currently using, is the CompareWordList macro created by Allen Wyatt on WordTips. See “Highlight Words from a List” (updated July 2015). As some of you will already know, Wyatt has two WordTips sites; the one you use will be determined by which version of Word you’re running. The linked article above will take readers to the article written for MS Word 2007, 2010 and above. If you are working with an older version of Word, you’ll need to follow Wyatt’s links to the sister site. Why I’m using Wyatt’s CompareWordList CompareWordList is currently my preferred tool simply because of how easy it is to create and update my own list of words to be checked – words that can, on occasion, be blind spots for me. As I’ll show below, customizing the list of confusables doesn’t require me to amend the script of the macro once it’s installed. Instead, all I have to do is amend a basic list in a Word document – nice and simple! Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables The first thing to do is to create a list of the words you want the macro to find, and highlight, in a Word document.
Using CompareWordList 2: Get, and tweak, the code Visit “Highlight Words from a List” and copy the code. If you’re completely new to installing macros, just paste the script in a Word document for now so that you can tweak it easily. Below is a screenshot of Wyatt's code. The highlighted sections show where I’ve tweaked the code to suit my own needs.
Tweaks to consider
(1) I’ve changed Wyatt's code (as per his suggestion) so that it describes where my list of confusables is located: sCheckDoc = "c:\Users\Louise\Dropbox\Macros\confusables.docx". You’ll use the location you made a note of when you created your own list (see the section above – Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables). (2) Wyatt's code emboldens the words found by the macro; I wanted them highlighted so I replaced the highlighted text as follows: .Replacement.Highlight = True. (3) I changed the Match Whole Word instruction to False because I wanted the macro to find part words. This, of course, will pull up some false positives but it was the easiest solution I could find. (4) I also changed the Match Case instruction to False. Now that you’ve tweaked the code to suit your own needs, you’re ready to install it (the basic, step-by-step instructions below are provided for the benefit of those who are completely new to macro installation). Using CompareWordList 3: Install the code With Word open, open the “View” tab and click on the “Macros” icon on the ribbon.
This will open up a new window.
If you don’t have any macros already loaded:
If you have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):
This will open up a further window:
Running CompareWordList
Removing highlights one by one Here’s a tiny macro that I recorded to remove a highlight as I move through a Word document. Installing this means I simply have to click on a highlighted word and run the macro. Assigning a shortcut button (see below) makes the job easy and efficient. I decided on Alt H because I don’t have that keyboard shortcut assigned to any function that I carry out regularly. Sub UndoHighlight() ' ' UndoHighlight Macro ' ' Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight End Sub To install: Simply copy the red script above and install it in the same way that you installed the CompareWordList macro. To create a shortcut key: In Word, select File, Options, Customize Ribbon (1). Click on Customize (2). A new box will open up entitled “Customize keyboard”. In the Categories window (3), scroll down and select Macros. In the Macros window (4), select UndoHighlight. Finally, choose your preferred keyboard combination by typing it into the Press New Shortcut Key window (5). Select Assign and Close.
To remove ALL highlighting in one go: For this job, Paul Beverley’s your man. A huge number of macros are available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors (available on his website at Archive Publications).
Hope you find this useful!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this article, I consider how resistance to change can stop us from learning new skills or testing new methods to make our editorial businesses more successful.
‘I’m not trying that!’
Editors, like any other professionals, can fall into the trap of resisting change – for example, not trying out a new marketing strategy; claiming they have no need for business tools such as macros; or refusing to take on work that requires using a new platform, software package, or format. All of us have either said, or heard one of our colleagues say, ‘I don’t work in that way,’ ‘That’s a bad idea,’ ‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ ‘That’s not the way I do things,’ or ‘I just couldn’t bring myself to do that’ at some point in our careers. We work in a highly competitive, crowded, and international marketplace. We’re business owners, not hobbyists. That means our businesses have to earn us a living. Our market isn’t static – it’s always shifting:
All of that means that resisting change and failing to learn the new skills or to try new methods (whether technical, promotional, or practical) simply doesn’t make sense for today’s editorial business owner. If we refuse to change, we refuse to compete – and that’s a path to business failure. Why do we resist change? According to psychologist Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, it can be a result of ‘learning anxiety’ (Diane Coutu, ‘The Anxiety of Learning,’ Harvard Business Review, March 2002). Says Schein:
Learning anxiety comes from being afraid to try something new for fear that it will be too difficult, that we will look stupid in the attempt, or that we will have to part from old habits that have worked for us in the past. Learning something new can cast us as the deviant in the groups we belong to. It can threaten our self-esteem and, in extreme cases, even our identity.
Back in 2002, Schein discussed the issue in relation to the challenges of organizational change and transformation, corporate culture, and leadership. But that quotation can apply just as well to the editorial solopreneur in 2018. We may be anxious about making a change for fear of not doing it well; equally, we might have heard or read negative opinions from our colleagues about using a particular technical tool, testing a new marketing effort, or changing to a new way of working – and that makes us wary of being seen publicly to be trying such things, lest they draw negative attention. So how might we go about tackling learning anxiety so that we can embrace change rather than resisting it? There are several options:
Plan the change so that it’s considered and systematic If you think there are changes that should be made, or new skills learned, approach them as you would a business plan. By breaking the changes down into components, they will seem more manageable and less anxiety-inducing.
Redefine ‘failure’ as ‘lessons learned’ We must accept that change always brings risk. However well we plan change, however well it appears to meet our business objectives, the outcomes aren’t always what we hoped for or expected. The key here is to redefine those results in a positive light whereby ‘failure’ becomes ‘lessons learned.’
All those outcomes could occur; but it’s also possible – particularly if you’ve made thoughtful, informed decisions about what changes to test – that the following will happen:
And even if you do end up in the worst-case scenario, who’s to say that the changes you’ve made won’t reap rewards further down the line? Who’s to say that those colleagues who were disparaging about your efforts are correct in their assumptions? Being prepared to try new things is how we learn. When the outcomes are not as expected, that’s not failure; that’s information on which we can make future decisions about what not to do, what needs tweaking, and what needs retrying. Not being prepared to learn and change in a competitive market is more likely to lead to failure that trying something new. If you don’t try, you don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, only to find that it didn’t work. Any normal human being trying to be creative when running their business is not going to get it right every time. And if things don’t go to plan, you’ll be in great company. Here’s Woody Allen: ‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.’ And here’s Thomas Edison: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ Do a cost–benefit analysis If you’re nervous about making a particular change, do a cost–benefit analysis by considering the following questions:
Working through these questions can highlight benefits and challenges, and help you to think through ways to maximize the former and minimize the stress of the latter.
Case study
In 2015, I tested a new marketing technique. I wanted to provide a quick way for the client to engage with me, a device that would give them a sense of immediacy ... a ballpark price for proofreading and editing that they could use to decide whether to continue the discussion. So I tackled the questions above, and the answers helped me to map out a solution that I could test. What are the potential gains from the change?
What will I potentially lose if I introduce a quick-quote function?
What will stay the same, even though I’ve made this change?
How will the changes make me feel once I’ve completed them?
My solution was to offer a 60-minute ballpark quote service via text messaging. I required a few words of description, a deadline, and a word count. I commited to responding within 1 hour to any request that came in prior to 10 p.m. GMT. I didn't want to have to carry around a tablet or laptop all the time because I wouldn't always have internet access, but my phone was always with me. I charge on a per-1,000-words basis for my proofreading, copyediting and line editing services so it was easy for me to calculate a ballpark price quickly. I'd reply to the client with the preliminary price and an invitation to continue the discussion, this time with a sample. At that point, I’d be able to demonstrate the value I can offer. I placed this quick-quote service on a dedicated Contact page of my website, and included testimonials on the page so that clients had a sense of the quality of service I offer. Early results and later changes When I first set up this tool in 2015, the early results were encouraging. In the first month, I had around 20 enquiries via text messaging, 4 of which led to commissions to proofread or copyedit works of self-published fiction. I also acquired a small, fast-turnaround job for a business client. I turned down requests to proofread a business book and several theses, owing to the time frame. Over the next two years the focus of my business shifted to editing exclusively for indie fiction writers. I no longer accepted work from publishers, businesses, students or academics. Something else shifted too. The clients I was attracting weren't using the messaging option to get in touch. They were using my contact form, email or phone. This coincided with a much tighter rebrand of my website, so I suspect I was appealing to a different kind of client ... someone who wanted to talk. I decided to remove the quick-quote messaging tool. Still, I’m delighted that I found and tested a creative solution to my earlier resistance. I’m even more delighted that the outcome was positive for a couple of years. My fears about what I’d lose were overshadowed by the decisions I made on how to manage the service:
Even more importantly, perhaps, carrying out this exercise forced me to think more broadly about how client trust relates to pricing transparency. Taking professional responsibility Resistance to change is a normal human emotion. However, we are business owners. We work for ourselves. There’s no one in the HR department to walk us through the changes we might need to make even though we feel nervous about them. Change is inevitable. The fact that it can be anxiety-inducing needs to be acknowledged. The key is to ensure that anxiety doesn’t get in the way of action. The decisions I made about pricing transparency will not be something all my colleagues will agree with or want to implement. That’s fine – they have their businesses to run and I have mine. They make the decisions that are best for them while I make the decisions that are best for me. Still feel reluctant to make a change, or learn something new?
Chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. Whatever happens, you’ll know that Woody and Thomas would pat you on the back for it! This is an updated version of an article originally published on An American Editor.
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 proofread or copyedit fiction or non-fiction, or you're self-editing your own books, here's a macro that will highlight potential inconsistencies in proper-noun usage.
I've been meaning to review some of my favourite proofreading macros for a while now and ProperNounAlyse deserves its first place in the queue (only because it performed so brilliantly on a recent proofreading project!).
