Abigail is based in the UK and has been proofreading and editing for around five years. Most of her work thus far has come via existing contacts, personal referrals, and a third-party site.

Until recently, that was sufficient. Consequently, she hasn’t spent any time thinking about a website, marketing, or other forms of outreach. Furthermore, the third-party site has changed the service-fee structure so that the work is no longer as lucrative.

She asks:
‘At the moment, I do a lot of academic work, which I love and would like to continue; I just want to secure it privately rather than through third-party sites. In addition, I would like to move away from website copy, blog posts and more generalised proofreading, and start working with publishers on longer and more interesting projects. However, I don’t know where to start, what’s required, or how to approach them. Many thanks for any guidance you can provide!’

Thanks for your question, Abigail!

So, something else you mentioned in your email to me is that you’re undergoing professional training. I was really pleased to hear this because I think it’s an essential element in the mainstream publishing market.

So, I’m going to focus on the following:

• Why targeting publishers is such a good step
• A quick note on earnings and work stream
• Training for academic publishers – what you need to know
• Where academic publishers search
• Why going direct is still your best bet
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
• Taking academic publishers’ tests
• Asking for testimonials and building a portfolio

Why targeting publishers is such a good step
Publishers are still the preferred client group for many editorial freelancers. There are several reasons for this:

• Publishers do all the project-acquisition work for us, which means we can sit back and allow the work to come to us (if we have enough publishers in our pockets).
• They understand what we do – we don’t have to nail our brand identity in a way that’s becoming increasingly critical if we want to be visible in the search engines! No proofreading or copyediting course will teach you how to build a compelling brand, and doing that is an art in itself! Getting a publisher’s attention requires a strategy that’s skills- and experience-focused.
• The definitions of proofreading, copyediting and developmental editing are homogeneous. You won’t be asked to proofread an academic textbook but expected to sort out the structure. The terminology in the rest of the world is rather more tangled (see the Untangling Proofreading booklet below).

​A quick note on earnings and work stream
There’s a lot of talk in the online international editorial community about publishers and low fees. The situation is not straightforward.

There is no universal fee for copyediting or proofreading. I rarely work for publishers these days, but when I did I was offered proofreading fees from academic presses that worked out as low as £10 per hour and as high as £40 per hour.

It depends on the complexity of the project, the press, the brief, the length, the number of authors, and a ton of other things. After you’ve done a few projects for a publisher, you’ll start to get a sense of how things work and what you can expect to earn on average.

Some publishers will offer you a fee of £X per hour, and a guideline for the number of hours they expect the project to be completed in. Some will offer a flat fee for the job. Some of my colleagues (like Liz Jones: see her excellent post in Further reading, below) have successfully negotiated fees when they encountered scope creep.

With some presses, I found that I could counter what seemed initially to be a less favourable fee by being as efficient as possible.

You’ll also speed up as you become more familiar with a press – their house style, the format of their books, and their preferred professional style manuals and reference systems.

Regardless of their fee structure, they do all the project-acquisition work for you, which means you can sit back and focus on the proofreading and editing rather than worrying that your Google Search rankings aren’t as high as you’d like!

Here are three supplementary booklets: Proofreading for Publishers: Do They Always Pay ‘Low’ Fees?, Editorial Efficiency: Rates, Data Tracking and Digital Tools, and Untangling Proofreading.

​Training for academic publishers – what you need to know
In order to ensure you’re fit for purpose with publishers, ask them which style guides and reference systems they prefer, and take time to familiarize yourself with these manuals. Most presses will provide you with a summary of their preferences.

Your training course should draw attention to the importance of following a brief. Publishers are usually rigid when it comes to scope, and going beyond the brief without querying first could have detrimental consequences.

For example, if you’re training to proofread, you’ll need to practise when to change, when to query and when to leave well enough alone – no in-house editor will thank you for recasting sentences to improve the flow in a proofread.

That’s because: it’s expensive to make extensive changes on page proofs; the pagination could be affected; cross-references might be impacted; and the index could be damaged if it’s being created simultaneously.

Also check that the training course you’re doing is recognized by the UK publishing industry. You won’t go wrong with the following organizations, though they’re by no means the only ones to consider:

• The Publishing Training Centre
• Society for Editors and Proofreaders

Certainly, if you want to proofread for publishers, you’ll need to be familiar with the industry-recognized proof-correction markup language (BS 5261C: 2005). Even if a publisher asks you to proofread on PDF, you might be required (or find it efficient) to use digital versions of these marks.

Where academic publishers search
Some publishers do search for editors and proofreaders. The SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services is one port of call. Some also attend the SfEP’s annual conference and the London Book Fair, so those two events are worthy networking opportunities to put yourself on the radar of academic presses.

Recently, I was contacted by a publisher via Reedsy. It’s the first time I’ve received a request to quote from a press via this platform, and it was for a fiction title, so I’m not convinced that this would necessarily be a primary channel for you if you want to acquire academic work, but I’m mentioning it just as food for thought.

Why going direct is still your best bet
My top tip for getting in front of publishers is to contact them direct, by email, phone or letter. The reason why many don’t search online for editorial freelancers is simply because they don’t need to.

Build a list of UK academic publishers, then find out the name of the person in charge of hiring – it’s probably someone in the production department – and get in touch with them.

You already have lots of experience, and you’ll have a top-notch training course under your belt. I recommend customizing your CV and cover letter/email for each press so that your portfolio of projects sells you as a perfect fit.

Read Philip Stirups’ article for more top tips (see Further reading).

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
I recommend you build a bank of around ten publishers. If you stick to one or two you could end up in deep water further down the road. If one of those clients were to merge with another, you might fall off the freelance list during the transition. If your other client were to go bust, you’d be scuppered.

Having a larger bank of publishers means you have a safety net.

It’s likely your publisher client base will grow exponentially; each time you acquire a new client you’ll be more likely to impress another. It’s a small world, and many of the in-house staff know each other. That will work in your favour.

Taking academic publishers’ tests
Some publishers will ask you to take a test. There are two articles in the Further reading section that offer excellent overviews of how to approach these: ‘The Business of Editing: Editing Tests’ by Rich Adin, and ‘Test Taking Tips For Editors’ by Cassie Armstrong.
​
Asking for testimonials and building a portfolio
Are you able to ask current academic clients for testimonials? If so, do so – however embarrassing you find it! This kind of social proof won’t on its own get you work, but it’s one way of demonstrating that you’re capable of fulfilling a client’s brief.

I mentioned your portfolio above. If you’ve been in business for five years, chances are you have an amazing project portfolio. Make sure your CV, LinkedIn profile and website reflect your body of completed works. Publishers love to see experience!

I hope that brings you a little clarity, Abigail. Good luck with building your new client base!

Further reading

• ‘Does Training Matter? What Publishers Say about Proofreading & Editing Courses’ (Louise Harnby; The Proofreader’s Parlour)
• ‘Not all proofreading is the same, Part 1’ (Louise Harnby; The Proofreader’s Parlour)
• ‘Not all proofreading is the same, Part 2’ (Louise Harnby; The Proofreader’s Parlour)
• ‘Test Taking Tips For Editors’ (Cassie Armstrong; Morning Star Editing)
• ‘The Business of Editing: Editing Tests’ (Rich Adin; An American Editor)
• ‘The economics of working with publishers’ (Liz Jones; Eat, Sleep, Edit, Repeat)
• ‘The Proofreader’s Corner: Page Proofs and the Domino Effect’ (Louise Harnby; An American Editor)
• ‘Undercover editor: Selecting new editorial freelancers’ (Philip Stirups; The Proofreader’s Parlour)

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

​Amanda is a UK-based primary-school teacher.

She says: ‘I have zero experience in publishing. However, I have a first-class degree in Education Studies and enjoy reading and grammar. I've been reading your blog recently and have thought of qualifying as a proofreader but appreciate how competitive it is. What is the likelihood of me obtaining work based on my background?’

Many thanks for your question, Amanda!

So, the short answer is, there’s a strong likelihood if you get your marketing head on.

Because, essentially, this is a marketing issue.

Here’s my current favourite mantra:
We have two jobs: the work we do, and the work we do to get the work we do.

In your email to me you talked in terms of ‘qualifying’ so you’re clearly prepared to embark on professional training – a wise decision. It tells me you’re prepared to make yourself fit for practice – the work we do.

Now let’s look at what you could do to get that work.

1st-stage marketing (pre-qualification)

• Start working on your editorial website
• Create an editorial Facebook page
• Create an editorial Twitter account
• Create an editorial LinkedIn page
• Join the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and introduce yourself in the forums there
• Think about your target clients

These are the basics, but they’re enough to give you a solid set of standard online profiles that represent you and your proofreading business, and that will enable you to connect with like-minded professionals – old hands and new.

In reality, your potential client base is rather wide, but I believe that in the start-up phase, when you’re building a proofreading business, it makes sense to target publishers. That’s because:

• They already have their hands in the air – the want your services. You don’t have to persuade a publisher that hiring a proofreader is a good idea!
• Their definitions of proofreading match what you’ll be taught when you train. Outside the publishing world, things become more tangled. Many indie authors call proofreading what a publisher would call copyediting.
• They’re easy to locate and contact. You’ll need to find out the name of the person in charge of the freelance pool – it’ll probably be someone in the production department.

2nd-stage marketing (post-qualification)
So why would a publisher be interested in you, Amanda? Here are some reasons:

• By stage 2, you have a professional proofreading qualification (perhaps from the Society for Editors and Proofreaders or The Publishing Training Centre, since both of these are known and respected bodies in the mainstream publishing industry).
• You have teaching experience, so you’re used to working to fixed lesson timetables (think production schedules), following curricula to the tee (think editorial briefs), are good at working with people – albeit small ones – who need careful handling (think sensitive authors), and are used to working to rigorous educational key-stage standards (think publishing industry).
• You understand the language of academia (your degree) and the language of learning (education), so you’re already primed for academic publishing.
• You’re (naturally!) prepared to take a proofreading test to demonstrate the skills you’ve learned and prove that you’re ready to hit the ground running.
• Your education degree and career experience mean you know the language of education theory and practice. That means that for education publishers you have a USP that I don’t (with my Politics degree).

And who are those education publishers?
Google is your friend here, but here’s a short list of publishers in the UK who have education lists or imprints. In your position, I’d start by getting in touch with every single publisher you can find in the UK who publishes education content.

• Bloomsbury
• Cambridge University Press
• Collins
• Edward Elgar
• Heinemann
• Hodder Education
• Macmillan Education
• McGraw-Hill Education
• Out of House Publishing (packager)
• Pearson Higher Education and Professional
• Policy Press
• SAGE Publications
• Scholastic

My bet is that most (many, certainly) academic or scholarly publishers in the UK will have books, journals and electronic products in the field of education at some level.

