Think proofreading or editing would be a good side hustle? Two professional editors tell you what you need to know so you don't make mistakes. Listen to find out more about:

• What a side hustle is and why it's popular
• Why there's resistance to the term 'side hustle' in the professional editorial community
• Whether an editorial business can be set up overnight
• The importance of skilling up and marketing
• The competition side hustlers have to deal with
• The different levels of editing
• How to find work
• Business-critical considerations

If you'd like to support The Editing Podcast, thank you! That means the world to us. There are two tiers to choose from: 
​

• EditPod Tea Pot: Buy us a cuppa and help keep the podcast ad-free and independent.
• EditPod Tea Party: All of the above, plus you get exclusive access to quarterly live Q&As that help you keep your business on track.

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

The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle discuss marketing for editors and proofreaders, and offer 3 tips on how to overcome the fear.

Listen to find out more about

• Giving yourself permission to be an imperfect marketer
• Concentrating on your own marketing rather than comparing yourself with everyone else
• Following your own path and developing a strategy that’s appropriate for you, even if other people are doing things differently

Dig into these related resources

• Book: Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business
• Books: Business Skills for Editors series
• Blog and booklet: Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action
• Podcast collection: Editorial business tips​
• Blog: 2 business mindset tips for new editors​
• Blog: Why you MUST market your editorial business. Part I
• Blog: Why you MUST market your editorial business. Part II

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

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, ​Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk about why audio is such a great medium for editors who want to build brand trust and grow their businesses

​Listen to find out more about

• The popularity of audio content
• Stability during playback
• Native hosting on websites
• Voices as unique brand identifiers and trust builders
• Audio as an accessibility tool that allows communication with a diverse audience
• Why it's a less intimidating option than video
• The kit you need
• Options for recording, editing and hosting
• Editorial goals, and how audio helps us achieve them

Dig into these related resources

• The blog version: Why editors and proofreaders should be using audio
• Free booklet: How do I do my own audio-book narration?
• Podcast: 6 ways to use audio for book promotion
• Blog: 4 good reasons to edit your author podcast transcript

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

Is your editing or proofreading business new? Here are two mindset tips that will help you frame every action you take in terms of multiple goals, and stay positive while you’re waiting for the fruits of your labour to ripen.

Linear vs holistic thinking: Beyond the to-do list
I love a list! Recording the stuff I need to do helps me organize my thoughts. It also steers me away from procrastination and towards action.

What follows is therefore by no means a call for the abandonment of the to-do list. New starters and old hands alike can benefit from a list of actionable points.

Caution is required though. The to-do list does have the potential to encourage linear thinking, and this can be a hindrance when it comes to the business of editing and proofreading.

Linear thinking can lead us down a road of focusing too heavily on one part of our business in the belief that if we get X just right, everything else will fall into place, or that X is more important than Y and therefore must be completed in full before Y is considered.

Holistic thinking, however, recognizes that X impacts on Y, which impacts on Z, and that – together – X, Y and Z drive success.

Let’s look at what this means for our business practices.

A simplified example
Shami is in the process of setting up an editing business. She’s completed a comprehensive training course followed by mentoring. She’s confident in her skills and believes she’s fit for purpose. And she is – from a technical point of view.

However, there’s a potential problem. She’s been so focused on her training that she’s not spent any time considering how she’ll make herself visible to paying clients.

Training was at the top of her list – and while this is certainly no bad thing to be at the top of any freelance business owner’s list, focusing on it alone won’t bring in paying work.

Shami's business to-do list
Shami’s to-do list looks like this:

​Shami could do one thing at a time, and tick all those jobs off as she goes. But might she benefit from looking at her editing business in a different way?
​
An alternative view: The business wheel
What if, instead, Shami visualized her business as a wheel rather than a list?

The list and the wheel address the same issues, but the wheel helps Shami to visualize her business holistically; it shows her the interconnectedness of the various elements.

Let’s consider her training in relation to other aspects of business development.

Other ways to use the business-wheel mindset
I could go on, but you get the point. Training isn’t something you do before marketing. Rather, it’s connected to marketing. They are but two spokes on a wheel, and they link the hub (the business) to the rim (clients and colleagues).