ProperNounAlyse is just one tool among many, of course. Those of us who use macros on a regular basis have a whole suite of them that we run during the process of a proofread or a copy-edit. ProperNounAlyse was created by my colleague Paul Beverley, and it’s just one of a huge number of macros available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors (available on his website at Archive Publications). I've written this post for the person who doesn't use macros and is nervous about trying. I think it’s such a shame when a fear of tech leads to lost opportunities for those who want to increase productivity (which is great for the editorial pro) and improve quality (which is great for the client). Why bother? Three reasons
Go to Paul’s website and download Computer Tools for Editors. Save the zipped folder to your computer and extract three files: One is an overview of the macros – what they are, what they do, how to store them and so on – plus all the programs themselves; another contains just the actual macro programs; and the final file is a style sheet. The file you need to open in Word is “The Macros”. Use Word’s navigation menu (or Ctrl F on a PC) to open the Find function. Type “Sub ProperNounAlyse” into the search field and hit Return. That will take you to the start of the relevant script. Select and copy the script from “Sub ProperNounAlyse()” down to “End Sub”. Paul’s helped us out by highlighting the name of each new macro. Still with Word open, open the “View” tab and click on the “Macros” icon on the ribbon.
This will open up a new window.
If you don’t have any macros already loaded:
If you have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):
This will open up another window:
Running ProperNounAlyse
A fictive sample
Below is a simple word list of proper nouns with lots of inconsistencies – differences in accent use, apostrophe use and spelling.
I run ProperNounAlyse on the document. It analyses the text and then creates a new Word file with the following results:
I’m provided with an at-a-glance summary of potential problems that I need to check. It may be that the differences identified are not mistakes, but I know what to look for.
“I don’t need to use techie tools … my eyes are good enough” Macros don’t get tired. Macros don’t get distracted. I don’t believe any proofreader who claims they can do as good a job with their eyes alone as they can do with their eyes and some electronic assistance. It’s a case of using these kinds of tools as well as, not instead of, the eyes and brain. I could have relied on my eyes to find all of the above problems, and in a small file I would hope to have hit the mark 100%. But if I’d been working on 100,000 words of text, and there were twenty key characters, a plethora of grammatical glitches, two major plot holes, numerous layout problems, and a mixture of hundreds of other inconsistencies regarding hyphenation, capitalization, punctuation and regional spelling variation, there would have been a lot of problems to solve; I want to utilize every tool available to help me do that. Yes, my eyes and brain are two of those tools. But using macros like ProperNounAlyse and others (PerfectIt, for example, just because it’s another favourite!) speeds me up, pure and simple, and massively reduces the chance of a miss. I ran ProperNounAlyse on a recent fiction proofread for an independent author who is a phenomenally good writer – great plot, excellent pacing, engaging characters. But he was so busy crafting the 95,000 words it took to build a fantastic story that he’d introduced a lot of proper-noun inconsistencies. That’s fine – it’s not his job to deal with these; it’s mine. It took me minutes, rather than hours, to locate them and deal with them. And I know I found them – every one of them. What will the client remember? If you’re still reluctant to try out ProperNounAlyse (or any other editorial tool for that matter), consider this: What will the client remember? The three hundred mistakes that you spotted or the three howlers you missed? When it comes to proper nouns, especially in large volumes of character-based editorial work, it’s too easy to miss a discrepancy. And character names stand out to readers. Taking just a few minutes to run a simple-to-use macro might determine whether your client thinks your work was pretty good or outstanding. Which of those is likely to gain you a repeat booking or a referral to another potential client?
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. I’ve recently posted links to a couple of overviews of PerfectIt, Version 3 of which was recently launched to the delight of regular users like myself. I believe that user reviews can play an important part in helping others make the decision on whether a particular tool or piece of software is a wise investment. However, the developer’s voice is invaluable too because no one knows the tool/software better. With that in mind, I asked Daniel Heuman, Managing Director of Intelligent Editing and developer of PerfectIt, if he’d like to join me and the Parlour’s readers in a discussion about his proofreading software, and he graciously accepted. The following relate to some comments I’ve made in the past, here on the blog, and more general issues about the software. Feel free to join in the discussion in the Comments below if you have something to add. Daniel Heuman: Hi Louise. In the interest of generating discussion, I’ve got some questions for you about PerfectIt 3. You described one review of PerfectIt 3 as “robust”. I’m not sure I’d agree with you; below I’ve provided some questions and examples to help illustrate the issues. But for now, I’m interested to know why you used this term, particularly since I think it may be holding you (and others) from reviewing Version 3 themselves. Louise Harnby: You make a fair point, Daniel, though I used the word “robust” in quite a general sense to mean “uncompromising” rather than in the more academic sense that some might be used to. You’re correct that I haven’t yet done a public detailed review of PerfectIt 3 myself (though I’m using the software on a regular basis), and if it seems like my links to other people’s reviews are a case of time-strapped piggy-backing on other people’s hard work, you’re not far wrong! But this isn't the only reason: as a proofreader who specializes in working for publishers on hard copy and PDF, I’m rarely in a position to take advantage of PerfectIt’s full functionality – it simply isn’t apporpriate for the kind of intervention my clients require. Having said that, I don’t think others should hold back on doing their own detailed exploration of the software, particularly given that you offer a try-before-you-buy option. [Readers, you can access the trial version here.] DH: One review was entitled “Quality Software for the Experienced Editor”. Do you think someone needs to be an “experienced editor” to use PerfectIt? What about editors who have completed training but are just starting out? What about non-editors with a good grasp of language? LH: I don’t think someone needs to be an experienced editor (or proofreader or writer) to avail themselves of the benefits of PerfectIt. I do, however, suspect that to maximize the full functionality of the software, one would need to be reasonably comfortable with using Word and its plugins. It’s not that newbies can’t use PerfectIt – they can, and I think they should. Rather, I’ve come across many people in the international editorial community who are still nervous about using complementary tools to improve their efficiency and output quality. I’m not just talking about PerfectIt, but a whole range of tools – from Word’s find/replace function, to both simple recorded macros and more complex scripted ones. Having experience of using such tools gives one the confidence to experiment with their various features, and this in turn can have a really positive impact on one’s editorial business practice. My feeling is that the review title in question was acknowledging that those editors, proofreaders and writers who do have this confidence will be able to maximize PerfecIt’s functionality, and given that the review was written by a very experienced editor, it’s understandable that the article was positioned in such a way. DH: The reviews you’ve featured haven’t addressed in detail PerfectIt’s full functionality; rather, they’ve just looked at the new features in Version 3. Again, here I’d question the appropriateness of your using the term “robust”. Does not “robustness” require a fuller discussion? LH: I think a robust, as in uncompromising, review could include details of only the new features. I think that a software review that addresses the challenges and benefits experienced by the user who writes the review can still be robust in its analysis. Those of us in the blogosphere are always aware that our readers are time-limited, so when we’re sharing information about new (or revised) editorial tools, we want to focus on the most exciting elements of the product as we see them, and then help readers navigate to other resources (including the websites of the relevant developers) that will provide more detailed information. DH: I’d like to address some of the issues that one of the reviews highlighted, just to reassure any potential new users who might have decided that PerfectIt 3 was too complex for them to use.
But I’d like to know about other people’s experiences, too, whether they are newbie users or old hands. What do they like best, what are they struggling with, what are they confused by, what works well, what benefits to their work flows have they noticed? LH: So, readers, if you’ve recently had the chance to experiment with PerfectIt 3, and you’d like to share your experiences with others in the international editorial community, drop us a line in the Comments. As Daniel said, you needn’t be an experienced user (or editorial freelancer for that matter). All input is welcome. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a LinkedIn discussion group, "PerfectIt Users", dedicated to getting the best out of PerfectIt – if you have questions about how to take advantage of the various functions but need a little friendly guidance, there are plenty of experienced users online who’ll be happy to chat with you and share their expertise! To start the discussion, my personal favourite features (some of which are new to Version 3, and some of which have been available since PerfectIt was initially launched) are as follows:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
An in-house editor discusses how he handles receipt of substandard work from a freelancer. Also worth noting is his advice on how a freelancer might interpret a lack of contact from an in-house editor and what to do about it ...
Philip Stirups sheds light on his experiences of editorial production. To be clear, Philip’s contributions are from the point of view of a publishing professional, broadly speaking. So while some of the things he has to say are informed by his experiences within the UK company for which he currently works, his residency here is not in the capacity of a representative of that particular publishing house. Over to Philip ...