​Find out who’s in charge of hiring editorial freelancers. Email or post a cover letter and CV. Be sure to emphasize your training, background, society membership and subject specialisms.

In the early stages, education will be your core specialism but, honestly, if you can proofread an educational research book, you can proofread a politics book or a social theory book, so you might decide to expand your list of interests to education, social sciences and humanities.

Or you might talk in terms of education teaching, theory, practice, governance, and research, and other key related terms.

It’s something to think about. When you start looking at what else all those publishers with education books are putting out to market, you’ll get a sense of how you might customize each contact letter/email so that you really engage with each press’s list.

3rd-stage marketing
As you build up your publisher list, your portfolio of completed works, and your testimonials from all those satisfied in-house production editors, you can really start to make your online presence stand out.

Perhaps you now meet the criteria to advertise in the SfEP’s online Directory of Editorial Services.

This is one way of making yourself visible to clients outside the publishing industry – I’m thinking here of master’s and PhD students preparing dissertations and theses in the field of education and beyond; academics (particularly those whose first language isn’t English) preparing articles for journal submission); independent non-fiction authors, and so on.

For a broader look at different marketing approaches, check out the Marketing archive here on the Parlour, or my book Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.

If accessing a market outside the mainstream publishing industry is something you’re serious about, start your content marketing as soon as possible. I have a wee primer that will give you the basics.

If you want to get serious, visit the Andrew and Pete website. I bang on about these two all the time, but they know their stuff.

I wish I’d known them 10 years ago. Unfortunately for me, they’re a fair bit younger so were probably doing their GCSEs when I started my editorial business! But I’m using them now to help me get the very best I can from my marketing.

Summing up
So, yes, I think you can obtain work if you are practice-fit and ready to plant a big marketing hat on your head and really commit to it!

The fact is, it’s noisy out here, and getting noisier. But the market is bigger too – global, in fact – so there’s more competition, but more opportunities too.

Another mantra – be interesting and be discoverable.

• It doesn’t matter how well-qualified you are if no one knows how to find you.
• And it doesn’t matter how visible you are if you can’t do the job.

Get your training and your marketing licked and there’s no reason why you can’t create a successful proofreading business. It will take time and hard graft, but it’s perfectly doable for those with the right mindset.

Hope that helps! If you have additional questions, just pop them in the comments below.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Georgia got in touch with a training query. She’s asked to remain anonymous in order to not jeopardize her existing client relationships. I’ve therefore changed her name and removed all the details from her email that might enable colleagues or clients to identify her.

She’s based outside the UK. She has only two clients, both of which I believe are exploiting her. One pays months late on a regular basis, though it expects its freelancers to meet its tight deadlines; the other (more recent) expects her to wear far too many editorial hats given what she’s being paid for each project.

Although Georgia has several years’ copyediting experience, she has no formal training and feels that scope creep has exposed gaps in her professional knowledge. These are proving to be a challenge in her current roles.

Georgia’s budget is limited (not a surprise given that she’s not being paid in a timely manner).

She asks: ‘Could you suggest further steps for me? Are there any reputable online training courses you would recommend that would advance my skills and that would not be too expensive?’

So, what should she do?

Training and beyond
So, Georgia, first of all, I’m really impressed that you’ve focused on upskilling rather than complaining. Few editors and proofreaders know everything about everything; there’s always more to learn!

Of particular interest to me, though, was the fact that you framed your query purely in terms of skills gaps and training solutions. Actually, I think there’s a bigger issue at stake: your limited choice.

Your current clients expect you to be able to carry out more levels of editing than you feel capable of. And yet there are plenty of clients in the world who would benefit from – and be glad to hire you for – your existing capabilities. However, they can’t find you.

With that in mind, I’m going to break down my answer into several parts:

• online training
• book training
• mentoring
• other types of work, and how to be visible

And if that sounds like I’m looking for an excuse to bang my marketing drum yet again, I won’t apologize! The fact is that the work we do and the work we do to get the work we do are connected.

Having appropriate skills is of course the foundation of good practice, but it’s next to useless if we’re still rendered vulnerable to clients who expect the earth, and believe they can ask us for it, because we have nowhere else to turn.

But let’s deal with the training issue first, since that’s what you asked me to address ...

Online training
So the bottom line is that, as far as I’m aware, there are no ‘cheap’ distance-learning courses that will provide you with the baseline skills that mainstream publishing houses and university presses will expect from a copyeditor or proofreader. You get what you pay for when it comes to professional training.

Of course, what’s cheap to you might seem pricey to me, or vice versa. Given that the pound is rather weak as I write in June 2017, perhaps some of the UK online training courses I’m about to recommend might be well within your budget today even if they wouldn’t have been three years ago!

The two institutions I’ve worked with, and so can vouch for with confidence, are as follows:

• The Publishing Training Centre
• Society for Editors and Proofreaders

Bear in mind that if you decide to do proofreading training, the proof-correction markup language taught (BS 5261C: 2005) on UK distance-learning courses will differ a little from that used where you live, so there’ll be some tweaking to do when you apply the training to your practice.

Below, in the comments, my colleague Corina Koch MacLeod kindly posted some additional links to online courses (see Professional Studies at Queen's University, Canada). They're open to anyone, anywhere.

• Fundamentals of Editing Standards
• Copyediting Standards
• Stylistic Editing Standards
• Proofreading Standards
• Structural Editing Standards

Books
Online proofreading and copyediting courses are superb options because of the flexibility they offer and, in some cases, the available feedback from a tutor (that's one of the reasons why they're not the lowest-cost option).

Given that you’re on a budget, though, you might want to consider books, too. Here are seven to think about:

• Basic Editing: A Practical Course (Nicola Harris)
• Basic Editing: A Practical Course: The Exercises (Nicola Harris)
• Butcher's Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders, 4th ed. (Judith Butcher)
• Copyediting: A Practical Guide (Karen Judd)
• Copy-editing: With Exercises and Model Answers (Barbara Horn)
• Proofreading Practice: Exercises with model answers and commentary, 2nd ed. (contact Margaret Aherne direct)
• The Effective Editor's Handbook (Barbara Horn)

These books most definitely aren't up-to-date in terms of technology (the on-what issue), but the best-practice elements are still spot on.

The fourth edition of Butcher's is also pricey. Second-hand versions of the third edition are going for a song on Amazon, though.

If you find that some of these books are out of print, ask in editorial forums if anyone has copies they’d be happy to pass on.

​Mentoring: formal and informal
Another option is to seek either formal or informal mentoring.

I don’t think you should feel embarrassed about explaining to colleagues in editorial forums that you’re looking to raise your skills to meet publishing-industry standards, and asking whether anyone would be prepared to mentor you. I'm impressed when even the most experienced editor or proofreader asks about CPD.

Some may expect a fee, others will do it for free, though there might well be a wait list.

Moving beyond mainstream publishers
Mainstream publishers, as you know, tend to have rather rigid definitions of what a copyediting or proofreading job entails. Editorial freelancers who specialize in working for these clients do have a smoother ride if they’ve formally trained because that training accords with industry expectations.

Things take a different (though not always easier!) turn when working with independent authors, students, businesses, and so on.

I would not be at all surprised if the experience you’ve already acquired with your two mainstream clients means that you're more than capable of working with many non-publishers effectively.

So let’s say you offer copyediting. While a publisher might expect you to edit the index or the bibliography as standard, you could decide to exclude these from your service for non-publishers.

And perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that many non-publisher clients come to me, and thousands of my colleagues, looking for so-called proofreading services. What they’re actually asking for frequently falls under the rubric of what we'd call copyediting (correcting the raw-text files) rather than annotating final page proofs.

You're in a position to support this market given that you’ve already demonstrated your capabilities with several years of successful practice.

See the following for more on the tangled world of non-publisher proofreading and copyediting:

• Not all proofreading is the same: Part I – Working with page proofs
• Not all proofreading is the same: Part II – Working directly in Word
• Should a proofreader work for self-publishing clients who haven’t hired a copyeditor?
• The Proofreader’s Corner: Untangling Proofreading

A key issue for you to consider is therefore how you are going to make yourself discoverable to those types of clients.

Make sure your website, social media profiles and directory entries are bang up to date and presenting you as a compelling prospect for potential clients.

If you’re not advertising in the key industry directories, then that’s something you can fix immediately (whereas making your website visible is a more complex and slower-burn solution).

Think internationally. If you can access key industry directories, do so. You’re not a member of the SfEP, so you wouldn’t qualify for entry in its Directory of Editorial Services, but you might be eligible for other national societies listings (see this list of national editorial societies).

Then there’s findaproofreader.com, which is very reasonable. Consider other online business directories in your region, too. If their advertising rates are affordable, test them for a fixed period so you can evaluate whether they’re working for you.

One channel is rarely enough for any of us. Make yourself visible on multiple platforms so you can see what drives clients your way most effectively.

​To make your editorial more visible to clients searching online, I’d recommended a content-marketing strategy. This requires consistency, creativity and commitment, but it is an effective strategy if you're prepared to work hard at it.

I won’t use this Q&A session to delve into the issue because there’s far too much to say. If you want a taster, read my Content Marketing Primer for Editors and Proofreaders. (I also have a more general book on marketing an editorial business that might be of interest: Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.)
​
But, first, head over to the Andrew and Pete blog (they’re my content-marketing coaches, and my top recommendation for anyone wanting to dig deep and do it properly) and watch this short video: WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING? (IN 15 GIFS). Honestly, no one makes the task as fun as these two do!

Summing up
So, Georgia, there you have it – 2 online proofreading and copyediting training options, 7 paperback alternatives, 1 brief mention of mentoring, and my thoughts on promoting yourself into a position whereby you get to define the scope of your services rather than being forced into wearing hats that aren’t made to measure!

Good luck with the next steps!

Louise

​Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Why word of mouth (WOM) is often misunderstood
‘But my colleague said that all her work is via word of mouth.’

I don’t doubt it. But if she’s been running her business for 20 years and has a portfolio and client list as long as your arm, she’s not in the same position as the new entrant to the field.

She’s benefiting from 1, 2 and 3 because she invested in A, B and C.

New starters should indeed commit to WOM marketing. What they shouldn’t do is assume that it’s a passive approach that requires no effort. Nor will there be short-term results. Top-notch WOM marketing requires an intense level of commitment to action and an acceptance of slow-burn impact.

Awareness and trust aren’t built overnight, especially in our field. Editorial freelancers aren’t selling a product that promises something that swathes of people have wanted forever – an anti-aging cream, a painless leg-waxing treatment, a broadband connection that never, ever buffers even if you live out in the sticks and there’s more chance of getting a wi-fi signal on Mars. Our services have to prove their worth.

For the editorial business owner, WOM marketing is like creating a garden from scratch. If you’re proactive, it will take many months to knock it into shape. If you hold back, it’ll take years. If you’re passive, the garden will remain barren.

