Here's how to create ballpark prices for proofreading and copyediting using Excel.
There have been some interesting discussions about pricing models in the online editorial community recently.
If you prefer a per-word model, then you may like to consider using a progressive-pricing array formula. It’s not the only way of doing things, certainly, but it’s something I’ve tested and am currently working with. I like this model because it incorporates economies of scale. Before I explain how the progressive-pricing array works, a very quick word on price presentation versus determination. Price presentation versus determination Price presentation and determination are two different things.
Economies of scale When a proofreader is working on larger projects, there are economies of scale. I’m currently working with an independent fiction author on nine books (which I’m proofreading over a five-month period). Most of the projects are between 70,000 and 80,000 words in length; a couple are around the 50,000-word mark; and one is a short story with just over 10,000 words. All of the books feature the same central protagonist and a small cast of supporting characters. The serial nature of the content, the reappearance of key characters, and the concentration of action in predominantly one fictitious location all serve to save me time as I move through each book. This means:
Even so, the average number of words proofread per hour was fewer for the 10K-word short story than for the previous 70K-word novel. And in the first few hours of working on the the 70K-word novel, I proofread fewer words per hour than was the case in the hours that followed. That’s because, even with all the benefits of working on a series, each book still needs a certain amount of ‘stuff’ done to it in its own right:
If we take the series element out of the equation, and compare the proofreading of two books in a similar genre for two separate authors, the impact of project length for the proofreader can become even more stark. Consequently, I want to price the 30K-word novella differently from the 100K-word tome. It’s for this reason that while I like to build my quotations on a per-word basis, I don’t want something as straightforward as a £6, £8 or £10 per 1,000 words model. Instead, I want something that respects the economies of scale that come with larger projects. This is where the array comes into its own. How does a progressive-pricing array formula work? An array formula can look at a number (a word count, in our case) and then, based on a set of ranges that we’ve provided, price those ranges accordingly. Here’s a very basic example. You might set up your array such that the following are true:
This would result in the following quotes: (1) If you were asked to provide a quotation for proofreading a 2,000-word article, the price would be £50 (£25 per 1000 words). (2) If you were asked to quote for a 10,000-word short story, the price would be £175. This is based on:
The average price per 1,000 words works out at £17.50. (3) If you were asked to quote for a 70,000-word book, the price would be £575. This is based on:
The average price per 1,000 words works out at £8.21 and reflects the economies of scale that the proofreader will be able to benefit from because of the size of the book. A progressive-pricing array formula in action I’ll admit that it did take some fiddling to get the actual formula working for me. I used this as my template: ‘Progressive Pricing Formulas For Excel’ (www.cpearson.com). The example given is similar to the setup I wanted for my own quotation tool, and it provides a formula that I was able to tweak for my own data. See also my downloadable sample below. Here's a screen shot of what a progressive-pricing array formula might look like in Excel.
And here's an Excel template you can download and adapt to suit your own preferences. Note that you'll need to look carefully at, and amend, the array-formula box to ensure that the cell descriptions are correct for your data (that's the fiddly bit!).
One size doesn’t fit all
The usual caveat applies – my way certainly isn’t the best way or the only way! It’s just one approach of several. I wanted to share my experience with you so that if you fancy testing a progressive-pricing array, you have a framework to get you started. In practice, you might want to build more ranges into your array formula to provide increased flexibility. The numbers I’ve used above are just for illustrative purposes. I find the array formula useful for ballpark quotations because I want to provide a quick quote based on a word count. Obviously, any professional proofreading project needs to be evaluated on more than just a word count before terms are agreed and confirmed. Those editorial professionals working with complex projects that require varying levels of intervention might find a progressive-pricing array formula far too limiting. It functions well for me as a proofreader because of the nature of my work. I do, however, have different arrays set up for different client types (e.g. students for whom English is a second language; independent authors whose first language is English) and for different levels of proofreading service. The prices I assign to the various ranges are different in order to reflect the variances in how I work with the text and the speed at which I am able to proofread. How do you build a price for editorial work? How do you build your quotations? Per hour, per word, per day, per project? Have you tested different approaches for building your fees? And do you find that different models work better for different types of editorial work? I’m always interested in learning how others go about pricing editorial work so please do leave a comment if you have something to share. UPDATE (August 2020): For more help with fees, take a look at my guide How to Develop a Pricing Strategy.
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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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.
This post explores the disadvantages of ballpark pricing for editors and proofreaders.
Part 1 discussed the advantages of ballpark pricing. There are, however, some valid concerns about the ballpark quotation that need to be considered before rushing into offering such a service. Disadvantage 1: Wrong focus – money over value … The argument goes that ballpark quotes focus on the money rather than the value that editorial professionals bring to the table. When we offer ballpark quotes, it’s just a figure. Says Celine Roque: ‘It’s incomplete. Your quote is just a number. Your clients can’t surmise all the information they need from that number. Apart from the primary services you provide, you should also give them your advice. Oftentimes, what a client really needs is different from what they think they need. In this case, an assessment of a client’s business and project, followed by a proposal, is the better approach’ (‘Why You Shouldn't Just Give a Quote to Potential Clients’, Gigaom, 2008). Regarding Roque’s concerns, giving advice takes time (see Part 1). Furthermore, what a client needs is not always the same thing as what a client wants. Giving advice to someone who actually just wants a price isn’t good customer service (even if we know that our advice, value, etc. would, in reality, be in their best interests). It’s just aggravating. There are ways to give advice that aren't invasive:
Disadvantage 2: Missing the opportunity to add value …
In ‘Sales 101: Don’t Get to Price Too Early, Even If You’re Asked to “Ballpark”’ (Sexton Group Ltd, 2015), Steve Payne discusses ‘the number one rule of quoting prices’: ‘Don’t quote a price – any price – before you have sold the client on your ability to do the job. If you haven’t convinced the client that it’s you they want to work with, before you quote a price, it’s like you are swinging at a baseball too early. In the case above, you made no effort to tell the client, through testimonials, through photographs, through stories, about your firm. How it operates. What makes it different. How delighted past customers have been with your work. How you have many repeat clients who will never work with another contractor as long as you are in business.’ In other words, you’re potentially shutting the door to negotiation, especially if your price is perceived as too high. Payne’s point about using value to make you a more hireable prospect is excellent, but I still believe that when a potential client asks for a price, we need to listen to that request and act on it. No one wants to hire an editor who can’t follow a brief. If we can’t listen to a client’s request at the very first point of contact, how can we expect them to trust us to listen further down the line? To ameliorate this, consider other ways in which you emphasize your value at the point where clients are likely to contact you.