At the outset, I want to say that the majority of proofreading jobs I receive back from freelancers are good. However, in a handful of instances, a job comes back and, unfortunately, it isn't up to scratch. Problems could include:
From an editorial perspective, this can cause an array of different problems. First, an unsatisfactory proofread will usually lead to the in-house editor having to step in to compensate, which can in turn have an adverse impact on the book schedule. A second problem, from an in-house editorial perspective, is even trickier: how to give feedback in an honest, yet tactful, way. Breaking the bad news … On the surface, the simple solution to this seems to be: "tell it as it is". However, this is easier in theory than in practice. The problem is that it’s quite difficult to convey tone via email. I want to get across what has been missed, but in such a way as not to seem condescending. Furthermore, I don't want the freelancer to go away thinking they've done a bad job, when overall they haven’t. I could use the phone in order to avoid tone problems. However, I believe that an email is more beneficial to the freelancer because it provides them with a written record of the issues; this means they have something to refer back to when they carry out future work for the in-house editor. Receiving criticism, albeit constructive feedback, can be a shock for the freelancer, and very upsetting. I don’t want my suppliers to lose confidence when I have to tell them a job didn’t meet my requirements. Instead, I want to communicate the message in a way that enables them to move forward, strong in the knowledge that by attending to the highlighted problems our working relationship can continue satisfactorily. Email gives them the time and space to digest the feedback I've offered in a non-confrontational way. In cases where the work continues to be substantially below expectations, the clearest feedback a freelancer will receive may be represented by them not being offered further work. This isn't to say that, overall, they are not good at what they do – rather, each job needs to be assessed on an individual basis, and when a freelancer is unable to use critical feedback to meet the in-house editor’s needs, the editor may decide that the supplier is no longer a good fit. Things aren’t always what they seem … Being offered no work, or only intermittent work, is not always an indication of poor fit or poor-quality work. It can often simply be, as I have often experienced, a case of there being no work available at the time. Publishers' production workflows vary. A large house, with multiple imprints, that publishes mass-market paperback fiction may have a steady stream of projects to offer freelancers throughout the year, while a smaller independent academic press specializing in social science monographs or student handbooks may have busy and quiet spells in its production process. It may also be that the freelancer had regularly turned down work, owing to the demands of their schedule. In this case, the in-house editor may have taken the decision to focus on other suppliers who are more often available. It’s not a question of poor fit or poor quality; rather, the freelancer has simply slipped out of the in-house editor's mind. If you’ve not been offered work from one of your in-house editors for a longer time than you feel comfortable with, get in touch. It never hurts to drop an editor a message to ask whether they have any projects. The worst they can say is “no”, and even if they don't have anything to offer you now, but are happy to work with you again, you’re back on their radar. Don’t be afraid to ask … I cannot say there is a right or wrong way to give feedback. However, I firmly believe that openness on both sides is the key. I am willing to admit that my freelancer briefs could be improved. If you ever want feedback from your editor, just ask ... And remember: it is never personal; it’s about meeting a set of business requirements. We in-house editors and freelancers are on the same team.
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. PerfectIt is one of my favourite pieces of editorial software – a set of mechanical "eyes" that enable me to increase my productivity, consistency and overall quality when proofreading. That means it's good news for me and for my clients. Version 3 of this super software was recently launched. For an overview of what's new, visit the Intelligent Editing website, where all the additional features are explained by the developer. I'd planned to review version 3 here on the Parlour, but I'm a great believer on not reinventing the wheel when someone's already done the donkey work! So when I read fellow PerfectIt user Adrienne Montgomerie's robust review of PerfectIt 3, it made more sense to push my readers in her direction. You can read the article in full here: PerfectIt 3: Quality Software for the Experienced Editor (The Editors' Weekly, the official blog of the EAC). Montgomerie provides a useful overview of the best new features, points of confusion, points of frustration, and an overall verdict. Her final words? "PerfectIt will still save your bacon, can save you time and tends to make you look eagle-eyed. If you take the time to set up style sheets for repeat clients, you can free up your eyes for content issues and lingering style issues. I will definitely be taking the time to make the most of this add-in for my largest clients, and I’ll continue running it on all documents." Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
Like so many of my proofreading and editing colleagues, I never rely on my eye alone. I’m human, and my eye sometimes sees what it wants to see rather than what’s there, even when I’m working with clients rather than reading for pleasure.
TextSTAT: Creating a frequency list
One of my favourite tools is TextSTAT. Actually, it wasn’t created with the proofreader or editor in mind. Rather, the program was designed to enable users to analyse texts for word frequency and concordance. However, I use it to generate, very quickly, simple alphabetized word lists.
Time and again, those word lists have flagged up potential problems that I need to check in a proofreading or copyediting project. If I'm proofreading a PDF, I strip the text from the PDF proof and dump it into a Word file. I remove word breaks from that Word file (using "-^p") so that TextSTAT generates a list of whole words that I can compare, rather than thousands of useless broken words). If I'm editing in Word, I can obviously bypass the above steps. Identifying potential problems in text
Here’s a small sample from a word list I generated in TextSTAT. As you can see, there are several possible problems:
(The colour coding is mine; I've provided it for clarity only. TextSTAT's word lists are in plain text.)
Upon checking the actual proofs, some of these issues turned out to be fine. For example:
Some issues had to be queried. For example:
Some issues needed further checking and amending. For example:
When proofreading hard-copy or PDF proofs, would I have spotted these problems with my eye alone? I'm not confident I'd have got everything, particularly the issues with the names of the less well-known cited authors. And if "beginings" had been in point-9 italic text, my eye might have passed over the missing letter. Where’s the context?
There is no context – that’s the point. When using TextSTAT as a word-list generation tool, we’re just looking at one word and how it compares with words above and below it in our list.
We’re not reading phrases; we’re not paying attention to grammar and syntax. It’s just a long list of words in alphabetical order. Later, we can focus on the words in context – TextSTAT’s word lists are just a tiny part of a process that help the proofreader or editor to provide his or her client with a polished piece of work. Fast, free and offline
TextSTAT isn’t the only word-list generation tool available for free. However, I love it because it can handle huge chunks of text without glitching – it will quickly generate word lists for books with hundreds of thousands of words (the sample I gave above was taken from a project of over 150,000 words, but I’ve used the program for larger projects). It’s never crashed on me.
You can download the software to your own computer, so there’s no issue regarding confidentiality. My clients don’t want me to upload their content to third-party browsers without their permission, so when I use a particular proofreading tool to augment my eye, that tool needs to be able to sit offline on my PC. Furthermore, it costs nothing. Say the creators: “TextSTAT is free software. It may be used free of charge and it may be freely distributed provided the copyright and the contents of all files, including TextSTAT.zip itself, are unmodified. Commercial distribution of the programme is only allowed with permission of the author. Use TextSTAT at your own risk; the author accepts no responsibility whatsoever. The sourcecode version comes with its own license." Is it worth the effort?
Some might think that an hour or so trawling through a simple word list, and cross-checking any potential problems against hard copy or PDF, is a lot of extra time to build into a proofreading project. I think that time improves the quality of my work and increases my productivity.
When I come to the actual reading-in-context stage, I'm confident that some really serious snags have already been attended to. That gives me peace of mind and enables me later to focus on other important issues like the page layout, the sense of the text, and more. I've found that using this method for dense academic projects has been particularly worthwhile. However, I'll not forget a recent fiction project (a "big name"-authored book that's in its nth edition and was first published over two decades ago) where the main protagonist's name was spelled incorrectly in two places: an easy thing to miss again and again over many years and many proofreads. I caught it – not because my eyes are better than those who came before me, or because I'm a better proofreader than those who came before me, but because I used a simple tool that allowed me to concentrate on just the words. Want to try TextSTAT?
If you want to give it a spin, it’s available from NEON - NEDERLANDS ONLINE.
The usual caveat applies: generating word lists as part of the proofreading and editing process isn't the one and only true way. TextSTAT is an example of one tool that I and some of my colleagues utilize to improve the quality of our work. You might utilize different tools and different methods to achieve the same ends. All of which is great! How to use TextStAT
These instructions are correct as of 24 June 2021.
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.
When will I start earning a decent income from editing? That's a question many new editors and proofreaders want to know the answer to. The fact is this: it depends on many factors.
Difficult questions
It’s not uncommon for established editorial business-owning folk to be asked the above questions (or variations of them). It’s natural that any potential new entrant to the field wants reassurance with regard to the possibilities for “success”. Unless we own a business that provides editorial services for free, has no operating costs, and is owned by someone (us) who has an independent income that pays all our bills, we all need to earn money. However, there’s a problem – all these questions are impossible to answer by anyone other than the person asking the question. I would love to be able to give definitive answers:
But to respond as such would be misleading. However long we’ve been in business, however “successful” our businesses, we can’t know how a new colleague will fare. This is because the following are specific to each and every one of us: A How much we need to earn per month to meet our expenses B How many billable hours a month we have available for work C The customer groups with whom we are best matched D How much our target customers will pay E How much work per month (hours) they will supply us with Ultimately, we all hope to be in a position where D x E is greater than A (though we are limited by B). Getting to this point takes time and effort, so transitioning carefully with realistic expectations, thorough research, sensible planning and an awareness of what needs to be done to run a business will form the backbone of any advice an editorial pro can provide. A: How much money do you need to earn?
Financial viability is less about what you earn than what you need to earn. If Ms Editor earns ten grand a month from her editorial business but her mortgage is triple that, she’s in trouble.
If Mr Proofer earns ten grand a year from his editorial business but he has a large trust fund and a mortgage-free home, courtesy of a wealthy and generous relative, he’s laughing. These are extremes, I know, but the point is that each person’s requirements are unique to their situation.
All these issues and more will affect what you need to earn and therefore what financial figure will mean "success", "sustainability" and "viability" for you. B: How many billable hours a month do you have available?
Returning to the basic equation above, if D (what our customers will pay) multiplied by E (how many hours of work we can secure) only equals A (what we need to earn) when we bill for 40 hours a week, but we only have 20 billable hours a week available, we have a problem.
For example, in my household there is a young child who needs attending to, meaning I have 30 billable hours available. I have to factor that into my planning. Even if you have 50 billable hours available, are you sure you can work those hours? Proofreading and editing require a lot of concentration. There’s a lot of strain on the brain and the eyes. Some people can sustain this level of attention; others struggle. It’s therefore important to be realistic about whether it’s physically feasible to work the hours available. Heed Rich Adin's wise advice:
The usual scenario is that an editor ends the year having worked fewer than an average of 40 hours per week and fewer than 52 weeks during the year.