Training gives substance to the marketing message. Marketing generates visibility and, therefore, new clients. New clients become regular clients because of the standards embedded by training. And up and down the spokes and round the rim we go.
​
We might carry out a similar exercise when considering the links between pricing, an accounting schedule and stationery; or resource creation and business promotion; or brand awareness, accounting and stationery.

Taking the long view
Developing a successful editing business doesn’t happen overnight. No matter how good our skills, how creative our marketing, how professional our practice, it takes time.
​

• Time to rank in the search engines
• Time to become so discoverable that we’re never without work offers
• Time to build a wait-list
• Time to fill that wait-list with people who trust our skills and judgment, return to us time and again, and pay our price

And, even then, we can’t sit on our heels because our industry, broad as it is, is always changing.

• The technical skills our clients wanted five years ago might not be what they want next year
• The fees our clients were paying five years ago may not be what they’re paying this year (we might even be worse off in real terms).
• The types of clients hiring us five years ago might have become more varied (consider the expansion of the self-publishing market over the years).
• The software or hardware we used five years ago might no longer be fit for the purpose or compatible with what our current potential clients are using and expect us to use.
• Two companies we worked for five years ago might merge tomorrow; or one might acquire the another. This could reduce the number of editorial freelancers hired, and we could end up on the cut list.
• The publisher we work with directly today might outsource its proofreading and editing to a packager in two years’ time. That could affect the rate we’re paid and the security of our freelancing relationship.

Moving from entitlement to investment
This means that, as business owners, we need to be keeping our ear to the ground so that change is something we embrace, not resent, and something we view as providing opportunity, not marginalization.

When we own our own businesses, we don’t have the luxury of spending time on blaming a lack of success on others who are now doing things in ways that don’t suit us.

When we own our own businesses, we’re not entitled to be paid X by a publisher whose profit margins are being squeezed its own customers. Nor are we entitled to work on paper because that’s the way we prefer it. For example, most independent authors want us to work in Word or on PDF.

Instead, we have to invest in what makes us interesting and discoverable to those we want to work for and who will pay us what we want/need to earn if our businesses are to be profitable.

Whether that means acquiring new skills, learning how to use new tools, changing the way we do our tax returns, targeting new client types, replacing old equipment, or testing and evaluating new and innovative marketing activities that increase customer engagement, the responsibility lies with us, and us alone.

Time and hard work are part of the deal
We might not see the fruits of our labour for months. None of us can say how long it will take for an individual’s marketing strategy to put them on pages 1–3 of Google. And that’s okay. It’s normal for it not to happen overnight.

None of us can predict whether a favourite publisher client will merge with another press and freeze its freelance rates.

None of us can know whether the skill we learned in 2008 will still be relevant in 2025. When I first started proofreading back in 2006, I was working almost exclusively on paper. At the time of writing in 2020, I edit exclusively in Word.

What we can be sure of is that there are no shortcuts – building an editorial business takes time, effort, and not a little courage because there will be times when we’re pushed out of our comfort zone.

Taking the short view leads to disappointment, frustration and stagnancy:

• Disappointment that the creation of a website alone didn’t generate fifty new leads a month
• Frustration because the client we’ve worked for solidly for six years is now squeezing 200 additional words on a page but still paying us for the same page rate
• Stagnancy because we didn’t keep up to date with new developments and are no longer able to compete with colleagues who are providing a service that we consider unusual but that they consider run-of-the-mill

Embracing that longer timeframe means we’re less likely to feel deflated when our hard work doesn’t give us immediate results. Instead we could do the following:

• Commit to tracking our webpage metrics and thinking of ways to more ideal clients to our site
• Work regularly on finding new clients so we feel comfortable with ditching the word-count squeezer
• Make technical skills development a part of normal business practice

Summing up
If you’re the type of person who’s capable of looking at a list without feeling compelled to move through it only from top to bottom, go for it. List away!

However, if you think that your to-do list is leading you into a mode of thinking that ignores the connections between the various aspects of running your business, try redrawing it as a wheel.

It may be just the ticket to seeing your editing or proofreading business in a whole new interconnected light – and focusing your energy accordingly.

And it's okay to set a realistic time frame for getting your editorial business to where you want it to be. The hard work we put in at the beginning doesn’t necessarily generate immediate results. Taking the long view means we give our efforts space to breathe.
​
[An older version of this article first appeared on An American Editor.]