WOM and colleagues
There are a lot of us, and many have already developed niche networks of friends and colleagues to whom we refer work.

When an editor or proofreader ends up on my radar, it’s because they’ve instilled trust in me.

• Perhaps they blog regularly about, offer training on, or deliver presentations about specific aspects of editorial work that I don’t offer.
• Perhaps they’re visible on social media and professional forums, often sharing valuable knowledge that answers questions, solves problems, and demonstrates their skills, experience and expertise.
• Perhaps they’ve helped me solve a problem.

Only then am I likely to add them to my referral network.

WOM and clients
As for client A telling client B about you, you’ll need a lot of mouths to share the good news if you want to have a full schedule! That’s not where you’ll be if you’re a new entrant to the field, not because you’re not an effective editor or proofreader but because you don’t yet have a large enough bank of clients.

Effective WOM
Find out which networks (online and offline) your clients and colleagues recommend and join in the discussion. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions but be prepared to offer solutions too. Even new editorial freelancers have specialist skills and background experience that are relevant and valuable to the debate.

In 'Why word of mouth marketing is the most important social media', Kimberly A. Whitler, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, breaks down WOM marketing into the three Es:

• Engage – talk to your colleagues and clients via social media, online forums and local networking groups.
• Equip – give your colleagues and clients a reason to engage with you and your business – advice, knowledge, tools, support, great-quality proofreading ... whatever helps them and solves their problems.
• Empower – enable your colleagues and clients to engage with you in ways that work for them. What’s useful for one person will not be useful to another. Not all of my colleagues want to trawl through a dense blog with hundreds of articles about editorial business planning and marketing, so I offer them books, too. Not all of my potential clients want to fill in a contact form on my website, so I provide my phone number, too. Not all of my readers want to read long articles, so I sometimes produce infographics, booklets, checklists, podcasts and videos (though, admittedly, the latter is a work in progress!).

​Action first, passivity later
Clients can come via active and passive marketing strategies. It’s not a case of the right strategy but the right order.

If you’re a new starter, make active editorial business promotion a standard part of your working life, just like copyediting or proofreading, invoicing and updating your software. Assign space for it every week so that it becomes commonplace rather than a chore or, worse, something to be feared.

Be active. Be committed. Be the ham!

Once your business is established, you’ll be able to take advantage of the passive benefits that result from your effort. Just take care not to hand over the chill space to your Labrador!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

In my latest guest article for the BookMachine blog, I take a look at how publishing professionals, from the freelance editor to the mainstream publishing house, can stretch their marketing budgets by repurposing one in-depth piece of amazing content.

The fabulous Gordon Graham, otherwise known as That White Paper Guy, was my inspiration, and I'd recommend you take a look at his guidance on ways to create brilliant resources to make your clients' lives easier.

​Click on the stretchy guy to read the article in full!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Maya has a PhD in social anthropology, and is an experienced editor and proofreader. She’s in the process of expanding her editorial business while continuing to publish academic research.
 
To date, she’s focused on acquiring work through a freelancing website, but the work flow is unpredictable and she’s not convinced it will supply her with a viable income stream in the long term.
 
She’s created a website but recognizes that it’ll take time to become visible to potential clients, and to earn their trust.
 
She asks: ‘There are a couple of other freelancing websites that look promising, as well as academic editing agencies. Does it make sense to try to sign up to those as well, or is it better to focus on one thing at a time? I'm planning to blog and make YouTube videos about academic writing on top of these things. But is this a case of "less is more" or "more is more"? I’m an experienced editor but completely new to marketing!’
 
Great questions, Maya.
 
Two things to consider
There are two different elements to your strategy here:

• agency and directory marketing, where you wait to be selected
• content marketing, where you build trust and engagement by creating compelling content that makes you appear delicious to potential clients!

 
Both approaches are important in the editorial industry, so hats off to you for recognizing that even though you’re new to marketing. You’re doing brilliantly!
 
The reason why both approaches are important is because directories and agencies have already done the online visibility work on your behalf. By using them to make your business visible now, you’re freeing up your marketing hours to focus on the longer-burn stuff – your blog and videos.
 
Broadly speaking,

• freelancing directories and agencies: more is more
• content marketing: less is more (sort of – see below)

 
I’ll explain why further down, but first I wanted to ask you whether you’ve considered approaching publishers too. You didn’t mention it in your email so I think it’s worth my taking the time to discuss it here.

Publishers and freelance editors – a gift
Directories, agencies and content creation are all great ways to acquire clients, albeit over different time frames.

The biggest problem the editor faces, however, is getting the client to raise their hand in the first place. ‘I’m interested in you, Maya!’ is what your directory entry, agency listing, blog article or YouTube video needs to make your audience member feel compelled to say.

That means working hard to create stand-out information that sets you apart from the competition surrounding you. Furthermore, in the directory and agency fields, there will always be a group of clients looking for cheap rather than brilliant. And in the marketplace more generally, there are potential clients who don’t even realize they need you, or, if they do, which of the different levels of service will be the most appropriate.

But here come the publishers! (Sing it, like the Boots ad!) We’re in a rather privileged field of having a core client group who understands exactly what we do, why we’re necessary, and the value we bring to the table. We don’t have to get them to raise their hands; their hands are already in the air!

Some publishers will take the time to scour the SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, but to my knowledge the single best way to get noticed by a production manager is still to go direct. Email, letter, phone call – whatever you prefer.

I worked almost exclusively for publishers for the first half of my freelance career. I had about 10 publisher clients who kept my schedule as full as I needed it to be. Feast and famine? Nope, just feast.

Like you, I have a background in the social sciences, so that’s where I focused my initial wave of inquiries. You mentioned in your original email that you’d 'bought my marketing books', so you’ll find more information on how to tackle that in Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.

Take a look, too, at the SOS Marketing Strategy PDF below. You’re not in an emergency situation but the basic principles about how to proceed still stand.
​
Publishers, like agencies, will give you regular work, and that means you can focus all your marketing juice on creating compelling blog posts and irresistible YouTube vids.

Publishers are a bit of a gift like that – while their rates aren’t always top-notch, the time they free up for you by handing you a steady supply of work certainly is. And creating valuable, usable, accessible content does take time.

Directories and agencies: more is more
Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration! By more is more, I’m not saying you should sign up with 20 directories and agencies; you’ll spend more time being busy creating the entries than you will being productive finding the work!

I do think, though, that you needn’t limit oneself to one. If you identify a group of, say, four or five that are used by your core clients to find people like you, I’d recommend you sign up. More is more, as long as you’re selective.

There are SEO benefits, too. For certain medium-tail keyword searches, I rank first on page one of Google – but it’s not my website showing up. It’s my SfEP directory entry.

And, anyway, you’re in control. You get to accept work, or decline it – whatever suits your needs.

The key thing to remember is that if you get too many requests to quote from the directories and agencies, you can always trim and focus on those that deliver the best-quality clients to you. Plus, you’ll never know what’s working if you don’t test in the first place.

Testing is something else you’ll see me bang on about in my books, but only because it’s the foundation of any solid marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you try something, and that something doesn’t work. You’ll still have learned something, and having learned it you can make an informed decision about what to do next. Otherwise your marketing is just guesswork – which is exhausting at best!

So, yes, go ahead. Sign up for a few more and find out what works for you. Evaluate in a few months’ time. Then leave behind the ones that don’t work out and try something else instead.

Now let’s deal with the content strategy.

Creating delectable content! Less is more (sort of)
When I say less is more, I’m talking about platforms, not the actual content itself.

This isn’t just me banging my drum. The professionals emphasize this. My own content marketing coaches Andrew and Pete recommend focusing on one or two platforms, and really honing them. Plus, I’m halfway through the online conference Summit on Content Marketing, and speakers Rand Fishkin, Ilise Benun, Dave Jackson, and Stoney deGeyter agree: concentrate on what your core clients are using – in other words, choose the platforms your customers prefer, rather than the ones you prefer.

So, you’re planning to use a blog and YouTube to deliver your advice on academic writing. If those are platforms that your core clients like using, then go ahead. And stick to those two – really craft them into something special, something compelling.

Some quick tips (you might know the following already but other readers might not, so bear with me!) …

Quality
Make sure your content is really useful so that it offers solutions for your potential clients. Don’t sell – just solve. I used to call content marketing ‘value-added marketing’ (see the marketing book you’ve bought). Seriously, I didn’t know ‘content’ marketing was a thing until a year ago! I still think it’s an oddly bland name for such an exciting strategy.

Anyway, I don’t get to make the rules, so content marketing it is!

Focus on value above all else. Value trumps everything (unless your great writing is so blurred as to be unreadable, or the audio quality of your video so poor as to make it unwatchable).

If you create a beautiful video, or a blog post with loads of fancy pictures, but the story you’re telling your viewers or readers is of no use to them and doesn’t help them, you won’t grow that audience.

But if your video is a little flawed, or your blog post a little ugly, you’ll still grow your audience and build trust and relationships if you’ve made someone’s life easier. It’s no different to friendship. I don’t pick my mates because they look gorgeous – it’s all about the relationship and how we make each other feel. Content marketing’s no different.

I’ve tried hard to make my blog look prettier this year. But you know what? Some of my most popular posts are still those I wrote years ago – posts with really long paragraphs of dense narrative – 1,500 words of me telling people what publishers think about proofreading training courses, and another 1,500 of me on how to upload custom stamps of PDF markup symbols. No pictures. No clever SEO titles. Just loads of text. But it’s text that answers the questions that (some) people are asking.

Consistency
Be consistent with how often you deliver your blogs and videos. The expert view is this: whether you post twice a week, once a week or once a month is less important than choosing one of those and committing to it. That way your readers and viewers get into the routine of engaging with you.

Furthermore, if you commit to once a week, but you don’t have enough content to fill that schedule, you’re more likely to feel deflated and stop. Which would be a huge shame! It's better to excite an audience by raising your game than disappointing them by going backwards.

Quantity
If you write great blogs that are 400 words long, perfect. If you need 2,000 words, perfect.

If your videos need to be 5 minutes long to solve your client’s problems, make them 5 minutes long. If they need to be longer, and that’s what your audience wants, make them longer.

Just make sure that every word and every minute is full of value. I know I’m a right old rambler so I struggle to make every word count. Let’s just call me chatty!

Delivery
Think about how you’ll direct people to your blog and YT channel. I post to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to make editors and writers aware of what’s new on my blog.

​I’ve also recently created a mailing list for writers to enable me to alert them when new self-publishing resources are available.

And, these days, Google Search is working wonders for me. In time, it’ll work for you to if you commit to creating all that delicious stuff for your potential clients!

If academic writers are also using Twitter, FB and LI to get their updates, those are the channels you should use to direct them to your blog and video platforms. If they’re using some other channel to get their news, that’s where you should be.