Disadvantage 3: Poor accuracy
Rich Adin (personal correspondence) pointed out that accuracy can be a huge problem for some editorial freelancers when it comes to ballpark pricing. One simply cannot offer anything like a realistic price without seeing at least a sample of the work. For those editors who offer complex services to clients, this is a valid criticism of the ballpark mechanism. The kinds of projects that Adin is often asked to quote for include ‘2,800-page biology text[s] with thousands of references’; require various levels of editing; involve various subjects; and require the handling of multiple references and reference styles. A client asking for a ballpark figure for editing one of Adin’s ‘13,000-page medical manuscript[s]’ might fail to mention that they need the project completed in an eye-watering ten weeks, or that all 5,000 references are in a mish-mash of citation styles. For that reason, Adin doesn’t offer ballpark quotations because, without knowing the detail of what’s involved, it’s impossible to build a price, or justify it, in ways that make sense to, and can be respected by, the client. Says Adin: ‘Even if after a detailed explanation I do not get the current project, I do not consider having given the detailed explanation a waste of time because the client can see that I have reasons for my positions and am willing to offer solutions. Clients are also made aware that there needs to be a balance between schedule, fee, and quality. Based on past experience, I will be asked to undertake a future project, perhaps even one where the client has already preapplied my analysis’ (‘The Business of Editing: The Standard Editing Workday & Workweek’). Editors therefore need to consider whether there are parts of the editorial service they provide, or particular client types with whom they work, where fewer complexities are involved, making them more appropriate for testing ballpark pricing.
Testing ...
You may be enthusiastic or concerned about offering ballpark quotes. You may have fifty colleagues who offer ballpark quotes, seventy who steadfastly refuse to, and twenty more who are thinking about the issue. All of that will be interesting and help to guide your thinking. Ultimately, though, what’s good for you will not necessarily be good for me or any of those 140 colleagues who have already made their own decisions or who are in the process of making those decisions. The only way to know whether ballpark pricing is good for your business is to test it. Design any ballpark pricing test in a way that, to the best extent possible, ameliorates some of the concerns you have. Then track the results and see how the experience works out for you. You’re in control so you can end the test whenever you wish. Consider tweaking the following:
Other colleagues will have opinions, and those will be useful – not in regard to whether you should or shouldn’t offer ballpark quotes, but in regard to the issues you consider and the challenges you prepare yourself for should you decide to undertake the test itself.
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.
This post explores the advantages of ballpark pricing for editors and proofreaders.
What's a ballpark quote? Ballpark pricing is that which gives the client an initial and fast indication of what a project might cost. There's no project evaluation involved, which means the editor's working with numbers based on average speeds, and the client's working with word counts or some other given element (e.g. a web page of up to X words; a publishing 'page' of 250 words; X hours of the editor's time, etc.). Ballparks can be provided on rate cards, web pages, via online instant-quote widgets, or via email or phone. Ballpark prices don't suit every editor Spark up a conversation with fellow editorial professionals about providing quick-quotes and you won’t find a consensus on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea. Certainly, not everyone in our profession is prepared to offer ballpark quotations, and some even consider the decision to do so as controversial. So how do we know whether it would be good for our own business if there’s no consensus? The best way is to test it for a fixed time period and evaluate the impact.
Advantage 1: No time-wasting
Some years ago, I arranged for a sales rep to visit with a view to securing a quote for some new windows to be fitted. I took the rep around our house and showed him which windows needed replacing. Then I sat through a 45-minute pitch about the company and the quality of its products. I was frustrated after five minutes and couldn’t wait to get the guy out of the door. While quality is important, and the fine detail might have been useful later, I didn’t want to spend my valuable time listening to someone selling a product to me that ultimately I couldn’t afford. I wanted a ballpark price upfront. Many of our clients are no different. If a self-publishing customer has a figure of £400 in her head for an 83,000-word proofread, and my ballpark quotation is £500, we’ll probably continue the discussion because the gap between what she wants to pay and what I want to charge is bridgeable. If my ballpark quotation is around the £1,500 mark, it's a different story. That’s nearly quadruple what the client hoped for. I’m certainly not going to come down by 70%, and I doubt they'll go up by 375%. My public rates are created by estimating the time it will take to complete an editing project and pricing that time in such a way that I earn what I want and need in order to make my business sustainable. My client’s preferred price is based on ... actually, I have no idea what it’s based on. And it doesn’t matter what it’s based on. All that matters is that neither of us has wasted each other’s time having a lengthy email discussion about the value I bring to the table set against the financial pressures they're under when, in fact, we’re just not a good financial fit for each other at this point in time. My time has a cost to it. My customer’s time has a cost to it, too. The ballpark figure allows both of us to move on quickly and spend our time in ways that are more appropriate to each of us. Says freelance copywriter, trainer and speaker Ed Gandia: ‘As a freelance professional, your most valuable non-renewable resource is time. You must use it wisely. So when you spend two or three hours “educating” a prospect on the value of your services (and why you’re a much better option than someone charging one-tenth of what you charge), you’re using up valuable billable time. [...] There are enough prospects who understand the value of what you offer to save you from wasting time with those who don’t. [...] Yes, it’s hard to see a potential client walk away because you won’t budge. But, let’s face it. If his budget is 75% less than your absolute minimum fee … what’s the point?’ (‘Why You Must Quote a Ballpark Figure’, Freelance Folder, 2010). Copywriter Steve Slaunwhite concurs: ‘What if a prospective client is cheap and not willing to pay professional rates for professional work? Wouldn't you rather find that out right away instead of wasting an hour or two (or even longer) preparing and submitting a formal proposal?’ (‘Should You Give the Client a “Ballpark” Price Before You Quote the Project?’, American Writers & Artists, Inc., 2011). And here’s another supporter, my colleague Adrienne Montgomerie. Montgomerie has a widget on her website than enables potential clients to ‘watch the time and cost estimate build before your eyes’ (‘Stop Wasting Time On Estimates’, Right Angels and Polo Bears, 2014). Montgomerie’s instant estimator is based on an average, ‘the mean of all projects I have ever worked on’. To offer a confirmed price, Montgomerie, like most editors, would need to understand the guts of the project – which means seeing a decent-sized representative sample and knowing the full word count, the subject matter, what rounds of editorial intervention the project has already been through, the deadline, and so on.
Advantage 2: Engaging with the client
Some customers simply want to know the price quickly. It’s not that they're trying to get our services on the cheap, or that they don’t value what we do for them. Rather, they want to be able to plan their budget as quickly as possible. Consider, again, the author mentioned above. They have an 83,000-word novel that needs proofreading. She has no idea what proofreaders charge, but she does want to hire one and is prepared to find the funds necessary to secure the services of a an editor who instils confidence in her. She’s looked online and found a few whose websites she liked and who made her feel like she’d be in safe hands with them. To some extent, the value those proofreaders will bring to the project has already been acknowledged. At this stage, she wants to get a feel for what her investment will likely be – will she need to save up or does she already have the funds in place? Acquiring a ballpark figure prior to having a lengthier discussion about the proofreading process will help her to get the ball rolling. In some cases, the ballpark price enable us to engage with the customer and nail the deal before they’ve had a chance to search elsewhere. Here’s Slaunwhite again: ‘[W]hen you quote a ballpark price, some clients will be satisfied and give you the go-ahead right away. [...] I've had many projects where I quoted a ballpark price and the client said, “Yes, that sounds fine. When can we get started?” After that, the formal quotation I send later on is just that: a formality. The project is already mine!’ (‘Should You Give the Client a “Ballpark” Price Before You Quote the Project?’).