(The Business of Editing: Why $10 Can’t Make It, An American Editor, 2014) That's worth bearing in mind when doing the arithmetic. Furthermore, running one’s own business means that time has to be made for housekeeping issues that aren't billable – marketing, invoicing, equipment maintenance, troubleshooting, accounting, training, etc. If you have 40 hours you may well need to set aside 5 for your other business-essential tasks, leaving you with only 35 billable hours. Be sure to factor those in to your planning. Rich Adin offers some detailed advice about this on his An American Editor blog: see his posts tagged "effective hourly rate" or "EHR". C: With which customer groups are you best matched?
What services you are offering and to whom? Different client types have different expectations – of what editorial services cost and what they comprise.
An independent author might ask for a proofreader but expect the level of intervention that a copy-editor would provide; they might even need a structural editor (for a summary of these different levels of intervention, download the booklet Which Level of Editing Do You Need? Also worth noting is that a publisher with a set of typeset page proofs will almost certainly define “proofreading” differently from a business client with a Word file. And a biologist looking for an editor to check her journal article prior to submission might require that editor to have a life-sciences knowledge base that the fantasy fiction author certainly won’t. Knowing your customer and how their needs match your skills is important if you are to target effectively. Getting to those customers is key – earning money means finding clients; and finding clients means promoting your business. If you have 35 billable hours available but no clients, you're effectively unemployed. Assuming you are trained and work-ready, you need to be proactive with regard to those promotional activities that are most likely to bring you into contact with your customer. Effective marketing is not only about delivering the message via an appropriate channel, but also about ensuring that the message is on point. This can take a lot of tweaking – making sure that CVs, portfolios, website copy, letters/emails, directory listings, etc. communicate the right message to a particular customer. D and E: How much will your target customers pay and how much work will they will supply?
Even if you've identified appropriate customer groups and worked out how to get their attention, will they pay you what you need to earn? “Editing” is an umbrella term that incorporates a range of functions and a corresponding range of fees
See, for example:
Asking how one goes about getting into “editing”, how much it will pay and how long it will take to earn that money is a little like asking the same questions with regard to hospital work – it depends on whether you want to be an auxiliary nurse, a radiologist, a heart surgeon, an administrator or a cleaner. There are lots of different jobs that pay different rates. Opportunities for one role may come up less often than opportunities for others, and the skills/training required to be work-ready for those roles are different, too. (For guidance about suggested fees, check your national editorial society's guidelines.) You may find that, in the start-up phase of your editorial-business ownership, the clients who are offering you work don’t have enough of it to meet all of your financial requirements, or they have enough work but the rates they are prepared to pay mean that your total monthly earnings don’t match your outgoings. Furthermore, the editorial freelancing market is competitive. Some of your core potential clients may already have the suppliers they need, so even though you have the skills the customer wants, they don't yet have space to take you on. All of these factors mean that building an economically sustainable client base will take time, though exactly how much time will vary depending on whom you speak to. What to do ... asking answerable questions
Here's what to do:
Once you know what you’re spending you know what you need to earn. Now you’re in a position to start thinking about the types of people who will hire your services and how you will get to them.
Join editorial freelancing networks and use these to talk to your colleagues-to-be. In addition to the social media options, most national editorial societies offer opportunities for members to engage with each other. Using these networks, you can explore the following: None of the above will tell you whether their experiences will be the same as yours because you’re starting out now, whereas they were starting out then. Furthermore, your voice is different to their voice, so the way you present yourself will be unique. Still further, not all the online voices will be targeting the same customers as you or even live in the same part of the world as you; advice may be country- or region-specific and therefore not necessarily appropriate to you (though many core business issues are universal). What these discussions will do is guide you towards ideas and activities that can be tested. As Kate Haigh reminds us, when it comes to networking:
The support that we all offer each other is invaluable, not only with work-specific queries but also with ideas for training, ways of dealing with the peaks and troughs of work and, perhaps more importantly, just being there with an understanding ear.
(Best of enemies – the joys of seeing other freelancers as colleagues and not enemies. Find a Proofreader) No established editorial business owner will be able to hand over a ready-made plan that will guarantee a certain level of income in a certain time frame by carrying out a definitive list of activities. However, by doing the in-depth research and planning, you can still make sensible decisions about whether to jack in your full-time job and go freelance straight away, or whether to hold off and transition more gently as you hone your skills, explore your potential customers’ requirements, and build a sense of what work is available and how much income it generates. And don't forget that terms such as “success”, “viability” and “sustainability” mean nothing unless they are framed within the broader and unique context of what each of us requires to thrive. More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. Dear valued proofreaders and editors, Louise has presented a wide range of business and editing advice here on the Proofreader's Parlour. Some of it I refer to regularly. What I hope to contribute is an understanding of what developmental editors (macro level/substantive changes) do in the school market. That means the textbooks, handouts, exams and such that kids get day to day at school. First, I hope this insight will be interesting. Second, I hope it will alert everyone down the line in the publishing process to the intricate web of concerns that are woven into today's textbooks. Grab a cuppa and listen in. Most of the resources I work on are for the K–12 school market in Canada and the USA. That covers all schooling from the first days until university or college. Chemistry and physics topics make up most of my work; math comes after that. Though I am a certified copy-editor, substantive editing is so time consuming that it makes up the majority of my practice. That explains my POV. When material finally makes it to the copy-editor (and afterward, to the proofreader) it has been massaged to an astounding extent. Less of the author’s voice is left in these materials than in most others. The editors have taken into account:
That's off the top of my head. There's definitely more. Any changes I suggest had better move the manuscript closer to those goals. Reading level is high on my list of concerns when copy-editing. Because I edit tough subjects, it's important that the language not get in the way of the learning. Often we are aiming one full grade level below the audience. I have edited chemistry to the cadence of Green Eggs and Ham, and physics to the rhythm of Sherlock Holmes. Occasionally, another copy editor will “smooth” the language of a piece, raising the reading level eight years above the education level of the audience. There was a reason it was written that way. The style sheet in school products reflects current trends in education, propriety, and avoiding any possible sense of moral, ethical, or legal infraction. I have removed the image of a sculptor because he was working on a backside, I've struggled with wording about erecting structures, and I've flipped the terms Aboriginal with Indigenous because none of the consultants seemed to agree. I have also taken indigo out of the rainbow, and mourned the loss of Pluto’s planet designation along with the rest of my generation. Learning new things is one of the best perks of editing. Working on school materials brings a broad wealth of information to your screen. And the author’s enthusiasm? You can sense that from the sheer number of exclamation marks. My husband once admonished me: “If you’d worked that hard in school, you’d have done much better.” Well, they weren't paying me to go to school, and they didn't give me six solid months to work on one text. A lot has changed. Adrienne Montgomerie is a freelance editor in Canada where she lives on the shore of one of the largest lakes in the world, Lake Ontario, and enjoys time outdoors in all weather. She is a phonics app developer and a certified copy editor who works mostly on instructional material. You can learn editing tricks from her in online courses and in a weekly column at Copyediting.com. You can also listen to her posts on the Right Angels and Polo Bears podcast. Note from Louise: I've been charmed in the past two weeks – three special guests sharing their wisdom on the Parlour! This time it's my colleague Sophie Playle. Sophie and I met at our SfEP local-group meeting in Norwich. She's a talented writer (more on that in a future post) and has a very specialist skill set within her service portfolio – manuscript critiquing. I asked Sophie if she'd tell us a bit more about it, and she kindly obliged ... How I ended up offering a critiquing service My journey to where I am now – a freelance writer and editor who offers critiquing (or manuscript appraisal) as one of my services – evolved partly organically, and partly with focused purpose. It's a familiar story, but I have always wanted to write. At school, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life in terms of career, but I did know that I loved the escapism of books and the swooning elegance of language. While choosing a university degree, I followed my passion and went for the English Literature with Creative Writing BA offered by the University of East Anglia. I loved the writing element of the course more than anything, and from my first to my final year, I went through a steep learning curve. Our final-year creative writing group consisted of a small core of writers. We would write short stories and submit them for our fellow group members to tear apart. It was invigorating. We all knew the value of criticism, and both craved and respected the feedback we received, eager to improve our craft. It was a tough but safe bubble. In one of my private tutorials, my tutor complimented me on the quality of my feedback to other students (our feedback contributed 10% to our grade, but I was more motivated by the thought of genuinely helping my fellow writers). She asked if I had ever considered a career as an editor. Getting this endorsement certainly gave me encouragement, and nudged me towards my future career. Leaving university, I began to apply for jobs at publishing houses for entry-level editorial assistant jobs. I also began a long distance-learning course in copy-editing. Eventually, I landed a full-time role at a large educational publisher. Before long, however, I was craving fiction and creativity and writing again. So I decided to take the plunge and do an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London – while still keeping in touch with my publishing house for the odd freelance project. The focus of my MA was novel writing, and each of us on the course was plunged into the task. As with my final-year undergraduate class, each week we would critique each other's work – from sentence-level, language and grammar issues to the developing bigger issues such as point-of-view and voice as our novels progressed. Much of our course was also focused on reading and analysing critical theory related to literature and the craft of novel writing, so that our constructive criticism had a sound academic foundation. I absolutely loved the experience, and my writing and editing skills developed dramatically in the challenging environment. During my time working in publishing, I also set up my own literary publication called Inkspill Magazine. I decided to host a short-story competition, where all entries received a free critique, to test my critiquing skills in the real world. I received lots of positive feedback and, upon completing my MA, I decided to offer critiquing as a freelance service to writers. My academic foundation and publishing experience (and the various tests I set myself) provided me with the confidence to offer a critiquing service. So, what is a manuscript critique? A critique sounds a bit daunting, akin to the word criticise – but it's not a harsh deconstruction. Essentially, a critique looks at the "big picture" elements of a manuscript (plot, pace, characters, voice, etc.) and offers a constructive analysis, with the aim of showing where the writing succeeds and where it could be improved, to better inform the writer's next step. It is often called a Manuscript Appraisal, but I favour the term "Manuscript Critique" because what I provide goes beyond an assessment, also offering possible ways to address the issues I might highlight. The critique is offered as a report, which is usually between 5 and15 pages (though I have written reports of up to 25 pages) depending on how many issues I feel need to be addressed, or depending on the length of the manuscript. It doesn't include any sentence-based editing, though if there is a recurring issue throughout the manuscript, I would flag it up within the report as a general area to look at. Who are the clients? Most of my critiquing clients are writers on a journey to self-publication, or writers who want to increase their chances of representation for traditional publication. Generally, a critiquing client will be interested in making sure the core of their novel is as good as it can be, and looking for external professional confirmation and/or suggestions for development. This type of assessment comes before any copy-editing or proofreading, and can be used to test ideas (with a sample of the novel plus a synopsis) or strengthen complete novels when the writer feels there is more work to be done but is not sure how to go about it. The benefits of a manuscript critique A critiquing service is not needed for everyone, but it can help a writer gain a professional outside perspective, help them develop their manuscript, provide confirmation of its quality, and help inform the next step of their project – in the worst-case scenario, that might be to put the novel in a drawer and chalk it up to valuable experience, and in the best-case scenario, it might be to immediately send the project out to agents and publishers! (Often, it will be the steps to take for a further draft.) Often, beta readers (friends, colleagues, etc.) can give a writer a useful "big picture" perspective on their writing, but a professional critique goes much deeper – with the added benefit of an honest appraisal (something that might be skewed by kindness from friends!). Writers are often told that they need a thick skin – and that certainly comes in useful with a critique. Though I attempt to critique with the utmost sensitivity and respect, I feel the biggest injustice to a writer would be to offer them hollow advice and empty praise. Sometimes the assessment can be a bit of a shock to the writer, so it is important to remember that the critique is designed to improve the project, and not to negatively criticise the writer as an individual. It's often very difficult to accept that there might be some fundamental issues with a manuscript that will need substantive work, so when a writer sends their novel to be critiqued, I would say: be prepared for some more hard work ahead! Copyright 2013 Sophie Playle Sophie Playle offers writing, editing and critiquing services to independent writers. Find out more: Liminal Pages.