Again, it’s about what your listeners and readers want, rather than your own preferences. (I really, really hope authors aren’t big Snapchatters! If they are, I might just have to break my own rule and say, ‘Stuff what my clients are doing!’)

If one of the books you told me you’d bought was my content marketing primer, you’ll get a good overview of the basic principles. You can always post another question if you want to dig deeper.

Hope that’s helped, Maya. Thanks so much for asking two great questions. I hope my response has told you what you wanted to know. 

Cheers!

​Louise

P.S. Click on the image below to access the PDF.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

​One of the Parlour’s UK readers contacted me with some questions. I’m answering them here because they’re the kinds of things that are often asked by those who are thinking entering the field of editorial freelancing.

Out of respect for my reader's privacy, I’ve masked his identity. Let’s call him Charlie (after my Labrador!).

So what did Charlie want to know?

• How will clients pay me?
• How do I register with HMRC?
• How do I keep track of the hours I spend working?
• How much should I charge?
• How do I acquire assignments?
• Can I use prior career experience?
• Do you accept volunteers or offer apprenticeships?

​Phew! That’s a lot of questions, Charlie, so I’ll only be able to scratch the surface, but I’m confident I can point you in the right direction.

First things – going deeper
Here are four resources that dig deeper into all your queries , though you’ll have to cough up a few quid for them!

• Going Solo: Creating your freelance editorial business (Sue Littleford).
• Pricing a Project: How to prepare a professional quotation (Melanie Thompson).
• Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers (Louise Harnby)
• Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business (Louise Harnby)

​

​
They’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about starting out and keeping going.

Might I also suggest you join the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), the UK’s national editorial society? The forums provide a warm and supportive environment for old hands and newbies alike.

How will clients pay me?
A better question might be how would you like to be paid? For example, I accept cheques (reluctantly!), PayPal (convenient for international clients), and direct bank transfer (easy-peasy). Other options include Stripe and CurrencyFair.

I send an invoice as soon as a project’s complete, but some of my colleagues prefer to do all their invoicing for the month in one fell swoop. It’s a matter of personal choice and what works for each business owner in terms of efficiency. You can download an invoice template from my Other Resources page.

How do I register with HMRC and what do I need to tell them?
Quite honestly, the easiest way to deal with HMRC is to give them a call. I found them incredibly helpful when I first started my editorial business. Believe me, they’ll put your mind at rest.

Sue’s book (mentioned above) has lots of information about dealing with HMRC. My primary piece of advice is to keep a record of what you spend and what you earn in relation to your business. There’s an accounting template on the Other Resources page that shows you what I record for each project.

How do I keep track of the hours I spend working?
I record my hours in the accounting template. That way, everything’s in one place. I keep track of time the old-fashioned way – with a pen and a piece of paper! Other colleagues use various time-tracking tools and widgets, e.g. Toggl.

Keeping track of how much time you spend on a project is important for gauging how efficient you are. Bear in mind, though, that not all clients will be prepared to pay you for the hours you work. Rather, they’ll pay you for the hours they think the job should take you. This is often the case with publishers and packagers.

When you’re in control of the setting the price of a project (e.g. with independent writers, students, businesses etc.), you’ll need to assess how long the project will take and how much you want to earn from it. This comes with experience; it’s likely you won’t hit the mark in the start-up phase of your proofreading business.
​
Don’t fret about this, though. You’ll get better at estimating over time. And by tracking how long each project takes to complete, and what you earned, you’ll get a sense of what’s possible in an hour or per 1,000 words.

How much should I charge?
Take a look at the following articles here on the Proofreader’s Parlour:

• The highs and lows of editorial fees (or how not to trip up during rate talk)
• The rates debate: Looking at the value beyond the fee
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work

What you charge will be determined by your particular needs, your ability to access clients who’ll meet those needs, whom you’re working for, and what you’re doing.

If you work for publishers and packagers, they’ll control the price – you’ll be a price-accepter.
If you work for businesses, independent authors, academics, and students, you’ll offer a price in the hope that they’ll accept – you’ll be a price-setter.

If the second option sounds a better financial option, bear in mind that, even if it is, it’s harder work! Publishers and packagers do all the client-acquisition work on your behalf, while acquiring clients for whom you’re a price setter means you need to actively promote your business on a regular basis so that you’re interesting and discoverable to clients across the platforms they’re using to find people like us (e.g. Google).

How do I acquire assignments?
My line on this is: when you set up your own business you’ll have two jobs:

• The work you do – proofreading in your case.
• And the work you do to get the work you do – marketing your proofreading business.

​I’ve shared all my experience of editorial business promotion in these three resources:

• Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business (Louise Harnby)
• Content Marketing for Editors & Proofreaders (Louise Harnby)
• Proofreader’s Parlour: Marketing Tips

​

What I’ll say here is that there’s no single way to go about it, not least because different client types use different platforms to find their proofreaders and editors.

For example, content marketing is not the most efficient way to go about acquiring publisher clients – honestly, just get on the phone or write a letter/email instead. If you want to work for independent authors, though, it’s one of the most powerful methods of being discoverable.

Conversely, phone calls to publishers will reap results (if you make enough of them), but for indie authors this method will take you into Ghostbusters territory – who you gonna call?!

My advice is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask:

• Who are your target clients?
• What are their problems?
• How will you solve those problems?
• How will you demonstrate your ability to solve them?
• How will you find the clients?
• Or, if they need to find you, where will they look, and how will you make yourself visible in those places?

Can I use my prior career experience?
Absolutely – it will be one of your unique selling points. For example, I’d worked for a social science publisher for many years prior to starting my business, This, along with my politics degree, helped to make me an interesting prospect for social science publishers with politics lists.

Wordsmith Janet MacMillan is a former lawyer – now her client base includes legal publishers, legal students, academics and law firms.
​
Both of us understand the language our respective disciplines, and that means we’re more likely to spot errors in related texts than someone with, say, a nursing background.

My advice to new starters is: always specialize first in what you know. Later, if you wish, you can diversify, or transition to another specialism (I’m now a  fiction copyeditor and proofreader).

So, in the start-up phase, use your career experience to help you determine which core clients you’re going to target. Then think about how you'll communicate with them in a way that makes them want to consider you as their proofreader.

Here are two resources to help you think about how to create a stand-out brand identity using a client-centric approach: 

• Pen portraits (free article by technical editor and writer John Espirian)
• The Hippo Campus (book by content marketing pros Andrew and Pete)

​Do you accept volunteers or offer apprenticeships?
I don’t, Charlie – sorry. I’m a one-woman show. That’s critical to my business model. My clients hire me and only me to work on their books.

That doesn’t mean that mentoring programs aren’t a superb option. Time to think about training!

I’d strongly recommend you do some professional proofreading training to prepare yourself for market. It’ll show you where your strengths are, and help you fix your weaknesses.

Training has three core benefits:

• It instils trust in your clients – you’re demonstrating professionalism. Trust is critical in an unregulated market where anyone can set up as a proofreader.
• It instils confidence in you when you take the initial client-acquisition steps, e.g. calling publishers, creating directory listings, publishing blog posts, etc.
• It increases client-retention rates – you’re more likely to do a fantastic job if you approach it like a professional.

The SfEP and The Publishing Training Centre are my recommendations … purely because I have personal experience of their courses on which to base an opinion. There are other options available, though. 

The SfEP runs a mentoring programme, too, though you must have completed some initial training beforehand.

Last things
That’s it, Charlie – a whirlwind tour of how to set up a proofreading business! I hope you find the guidance useful. I realize there’s a lot to think about.

If you decide to join the club, you’ll find a supportive community awaiting you, one that stretches well beyond the geographical boundaries of the UK.

Good luck!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

This week's post is a cracker. Self-published author Jeff Carson has kindly agreed to discuss his writing journey.

Jeff's a mystery and thriller writer from Colorado. Writing is his full-time job and he makes a living from his self-published series.

That's a dream for millions of independent authors; below, Jeff shares 11 tips on how he turned that dream into a reality.

If you're at the start of your self-publishing adventure, this is definitely for you!

My name is Jeff Carson and I’m the author of a series starring David Wolf, a cop living in the fictional town of Rocky Points in the Colorado Rockies. Right now, I’ve written ten books in the series.

When I first started out writing, I remember being tormented at night by questions swimming in my head (and by mosquitos … at the time, we were in Italy for a year, and they were thick that summer, I tell you). Questions like: Can I really do this? Can I make a living at it? Is this just a waste of my time? What if everyone hates the books?
 
By finding a few people online who’d made a success of becoming a self-published author, I was able to get a lot of my questions answered and some inspiration that propelled me towards making a living as a fiction writer.
 
I despise playing the guru, and I’m cringing a little as I write this, but I have accomplished the goals I laid out five years ago. So I have to say that I feel l’ve succeeded in the self-publishing realm.
 
There are others, many others, who would scoff at my level of accomplishment, but this blog post isn’t for them. This is for those who are in the position I once was, in that sweat-soaked Italian bed.
 
Here are 11 things that have helped me succeed as a self-published author. 

1. I want to make a living doing this
That’s been the over-arching goal from the beginning. I wanted my paycheck to come from writing. I wanted to make money twenty-four hours per day from people reading my books.
 
I’ve met many people who approach writing as a therapeutic tool for their lives. That’s fine. But 100% of people who write get the therapeutic benefit. One only makes money from it if it’s a goal.

You don't wake up with a horse one day by random accident. There’s a lot of intention and action that goes into suddenly having a hay-eating animal roaming around in the back yard. Same thing goes with earning a living from writing. 

2. I wrote a book series
I learned that if you want to make money from writing fiction, the odds of success go up dramatically by writing a series. Since my goal was to make money with this gig, naturally I wrote a series. 

Harlan Coben is the exception, not the norm. 

On this note, I learned the hard way to not leave books ending on a cliff-hanger. I'd done this with book one and received a lot of negative reviews. I’ve since fixed the novel so that all story goals are resolved and it ends completely. 

In my series, my characters grow and their lives change from each book to the next, but I try to make each book a stand-alone. 

This helps with marketing, too, since anyone can pick up one of the David Wolf novels at any point in the series and feel grounded and up to speed. 

3. I over-estimated, or realistically estimated, the level of work it would take to achieve my goal (of making a living writing) 
I knew that one book in a series, the first book I’d ever written and published in my entire life, would make no money. Pessimistic? It’s not.
 
First, I was learning how to write a story. Second, I wasn’t expecting to gain a wide audience with a single book taking up a single slot in the vast Amazon universe.
 
I knew book one was the hook – the mouth of a funnel – that would lead to the rest of the books in the series. In fact, I knew I was probably going to offer the first book for free.
 
I needed multiple books in multiple categories grabbing people’s attention, all of them leading readers to the other books sitting in other categories. The series would act as a big net.