Audio content has never been more popular. Publishers recognize this; so do independent authors. Here’s a list of tips and tools for freelance editors and proofreaders who’d like to introduce audio content into their business workflow and amplify their editorial voices – literally!

5 advantages of audio
Here are my top 5 reasons why I think audio is a superb tool for the editor or proofreader who wants to use audio as a marketing and business tool.

2 pieces of kit
Contrary to what a lot of people think, you don't need a lot of expensive and difficult-to-use kit. Assuming you already have a computer, here's what you'll need to get hold of.

3 ways to record
Recording audio content needn't cost you a single penny. Here are three resources you can use. You might even have two of them already.

3 ways to host
Here are three hosting options to consider. There's something for everyone – whether you want to keep your costs down while you experiment or you want to go full on in to audio content creation.

6 ways editors can use audio
One of the reasons why I love audio is that it's versatile. If marketing makes you nervous, think of how you might use your voice as a business or educational tool. Below are six things you could try.

5 ways to make audio interesting
Here are five ideas to help you add a cherry on your audio cake! None of them will cost you a bean!

Listen up! Audio content is now showing up in search engines. Editors and proofreaders who use it to solve problems and engage with clients and colleagues will increase awareness about themselves and the profession they love.

Fancy learning how to do this step by step? Me and my brilliant podcasting partner Denise Cowle are creating a course that will show you the way. It’s called The Audible Editor. Watch this space!

[An earlier version of this post was originally published on The Editors’ Weekly, the official blog of Canada’s national editorial association.]

Related marketing and audio resources

• 5 ways to use audio for book marketing and reader engagement
• Beyond editing qualifications: Gaining author trust
• Branding for editors and proofreaders – beyond me-me-me
• How to become a better editor while secretly promoting your business
• How to go mobile with audio: Book-editor podcasting on the go
• Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business
• Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action
• The Editing Podcast

Want to copyedit fiction for indie authors? Even if you have extensive experience of working for publishers, there are skills and knowledge you might need to acquire before making the shift.

Publishing has its own language
Fiction copyediting means something specific in a publishing company. It’s usually (there are always exceptions to the rule) the corrective work that focuses on spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and logic.

It’s important work – meticulous and detailed. It stops a character giving birth two months before she got pregnant; it spots when your protagonist’s eyes have changed colour; it flags up the trigger safety that doesn’t exist on the model of gun being described.

In the wider world, ‘copyediting’ can mean all sorts of things. It will include all of the above but might include a deeper level of stylistic work.

Some editors will use different terminology to describe their services, such that this middle-level editing – further down the chain than developmental or structural work but higher up than the prepublication proofread – is more intense.

Some editors even include developmental/structural work in their ‘copyediting’ service because their target clients fall into one or both of the following categories:
​

• aren’t familiar with all the levels of editing
• are more likely to search for terms such as ‘copyediting’ and ‘proofreading’ even though the big-picture elements of their story might also need some work

The mismatch between language and need
Some editors work only for publishers. Some work only for indie authors. Some work for both.

That messy publishing language becomes problematic when everyone’s using one term – ‘copyediting’ – to mean different things.

Plus, none of us knows what we don’t know.

If an editor has copyedited fiction only for publishers, and then moves into the indie-author market, there’s a risk that their knowledge and skills match the needs and expectations of mainstream publishers, but not those of indie authors.

Many indie authors are self-publishing for the first time. They’ll expect a professional editor to know what they don’t. But a fiction copyeditor, just by virtue of having done something called ‘fiction copyediting’ as defined by publishers, might not know how to handle the stylistic issues in a book.

That doesn’t mean they’re a bad editor. It means they have a specific skill set that might not be what the indie author needs or asks for.

I’ve done all three in my time. My choice was based on the author, my schedule, and the connection I felt with the project. There’s no wrong or right, just informed decision-making.

What’s gone wrong in the editing process?
So what went wrong in that case study? This problem arises because of flawed assumptions about language and responsibility.

Language
The author and the editor are using the same language to describe different outcomes.

• The author thinks of ‘copyediting’ as a middle-ground service between developmental/structural editing and proofreading.
• The editor, who works mainly for publishers, considers ‘copyediting’ a non-stylistic type of work that comes after line editing.