Independent author T.P. Archie recently published A Guide to First Contact, a post-apocalyptic novel set in 2060.
His search for editorial assistance initially led him to me. However, after some discussion about what was needed, we agreed that he’d benefit from an developmental and line editor, not a proofreader. I pointed him in the right direction and he hired one of my SfEP colleagues to work on the manuscript. Now he’s been kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to the Parlour about this experience, and his independent publishing journey more broadly.
Parlour: First of all, congratulations on publishing your book! Can you give us a short synopsis of the novel and tell us how the idea for Guide came about?
T.P. Archie: Hi. Thanks for inviting me in. Guide alternates between the present day and a post-apocalyptic Earth. On the edge of the solar system, Star Beings plan the next phase of their work. New life. An animite must be hurled onto the third planet. The impact will scatter organic compounds throughout Earth’s biosphere. But there’s a problem: the animite goes missing. A hundred thousand years later, it’s the 21st century. A space mission to a near-earth object makes an amazing biological discovery which is brought back to Earth. This American secret is trumped when France announces contact with creatures from outer space. Then disaster strikes. Technologies in key industries begin to fail. The West collapses … It’s now 2060. Most cities are long abandoned. All that remains of the once-mighty United States is the Petits États, centred on New England. Outside of there, civilisation survives in Enclaves, relying on the confederation of Sioux Nations for protection. For forty years a genetic plague has ravaged humanity. It began just after Earth was contacted by aliens. A new and mysterious power – the mandat culturel – controls access to advanced technologies.
Triste, hopeless with girls, but good with guns, is a bounty hunter. He has all the latest ordnance. His contracts pay well but are dangerous. They take him to the ruined cities; he spends a lot of time in the former urban area of New York.
His current mission is to reconnoitre a long lost laboratory. He encounters a ramshackle band of opportunists whom he sends packing. In doing so, he meets Shoe. They find the lab. It has secrets linking it to the collapse of Western civilisation. Shoe is running from her family. She has other secrets. In the dead shell of Manhattan lurks a secret pensitela base. Their alien biology protects them from the brutal savagery of the place. They have their own reasons for being there. From the edges of the solar system, a Star Being monitors Earth. It has a plan – and Triste meeting Shoe isn’t accidental. His troubles have just begun. Eventually he is faced by the hard truths behind the fall of the West.
At its most basic, Guide is a series of interlinked narratives that combine to reveal how the apocalypse comes about. Other readings are possible. One of my objectives was to explore different kinds of first contact.
However, Guide didn’t start like that. It began as a test of Novel Writing Software – yes, there’s a product really called that! I planned to write three chapters, which I thought would be sufficient for my purpose. So out it churned, an endless stream of 'hero takes on hordes from hell'. At about 8,000 words I took stock. I already knew it wasn’t intellectually satisfying yet I had found a writing rhythm. It occurred to me that while I was in my stride, I should experiment. Why didn’t I add something with a bit of interest? I had a few characters kicking around in my head. "Everyone has a novel in them," I told myself; all I needed was a theme to link them together. In they went; and the violence was trimmed. That was it; I was hooked. I wrote and added themes. There’s gender reversal – the story won’t work properly without it – and Darwin’s theory of evolution (these two are linked). Then the never-ending Anglo-French rivalry; followed by a drip feed of classical Greek philosophy. Each theme had a purpose. Why? I want SF that makes sense, including the cosmogony. Depicting aliens, for example, requires some attention to how they might see the universe. In retrospect, I realise I’d grown away from SF/Fantasy; little of what was available appealed to me. I was sitting around waiting for someone to write the stuff I wanted, which wasn’t happening. Parlour: Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you started writing? T.P. Archie: I qualified as an accountant in 1990. My mother was born to a family of Estonian farmers and my father began life as a cobbler. I grew up in a one-parent family. Most of my early life was lived in Stoneyholme, a deprived part of Burnley. My mother rented from a block of terraced houses. There was plenty self-inflicted misery, but it was rarely safe to observe. As the son of an immigrant with a German accent, it was my duty to avoid the occasional beatings that were due to me. Grammar school education informed me that the oppressive reality of working-class life stopped at the edge of the estate. I began reading SF/Fantasy in my teens. This was later complemented by an interest in classical philosophy and history. Once I started writing, I found a great deal to say. Parlour: Who are your biggest influences (from a literary point of view)? T.P. Archie: My formative years were very much influenced by genre authors, e.g. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. I continue to be impressed by Tolkien’s myth building and the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Outside the genre I have found Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Pasternak, George Eliot and Doris Lessing to my taste. I am also partial to Plato and the works of Idries Shah. My writing is also influenced by the work of Orson Welles. (Oh, okay – he didn’t really write :) ) By the way, I’m ridiculously pleased with my Philip K. Dick collection, tatty Ace editions and all. Dick is best known for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which inspired Bladerunner. Dick didn't need to spell out apocalypse, yet his settings work. His characters think a great mix of the mundane and the profound. Seemingly omnipotent creatures are driven by biology or freely admit their fallibility, as Glimmung does in Galactic Pot-Healer. Many of his works are laced with dark humour and are worth a reread. Parlour: Like many other authors around the world, you've decided to go down the independent publishing route. Self-publishing requires the wearing of many hats in addition to the writing. What have been the upsides and the downsides of this decision? T.P. Archie: Upsides: you control everything. Downsides: you control everything. Okay, that was tongue-in-cheek. The main benefit is that you are in control over the pace of your development. Once you have a deal, you are locked into it. As an indie author, I don’t feel the constraint of writing to fit genre style/house style. Ask the right questions at author events and the strictures of formulaic writing become clear. I've read widely in my chosen genre, including many of its standards. There are many themes to explore/treat differently. The most significant drawback was in the narrative – devising a practical approach to self-editing. While shaping ideas, I’d revisit text. If words didn’t come, I’d use "next best", i.e. placeholder terms, and work it until it was there or thereabouts. This resulted in intermittent problem areas. Sometimes I attempted to clean these up but this was a chore. I’d ask of myself, "What comes through in the narrative? Does it need reshaping?" I was too close to answer that, and a long way from feedback. I moved on. In my heart of hearts, I knew there were better approaches but I lacked the comfort of funds, so investigation wasn't an option. Besides, it was still a hobby. Did I plan to go DIY? I saw no choice. New authors produce first novels. First novels are best kept locked away in a drawer, hoping no one reads them; or (in my case) kept for practice. Many new authors go on to sell a few copies to friends and families. It’s a hobby and a fine one. You learn how to put a PDF together; you Photoshop-up a half-way reasonable cover – and if that doesn't appeal there’s plenty of stock imagery out there. Then you get to make friends with local book-sellers and libraries. Soon your edition has gone from sales of 10 units to say 100 and you can get stuck into decisions such as how many to print (economic order quantity for the business inclined). That’s a long road which begins with up front financial commitment, a dry garage and benign family arrangements. So, back to me – before I spent, how ready was I? How much confidence had I in my book? What was acceptable quality? What did I do to reach that bar? These are big, big questions which each author must decide for themselves. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a high proportion of self-published product doesn't make the grade. The follow on question to this, kind of asks itself: Am I self-critical enough? The only way is feedback. Parlour: So tell us about that. What was your experience regarding feedback? T.P. Archie: Completing that first draft gave me a tremendous burst of energy. There was so much more to write. What did I do? Jump the gun or wait? There were troublesome areas but I was too close to it to deal properly with them myself. I needed feedback and had none. So I seeded drafts to those who thought they might like to read it through, and I waited. I hoped that this would put me in a better position to know if it was worth writing more. It was only hobby time, but I might as well get it right. I waited for feedback ... and waited. It was a long time coming. That time was frustrating, to put it mildly. While I waited, I reacquainted myself with the rudiments of grammar and punctuation. I joined writing groups and reluctantly practised short stories. There’s nothing like reading out loud for finding flaws in your work. Finally I got feedback from my draft. It became clear that I needed to reshape Guide. I realised there was still a long way to go and I had to up my game. The stage points of that journey weren't yet clear. I continue to practise short stories, which, contrary to my initial opinion, gave significant benefit. Parlour: How long did it take to get Guide from the conception stage to the marketplace? I ask because some of the conversations I have with more inexperienced indie writers leave me worrying that they might not be being realistic about the length of time the process takes. T.P. Archie: A quick answer is four years. Could I have done it quicker? No. Longer answer: At the time, I thought I would be finished with the process in six months. Having said that, it’s worth pointing out that my original objective wasn't writing per se. In fact, it didn't matter if I couldn't write; my objective was to test a software package. It was only when I’d "done enough" for that initial purpose (my target was 8k words) that I realised I had something to say. Basically, I was a committed hobbyist who got sucked in. My early view changed from "let’s do 8k words" to "I bet I can finish this off in 60k words". I gave myself three months to get to first draft (it took three and a half) and a further three to tidy things up. This latter goal was totally unrealistic – it assumed a level of proficiency in editing my work that I didn't possess. The three months for first draft misled me because the effort, although considerable, was compacted together. Much longer was needed to give Guide a finished gloss. How long would I allow now? It would make me uncomfortable to imagine I could do it in less than a year. At the moment I’d calculate the minimum time as:
Why all that extra time? There’s little chance that Guide could have been ready earlier than it was. I wanted to get things right. While I waited for feedback there were things I could do that wouldn't be a waste of time. First things first: a test of commitment, learn the ropes. I learned Lulu (POD/ Print on Demand), dabbled with Photoshop, put work into devising blurb, table of contents, copyright, permission to quote. The drip of feedback began. I got stuck into editing. The more I did, the bigger Guide got. It started at 60k words and grew to 80k. Then I received good-quality feedback. A complete rethink was required. I needed to convince myself that there was mileage in the next step. Plusses and minuses two years after first draft would have read:
With hindsight, I now know that my product wasn't ready; I needed to develop as an author. What wasn't clear was how much time was required to become half-way competent. Much of the past four years has been spent looking for feedback and dealing with it. I've a better idea how much work goes into publishing. Using other expertise means you spend more time in your comfort zone. I've spent a lot of time in business, enough to know that I've little interest in activity that adds little value. Successful authors should prioritise and focus on what they’re good at: writing. During this time the stages I went through were:
Parlour: Some independent authors take a completely do-it-yourself approach to the self-publishing process – including the cover design, editing and proofreading. Why did you decide to hire an editorial professional, how did you go about the task, and what qualities were you looking for? T.P. Archie: By 2012 I’d done all I could, Guide could progress further. I rested it. A change of circumstances made that extra investment possible. Browsing on Goodreads gave me the idea that it needed other eyes, and that proofreading might be worth looking into. I ranked proofreaders; you came top. Hiring an editor was a leap in the dark. I’d little idea of how to proceed so I went with gut instinct. Stephen Cashmore became Guide’s editor. Parlour: What were the biggest benefits of hiring an editor? T.P. Archie: It smoothed out my style and helped me understand what worked and what didn't. This has given me confidence in my other projects. Parlour: Any challenges? T.P. Archie: Definitely. The main one was to disengage thoroughly from the story design in mind – i.e. what I meant to convey – and actually deal with the editorial comment. I flip-flopped on some changes; in others, what I thought I needed to do didn't work. At times I needed to check my original intent; fortunately, my notes plus backups were up to the task. I found the editing process to be very helpful. Parlour: If you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently? T.P. Archie: Interesting question. As far as the actual writing goes, things fell out as they did. The main characters had been in my head for some years. I felt little urge to write something I could get over the counter; the piece was always going to become complex. The decisions affecting the outcome couldn't be envisaged until after first draft. Some were merely opportunities, which if not pressed would have held me back – e.g. I pushed for the local writing group to reform, even though I knew little of writing and less of those who would come to make up that group. Selecting an editor was an act of faith but there was a real choice. I wasn't entirely sure how things would progress. Different outcomes were possible – but given a rewind, I’d be unlikely to do anything differently. I still have more to learn. Parlour: Many of this blog’s readers are editors and proofreaders. Is there any advice you’d like to offer to us about dealing with independent authors so that we can do our very best for you? I currently publish a set of Guidelines for New Authors, and, like many other editorial professionals, I'm keen to ensure I offer indie writers the information that’s most helpful to them. So what should we be doing and what might we do better? T.P. Archie: Many potential clients don’t have a literary background and so won’t understand the value of your services. I think it’s worth taking me as an example ... In 2012, Guide had progressed as far as I could take it, yet I was certain that its story was worth extra effort to get it into the marketplace. However, what to do wasn't clear. I had little idea what could be achieved and I put it on one side. I came across the SfEP by accident, while following up a comment made on Goodreads by a US proofreading business. I ran a web search, ranked the results, emailed the top ranking proofreader who helped me find an editor. Encountering you (and hence the SfEP) wasn't a guaranteed outcome. It takes courage for first time indie author to let a professional look at his work. The edit began. Issues were identified and ranked into major/moderate/minor. Changes were proposed. I prioritised my effort. Nearly all the minor changes were accepted without question. Suggestions for other issues were helpful and I followed many of them. Guide had several types of problem. The story structure required a rethink, the style was inconsistent, and the text was too fragmented. In many places, the pace of the plot was let down by the narrative. The benefits from the edit were significant. I put Guide into chronological order. Style excesses and inconsistencies were smoothed out. Fragmented text was joined up. I dealt with problems on a case-by-case basis. Some solutions came from my editor; dialogue translation was provided for the one chapter where Russian is spoken. This added authenticity without detracting from the pace. In another case a solution evolved in the to and fro of the edit – a lengthy dialogue was demoted to the appendices, where it actually plays better. The overall result is more readable. The edit kept me in my comfort zone and solved a major headache; knowing how much to edit, and when to stop, was now solved. I had a better idea of what worked and what didn't. In addition I got an idea of where the boundaries of taste lay (where Guide strays near the edge, it is for story purposes). The whole thing has given me a great deal of confidence; I now know thorny problem areas can be identified and improved. I'm certain my editor would agree with me if I said I was slow on the uptake. For this, and other reasons, what editors and proofreaders do needs to be out there and spelt out. A book on this sounds a good idea. [Editorial freelancers] are more likely to find value from those who are already seeking out their services. Parlour: Having now achieved that final goal of getting your novel to market, what advice would you give to any indie author who’s considering self-publishing? T.P. Archie: Self-publishing requires an author to get a lot of things right. Some of these are tasks with steep learning curves that can take an author away from his/her comfort zone. New authors need to make judgements on where their expertise stops. Where the processes are mechanical (e.g. POD formatting) it is clear if you have this right or not. As far as the actual writing goes, you are too close to your work to make that call. Any indie author seriously considering first-time publication would do well to consider putting it through copy-editing. I plan to do this with my next novel. In the case of Guide some kind of final check was needed. Proofreading seemed a good idea; it actually needed copy-editing. That process was well worthwhile. Parlour: What does the future hold? Do you have plans for future novels, and, if so, will they be in the science fiction genre? T.P. Archie: I have four genre pieces in progress. In 2012, I dared to look forward, on the heroic assumption that Guide could be finished; I asked myself “What I would like to write next?” The ideas I liked were:
I've made starts on each of these. There are also a number of themes coming out of Guide that I would find interesting to follow up. Before that happens I’ll do a little marketing. I'm on Goodreads, where I'm planning a "giveaway". I also want to tell local newspapers about Guide. There’s a press release, some bookstores to visit and, in between, I might read a few extracts onto YouTube. I promised to inform Octagon Press, agents to the written works of Idries Shah, as well as the Department of Public Affairs at Mayo Clinics ... Parlour: Thank you so much, T.P. I think independent authors and editors/proofreaders can all learn a huge amount from the experiences you've so generously shared!