What a ballpark isn't
Ballpark prices should be as realistic as possible. It's not a trick price to lure a client into a conversation, only for us to turn around and say, ‘Sorry, it’s going to be double the fee I quoted earlier.’ Rather, it's meant to facilitate a conversation that enables us to cut to the chase and decide as quickly as possible whether we’re a financial fit. There will be times, of course, when the ballpark and confirmed quotations are far apart because, following an assessment of the project, the level of intervention required is either beyond our skill set or requires more time. Hitting the mark comes with experience and data.
Tracking and reviewing data
Here’s Montgomerie again: ‘Of course, the reason I can ballpark with confidence is that I have kept detailed records of my pace over the years. It also helps to work on the same kinds of projects again and again. And some types of projects are more consistent than others. I’m sure there are a thousand other reasons pessimists think this won’t work. But I guarantee you, it’s worth a try. If you know assignments typically pay $5000, there’s no reason wasting everyone’s time when the budget only allows for $500’. By tracking our data, we can learn approximately how long it takes us to proofread or edit different types of material, written by different client types with varying levels of English fluency. And by recording different variables, we can, over time, extrapolate information that enables us to build a picture of where the financial value lies in our client base. The fact is this: None of us knows whether our business is sustainable if we don’t know what an hour of our time costs us, or is worth to us. Taking account of project variances … When thinking about a pricing structure, consider the type of editing you do and the projects you'll be quoting for. Ballpark pricing might be less suitable for structural editing and project editing, but effective for line editing, copyediting and proofreading. Still, that doesn’t mean that every client type will be priced equally. Ballparks might vary per 1,000 words or per hour for the following reasons:
In Part 2, we'll look at some of the disadvantages of ballpark pricing.
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.
Having traditional proofreading skills isn’t just a business asset when it comes to working for the mainstream publishing industry. It’s a valuable service that we can offer independent authors, too.
Note: If you fancy giving your eyes a rest, get yourself a cuppa and listen to the podcast instead. Scroll down to the bottom of the article and click on the image.
This article discusses the differences between proofreading (or proof-editing) directly in Word and proofreading post-design page proofs. When I set up my business back in 2006, I was strictly a proofreader and most of my clients were publishers. For the most part, they expected me to annotate paper page proofs. As time went on, many of the presses for whom I worked shifted to digital workflows. Proofreaders are still required to annotate page proofs, but they're using a PDF editor’s onboard commenting and markup tools or digital proofreading stamps (see, for example, the free set of downloadable stamps that I’ve created for use in the likes of Acrobat and PDF-XChange; these comply with the British Standards Institution’s BS5261C:2005 proof-correction marks). What are traditional proofreading skills? Here, we’re checking the page proofs to ensure not only that the spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct, consistent and in line with the client’s brief, but also that the layout conforms to industry-recognized standards. In order to carry out these checks, proofreaders need to know not only what to look for, but also when, and when not, to intervene so that they do no harm. Checks include, but are not limited to, ensuring that running heads match chapter titles; chapter titles match entries in contents list; design of the various text elements is consistent; chapter title drops are consistent; text on facing rectos and versos is balanced; odd page numbers always appear on recto pages; bad word breaks are flagged; part titles appear on new rectos. Proofreading page proofs In case you’re unfamiliar with the terminology,
Page proofs, traditionally defined, are so called because they are laid out exactly as they will appear in the final printed book. If all has gone well, what the proofreader is looking at will be almost what the reader sees if they were to walk into a bookshop, pull this title off the shelf and browse through the pages.
The layout process has been taken care of by a professional typesetter who designs the text in a way that is pleasing to the eye and in accordance with a publisher’s brief. (Not all proofreading is the same: Part I – Working with page proofs) Proofreading raw text Proofreaders don’t just work on page proofs, though. Increasingly, we’re asked to work on the raw-text files (usually in Microsoft Word). A core market for the twenty-first century proofreader is the self-publishing client. For most of us, that means that an author will ask for their book to be ‘proofread’, even though what they want is a light edit of their Word document. Here, the proofreader is directly amending the text, usually with Track Changes switched on so that all the amendments can be reviewed. The line between copy-editing and proofreading is blurred, and the level of intervention will vary from client to client. The term ‘proof-editing’ is sometimes used within the professional editorial community to describe this tangling of what, traditionally, were two quite distinct services within the publishing industry. Are the old skills redundant? Most of my self-publishing clients ask me to work directly in Word. Given that all my work now comes from this sector, are my traditional page-proofreading skills redundant or am I still glad I took the time to learn them? I think the twenty-first century proofreader who doesn’t have this knowledge is missing an opportunity. Print isn’t dead Self-publishers don’t just publish electronically. Many make their books available in print via platforms such as CreateSpace, Lulu, BookBaby and Ingram Spark. That means they produce designed page proofs – just like mainstream publishing houses. And just like publishing houses, these independent authors need proofreaders with traditional skills that go well beyond checking spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax. Rather, we’re talking about also carrying out the same layout checks that our proofreading colleagues from 40 years ago undertook. If you’re offering traditional proofreading services to independent authors, and you aren’t familiar with the mainstream publishing industry’s conventions in regard to page layout, you won’t be able to carry out the aforementioned checks with confidence. That means you won’t be fit for purpose to offer this service to your clients, which means you’re missing out on a potential work stream. Understanding traditional production standards Certainly, there’s no law when it comes to layout, and none of us wants to interfere with books that have been deliberately designed in a creative way. However, many self-publishers are looking to mirror the production standards that a traditional publishing contract would have provided them with. Part of that process involves ensuring that their printed book looks like it belongs on the shelf on the high-street bookshop. Some readers will have in-house publishing experience through which they’ve learned about layout conventions; others will have acquired this knowledge via formal editorial training. If you’re a proofreader who isn’t familiar with layout standards, Joel Friedlander’s free Printed Book Design 101 is a short but useful primer. The next stage is to follow up with more detailed guidance provided by an industry-recognized style manual (e.g. New Hart’s Rules or The Chicago Manual of Style). Ultimately, though, I’d strongly recommend sourcing appropriate training from your national editorial society so that you learn how to manage page proofs effectively while doing no harm. Doing no harm The proofreader will need a little artistry and a lot of common sense when it comes to managing the potential problems in page proofs. Consider the following examples of harm:
1. A self-published organization studies monograph
The text on two facing pages of Chapter 1 (pp. 4 and 5) is unbalanced. Page 4 is much shorter than page 5. Page 4 contains text that refers to Figure 1.2, which currently appears on page 5. You solve the problem by annotating the page proofs with an instruction to move the figure to page 4. The figure is now close to its referring text, and the issue of the imbalanced facing-page depths is solved. Four chapters later, Figure 1.2 is mentioned again and cross-referenced with a page number. Your seemingly elegant change means the cross-reference is now wrong.