I figured that after three books I’d be making some ‘extra money’. I hoped that after five I’d be making enough money to quit all other work and concentrate on writing only. Then I doubled that number.

Therefore, I created a goal of writing ten books; then I’d judge the venture one way or another.

In reality, after five books I was able to write full-time and make a full-time living wage. Now that I’m on book eleven, my goals, expectations, and earnings have elevated. 

At the beginning, I felt that if I set my work expectations too low, I’d become discouraged, and fast. Because if after, say, four books I was still irrelevant and making nothing, then my hopes would be dashed.
 
Some people would call a ten-book ‘realistic expectation’ pessimistic, but in my mind it’s the reason I kept going when, after three books, I’d known months that wouldn’t have paid for a week’s worth of groceries. 

4. I concentrate on what I want every day
I’ve filled two college-ruled notebooks with lists of my goals. Every day (or most days) I open up a notebook, list the writing goals/life goals with specific deadlines, such as when I’ll finish the first draft and when I’ll publish, and then I get to work. 

I learned this technique by reading this Brian Tracy book on goal-setting: Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – ​Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible.

That book definitely changed my life. I'd never even had goals before reading that book. 

Now I always set goals. Deadlines always get pushed back, which would be depressing if I let myself to think about it. But the system doesn’t allow for that. Each day is a new sheet, and a new list of goals with either the same deadlines or adjusted deadlines. Looking back on previous lists of goals is not permitted. 

5. I read the bad reviews
This is a biggie. I’ve heard some authors say, ‘I just ignore the bad reviews.’ I adopted that stance for quite a while, actually. But there’s always something to learn from a bad review. 

In fact, I think it’s dangerous and irresponsible if you ignore the one- and two-star shellacking some people take pride in giving out between hangover-induced trips to the bathroom, the sons of bitches. 

Some people get specific – ‘Nice try. A Sig Sauer P226 doesn’t have a safety! Amateur writer at best. I will not be reading another piece of filth by this author.’

So, fine. You skim past the amateur comment and go fix the book so that the special agent DOESN’T flick off the safety as she steps out of her SUV. I think my books are orders of magnitude better because of the bad reviews. 

I figure that if somebody came up to me on the street, pointed, laughed, and criticized my outfit, I’d shake my head and move on, not in the least worried about that person a few steps later. But if her criticism is, ‘Your fly’s down … oh, yeah, and your pants are on backwards. Idiot,’ well, then, I want to know that. 

6. Screw it. I don’t need social media
Early on, I adopted the stance that I needed to write my way into relevance as a writer, not tweet, post, or whatever my way into it. 

Once I adopted this mindset, a weight lifted off my back. I hated it for some reason. I couldn’t get a grasp on social media, so I just let go of it. 

My investigation leading up to my decision showed a correlation between how much an author published books and how successful they were, between how many positive reviews a book had and how successful it was. I could check an author’s success by looking at the rankings of their books on Amazon and other market places.

There was no correlation, however, between how present people were on social media and their book rankings. 

In fact, more often than not, I saw that people who were successful had all but abandoned their social media accounts. In contrast, there were people all over Twitter and Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of friends/followers, and books lost in obscurity. 

Clearly there are exceptions, and some people have great success with social media, but my reasoning was: you write your way into being a writer. 

I rarely post on Facebook, and when I do, it’s usually a link to my new books – classic poor social media behavior. Screw it. I don’t care. 

7. I am accessible
​I respond to every communication sent to me. I think this is huge as a writer, or as a person in general. Nothing irks me more than somebody simply not responding to something.
 
The most surprising thing about writing, and that I sometimes get all teary-eyed about, is the amount of love people will send your way after they’ve read your novel. People will click on the email address (which I put in the back of the book) and contact me, telling me how much they like my book. For me to not say thanks is plain psycho.
 
Plus, it’s just good business. People who like you are more likely to share the news about your work.

8. I have a newsletter email list
This is one of those things I heard people preaching – you have to have an email list of readers – but never did anything about. It took me four freaking books to finally put my email list in place. But I finally did, and that’s when I was finally able to write full time.
 
It only took two days to write and publish a short story, which I give away on my blog as a thank-you if somebody signs up for the new-release newsletter.
 
Now, when I have a new release, I launch the book to thousands of people, versus dropping it into a field of crickets.

9. I write in sprints first, edit later
This is one of those huge game-changers for me. I was getting upset sitting in front of the computer every day but only coming out with one or two thousand words.
 
Now, I write in sprints, which means I write in thirty-minute blocks, take a five-minute break, and then do it again. Using the backspace button is not allowed (a rule I break all the time … my OCD won’t allow David Wolf’s name to be Wols for more than a few seconds).
 
It took me six or so books to employ the sprint tactic, and now I’ll never write any other way.

10. I have a self-editing PLAN
After tapping out a real crappy draft of a terrible book, then going back through a few times, editing, ironing out inconsistencies, tightening up descriptions of dead bodies, etc., I have in the past simply read and re-read the book, then tweaked until I felt it was ‘as good as I can get it’.
 
I’m ashamed to say, it’s only been recently that I’ve implemented a self-editing plan.
 
The plan is something like …

1. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘there were’.
2. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘there was’.
3. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘was’.
4. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘just’.
5. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘really’.
6. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of helping verbs.
7. Etc.
8. Etc.

Since I’ve begun to remove all extraneous wording with a set plan, I feel my finished products have improved drastically. There’s a lot of literature out there on how to approach this. [Note from Louise: bookmark my Self-publishers page; I have a post due shortly on how to highlight unnecessary words using a free, easy-to-use macro.]

11. I hire an editor who does it for a living, for a rate that allows her to do it for a living
After seven books, going through three editors, and becoming frustrated with the service I was getting, I realized that I needed to hire an editor who was an editor and only an editor, and who charged a rate that clearly allowed her to feel properly compensated.
 
The alternative is hiring somebody who does the work on the side for cheap. They’re pressed for time. They’re secretly (I imagine, because I would be) pissed off about being underpaid for a job that deserves more money.
 
The equation adds up to a poor editing job on the finished product … suspicious stretches of pages – five, ten at a time – without a single mark on them.
 
The saying goes, ‘You get what you pay for,’ and it can get tricky when paying for editing services. For years, I tried to get away with paying less. And I definitely got less.

... In today’s publishing environment, I know that, for me, every bit of advice helps. I hope at least one of the tips above helps you on your journey to becoming a successful self-published writer.

​Where to find Jeff and his books

• Jeff Carson: contact
• Jeff Carson: newsletter sign-up
• Foreign Deceit (David Wolf #1) 
• The Silversmith (David Wolf #2)
• Alive and Killing (David Wolf #3)
• Deadly Conditions (David Wolf #4)
• Cold Lake (David Wolf #5)
• Smoked Out (David Wolf #6)
• To the Bone (David Wolf #7)
• Dire (David Wolf #8)
• ​Signature (David Wolf #9)
• Dark Mountain (David Wolf #10)

For instant access to more self-publishing and indie-author resources, visit my Self-publishers page. ​Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Using Word more efficiently
In the past 18 months, two editorial colleagues have written blogs that have had a significant impact on how I use Word.

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

​

Quoting mechanisms and publicizing rates
Pricing issues affect every editorial freelancer, and although fee setting needs to be done using a deeper level of analysis than just following what colleagues are doing, there’s still a lot a colleague can bring to the table.

• I’d long used a per-hour method to determine my prices, but I was open to new ideas. Kate Haigh talked with me at length about her preferred approach (quoting per 1,000 words) on several occasions over a two-year period (including a camping weekend where we met face-to-face for the first time despite being professional buddies for years!) and encouraged me to test it. It had a dramatic effect on my business. Not only did it become quicker to quote, I also boosted my earnings, increasing my average hourly rate by £8 per hour.
• John Espirian blogged about being transparent about prices (see ‘Pricing: a question of trust’). His article convinced me that a test was in order, where I would publish my prices on my website. I wasn’t entirely happy with the results of my test and unpublished my prices (though I don’t yet have enough data to be sure that transparency was actually the wrong decision for my business). Regardless, what’s important is not the result. What’s important is that I tried something new. I consider the test a success because I have confidence in my current decision to not publish my prices online.

These two examples proved to be excellent reminders that testing is essential for the editorial freelancer who wants to learn whether a colleague’s way of doing things is appropriate for their own business.

Making friends
My colleagues can do something a book or a course can’t. They can become friends. I’ve made so many edi-buddies that I can't even begin to list them all.

​What I can say is that Kate Haigh's campsite spag bol borders on legendary; the AFEPI crew at last year's SfEP meeting almost made me want to emigrate.​ I wish Sophie Playle still lived in Norwich because I miss having coffee with her. I wish Rich Adin lived in the same country so that I could have just one coffee with him. Nick Jones has made me laugh via Facebook Messenger too many times. Janet MacMillan's soup ... 

You get the point.

Sourcing professional help
I decided to hire a couple of proofreaders for my blog in 2016. When I’m writing, I don’t behave like a proofreader. I have my authorial head on. That means I’m too close to my own words to spot all my errors.

I bit the bullet and decided to work with some fellow professional proofreaders. Whom to pick though? I needed some recommendations. John Espirian, in his capacity as guardian of the SfEP directory, had a couple of names up his sleeve and they haven’t disappointed.

Cally Worden and Anna Black are my go-tos. They’ve done a fantastic job for me and I wish I’d sourced them years ago. Of course, I still have to upload their gently edited work to the Parlour, and, I’ll be honest, sometimes I just can’t help making a little tweak here and there, post proofreading (I know, I know!). So if a typo has slipped through, it’s my fault.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Changing famine into feast ... quickly
I discussed some of the problems of relying on one editorial client back in 2013. The issues I raised then are as valid today as they were four years ago, perhaps even more so given the current economic and political climate (both here in the UK, and elsewhere).

This article revisits the problem and includes an emergency business-promotion plan.

The booklet, SOS editorial marketing strategy: Quick fixes for big emergencies, is free to download. I sincerely hope it helps you if you need some inspiration during tough times.

Why one client isn’t enough 
Having only one client when you’re an editorial business owner is problematic for two reasons:

• you might lose that client
• your reliance on that client’s supply of work could lead to your neglecting what’s in your business’s best interests

The client-losing editor
You can lose clients for reasons completely beyond your control, including:

• they no longer need your services 
• they can no longer afford your services
• your contact moves to pastures new
  It happened to me. One of my primary contacts in a publishing house went on maternity leave in 2012. I noticed her absence – I didn’t work for that press for a year. Fortunately, I had plenty of other clients in my portfolio to ensure this didn’t affect my workflow. It was great when my contact returned to work 12 months later and offered me three novels in one hit, but I’m glad my business wasn’t dependent on her.
• they merge with other organizations
  My first job in publishing was for the UK arm of Williams & Wilkins, a Baltimore-based STM publisher. Prior to 1990, Wolters Kluwer, Lippincott, Raven Press, the medical division of Little Brown, and Plenum were competitors. Over the next decade these would all be subsumed under the WK umbrella – six potential clients gradually became one.