What Jo needed was an editor who recognizes that ‘copyediting’ could mean something different in the author’s head – something like: Do what’s required to make my prose sing! I don’t know what those things are, but that’s why I’m hiring you.

​What she got was a traditional high-quality copyedit as defined by a different client type. It’s work that she needed, but not all the work she needed.

Responsibility
A frequent fallback position on the editor’s part is this: it’s the author’s fault because they didn’t hire the right service. Jo shouldn’t have commissioned a copyedit when stylistic work was required.

That’s flawed. She hired a professional editor precisely because they’re a professional editor. She wanted them to show her what she didn’t know.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that editors define their services differently. I offer ‘line-/copyediting’. Some of my colleagues offer the same level of intervention but call it just ‘copyediting’. Others offer two distinct services: ‘line editing’ and ‘copyediting’.

Yet others don’t even call line editing ‘line editing’. It might be called ‘substantive editing’ or ‘stylistic editing’.

It is any wonder that an indie author chooses to ignore the tangled terminology and focus on collating a shortlist of editors who have extensive experience of working for traditional industry gatekeepers – publishers?
​
That works splendidly when the editors have the skills and knowledge to go beyond what a publisher might expect from a fiction copyedit. But it can fall of a cliff when the rigidity of the terminology restricts the depth of editing required.

How can editors help fix the problem?
Editors must take responsibility for the language they use and the skills they have so that they’re fit for a diverse indie-author market. That means learning and educating.

Learn line craft
Fiction editors serving indie authors should learn line craft – the stylistic sentence-level editing that might be required.

If we don’t understand the likes of show and tell, narrative viewpoint, tense, holding suspense, dialogue craft, and so on, we should question whether we’re ready for this market.

And if we do still want to serve this market with publisher-defined copyediting, we must be explicit about the fact that we don’t offer solutions to stylistic problems in prose.

Still, being able to say we don’t offer those solutions means understanding what they are in the first place. Not recognizing them is not an option.

Educate authors
We must go the extra mile to ensure that our online and direct communications with authors explain the different levels of editing and how we define them.

A website that boasts of our achievements but doesn’t show our understanding of the craft of fiction editing doesn’t help a beginner author make informed decisions. It serves only us, not them.

That can lead to disappointment on the author’s part. And disappointment leads to mistrust, not just with the editor who did the work but with the global editorial community in general.

Editors frequently report that editing is ‘undervalued’ and ‘underpaid’. But value and worth have to be earned. So does trust.
​
When an editor works with an indie author, but doesn’t have the skills to offer what’s required, or is ignorant of the fact that they don’t have those skills, it’s they – not the author – who is bringing down value and worth in the editing industry.

How can authors help fix the problem?
Writers can help themselves too. If you’re an indie author, and you’re not one hundred per cent sure about what you need, do the following:

Summing up
What publishers expect from a fiction copyeditor is often very different to what indie authors will want or need.

If you’re an editor who wants to offer sentence-level work for indie authors, think about the following:

• The language you use to describe your service.
• The indie author’s expectations.

Even if you have an extensive fiction copyediting background by virtue of having worked for a ton of mainstream publishers, there might still be a mismatch between what’s required or what’s asked for and your own definitions and experience.

​Be prepared to learn, and to show what you’ve learned when you communicate with indie authors. That’s how we build trust, value and worth.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise answer more questions about how to run and grow an editing and proofreading business.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 6

Listen to find out more about:

• Increasing organic lead generation
• Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) and the impact on freelancers in California
• The benefits of working with publishers, packagers and project-management agencies
• Content marketing: Solving clients problems
• Facebook marketing: Ads, chatbots and website pixels
• Google ads and sourcing professional expertise
• Managing impostor syndrome
• Attracting indie genre-fiction authors: content marketing and branding
• Getting work with publishers
• Ethical promotion to a primed audience
• Technical writing and copy-writing
• Choosing a business name
• Building an editorial business on a tight budget
• Using career expertise as a foundation for an editing specialism
• Choosing the right training course
• Building a marketing strategy
• Starting an editing business when we care for young children
• Scaling a business: Passive income streams, price increases, training, and premium services
• Researching markets and audiences
• Making a website visible