2. A self-published novel
You annotate the page proofs with an instruction to move two lines over to the next page in order to improve the balance of the text on two facing pages. This has a knock-on effect throughout the rest of the book, and causes an extra page to be added. So what? It’s only a page. The problem here is that printers don’t think only in terms of the number of pages. They also consider, for example, the format of a book, the binding, the grain of the paper and the size of a page. If they can fit eight pages on one sheet for the purposes of printing, it could be that your instruction to add one page actually results in the printer having to create eight pages. That’s an added expense your author may not have the budget for.
3. A self-published engineering manual
You're asked to proofread. The client has hired an indexer, too, but you don’t know this because the index isn’t included in the page proofs. You annotate the page proofs with an instruction to change the spelling of a cited author’s name. This proper noun is the last word on the page and the word spacing is so tight that the sentence is difficult to read. You solve this by annotating the proofs with an instruction to move the name onto the next line, which appears on a fresh page. This cited author is a big name in the engineering field and will be included in the index. You don’t alert the author to the possible consequences of your instruction. When the book is printed, there’s still a spelling error in the index and an incorrectly numbered page reference. The three examples above illustrate why formal proofreading training is advisable. Learning what to look out for on page proofs is a lot easier than learning how to properly manage any problems you find. When you understand not only what to mark but also the consequences of those marks, you’re fit for purpose. Proofread like it’s 1976, and offer multiple passes Yes, it’s 2018 at the time of writing, but being able to proofread like it’s 1976 allows you to offer multiple passes to those clients who want to publish digitally and in print. Knowing how to proofread (or proof-edit) in Word enables you to correct language problems. But if you also know how a book page works, and how to mark up page proofs so that they conform to publishing industry-recognized standards – in a way that does no harm – you can provide your author with the same high-quality proofreading service that those with mainstream publishing contracts have access to. That’s good news for your client and your business. The podcast version! Click to listen
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. 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.
This article considers the importance of testing in an editorial business marketing strategy.
If you're building a marketing strategy for your editing or proofreading business, you probably have a ton of questions. Some of those questions might look like this:
They’re perfectly good questions and our colleagues usually have some excellent answers. There’s nothing wrong with asking more experienced professionals for advice on how to go about promoting one’s business; indeed, I’d recommend it as one tool for deepening one’s marketing knowledge and stimulating one’s creative juices. However, it’s important to remember that ‘advice’ is just that – guidance and recommendations for action; advice is not a rule of thumb that needs to be followed without consideration of our own individual business goals, target clients groups, and required income streams. We all, too, have our own voices – some people shine when promoting their businesses face to face or over the telephone; others make more of an impact using their written communication skills. In brief, the marketing tools that work for me might not work as well for you, and vice versa. That’s why we need to incorporate testing into our marketing strategy. Testing involves experimenting with particular marketing activities over a fixed timescale, and evaluating the results. Testing allows you to discover which promotional activities are effective for generating business leads in particular segments of the editorial market. The results may well match the experience of many of your colleagues, but don’t be surprised if they differ too. Before you start … Before you begin testing, it’s crucial to consider what you are trying to say and to whom. Spend some time reviewing your business plan so that you have the following in mind:
A fictive case study Let’s return to just one of the questions that I posed at the beginning of this article and consider how testing offers a constructive approach to acquiring market knowledge that complements the advice gleaned from colleagues. ‘Is [directory name] worth advertising in?’ Ash is a recently qualified proofreader. He’s considering advertising his services in his national professional association’s online editorial directory. The cost would be $300 per annum, which is a big chunk of his marketing budget. He asks 3,000 of his fellow association members whether the directory has proved successful for them. He receives 30 responses, which at first sight is useful, but when he reads the replies in full, the advice is mixed.
Despite the mixed responses, there is some really useful information to be gleaned. Ash considers the following:
Ash reviews his business plan (including the skills he has, his career and educational background, the editorial training he’s carried out) and concludes that, although he has little experience, publishers are a good fit for his business model. The price tag of $300 is a little on the steep side for him, but he wants to acquire experience from publisher clients. Publishers seem like a core client group for the directory, though Ash is cognizant of the fact that he only has feedback from a small percentage of the society’s membership and he’s unsure whether their views are statistically significant. He decides to test the effectiveness of the directory for 1 year. He constructs a listing that is designed specifically to appeal to the publisher client group. In 12 months’ time he will evaluate the results. If the listing has generated his required income-to-cost ratio, he can continue investing in this marketing activity, confident that his money is well spent. If the listing doesn’t generate the desired results he will have two choices: (a) test a reworked version of the advertisement or (b) abandon the directory and explore other methods of making himself discoverable to publisher clients. Whatever the outcome, Ash’s test will provide him with evidence that he can use to make informed and confident decisions about how best to market his editorial business. What should you test? What you should test will depend on what you want to know. Here two tests I've carried out. Advertising with Reedsy I wanted to know whether creating a profile on Reedsy would make me more discoverable to independent fiction authors. It costs nothing financially to generate a listing, although Reedsy takes a percentage of any income earned. Feedback within the UK and the international editorial communities has been mixed. In May 2015, I decided to carry out a test over a 12-month period so that I could evaluate the potential benefits for my own business. Early results were positive – I picked up a high-value client within only a few weeks and completed several projects for him. The process was smooth and payment was timely. I continued to advertise on the platform and monitor the results. As of 2018, I receive requests to quote on a weekly basis. The test proved to me that Reedsy is a valuable lead generator for my business. The only way to find out if it works for you is to test it too. Adding video into my marketing mix I wanted to know whether videos would offer my clients and colleague-customers a valuable alternative way of consuming my written blog content. Would there be SEO benefits? Would the project generate sufficient additional high-value work opportunities and book/course sales to make the investment in time worthwhile? I began creating video content in 2017. As of 2018, my written content still drives more traffic to my website than my video content. However, certain videos, such as the 'Hello' one on my home page, a free webinar for colleagues on emergency marketing, and some tutorials on using Word's styles palette, have been popular. The emergency-marketing video led to a spike in sales of my books, and several clients have commented on how much they like being able to see the editor behind the website. The test leads me to believe that, in the main, I'm more likely to gain traction from videos that have a teaching or welcoming element, so I've decided to focus specifically on tutorial-based video content for now, and only as a supplement to my popular written content. Don’t mix things up Take care when carrying out more than one test. Multiple tests on one marketing tool are problematic – it won’t be clear why any changes to response rates, either positive or negative, are occurring. For example, if I decided I wanted to find ways of increasing the speed at which I receive payment, I might consider tweaking my invoice as follows:
It’s crucial that I test each of these things separately; otherwise, 12 months down the line, I’ll have no idea which of these tactics is working (or not working). It could well be that the message and emoticon are just as effective as the 5% discount. Unless I identify this by carrying out the tests separately, I’m needlessly throwing money out of the window. Tests can, of course, be carried out separately but simultaneously by dividing similar clients into groups, with one tweak applied to each group. So, in the invoicing case, I might divide all my publisher clients into three groups and send out invoices with the late-penalty payment info highlighted to group A, a 5% discount for early-bird payment to group B, and a thank-you message and emoticon smiley to group C. Then I would track the results for each group. Track the results Make sure you track test results. If, for example, you’re mailing your CV to a large number of publishers, and testing different designs, or different wording in the accompanying cover letter, make a note of who was sent what. That way you’ll be able to identify whether a particular test is generating a higher response rate. Codes can be a useful way of collating data if you’re want to work out where your best leads are coming from. Many editorial freelancers receive emails and phone calls from clients who don’t identify how they discovered them. Adding a distinct code to each call to action on your website’s Contact page, leaflet, business card, or advertisement helps you to distinguish the results of your marketing efforts. Likewise, if you are testing different pricing models with, say, students (e.g., a flat fee vs. $X per 1,000 words), you might issue them with different ordering codes if they decide to commission you (FF2015 for those offered a flat fee vs. PK2015 for those offered a price per 1,000 words); this would enable you to track which test generated the best likelihood of being hired. Summing up
An earlier version of this article was first published on An American Editor. 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.