​The client-reliant editor
There are several reasons why you might become reliant on a client:

• you enjoy the work
• you value the experience and portfolio-building opportunities
• the client has a lot of work to offer and is able to keep you busy. That means you don’t have to spend time on marketing – your client is doing all the project-acquisition graft on your behalf. In other words, you’re benefiting from the client’s marketing efforts. This can be appealing to inexperienced marketers.

On paper, those are good reasons to work for a client. However, if it’s your only client, and things turn sour, you have a problem:

• perhaps the work has become more demanding
• maybe the rate of pay, which seemed good enough several years ago, hasn’t risen in line with your own cost of living
• your own circumstances have changed, meaning you need to work fewer hours for the same income

​If you have only one client, you have no choice – nowhere else to shift your focus, no one else with whom to negotiate, no one else from whom you can accept improved pay or working conditions, and no opportunity to phase out the one (now problematic) client on whom you rely.

Emergency marketing strategy
Whether you’ve lost your only supply of work or you’ve fallen into the trap of reliance on a now unsatisfactory client, there is action you can take immediately.

Here’s the free SOS editorial marketing plan I promised. Just click on the image to download.

The work you do … and the work you do to get the work you do
If you’re a freelance editorial pro, you’ll always have two jobs:

1. the work you do
2. the work you do to get the work you do

Pay attention to the latter so that you’re not at the mercy of the former.

It’s essential to protect your future interests by building a portfolio of several clients rather than focusing all your energies on one. If you put all your eggs in one basket and things go pear-shaped, the impact on your editorial business, never mind your emotional wellbeing, could be devastating.

If you’re not facing an emergency, you can afford to spread your business promotion over a longer period and focus on slower-burn activities such as content (value-adding) marketing. But if you are in crisis mode, there is action you can take right now that, with commitment, will generate positive responses.

You’re not a newbie – you have experience and you’ve already proven your ability to acquire a client. That’s a great position to be in, so use it to your advantage!

Good luck!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Part of my mission with this blog is to help new entrants to the field understand the challenges and benefits of editorial freelancing, and to assist them as they navigate the early stages of their careers. There's no one way to build a business and one's background and preferences will influence the path taken. That's why, from time to time, I like to feature colleagues, particularly those who have a different skill set or career background to mine.

With this in mind, I'm delighted to welcome technical editor Peter Haigh to the Parlour. Peter discusses how he took a strategic approach to developing his editorial business, using his career specialism as a springboard ...

Hello. For those who don’t know me, I’m Peter Haigh and I used to be an electrical power systems engineer. Since November 2015 though, I’ve been a freelance copy-editor and proofreader.

This article is a little bit of a retrospective of how I went from being an engineer to being a proofreader and copy-editor and how I used my specialism to help with this.

First, a little background and then I’d like to explore a few truths and myths about 'specialist proofreading' and share my experiences of getting started and then beginning to mature in the world of freelance proofreading/copy-editing.

Why the move into proofreading and copy-editing?
So, there I was, happily playing with spreadsheets and algorithms (specifying harmonic filter requirements for offshore windfarms) and one day I thought, 'I know, I want to be a proofreader.'

Really?

No, not really.

Then why?

It was all part of a deliberate plan to adopt a location-independent lifestyle. I work from apartments near beaches, forests and cities around the world and when I get bored I (along with my companion, Kate of kateproof) simply move somewhere else. That, coupled with the joys of setting my own work hours and leaving corporate quirks behind, was more than enough reason for a complete change of direction. Further details available here.

What did I do to get started?
Well, I kind of cheated.

Having a wife that is now seven years into her freelance career – her empire is now established: an Advanced Professional Member of the SfEP with plenty of queries coming in – was a massive help. The Proofreader's Parlour (thanks, Louise) was also a mine of helpful resources and advice on a breadth of topics, marketing in particular.

I did some basic online training and read some books and did their exercises, but I also benefited greatly from having a live-in mentor and trainer.

How did it all evolve?
The basic flow was: launch a website, do some training, practise on badly written work, build a web presence, do more marketing, develop confidence in my skills, win some good clients, keep them and then look for more!

I confess: I still get about 50% of my work in the form of referrals from my wife. The other 50%
comes from my website or from an agency that I signed up with last year.

How did I market myself as a specialist proofreader/copy-editor?
The first steps were made before I left my engineering job. I gathered together all of the business cards I’d collected throughout my career and I connected to as many people as I could on LinkedIn.

I told my colleagues about my plans. I hoped that it might lead to work. So far it has led to copy-editing a colleague’s PhD thesis and I continue to edit for a CIGRE working group on a pro bono basis. Maybe one day it’ll pay off, most likely via word of mouth: I left on good terms.

How did the client base evolve?
To begin with, I sought out power system engineers and power engineering consultancies to scout for work.

From this approach, I got one repeat client but on mates’ rates so it paid quite badly. Then, I spanned out via LinkedIn to say hello to various consultancies from all sorts of fields: environmental management, mechanical engineering, pretty much anything where I could connect with someone at a suitable level and very briefly introduce myself and my services. I think it was this that led to me winning what is still one of my best clients: an engineering consultancy, though nothing to do with windfarms or electricity. Another great client I found this way is a financial algorithm developer.

How much does the specialism help me?
This is something I ask myself sometimes, particularly when clients contact me specifically because of my specialism. With the advantage of hindsight, I sit on the fence a little and say, 'it depends'.

When getting started
When I set out, I was confident that I could find work in my specialist niche. I guess I did find a little bit of work, but then it’s a highly specialized niche and so naturally the opportunities are limited.

I also discovered that large companies have well-defined processes for recruiting freelancers and tend to prefer dealing with large agencies or subcontractors. I remember battling with procurement restrictions from my days of engineering: it doesn’t matter if you are the best proofreader in the world, or how cheap you might be; if you’re not Achilles-registered then you will struggle to work for a utility. (And you don’t even want to know how hard – and expensive – it is to get registered.)

To sum it up, I’d say that it helped a little bit. It gave me focus for my marketing, somewhere to start, and in an area where I had a clue about what made the clients tick and what the fancy technical words meant. It felt like I had a USP. 

Nowadays
These days I have ditched my low-paying client from within my niche and continue to look for clients from a far broader range of fields.

Most importantly, I have redefined what I think my specialism is.

I am no longer a specialist in proofreading/copy-editing power system engineering documents. I’m not even an engineering specialist. I am someone who specializes in improving technical, numerical and scientific documents.

Does my specialism help the client?
My honest answer: my specialist power systems knowledge does not help them at all.
However, at the more general level of being comfortable working with equations, tables, graphs, variables, and other forms of scientific text, I would say that this helps with a wide range of clients.

From financial algorithms to social science surveys, knowing your natural log from your base 10 and spotting an unbalanced equation can earn some brownie points at times but, the thing is, that really isn’t proofreading as I know it.

I’d say that as you move up the scale towards developmental editing, it becomes more important that you have some appreciation of the subject being worked on. For proofreading it doesn’t help much at all.
​
In fact, here’s a geeky graph to illustrate this:

*Note: I made the numbers up.

Do qualifications and experience help?
I think that at any stage in a career, it is possible to rest on one’s laurels. When starting out, they may be the only support available, so I’d recommend using them as a springboard, along with any specialisms, and growing from there. I certainly set out to build on my specialist experience at first, then sought ways to hone my skills, grow capability and branch out into new fields of experience.
​
Hang on, I can feel a pie chart coming on!

Let’s take a look at each slice of pie.
​
Degree qualifications
I am yet to work on anything related to my philosophy degree (past life) – other than a blog article on the philosophy of proofreading – but it did expose me to lots of books, and I wrote lots of academic essays, dissertations etc. I’d say this helped me a little bit.

My engineering degrees exposed me to lots of technical documents, maths and other science stuff, as well as helping my confidence when setting up as a proofreader/editor by giving me a USP.

Specialist experience
My work experience as an engineer helped expose me to writing, editing and reading lots of technical academic journal papers. This is now something that I edit a lot of, and feel that I am good at, so I guess that helped quite a bit.

Formal training
I did a basic grammar course (Gpuss), read Barbara Horn’s Copy-editing book and did the exercises and also had access to Kate’s PTC course notes. All of this helped me quite a bit, but was not as helpful as seeing some of Kate’s work (with her clients’ permission, of course) and asking her 'why?' all the time, not to mention Kate checking my first few projects before they were returned to clients.

Training on the job
My editing and proofreading experience is 60% of the pie for me. Learning on the job was what helped me most and, to begin with, it was a case of working for mates’ rates to get experience. It also helped me to start off by working on, dare I say, badly written non-native English documents. The end product would be unrecognizably better, even if some of the finer points were not 100%. Then I kept looking for ways to learn and improve.

Editing for an agency helped because, particularly when I first started, their quality control editors reviewed and critiqued my work. This was great because they showed me where I had missed something and made helpful suggestions. They also gave me positive feedback when the quality controllers were happy and now don’t seem to check my work much at all.

Summary
Hopefully I have given a bit of an insight into what it was like for me transitioning from an engineering specialist to a proofreader/copy-editor and how my specialism has helped me to make that transition.

I’ll attempt to leave with some wisdom from my experiences of making the transition:

1. Get experience and get feedback on your work to improve and grow your capability.
2. Use your specialism to win clients, then use your general capability to keep them.
3. Use your marketing skills (Louise has tons of wisdom on marketing and starting out) to grow your business in the direction you want.
4. Don’t be stifled by your specialism: opportunities can come from all sorts of directions, so be open to them.

Creating high-quality images for online promotion can be tricky if you’re not a design guru and don’t have access to expensive, top-notch software. I’d played around with Word, Publisher and PowerPoint because they’re already on my desktop, but the output was okayish at best. Then I found Canva and was converted.

Still, I wasn’t getting the best out of this excellent tool, mainly because I’m a fiction proofreader and copyeditor, not a designer.

Andrew and Pete to the rescue … I did exactly what they told me to do. And it worked! I was really chuffed with my first attempt – a really high-quality image that I’ll use as a booklet pic for my April article on client loss and emergency marketing. I reckon it’s my best pic ever and it gave me confidence. So then I updated my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook banners using the same method. And I've also played around with the idea in this blog post. Sky's the limit, I reckon! I recommend you have a go.

​​Get it here: How to Create Social Media Graphics ​(video and blog)​

If, like me, you’re committed to creating blogs posts with substance (no soundbites and clickbait for us!) then you, too, might end up with a lot of text.

The audience for The Proofreader’s Parlour expects that substantive content, but could I make it more interesting without compromising on tone and detail?