To buy A Guide to First Contact, visit Amazon or Lulu:
You can contact T.P. Archie as follows:
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. The Fiction Freelancing series presents the individual experiences of editorial freelancers working on fiction within both the publishing sector and the independent-author market. The Parlour’s Work Choices feature has proved tremendously popular with editors and proofreaders looking for insights into working in various genres and specialist academic/professional fields. This time round we’re looking at editing genre fiction, and sharing his wisdom is my colleague Marcus Trower. Marcus has an impressive publishing background – journalist, production editor, chief sub-editor, feature writer, film critic, contributor to men’s magazines, travel journalist, and editor. Oh, and he’s written and published a book, too. With this many strings to his bow he knows a fair bit about the written word, so I’m delighted he’s agreed to talk to us about the business of editing … Louise Harnby: Welcome to the Proofreader’s Parlour, Marcus, and thanks for taking the time to explore the field of genre fiction with us. So to start off, and for the benefit of those who are new to the field and unsure of the terminology, can you tell us what the term “genre fiction” means. Marcus Trower: Thanks for having me, Louise. The border between literary fiction and genre fiction can be a little blurred at times, but basically we’re talking about crime fiction, thrillers, sci-fi, romance, fantasy – that type of book – and the many sub-genres within those genres. Another term for genre fiction is “commercial fiction”. We’re talking plot-driven novels with an emphasis on entertaining the reader. That’s not to say that they can’t deal with big issues. They tend to be books that aren't say, experimental in form, however. These are novels in which, if there’s an unreliable narrator, it’s likely to be in the sense that he or she is someone who can’t be trusted to meet another character at a place and time they've agreed. And should you encounter navel-gazing in a work of genre fiction, it will be during a scene in which a character is admiring the midsection of his or her love interest rather than a passage in which the author, thinly disguised as the narrator, likens his life to a Buñuel film. LH: I’d like to hear more about your specialty areas. Can you tell us a bit about the editing work you’ve completed? Which particular subgenres most excite you from the point of view of an editor, a reader, and a writer? MT: I specialize in working with authors of genre fiction, and within that field, I would say 75 per cent of the total number of books I work on are either mysteries or thrillers, so crime is very much my specialism. The other 25 per cent tends to consist of sci-fi, romance, the odd translation, and the odd zombie story set in medieval England – I’m thinking of The Scourge, by Roberto Calas, which I edited recently. I have a specialism within a specialism, too: mysteries and thrillers with a Spanish language component tend to come my way, since I lived in Spain for a couple of years, and I know my way around the Spanish language. Mysteries have always appealed to me as a reader. I think that’s because I’m fascinated by the idea of hidden patterns and motivations lying beneath the familiar surface of life. Offering my services as a mysteries and thrillers specialist is a natural and sensible thing for me to do, not only because I like reading crime fiction, but also because I’ve been writing my own crime story, a tale set in the underworld of Rio De Janeiro, and I’ve studied the craft of writing crime fiction to an advanced level in order to enhance my own writing. When I started writing the novel a few years back, I made the mistake of thinking that because I’d had a work of narrative non-fiction published, I knew how to string scenes together and tell a story. Fortunately, I soon realized how wrong I was, and I subsequently took crime fiction writing classes to learn about things like POV, building tension, characterization, scene setting, dialogue mechanics, and so on. The courses I took gave me a knowledge base that is incredibly useful to me when it comes to editing the work of other authors writing crime fiction in particular and genre fiction in general. LH: I’ve proofread a fair bit of genre fiction, primarily for publishers, and at that stage my clients are really just looking for that final polish – ironing out any final inconsistencies, layout problems and typos. Editing is a whole different ball game – you’re intervening at a much earlier stage and in a more invasive manner. I do want to explore the challenges of doing this kind of work, and how you manage the working relationship with an author who’s put their heart and soul into their novel, but I think that first it would be helpful to understand a bit about the process. So, when you receive a manuscript, how do you go about it? How do you actually structure this kind of work? MT: I like to read the first couple of chapters without editing or commenting in order to bond with the material. I often make a few notes, jotting down characters’ names and so forth, which will help me later on. During a first read, I’m looking at everything – grammar, syntax, punctuation and style, as well as POV, characterization, scene setting, plot coherence, continuity, verb tense use, dialogue mechanics, possible legal issues, and so on. One moment I might be adjusting hyphenation, the next I might be flagging the fact that an author has forgotten to give a physical description of a key character or querying whether he or she has sought permission to use song lyrics. What I love about copy-editing fiction is how many levels you have to think on. As I said, during that first read, I’m looking to fix or flag absolutely anything and everything that is, or could be, an issue. But I like to keep the forward momentum going during the first read, so if there’s an issue that comes up that requires more than a little thought, I’ll usually flag the passage it comes in and return to it later. Often that’s a wise move, because your perspective on a particular issue can change quite radically the deeper you get into a novel. The first read should remove simple distractions – misspellings, say, or awkward or incorrect style choices – allowing me to see even deeper still into what’s going on in the manuscript during a second read. I spend a lot of time working on comments addressed to the author, making sure that I get the tone right, explain an issue clearly and lay out options effectively. I tend to comment a lot; on average, I write between 150 and 250 comments in the margins of each manuscript – using Microsoft Word’s commenting tool, of course, rather than writing by hand on a hard copy. I know from what publishers and authors tell me that I’m considered to be at the very-thorough end of the editing spectrum, but in my mind I’m actually trying to intervene and comment as little as possible. My aim is to support the author, not impose myself on his or her work in any way, shape or form. When I’m satisfied that I’ve finished going through a novel, I spend a good amount of time reviewing the edits I’ve made, checking that they are correct and consistent, and making any necessary adjustments. I check through all my comments, too, and finish off my editorial letter to the author, which I begin composing during the second pass, and which can run to 2,500 words in length. I like to sit on a manuscript for a couple of days before returning it and the letter, just in case something else occurs to me. LH: You were a journalist in another life, and you’re a published author. This means you edit and you’ve been edited. Is the fact that you’ve been on the other side of the fence, so to speak, a benefit to your editing practice? I feel like I already know the answer to that question, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it anyway. Is the fact that you’re a writer yourself something you take the time to explain to your clients at the outset? And on the flip side, do you sometimes feel that being an author yourself gets in the way? In other words, can you wear both hats at once or do you feel the need to separate the two at times? MT: Right, I was a journalist for many years. I started off in journalism working for music magazines in the early 1990s – publications such as Record Mirror, Kerrang! briefly, Melody Maker and Vox. I also worked for Time Out and Empire, as well as The Big Issue and Loaded at the beginning of their lives. I subsequently worked for some of the nationals, most notably The Times and a section of The Mail on Sunday that belied the Guardian reader’s stereotypical image of what a publication from the Daily Mail camp is like – in fact, a lot of the journalists I worked alongside there went on to work for The Guardian and The Observer. I freelanced in contract publishing, too, for many years. During all that time, I was always both a writer and an editor. I know what it’s like to be edited well, and I know what it’s like to have what feels like a team of boisterous hippos trample all over my copy. You have to be pretty thick skinned to survive in journalism, though, and there’s not a lot of hand holding. I found that I had to make an adjustment and be a little more delicate and diplomatic when I first started editing fiction than would perhaps be considered necessary in journalism. I don’t go out of my way to mention that I’m a writer to authors, no, but then I don’t hide the fact either, and it’s there in black and white on my website. If I did make a point of mentioning that I’m a writer, that could be a turn-off for authors. They might think I’m going to try to write their book for them, which is one of the worst sins you can commit as an editor. I do stress that I can give feedback on the sort of storytelling elements I’ve already mentioned, though, which does stem from my being a fellow author who’s studied the craft of fiction writing. I never feel like being an author gets in the way – much the opposite. It helps me develop a strong connection with authors and their work. I really, genuinely want to help other writers. To use a terrible cliché, I want to make their book the best it can be. I identify strongly with novelists. I’ve faced the same creative challenges as they have; I’ve faced the same practical ones of trying to find, or buy, the time to write while working a day job. I’ve gone through the difficult process of trying to get an agent, then the even tougher one of trying to get a publisher. I’ve had my fair share of rejection letters and emails. From personal experience, I know how hard trying to make it as an author can be. If I can help other writers by offering them good editing, then that makes me feel good. LH: Getting the author–editor relationship right has got to be crucial, has it not? MT: Yes, it really is. The first thing I do is try to establish a rapport with the author and his or her work. I send out a questionnaire that seeks to find out everything from which other writers out there the author identifies with in terms of style, to how he or she feels about serial commas. The key is to get as good an understanding as possible of what an author is trying to do in his or her work, and to get across right at the beginning that I’m here to help him or her do that. I think it’s very important to set the right tone right at the outset of a book edit in margin comments. On the initial pages, you’re trying to make it clear to the author that he or she is in good hands, you’re not here to mess with his or her style and vision but to enhance the novel, and you’re also trying to establish clearly the principles and reasoning behind certain alterations you’re making so that you can save yourself the trouble of repeating yourself again and again throughout the manuscript. That’s also why it’s a good idea to write a thorough editorial letter. Much of the time I lay out options, since a lot of fiction editing involves making subjective decisions rather than the more objective types of calls you make as a proofreader, say. For example, a comment might begin “You may want to consider . . .” Diplomacy and tact are key. If I spot a dangling participle and a rewrite is in order, I don’t write – and I’m going to exaggerate here – “Honestly, what kind of idiot are you? Do you realize you’ve written a dangler?” but instead something like “There’s a dangler here at the beginning of this sentence . . .”, then quickly move on to laying out a couple of rewrite options, which should prove helpful to the author. You’re there to give constructive help and support. LH: Is editing genre fiction different from editing other types of writing? MT: Obviously there is a lot of crossover with editing other types of writing – there is the same confusion between “it’s” and “its”, or between defining and non-defining relative clauses, say, that you’ll see in all other types of writing. A big difference, though, is that you need to also analyse the storytelling elements I mentioned earlier – POV, scene setting, characterization, etc. Some people would call this big-picture editing, or developmental editing, and not see it as part of the copy editor’s job, but I’ve always offered that kind of feedback and analysis as part of my service, partly because that has been what publishers have asked me to do, and partly because I really do think it is part of the job. If a writer has slipped into omniscient mode while telling a story, but up to that point he or she has been keeping POV discipline and telling the story from the viewpoint of a single character, for example, to my mind that’s just as much a slip as a mistake in grammar or syntax, and it needs to be flagged. There are also style and even