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. How lucrative are your editorial clients really? Keeping an eye on creeping costs (part I)11/2/2015
We need to take care when making assumptions about how lucrative certain client types are. Here's part 1.
Online discussions among editorial folk often allude to the issue of ‘poor' pay when it comes to publisher clients. And while there are some presses who, for various reasons beyond the scope of this article, offer rates that some freelancers consider to be unsustainable, it's not always the case.
I have extensive experience of working with regular publisher clients (around 400 books since I set up my business in 2005) and I've worked with businesses, independent academics, students and self-publishing authors. I've enjoyed pretty much all of the projects I've worked on, but the jury is still out on who pays 'well' and who doesn't. For the purposes of this article I’m going to take a look at how working with a regular publisher client contrasts with working for a new non-publisher client. I’ve chosen to use publishers precisely because they are a group that are often cited as being ‘low’ payers. In today’s article , I consider two problems:
I also look at the booking phase of proofreading work, and consider how the situation can vary between a regular publisher client and a new non-publisher client, and what this means in terms of creeping costs. In Part II, I look at the additional costs that can creep into the actual editorial stage of a booked-in proofreading project, and the phase after completion – again comparing regular publisher clients and new non-publisher clients. This isn’t to say that any of the scenarios considered here will always occur with each client type on each job. Rather, I aim to show that (a) extra costs are less likely to creep in with the regular publisher client, and (b) this needs to be accounted for when considering which types of client are ‘well-paying.’ How do we define 'paying well'? What’s a ‘good’ rate of pay? This is the first problem that arises when we make statements about how lucrative particular clients groups are, and it can confuse the new entrant to the field. Some national editorial societies offer guidance on suggested minimum rates (see, e.g., the Editors Canada, the Editorial Freelancers Association [United States], and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders [United Kingdom]). Note, though, that while many new entrants to the field will aspire to these rates, for others they may not be high enough. Rich Adin, An American Editor, advises using these guidelines as ‘a place to begin but not to stop’ (Business of Editing: What to Charge (Part I). I agree with Adin’s advice. This is because there are 3 rates we need to be aware of:
In reality, though, there is no precise number that makes pay rate ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ What we can do is to construct our own definitions of acceptable and unacceptable rates around our individual business requirements. Thus:
Consider the following (the figures are for demonstration purposes only):
In the above situations, which rates are good, and which are poor? Looking at the above three examples, you will have your own opinions about what’s acceptable. In example 1, £20ph exceeds my needs. For me, it’s a good rate. Yes, it’s below the figure suggested by my professional society, but it doesn’t have to meet the needs of the professional society, because the professional society doesn’t pay for my rent, food, and bills. Rather, it has to meet my requirements. If your required rate is £25ph, it won’t meet your needs so it will be a poor rate. In example 2, £27ph exceeds my required and desired hourly rate, so it’s a great rate. It also exceeds my professional society’s guidelines, though that has no bearing on my financial situation. My colleague still thinks it’s too low. Perhaps that’s because she needs to earn £30ph. But her needs are just that – hers. What she needs to earn has no bearing on my financial situation. It’s a poor rate for her but it’s still a great rate for me. In example 3, the market rate of £13ph is lower than my required rate. I therefore consider the rate to be poor. This isn’t because a colleague or a society thinks it’s too low, but because it doesn’t meet my required rate of £17ph. If I wish, I can still choose to accept the job, if a broader analysis of my accounts tells me that my overall business earnings will compensate for the shortfall. So, if you’re a new entrant to the field and you hear someone say, ‘Publishers don’t pay particularly well,’ or ‘Businesses offer great rates,’ bear in mind that your colleague’s experiences may not be the same as yours because the yardstick by which she’s measuring rates of pay is different than yours. What she needs to earn will probably be different than what you need to earn, and what’s ‘good’ for you might well be ‘poor’ for her. Define ‘well-paying’ clients first and foremost according to your needs, not those of others. Comparing publishers with other client types Another problem that arises when considering how lucrative publisher clients are is that of comparison. Are we comparing their rates with students, self-publishing authors, academics, multinational corporations, charities? The fact is that even clients from within a particular customer group have will have different budgets and expectations (not every academic will be prepared to pay the same fee per word/page/hour for proofreading; not every publisher will offer the same rate for copy-editing a 300-page sociology manuscript). You may well find that ‘bad,’ ‘good,’ and ‘good enough’ rates of pay (as defined by your own needs and wants) can be found both within and between customer groups. The rates that I earn from proofreading for publishers vary a great deal. I record detailed data for every job I take. This allows me to make some comparisons between clients, and more broadly between client groups. In my own experience, the income I can earn from somepublishers is what I consider to be a ‘good’ or ‘great’ rate of pay. This isn’t just because the fees offered for the jobs are flat-out higher than what’s being offered by other clients; it’s not just because I’ve been able to introduce more productive ways of working (see The Proofreader’s Corner: Rates, Data Tracking, and Digital Efficiencies (Part II) for more detail on how this can be achieved); it’s also because there are, in my experience, fewer creeping costs. Creeping costs One financial issue that has often snuck up and tapped me on the shoulder when working with non-publisher clients is that of creeping costs. I’m not going to pretend it’s never happened with publisher clients, but I’ve found it to be less likely. This is because publishers understand what I do, and I’ve trained to proofread in a way that enables me to offer them a solution to their problems. This isn’t always the case with a non-publisher client. Some non-publisher clients do, of course, have extensive experience of working with editorial professionals, so the process is well understood. But for many , the decision to hire a copy-editor or proofreader will be new – it’s the first time the independent author has self-published; the first time a marketing agency has hired a copy-editor to work on its promotional material; the first time a business executive has hired a proofreader to check its reports. First-time clients may need a level of support that publishers don’t. Support and clear communication take time – and inexperienced editorial folk can fall into the trap of not building the cost of this time into their quotations. Creeping costs during the booking phase When a regular publisher client hires me to proofread for them, the communication goes something like this: Dear Louise, Are you free to carry out a hard-copy proofread of the following book: Author/title? The job is as follows:
There’s no need for the publisher and I to have a discussion about what ‘proofreading’ entails; there’s no need for me to assess the manuscript prior to proofreading; there’s no need for us to agree on how I will annotate the manuscript; the payment structures are already set up and proven to work; and my client isn’t asking for a free sample proofread before I get cracking on the job. We have a mutual set of expectations about how the process will work. It will take me no more than 5 minutes to read the project manager’s request, check my schedule, and reply accordingly with a Yes or a No. The only thing that might extend the conversation is if I want to ask whether there’s any flexibility on the deadline, owing to my busy schedule. I can’t send the publisher an invoice for those 5 minutes, but we are only talking about 5 minutes. This contrasts quite sharply with an enquiry from a nonpublisher client with whom I’ve never worked. It’s not uncommon for me to receive requests to quote for proofreading jobs without having any idea of what kind of state the writing is in (and thus whether it’s ready for proofreading), what format it will be in (paper, PDF, Word), what the required time frame is, what the writer’s budget is, what other stages of editing the manuscript has been through, or whether the client knows how to work with Track Changes or other digital mark-up tools. It’s right and proper that the freelancer and the client do have an in-depth discussion about these issues so that both parties are in agreement about the overall terms and conditions of the project. But this is rarely a discussion that will take 5 minutes. Additionally, a client who’s not previously used a freelancer’s services might request a free sample proofread so that he or she can assess the supplier’s proficiency (for a good discussion of why free sampling isn’t acceptable to every editorial professional, take a look at Jamie Chavez’s No More Missus Nice Gal), just as the freelancer should request a sample of the manuscript in order to confirm that her skill set matches the customer’s requirements. Such negotiations can be lengthy and may even result in the customer needing to find an alternative supplier. All of which is right and proper. It’s therefore essential to consider the bigger picture when considering the degree to which a particular client or client group ‘pays well.' Even in the booking phase, there are costs to acquiring business, and these have to be accounted for. Time is money. In Part II, I look at the additional costs that can creep into the actual editorial stage of a booked-in proofreading project, and the phase after completion. A version of this article was first 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.
There many different and effective approaches to marketing an editing and proofreading business. There are several ways to make a hash of it too. Here are five mistakes that you should avoid, not just at launch stage but once your business is up and running.
Mistake 1: Not actually doing any marketing
Here are three ideas that I think we should embrace when launching an editorial business:
Let’s say I’ve completed the relevant training, acquired the kit I need, worked out who my target clients are, notified the tax authorities of my business plans, acquired some experience via my mentor, designed my stationery templates, created my accounting spreadsheet, and hired a professional designer to produce a fabulous logo. Now I need the clients. That means they need to be able to find me and I need to be able to find them. If ne’er the twain meet, I’m unemployed. Being discoverable is the first step to the success of any business, editorial or otherwise, because it bridges the gap between the services we offer and the people who need them. The second step is being interesting enough to retain the potential customer’s attention. Having found us, our potential clients need to feel they want to go further and actually hire us to solve their problems. No matter how much the thought of actively promoting your editorial business sends shivers up your spine, to not do so is a mistake. Marketing your business gives you opportunity and choice. It puts you in a position where, over time, you can develop the client base, pricing strategy, service portfolio and income stream that you require and desire.
Mistake 2: Stopping marketing when you have work
If the cupboard is full, this isn't the time to put business promotion on the back-burner. I know it might feel like the perfect time to take a breather, but trust me, it really isn't!
A healthy business is a sustainable business. Not knowing what's round the corner is about surviving not thriving, and that's stressful. Emergency marketing forces us to rush. We don't always make the best choices when we're anxious. Panic can even lead to inertia. Plus, we might find there's a lot to do and only a small window in which to do it. For example, one tactic for emergency marketing is contacting lots of publishers. However, gathering all the information required to do that effectively is time-consuming. If we build marketing time into our schedule when the cupboard is full, we can pace our plans so that we do a little on a regular basis rather than a lot all at once. That's a far more pleasant and productive way to tackle business promotion and helps us build a wait-list.
Mistake 3: Marketing via a single platform
Relying on only one particular channel to make yourself discoverable to your clients is better than not doing any marketing at all. But it’s hugely risky – if that platform fails, so do you. One of my most valuable marketing assets is my website. It’s my shop front and it’s the only space in which I have complete control over the content and design. I’ve put a lot of effort into making it visible so that I can be found and visited. I use Weebly as my host. But what if the folks at Weebly ran into some horrendous problem and the site was inaccessible for a few days, or even a few weeks? It’s unlikely to happen, but even if it did it wouldn’t be catastrophic because I don’t rely solely on my website for work leads. It’s simply one tool among several.
EXAMPLE
James used to work for a major academic publisher but now he's gone solo and launched his new editorial business. He asks a former colleague who works in the journal production department if he can proofread for her. She agrees. The publisher has a huge journal list and his colleague keeps him busy with as much proofreading as he needs. He doesn't solely work for this press (here in the UK, HM Revenue & Customs wouldn’t like that) but it does supply him with most of his work and most of his income. Then double disaster strikes – the press merges with a competitor, and his colleague is made redundant. She gets a job for another press, though her new role no longer requires her to hire editorial freelancers. James doesn't know anyone in the newly merged organization (though rumour has it the press is taking journal proofreading in-house in order to cut costs). Plus, his former colleague can’t take him with her to the new press. He's scuppered. James won't let that happen again. He does the following:
Even if you’ve been able to establish a couple of seemingly stable and lucrative work streams, and you’ve found that one particular marketing platform or tool works well for you, take the time to investigate other channels. At the very least they’ll provide you with a backup. Moreover, by experimenting with new avenues, you could find that clients whom you’d been invisible to beforehand now have you on their radar. That means more opportunities and more choice.
Mistake 4: Focusing attention in the wrong place
Some new entrants to the field can make the mistake of giving information that focuses potential clients’ attention in the wrong place. Instead, focus on stand-out statements.
EXAMPLE
A well-educated material scientist has decided, for health reasons, to move out of the professional lab and work from home, copy-editing written materials relevant to his scientific educational and career background.
His clients don’t need to know most of the above because most of those facts don’t represent him in the best light. Instead, he should focus on his stand-out qualities and present them in a way that's client-centric.