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.​​

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise answer questions about how to run and grow an editing and proofreading business.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 5

Listen to find out more about:

• When editorial projects don't arrive on time ... how to manage it and how to prevent it
• Dealing with burnout and procrastination
• How to get fiction work with indie authors
• Making time for marketing
• Increasing efficiency
• Contracts, and whether email is sufficient
• What to tell publishers when we're asking to be placed on their freelance lists
• How to link up with other editors
• Billing in different currencies
• What to include on an invoice
• Starting an editing business, and the best order for tackling branding, website creation, social media networking, marketing, and investing in productivity tools

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Fresh eyes on a piece of writing is ideal. Sometimes, however, the turnaround time for publication precludes it. Other times, the return on investment just won’t justify the cost of hiring a professional proofreader, especially when shorter-form content’s in play. Good enough has to be enough.

Here are 10 ideas to help you minimize errors and inconsistencies.

Checking our own writing rarely produces the same level of quality as a fresh pair of eyes. We see what we think is on the page, not what is on the page. That's because we're so close to the content.

I'm a professional editor and I know that when I don't pass on my blog posts to one of my colleagues there are more likely to be mistakes. It's not that I don't know my craft but that I'm wearing a writer's hat.

Sometimes, getting pro help isn't an option. So what can you do to minimize errors and inconsistencies? Here are 10 tips.

Style guides help you keep track of your preferences, including hyphenation, capitalization, proper-noun spelling, figures and measurements, time and date format.

• If you’re a novelist, use my Style Sheet Template
• If you’re a business writer, check out the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) guide Your House Style

This pro-proofreading checklist (free when you sign up to The Editorial Letter) helps you spot and identify layout problems in designed page proofs (hard copy or PDF). It’s based on the house guidelines provided by the many mainstream publishers I've worked for.

PerfectIt is affordable software that takes the headache out of consistency checking. And because it’s customizable, it will help you enforce your style preferences and save you time. It’s a must-have tool for writers and pro editors.

Microsoft Word’s onboard find-and-replace tool enables you to locate and fix problems in your document quickly. This free ebooklet, The Author’s Proofreading Companion, includes a range of handy strings and wildcard searches.

Word's styles palette ensures the different elements of your text are formatted consistently. This tutorial shows you how to set up, assign and amend styles. It'll save you heaps of time whether you're working on business documents, web copy, short stories or novels.

• Video tutorial
• Written tutorial

If you want fresh eyes but budget's an issue, swap quality-control checking with a colleague or friend in the same position. Pick someone who has a strong command of language, spelling and grammar.

Even if they're not a professional editor, they're wearing the hat of the reader, not the originator, and that means they'll spot things you missed.

Here are 2 tools to help you locate inconsistent spelling:

• TextSTAT: This concordance software generates simple alphabetized word lists that flag up potential problems
• ProperNounAlyse: An excellent macro from editor Paul Beverley that highlights potential inconsistencies in proper-noun usage

The Bookalyser analyses a text for inconsistencies, errors and poor style: 70 different tests across 17 report areas in about 20 seconds, for up to 200,000 words at once. It works on fiction and non-fiction, and for British and American English.

Microsoft Word has an onboard document-checking tool that flags up potential spelling and grammar problems. It's not foolproof (no software is) but it's a second pair of digital eyes that's available at a click.

Go to the ribbon, click on the Review tab, and select the Check Document button.

Read the text out loud. Your brain works faster than your mouth and you might well spot missing words, grammar flops and problems with sentence flow when you turn the written word into the spoken word!

Word also has an onboard narration tool that can do the speaking for you. There’s a tutorial here: ‘Hear text read aloud with Narrator’.

Want to write great editorial reports, demonstrate excellence, and make your authors happy? How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report is for you.

Fiction editing isn't just about amending a book file or suggesting changes in comments boxes. It's also about communicating the why of our editing practice.

A high-quality, accessible report is as important as the book edit itself. Join me to find out how to do it.

And if you're already a member of my Facebook group, check out the notification there for your exclusive group-member discount.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On a project basis:

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

On a business-health basis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of data the editor can input

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

Examples of received data from TEA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for another example …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goals that benefit the editor

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

Goals that benefit the client

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

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