punctuation conventions in genre fiction that make it different from other forms of writing. To take an example, in academic writing an ellipsis (…) is used to show the omission of words from a quoted passage, but in genre fiction an ellipsis can be used to indicate that a speaker has paused or trailed off in dialogue, or in narration as a tension-building device – which is something that the crime writer Mark Billingham does, for example. A sentence will begin like this one and be about to reveal some crucial information, and it will . . . have an ellipsis like that one just before the revelation. It’s a little bit like the pause in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when a contestant has given his or her final answer, and Chris Tarrant draws out the tension by pausing before revealing whether the answer is correct while that bass-drum music rumbles away in the background. Perhaps, in fact, I should refer to that kind of ellipsis as a Tarrant from now on. Some people might consider it a melodramatic device, but there it is. LH: Newbies reading this will be curious to know how you go about getting work, Marcus. Running your own editorial business in a crowded market can be a tough gig – so how do find your clients or how do they find you? MT: I work quite a lot for CreateSpace’s Thomas & Mercer, 47North, Montlake Romance and AmazonCrossing imprints, which are based in the States. They represent a different side of Amazon’s publishing business from the self-publishing side that everyone’s familiar with. I got work with CreateSpace by taking and passing their editing test. Working for them set me on a trajectory of editing fiction written by US authors, and most of my clients are American. I’m a member of an American organization called the Editorial Freelancers Association, and clients find me through a listing I have on its website. I recently started blogging, and a few authors have found me through my website and blog, too. I don’t really go out to actively find clients, to be honest. Maybe I’m a bit naïve, but my attitude is that if I do good work, people will hear about me and find me, so I focus most of my energies on doing a good job, and I let marketing take care of itself, really. One thing I would say, though, is that in my opinion it’s important to have a specialism, as I have. I think it’s better to come across to authors as a specialist in a particular field than it is to sell yourself as a generalist. I don’t worry about losing opportunities by being a specialist, either. The fact is I do get to work on novels other than crime novels anyway. LH: One of the best things about editorial freelance work is that you can live where you want. Given you live on the Maltese island of Gozo and do a lot of work for the US market, is the fact that you don’t live in the States ever a disadvantage, or doesn’t it matter? MT: Yes, I can live where I want in theory. Great, isn’t it? Thank you, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. If I became complacent and started to believe the Brits and Americans use the same language, I would create a problem for myself. Obviously we do share a language, but there are a lot of differences, as we all know. I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m effectively working in another language, though it’s one I’ve been exposed to from a young age through American TV, films and music, and so on. I’ve had to make some adjustments. I write my editorial letters and comments using American punctuation and spelling rules, and I have to use American grammar and punctuation terms when I communicate with authors. There are many good resources, both online and on my bookshelf, in which I can usually find clarification of specific points that relate to US English and crop up during editing. If I do get stuck – and it doesn’t really happen very often, truth be told – there are always people I know in the States I can run a colloquial expression by to check a preposition used is correct, say. I’ve never really thought about this before, but since the US is such a vast place, maybe a New York-based copy editor has to do the same thing if he or she is working on a manuscript that uses a dialect spoken in the Midwest, for example. Obviously, as a copy editor you amass a big pile of language knowledge, but I think that one of the keys to editing, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, is knowing what you don’t know – and to look up whatever that is. Which I don’t think Rumsfeld went on to say. LH: We’ve primarily talked about your editing; now I’d like to focus on your writing. You post some fabulous articles on your website that are of interest to writers and editors alike. Tell us a bit more about the motivation behind that. And what kinds of things will you be posting about in the future? MT: That’s very kind of you to say. The blog series I write, Be Your Own Copy Editor, aims to help authors, but of course I’m very flattered that fellow editors are reading it, too. Its strapline is “Self-editing advice from the front line of fiction editing”, and that’s the key to the blog for me. It developed because in my work I kept seeing – and still do, of course – the same issues crop up again and again in authors’ manuscripts. I realized that some of these subjects weren't really dealt with properly by grammar books, style manuals and books on writing fiction. There are a lot of resources out there that talk about things such as subject–verb agreement, say, or the difference in meaning between “compliment” and “complement”, but there isn't much guidance about things like when and how to style inner monologue using italics, which I've covered in a blog, or identifying a three-verb compound predicate and punctuating it correctly, another subject I've covered, since compound predicates with three or more verbs are common in genre fiction. I intend to keep posting about issues that are specific to genre fiction but don’t get much coverage, if any, and subjects that are covered elsewhere but which I think need to be both looked at in more depth than they often are and viewed specifically from the perspective of genre fiction. By the way, the series may be called Be Your Own Copy Editor, but I’m not suggesting authors should bypass having their work copy-edited by a professional. My thinking is that the better the shape they get their manuscript in before submitting it to an editor, the more control they have over the final version, and the fewer things there are that can potentially go wrong. I think that’s good for both editors and authors. LH: You also had a non-fiction book published by Ebury Press, The Last Wrestlers, which received some great reviews, and you said you’re writing a crime novel. The two sound a million miles apart! So how did the former come about, and where are you with the latter? MT: They do sound far apart, however a couple of reviewers of my wrestling book were very perceptive in that they described it as being like a crime novel, which I think is true. Like a detective, I was running around the globe – I visited India, Mongolia, Nigeria, Brazil and Australia to do research – trying to discover who had murdered real wrestling and why. The Last Wrestlers grew out of an obsession with wrestling I had during my twenties – with doing it rather than watching it, I should add. I wanted to get to the bottom of why it meant so much to me, and also why it had declined in Britain. I thought, “Hang on. Wrestling is great. It’s a sport with real soul, dignity and history, yet it’s a laughing stock in Britain, where it’s associated with those guys prancing around in spandex on TV. What went wrong?” I spent over two years in the field, as it were, trying to answer that question and other questions. My crime novel is set in the underworld of Rio De Janeiro, a city where I lived for a couple of years, but actually the story sprang partly out of an interview I did with a gunda, the Indian equivalent of a mafia don, while researching my wrestling book in Varanasi. Meeting him affected me a lot. He was young, high caste, physically slight and wore glasses, yet he had personally murdered about eight people, and he controlled elections, politicians and banks in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In a key opening scene in my crime novel, I transpose certain elements of the meeting to a favela in Rio, and the crime king in my novel is the boss of a fictional drug-dealing crew with similarities to Red Command, which runs a lot of shanty towns in Rio. LH: What was the experience of being published like? Again, we’re back to the point about editing versus being edited – that sense, perhaps, of handing over control to someone else. Did you find the process a comfortable one? Do you hope to go down the publisher route with the crime novel or would you consider, or even prefer, self-publishing? MT: I put my heart and soul into my wrestling book, and the research journey I went on nearly killed me – I mean that in the literal sense. I came back from Nigeria with a very serious tropical disease that the best doctors and professors of tropical medicine in the UK couldn’t diagnose and consequently couldn’t treat properly. Fortunately, I recovered spontaneously. But anyway, the point is that my book was incredibly important to me and told a very personal story, and in some ways I paid a high price to research and write it. So yes, it is difficult to hand over a project like that to someone else. But I was very fortunate in that I had input on the developmental editing level from John Saddler, a brilliant agent who was a creative mentor to me, too, and Hannah MacDonald, then at Ebury Press, who was very perceptive and who I felt really understood where I was coming from as an author. She’s a novelist, too, which of course must help her engage with authors. There were one or two anxious moments, such as when I was told readers were unlikely to be able to stomach a book of over 80,000 words in length from a first-time author, and I’d written over 120,000, I think it was – but I felt like I was in really good hands. And in the event the word count wasn't cut dramatically. I was fortunate enough to be published very well indeed. Since I lived in Brazil at the time, Random House kindly let me stay at the Random House flat in central London for a few days at the time of the book launch. I was given a PR handler, who took me around various radio studios, where I gave interviews. My book was reviewed in the Telegraph, The Sunday Times, twice by The Times, the Literary Review, The Independent, Arena, and a number of other publications. I did Excess Baggage on Radio 4. The book didn’t then go on to sell in the tens of thousands, though it had respectable sales. In hindsight, I think the title may have been a barrier to finding a readership for the book. Essentially, the book is about being a man in the modern world and it speaks about the topic by talking about my obsession with wrestling; it isn’t a book simply about wrestling. But if you look at the book’s cover and read its title, you probably won’t come away with that impression. I have to say I get a little irritated when authors who identify heavily with the self-publishing and indie publishing boom talk about agents and editors at traditional publishing houses as though they are evil incarnate. I know I had a particularly good experience when my book was published, and not everyone is as fortunate as I was, but a lot of nonsense is talked about the traditional route in publishing. A lot of the people who work in publishing or work as agents are doing it because they genuinely love books, and they love breaking new authors. With my own crime novel, I will try to get an agent for it and then a publisher. I came very close to getting represented by a big agency in London when I submitted it to them about 18 months ago – but a miss is as good as a mile, as they say. My first thought – actually, that’s a lie; it was probably my third thought, and the first two thoughts are unprintable – was that the manuscript just wasn’t good enough to get published, and I needed to work on it further. I hope to produce another draft this year, and if the manuscript gets rejected again, no, I won’t self-publish. I’ll take it as another sign that the novel isn’t good enough and try to improve it. However, I am thinking of revising my wrestling book and producing print-on-demand and eBook versions for sale in the States, partly because I know the book will have some appeal there, and partly because I’d like to go through the process of putting out an eBook and print-on-demand book, because that will help me understand the publishing processes involved, which will in turn help me when I work with authors who are self-publishing using print-on-demand and eBook services. LH: Marcus, thank you so much. The editorial knowledge you've shared is gold dust, both for new entrants to the field and for more experienced editors considering expanding their focus into genre fiction. I've also found the description of your journey as a writer fascinating, particularly given the changes in the publishing market taking place, but also in terms of how you use your experience to enhance the editorial service you provide. And as a keen reader of crime fiction, I'm looking forward to your book! MT: You're very welcome, Louise. It's been great chatting to you. Visit Marcus Trower's blog: Be Your Own Copy Editor. And if you fancy picking up a copy of his book (I'm off to buy a copy now!), it's available on Amazon: The Last Wrestlers. Other posts in the series cover proofreading for trade publishers (Part I; Louise Harnby), editing fiction for independent authors (Part II; Ben Corrigan), and editing adult material (Part III; Louise Bolotin).
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