If what you say doesn’t make you compelling, don't say it. Show how you can solve clients' problems. It should be all about them and what you can do for them. If you lack experience and an extensive portfolio, focus instead on positive selling points that make the client feel confident about hiring you to fix what they can't. Sell your positives, not others’ negatives It’s also imperative that your message does indeed focus on what you can do for the client. Just in case you are one of the few people on the planet who thinks that highlighting a competitor’s or colleague’s mishaps rather than your own skills is a good marketing strategy (I’m sure you’re not!), then here's a quick reminder about why it’s disastrous in terms of PR.
Mistake 5: Ignoring traditional marketing methods
Before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, editorial professionals had to promote their businesses using telephone and postal services, face-to-face meetings, and onsite networking groups. These methods worked then, and they still work now – don’t make the mistake of ignoring them in the belief that they’re out-dated. Social media profiles, websites, and emails are all excellent ways to make yourself discoverable, and the twenty-first century editor should embrace them. Bear in mind, however, that from the client’s point of view they're as easy to discard as they are to access, precisely because they're digital methods of contact. Consider also the following:
Balancing immediacy and permanence is key to a well-rounded marketing strategy. By using a mixture of the two, you'll enhance your visibility and spike a client's interest. 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.
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.
If you’re thinking about becoming a proofreader, it’s important to understand that this term can mean different things in different contexts and with different client groups. This article focuses on working with raw text.
What type of proofreading you want to do and which group of clients you want to be work-ready for will determine the choices you make with regard to training.
Some proofreaders work directly with the creators of the written materials – independent authors, students and business professionals, for example.
These clients send Word files and the proofreader amends the files directly (often with Track Changes switched on so that the client can see what’s been changed). Others work for intermediaries such as publishers and project-management agencies. Here the author supplies the text files; then the in-house project manager (PM) organizes the various elements of the production process – including copyediting, proofreading, typesetting and printing. After copyediting and typesetting, the PM supplies page proofs to the proofreader, who makes annotations that identify where there are problems to be attended to. The proofreader does not amend the text directly. In Part I, I gave the new entrant to the field an overview of what it’s like to be a proofreader working with page proofs. Here in Part II, I consider proofreading that involves working directly with the raw-text Word files.
Which types of client want to work in Word?
Most of the proofreading done in Word stems from having been commissioned directly by the content creator – a business executive, a self-publishing author or a student. Academic writers, particularly those submitting articles to journals and for whom your first language is their second, are also likely to send Word files. Only one of my publisher clients asks me to proofread in Word. What is the proofreader looking for? It depends on the client's expectations (see below: Disadvantages) and your terms and conditions. Certainly, when it comes to proofreading for non-publisher clients, the definition of proofreading starts to look unclear and the boundaries between this and copyediting become blurred. Unlike with page proofs, we can't check the final designed layout of the file but we still need to read every word. Some of the issues dealt with in the list below would be acceptable to the proofreader working for an academic author but not when working with a Master's student. (Some clients might even want/expect a level of restructuring, rewriting and checking that a proofreader wouldn't consider to be within their remit.)
What are the advantages?
What are the disadvantages?
There are still legal issues to consider … Even if you are working directly with the primary authors of the content, you still need to get their permission to upload their text to third-party sites if you want to utilize software that's not on your computer. The files you've been sent from Indie authors, students and businesses are their property and they send them to you in good faith, so you must get permission for their content to leave your computer.
What does this mean for training?
Knowing the software ... If you want to proofread in Word, you'll need to be proficient in using it. Word is one of the most powerful pieces of word-processing software available, and there's a huge amount you can do with it if you want to proofread (or edit) efficiently. You might therefore need to supplement your proofreading training with learning that focuses on using macros, making the best of Find/Replace and wildcards, using Track Changes, and Microsoft Word usage in general. There's still the issue of how much to interfere ... If you do end up proofreading for a publisher client who wants you to work in Word, it will be necessary to consider the issue of when to leave well enough alone, as discussed in Part I. However, independent authors looking for a proofreader may actually be expecting a deeper edit and will be disappointed if you're not prepared to rewrite sentences for them. If you've not had experience of, or training in, editing, you may find that a 'proofreading' project ends up being a bigger bite than you can chew. One of my colleagues feels that specific training in editing isn't always critical when working with business clients, whereas for self-publishing novelists it would be very important. I'm inclined to agree. One person might be relatively comfortable suggesting improved sentence construction to a business client but very wary of doing so with an author of fiction. What this shows is how blurry the edges can become and how important it is to have a detailed conversation before you begin a project. I often encourage independent fiction authors looking for a proofreader to consider commissioning editing first. Editors with both editing and proofreading skills are better placed to take on jobs for non-publisher clients that fall in the editing camp, or somewhere between editing and proofing (proofediting). If you think you'll end up straying beyond the realm of proofreading, you might consider adding copyediting courses into your training mix. Think about what type of client you're going to be working for to help you decide what's appropriate. Summing up … Proofreading isn't some catch-all phrase that means the same thing to every client group. What you actually do, on which medium, how much you interfere, the extent to which you can use complementary tools, and the expectations of the client will differ greatly. This means a range of competencies will need to be acquired depending on whom you’re working for. Your training will need to match the requirements of various client groups – a publisher’s expectations in terms of industry-recognized standards will be different from a business executive’s or student’s, so take care to research any proofreading training syllabus carefully to make sure it’s providing you with the skill set relevant to your target client group. Your training should suit your needs, your business plan, your objectives – and what will be right for one person may not be right for another. Read this article's sister post: Not all proofreading is the same: Part I – Working with page proofs.
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.
Recent weeks have seen the publication of a number of really interesting resources* that focus the editorial freelancer's attention on pricing structures. I thought I'd jot down my views on the issue, particularly since it's one of those that new entrants to the field are often most curious about.
An effective pricing strategy is central to any serious marketing plan, since marketing our services is about making ourselves interesting to potential clients. How we present our prices to our clients is therefore important. I'm actually less interested in what my colleagues charge than how they present that fee. Talk of pricing in our community has a tendency to generate controversy, as discussed in my colleague Adrienne Montgomerie's recent post on Copyediting.com.* That's because one of the most well-used concepts in the world of sales – that of the discount – can end up being overused, not because members of the editorial community are deliberately trying to undercut each other, but because many of us live in a culture where deals are the norm. Whether we're in the supermarket or the book store, we'll be confronted with BOGOFs, three-for-two offers, or 25% discounts. Sales take place all year round these days and there's always a bargain to be had somewhere. What does this mean for editorial freelancers? Is giving money off the only way to get attention? In a comment that I wrote in response to Adrienne's excellent article, I put forward the idea of value-on thinking, as opposed to a money-off approach when considering the pricing of editorial services. What's wrong with discounting? There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of discounting. This strategy has been used effectively since people began trading goods and services, but my own view is that it needs to be used with care. Here are three reasons why:
Putting yourself in your customer's shoes There are ways of presenting a quotation to a client that have a value-on rather than money-off focus. And they're not hard to find, even for the newbie. One simple way of working out how to structure your own quotations in a value-on way can be achieved by putting yourself in your customer's shoes. Take my recent purchase of a new computer, for example. Prior to visiting the store I jotted down some notes about what I wanted, in order of importance:
It was obvious to me that I wasn't going to get that package by looking for the cheapest pc on the market. If I wanted cheap, I'd have to sacrifice my top three preferences. I did have a budget in mind before I started my research, but it was never going to be about just the price. This was going to be my new business computer – I needed it to do what it said on the tin, first and foremost. It's not that I had a bottomless purse, but price was one factor among several and had to be balanced against functionality. A value-on alternative to editorial pricing I believe that a lot of my customers are just like me – they have a list of things that they want from me. Price will be in there, but it will be one factor among many. I like to structure my quotations with that in mind. As part of my request for a quotation I therefore do the following:
In this way, the price I offer them is framed within the value of what I'm bringing to the table. They can see what they're getting and why I think I'm worth it. Rather than getting their attention by talking about what they save, I focus on what they gain. Don't be afraid If you're a new entrant to the field, it can seem like the most obvious thing in the world to say, "Okay, I'm new at this so I'd better not charge too much. And even if I'm good at this, I don't have a huge portfolio of clients to brag about so I better go in low – that way I'll get the client's attention." You may be right. You may well attract those clients that are only interested in the cheapest deal. But it's worth considering that not all clients are looking for cheap. In fact, that's not top of the list for many customers. Most of the people who ask me to proofread for them want a top-notch job and don't baulk at the fee I suggest. Many self-publishers and business owners may not have used a proofreader or editor before. They're therefore more interested in trust, engagement, ability and quality. If you can think about the interesting things that you bring to the table and that are of value to the client (for example, previous relevant career experience; industry-recognized training; testimonials; professional code of conduct; a commitment to quality; a readiness to take the time to understand exactly what they need), then you can use these USPs as part of your quotation. By placing your price within a framework of value, you shift the emphasis towards the professional, high-quality service that you offer and away from the financial hit they'll take. *** What do you think? Do you use the discount as a primary sales tool when quoting for a new client or do you have alternative ways of framing your quotations?
* Related resources:
Considering setting up a proofreading business? Or perhaps you're already on the journey. Here are 10 things you need to know and 10 more you need to do.
10 things you need to know ...
10 things you need to do ...
If you'd like more comprehensive guidance about starting a proofreading business, my books might be just the ticket. Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, these practical guides take the new starter, step by step, through the basics of planning an editorial career and marketing their services.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you're looking for an easy and free way to schedule your editing and proofreading projects – clients, income, payment-due dates – this free Excel template is for you.
Keeping track of editing and proofreading projects is essential for every professional editor.
Download this free Excel template to get you started. The figures are completely made up but show the basic structure. If you're a newbie, you can use this as an interim way of managing your accounts and your schedule; one less thing to worry about for now! This template includes a number of columns with formulae that I find useful.
I like to differentiate between different stages of the process:
It helps me to see, at a glance, what's going on in my schedule, especially when a client asks about availability. I also track how the job will be returned to a client: via email, the post office or courier (at the client's expense). The UK's HMRC allows the freelancer to offset a percentage of mileage costs against their tax liabilities. There's a summary box at the bottom of the spreadsheet. This shows me my average earnings, my average hourly rate and my average rate per 1,000 words. These figures are really only for curiosity, since each job varies quite considerably in size, type, budget, difficulty and speed. If I was doing any serious analysis I'd look more deeply into the data to assess whether there are patterns in terms of, say, client type, service offered and subject matter. Still, it's useful for grabbing quick-and-dirty data for annual comparisons. Feel free to copy, amend or ignore as you see fit. You can add your own formulae to particular columns if the way in which you charge for your work differs.
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.
You don’t necessarily need to have a legal background to proofread law books. If you’re comfortable with often dense and highly complex material, huge numbers of footnotes, and lengthy citations – and the legalese doesn't scare you to death – then this could be the work for you!
The many faces of the law
The law covers just about every aspect of human life, so the books on offer tackle a multitude of subjects. I’ve worked on legal books with a focus on public health, marine conservation, labour law, genetic resources, constitution building, piracy, family law, comparative law, European law, intellectual property rights, religion, climate change, competition law and cartelism, and environmental governance. Since I came to this work with a strong background in the social sciences, it suited me down to the ground. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the readability of most of the law books I’ve proofread. They’re often written by lawyers for lawyers (or by law professors for their colleagues and students) so you won’t be confronted by the impenetrable sea of words that often appear in legal documents. The authors aim to communicate with their readership just like any other writer. If you have experience of proofreading high-level academic books and journals, legal work shouldn’t present you with a problem.
What are clients looking for?
Rather than making assumptions based on my own experience, I asked one of my publisher clients to tell me what she looks for in a legal proofreader. Here’s a summary of our discussion:
Other points to bear in mind
Footnotes (or endnotes) tend to be lengthy. Sometimes it can feel like there’s more text in the notes than in the main body of the book.
Should you?
Actually, none of the above issues is problematic as long as you have a good concentration span and you aren’t surrounded by distractions. Distractions and proofreading don’t tend to go well together at any time, but with legal proofreading you may end up gnawing off your own arm if you don’t have the space to do the work without interruption. Working with law books is not unlike working with any other specialism (social science, STM, fiction) in that you need to be able to work within a framework of industry-recognized citation conventions, house style guides, and author preferences, while all the time employing a good old-fashioned dose of common sense. Talking to your client so that you understand what’s expected is crucial whatever kind of work you’re doing because only in that way will you understand the implications of your mark-up. When I was first approached with an offer to work in this field, I accepted it with some trepidation. A few years on, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoy it. Proofreading law books can be a rewarding and highly informative experience. As the world changes, so does the law. Globalization, public health awareness, climate change, and the birth of the internet have given rise to new dimensions within the law and I rather like getting paid to read about them.
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 building your editorial business, you can’t afford to sit back and hope the work will come to you – too many colleagues will be taking a more proactive approach.
So, this time around, I thought it would be fun to pretend to be someone else – someone with a different educational background and career history.
I’m going to pretend that I’m new to the field but that I have completed some sort of recognized training in proofreading/editing and have joined my national editorial society. My technical skills are there but I’ve got to work out how to get myself noticed, and how to make myself stand out. So who am I today? My name’s Basil Rhoueny [it’s the best anagram I could come up with – alternatives on a postcard].
So how am I going to create awareness of my new business? I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but I have a plan! That plan starts with providing clarity for myself about who I am and what I have to offer. At first glance, this is me:
My name is Basil Rhoueny, and I’m a fully trained copyeditor and a Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).
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