Andrew and Pete's post made me think about not only how I might use images more creatively (see 1 above) but also how I might complement, rather than change, what I’m already doing with multimedia. I’ve still some way to go before I make full use of their advice but I’ve started (see 1 above) and plan to develop this aspect so that I can make much more of my content accessible to multiple readers with multiple preferences.

What really grabbed me is the concept of taking the key points of a written message and delivering them in alternative formats. Many of us aren’t new to embedding templates, screencasts and instructional videos into our blog posts, but Andrew and Pete have inspired me to expand the ways in which my readers can access the core textual content in my blogs, too.

If you have substantive text-based posts that your visitors return to often and your editorial blog’s heavy with content, some inconvenient trawling might be required by your readers to locate that information. Repurposing sections of the material in, say, booklet form turns a post into a tool, because the valuable stuff you’ve created can be downloaded onto your readers’ chosen devices and accessed at their convenience.
​
​​Get it here: How to Write Better-Looking Blog Posts (blog, video and booklet)

​I overhauled my home page after reading this post.

• I updated my Weebly theme (it didn’t cost me anything but time) to a cleaner, more modern design that I felt better represented my business (while retaining my branded colourway).
• I added call-to-action buttons right at the top to help my visitors better understand what I want them to do (what the duo call Most Wanted Action).
• And, to increase engagement with my primary target audience of independent authors, I gave my mission statement the prominence it deserves. Previously it had been buried elsewhere on my site.

The post includes a free booklet, Home Page Chemistry: A Checklist for Getting Your Visitors to Fall in Love with Your Business (it's a great example of these two content marketers practising what they preach).

​​Get it here: Home Page Design | Making Your Home Page a Knockout (blog, video and checklist)

... So those are my top tips to introduce you to the world of Andrew and Pete. I love their full-on and fun style of sharing their wisdom. It’s engaging and inspiring.

The biggest pull, though, is their handholding approach. They assume no prior knowledge, so even if you’re a newbie marketer you, too, can follow their step-by-step guidance.

I hope you’ll find ways to incorporate their advice into your own marketing journey. If you’re nervous about business promotion, just remember that you don’t have to do everything in the zany way they do it! Take the core learning points and decide how you might use them in a way that feels comfortable for you, works with your brand, reflects your business goals, and engages with your clients.

There’s plenty more on offer via the Andrew and Pete website. And you can find them on Twitter at @AndrewAndPete.

Enjoy!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Why entitlement won't work for the self-employed
It's true. Just becoming editors doesn’t bestow special privileges upon us that are not available to other types of working people. Being editors doesn’t mean we’re entitled to be commissioned. Nor does it mean that we’re entitled to earn what we’d like to earn.

​Entitlements are the domain of employees. Freelance editorial pros aren't employees of businesses; they're the owners of those businesses.

​Work has to be found, which means clients have to be found. We don't live in command economies where the State hands out jobs and you take what you get. We've chosen to run businesses so we have to find a way to make them function successfully. The alternative is unpalatable.
 
In a global market, where clients come from all over, and have different budgets, requirements and expectations, what those clients will be able or prepared to pay will vary enormously.
 
Consequently, of all the clients we find via our extensive marketing efforts, only some will be a price match for us. For that reason, we need to be visible to as many as possible, because the bigger the pot the greater the chance of a conversion.
 
To recap, just being an editor in itself will provide us with neither work nor the money we expect to be paid for the value we believe we bring to the table. Doing visibility is the key to cracking the problem.
 
Imagine being a teacher ...
Do you know a teacher? Does that person have a paying teaching job? How did they get that teaching job? Are they happy with their salary? If not, ask them what they would have to do to solve the problem.
 
I know a teacher. She trained for the role. After her training was complete, she didn't have a job. So she had to find a job. She didn't sit there and say, ‘I'm a teacher. Where's the work?’ She went and searched for the work.
 
She did loads of research, applied for tons of jobs, reviewed the packages on offer, prepared for a stack of interviews, attended them (which was stressful), filled in her spare time with voluntary work in the education sector to make her CV sing, and finally found a school who wanted her and for whom she wanted to work.
 
For a few years the package worked for her, and then it didn't. She didn't say, ‘This school is predatory.’ She said, ‘I need to find a new job.’
 
So she did a lot more work. Now that she was more experienced and had higher expectations, it was tricky to find a good match. It took a lot of time, a lot of hard graft, a lot of research, but I never heard her moan. I'd ask how the job search was going. ‘Ticking along. No news yet but I'll know when I find it. The current post isn't perfect but it's better than being unemployed. You hear about Si? He’s been made redundant. Nightmare. He's really down in the dumps.’
 
My friend did secure a better teaching post. She worked her backside off to find that job. It would've been nice if it had landed in her lap, but that’s not how the teaching sector works.
 
And it's not how the freelance editing sector works either. We have to work our backsides off to find the work we want to do and that pays the fees we want to earn.
 
Feeling ripped off?
If you're feeling ripped off, that's okay. We’ve all done work that made us feel undervalued and underpaid. That's kind of how my teacher friend was feeling. Time to replace that rip-off work with a better package.

Be aware, though – this won't happen overnight. If you're not visible to those offering better-paying work, you'll have to make yourself visible, which takes a lot of hard graft. It took my teacher pal a couple of years to replace her employer with one offering the package she wanted. It might take you a couple of years to make yourself visible to the clients you want to work with. This could mean you have to stick with the current client while you're working your backside off to find a new and better-paying replacement.
 
The client under the microscope
In the meantime, take a good hard look at the client. If you're feeling ripped off, it can be useful to examine not just the deficiencies but also the benefits. This kind of exercise can shine a light on some of the value you might have overlooked, value that you may not have costed into your analysis.
 
Turnover
So the work isn't paying you what you'd like to earn, but is there a lot of it on offer? Every time you receive an email that offers you work on a plate, you get to fill your schedule with absolutely no effort on your part whatsoever.

Some people have a few regular clients who provide 90% of their work. Others have a few regular clients who provide only 20% of their work; the other 80% is new business.

New business needs to be found and converted into a working relationship. Which leads us to marketing …
 
Marketing
If you fill your schedule with a lot of work from one agency (or publisher or packager), and you think said agency is ripping you off, ask yourself how come they've got so much work that they can fill 80% of your schedule and the same percentage of many of your colleagues’ schedules. Is it because they’re marketing their backsides off?

Then ask yourself whether you're prepared to make the same investment, because that's what you'll have to do. You'll have to do all the hard graft yourself. Marketing an editorial business isn't just a cute little hobby you dip your toes into a couple of times a year. Well, actually, it can be if you get someone else, like the agency, to do the graft for you (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but there'll be a cost to it because they'll take a cut of every penny you earn.

And that's fair enough because there is a cost to finding clients. Marketing takes time, and time is money. So if you don't want to lose a cut, you have to fork out for the marketing investment.
 
In other words, we don't get to have it both ways. We can't expect someone else to find our clients for us and expect to earn as much as if those clients were coming direct. If we did expect that, who'd be ripping off whom?
 
Still want an exit?
Fair enough. Start actively promoting so that you can phase out the lower-paying client(s) and replace them with new customers who'll pay what you want to earn. Plan for this to take time and a lot of work.

If you don't fancy the transitional approach, you can wave goodbye to the work immediately. If that's the case, you either live with someone who can pay all your bills (quite possible, and good for you), you have a trust fund (less likely, but wow), or you're happy to be partially unemployed for a while.
 
As you can probably tell, I favour the transition method! That's because my family situation means my income, although the secondary one in our family, is essential. When I was starting out, I couldn't afford to turn down work on principle while I was finding better-paying alternatives. I had to use a phasing-out approach (if negotiation wasn't on the table).
 
Of course, it may be that you already have enough higher-paying clients to cover the lost income from the existing customer, but if that's the case you probably nailed your marketing strategy years ago and stopped reading this article at ‘There, I said it.’
 
We're responsible
No one else is responsible for the rates we earn, the clients we find (or whom we enable to find us), the tools we use to make ourselves visible, the equipment we buy, the tax returns we file, the colleagues we talk to, the meetings we attend. It's all down to us.
 
We're not entitled to have anything land in our lap. As business owners, we reap all the benefits, but we have to do all the work. Every time we hand over some of that graft to another entity (finance to the accountant; client-finding to an agency; fee-handling to a money-transfer organisation), we see a cut in profits. That's not being ripped off; it's a cost of business. If you don't want to bear the cost, you have to do it yourself.
 
Being an editor isn't enough when we're freelance. If we're not wearing the many hats required for business ownership (or we resent bearing the cost of someone else wearing them for us), we need to take a step back and consider whether it’s time to make some changes.
 
What we are entitled to
What we are entitled to do is to make our own decisions. We’re entitled to choose the clients, the rates, and the types of work that suit our needs.
 
So if you want to work for a packager or an agency that pays less than a colleague thinks is acceptable, but there’s value in it for you and your business, that’s fine. If you want to decline the work and source your own clients direct, that’s fine too. Me? I’ve done both in my time because it was right for me. You’re entitled to the same choice. Good luck!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

What's a fair price for proofreading or editing?
One of my concerns when discussing rates is that the value of a particular client to the freelance editor or proofreader’s business is sometimes overlooked.
​
Deciding not to accept a particular editing rate might be the right choice for me but the wrong choice for you, or vice versa. That’s because our circumstances are different and because businesses aren’t static.

​Terms such as ‘too low’ or ‘race to the bottom’ can be problematic because they’re used as if editorial business ownership is taking place in the now – as if the business, and the fees which that business owner accepts, are absolutes and somehow unrelated to what’s gone before or what will happen in the future.

I believe that business ownership is a journey – that the work I do, and the marketing I carry out to acquire that work, is fluid. The decisions I made and the actions I took three years ago affected the work I was doing and the fees I was charging/accepting at that time; but they ALSO affected the work I’m doing and the fees I’m charging/accepting now.

This fluidity means that the way we find value in a client extends beyond the rate.

Time for a case study to nail things down …

Case study: The packager and the proofreader
2012
Ellie’s a proofreader.

Work: She’s completed her training and become a member of her national editorial society. She’s technically excellent at her job, but she has no clients and very little experience of paid work.

Marketing: She has a website but the portfolio and testimonials pages are sparse. And, anyway, her SEO is, as yet, so undeveloped that she’s barely discoverable online. She gets in touch with a packager who regularly hires proofreaders who are members of her national professional society.

Clients: To the packager, she’s a great fit. She has the skills they want and she has the space in her schedule. To academics, students, businesses and independent authors searching for a proofreader, she’s invisible. Even if she were visible, she appears less experienced (less interesting, we might say) than other proofreaders touting their services.

Rates: The agency offers regular work, and the rate is £13.50 per hour. ‘That rate is woeful,’ says one of the more experienced colleagues in her network. ‘That’s so low it’s an insult,’ says another. ‘Accepting that is encouraging a race to the bottom,’ says yet another.

Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she has a cunning plan!

2014
Ellie’s still a proofreader.

Work: In the past two years, she’s done a book a month for that packager. Now, from that packager alone, she has 24 academic book titles in her portfolio – all of them published by international scholarly publishers, and some of them authored by big names in the academic community. She’s also contacted several academic presses whose rates are a little higher than the packager’s, but only by a few pounds.

Marketing: She’s been busy over the past two years.

• She published a smart portfolio on her website. Each of those titles, with their corresponding authors, contains rich keywords that in the longer term will make her website more discoverable to academics searching for editorial assistance in a particular field.
• She contacted several academic publishers (who don’t use the packager). They were impressed by her training and her experience – those 24 academic titles match their own publishing lists. They added her to their editorial freelancing lists and she now receives work from each of them every few months. Over the course of two years, she’s been able to add a further 27 titles to her portfolio.
• She requested testimonials from the packager and the publishers.
• She counted up her hours of experience, noted her professional training, and asked her referees if they’d support her application to upgrade her professional society membership. They said, ‘Of course!’ In two months’ time, she’ll meet the criteria to upgrade to a level of membership that entitles her to advertise in her professional society’s online directory – that’s more visibility. The directory enables her to link to her website – a superb SEO opportunity.
• She developed a number of value-adding tools for her website (checklists, advice, guidance, etc.). They’re targeted at clients to whom she’d like to be more visible in the future and with whom she’ll be able to command higher rates than she’s earning from the publishers and packager. She regularly shares this information using her social media platforms and professional networks – more SEO benefits, more visibility.

Clients: Two years ago, Ellie wasn’t discoverable to anyone but the packager and the publishers. Things have changed, though. It’s been a slow burn, but her down-the-road thinking has led to a larger number of direct hits on her website. There’s still a long way to go, but when clients visit her website now, they see the following:

• Experience – her portfolio page lists 51 books
• Trustworthiness – the pithy quotes from big-name presses inspire the viewer’s confidence in her ability

Rates: A few of the clients who’ve found her direct have accepted the rates she offered. These are sometimes as much as double the rate she’s earning from the publishers and packager. This inspires her to continue her marketing activities and increase her visibility to these client types so that she might shift her customer base as her business develops.
​
Ellie’s still not visible enough to fill her schedule with these better-paying clients. She continues to accept work from the publishers and the packagers. ‘Those rates are an insult to someone with your experience,’ cry some of her colleagues.

Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she’s not phasing out the publishers and the packager until she’s phased in enough higher-paying clients to replace the workflow and the income it provides.

2016
Ellie’s still a proofreader.

Work: Over the past two years, she gradually reduced the work for the packager, finally stopping it altogether at the end of 2015. She’s still taking some work from her early publisher clients, though much less than in 2012–14. That’s because she’s been working for four better-paying presses whose rates are what she’d define as ‘middle-of-the-road’, though nowhere near as high as the fees she can set when she works directly for authors and students.

Her increasing visibility has put her in a position where she receives several direct requests to quote per week. She’s noticed that some academic publishers are even asking their authors to source and pay for their own proofreading, so she’s glad she’s focused on making herself discoverable to these clients.

Marketing: Even though Ellie’s had a full schedule for several years, she’s continued to focus on what she wants down the road in terms of client types and income. The bread-and-butter work provided by the publishers and the packager have enabled her to concentrate large chunks of her marketing time on what she wants in the future without having to worry excessively about where today’s work will come from.

• Her portfolio is impressive. She’s added each new title and author to the page when she’s completed a project. That’s more rich keywords, plus her website is continually benefiting from having fresh content added (good for SEO).
• She’s advertised in several paid-for directories to increase her discoverability to businesses, students and independent academics.
• Her content marketing has continued – she’s added more resources that she believes will be of interest to her target clients.
• She’s upgraded her professional society membership status. Now her profile is visible via the organization’s website, which links to her own site. That’s more inbound/outbound links for her website, which is great SEO.
• She’s attended various workshops and conferences, and continues to network online. This relationship building has led to several referrals of work from colleagues whose own schedules were too full.

Clients: Ellie appears to clients as an experienced proofreader with professional qualifications. They think she’s on their wavelength because of the valuable resources she provides for free. The fact that she’s worked for international academic publishing houses gives them confidence that she knows how to follow a brief and work on complex materials to a high standard. If she wasn’t capable, those presses wouldn’t have hired her repeatedly, would they?

Rates: Ellie no longer accepts work below £20 per hour, although she aims to earn an average hourly rate of £28. She can afford to make this decision because of the balance between her later-acquired, medium-paying publisher clients (who provide her with a stable workflow) and the higher-paying independent clients who contact her direct.

On an online forum, a new entrant to the field posts that she’s been offered proofreading work from a packager at a rate of £15 an hour. Does Ellie say, ‘That rate’s woeful. It’s an insult. Accepting it would be encouraging a race to the bottom’? Nope. She says, ‘Is there value in this work beyond the fee being offered?’ She goes further:

• Is the minimum you need to earn £15 or below? If it is …
• Will accepting work from that packager provide you with regular work so that you don’t have to spend as much time finding clients now?
• Because the packager is doing some of your project-acquisition on your behalf now, how much time will this free up for you to do marketing that will help you find better-paying clients later?
• Will accepting work from that packager provide you with projects that you can list on your website, thus providing rich keyword search terms that will make you visible to better-paying clients now and later?
• Will the work from that packager provide you with experience that you can sell on to better-paying clients now and later?

The business journey
Ellie’s business in 2012 looks different to Ellie’s business in 2016. Her client base has shifted, her income has shifted, the base price she’ll accept has shifted, her work stream has shifted and her visibility has shifted.

It’s not just that the decisions she made in 2016 are different to those she made in 2012. Rather, the decisions she made in 2016 are founded on those she made in 2012. If she’d decided in 2012 that she wanted 2016’s offerings at the start of her career, she’d have struggled. It’s not that she wasn’t worth £X per hour back in 2012, but that she wasn’t in a position to be discoverable (or perhaps attractive) to those clients who were prepared to pay that price. Because she took a down-the-road approach – one that viewed her business as something that was moveable, something that could develop, grow and change – she was able to see opportunity and value in what was on offer back then.

There is value beyond the rate. Whether you take advantage of that value will depend on your particular circumstances, of course.

​My advice to new starters is to be cautious when listening to the rates debate. It’s easy for seasoned professional editorial freelancers to advise against accepting this or that fee simply because they’re in a position to command better fees. In fact, offering advice on what’s an acceptable price is almost impossible unless we understand an individual freelancer’s circumstances, requirements and access points to the industry.

Fees, like any other aspect of a business, need to be considered in the context of an overall business plan, and over a time frame that extends beyond the now.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

My new Content Marketing Primer for Editors & Proofreaders is now available to order.

The Primer costs only £3.99, so grab yourself a bargain! 

Simply click on the button below to go to the book's dedicated page and order form.
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I'll email your book within 24 hours (though probably a lot sooner if I'm not asleep!)

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

I'm delighted to announce the forthcoming launch of a new editorial freelancing tool for February 2017: Content Marketing Primer for Editors & Proofreaders.

The Primer shows you how to create and deliver value-adding content that embraces engagement with colleagues and clients and enhances your editorial business's visibility.

This 40-page book includes guidance on the following:

• Content marketing in relation to your business goals
• Defining content marketing
• Focusing on value
• Working out what’s useful
• Top of Google, top of mind and being human
• Different types of content marketing
• Underlying principles: value, visibility, memorability, usability, identifiability and credibility
• Content marketing in action: a selection of real-world examples
• How to build great content – including two case studies and a template
• Using visual media – including a quick guide to help you choose the best tool
• When to do content marketing
• Content marketing and other strategies compared

You can read more about it, and register your interest, on the book's dedicated webpage: Content Marketing Primer for Editors & Proofreaders.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Freelance pricing, marketing, testing/tracking and terminology
This article is a summary of what I learned along the way: the effects on my own business and how I responded.

For some of you, what follows will chime with your own experiences. If that's not the case, perhaps you'll be inspired to test some of the issues I discuss.

What I learned

1. Pricing: the debate around making one’s prices public is lively. For me, trialling going public has proved interesting but I still don’t have an answer
2. Marketing #1: good content marketing can happen in a bar or a pizzeria
3. Marketing #2: a hard-grafted marketing strategy can be time and money out the window if one’s schedule can’t accommodate the results
4. Testing/tracking: Data is good; more data is better
5. Terminology: I’m known as a specialist proofreader. I am one of those but I’m also a copyeditor and line editor

​
1. Prices – to show or not to show
I went public with my pricing structure for one month in November. The results were interesting; my explanation was uncertain; my response, however, was unequivocal.

I’ve been tracking my new-client contact data for over a year, so I could compare some numbers. In November 2015, I received 25 requests from new clients to quote. In November 2016, it dropped to 14.
Of those who did get in contact, the number who became paying clients increased by 50%.

On the surface, that’s good news – lower contact numbers but a higher rate of conversions. Dig a little deeper, though, and there are a couple of problems:

• Some of the people who were put off by the headline ballpark figure might have converted to excellent repeat clients if I’d had a chance to communicate with them and demonstrate the value of what I offer.
• Some of the people would still have been put off by my price even if I’d had the opportunity to communicate with them. However, I would have been able to refer at least some of them to colleagues.

So why did the number drop? Sure, it could’ve been that the price was too high. And, yes, I have comparative data, but not much – comparing one month in 2015 with one in 2016 is interesting but hardly conclusive. November 2015 might just have been a fluke. And, anyway, the numbers aren’t exactly huge so it’s difficult to make any statistically significant deductions.

At the end of December 2016, I compared the new-client contact data with that from December 2015. This time, the figures were similar – two more in 2016. At first sight, this might imply that the public prices were an issue. But, again, I only have one year-on-year figure for comparison, which I don’t believe is enough to warrant anything more than a ‘Hmm, interesting. That’s worth keeping an eye on.’

Data from at least five previous years would have given me the confidence to make a statement one way or another. As it is, based on my experiment and limited data, I’m not prepared to conclude that public pricing is either beneficial or damaging.

My response for my business: I removed my prices from my website. This is the approach I feel comfortable with at present, and I’ll continue as such until I have enough information to make an informed decision. I’ll continue to track my new contacts so that I can better understand the patterns of enquiry throughout the year.

2. Content marketing over gin and pizza
I plan to write more about content marketing (or adding value, as I prefer to call it) this year. There’s a section about it in Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business if you want to dig deeper. Here’s the thing – many of us think of content marketing in terms of blogs, booklets, tutorials and templates. In other words, stuff that can be read, watched and touched. In 2016, I was reminded that great content marketing – great value – is sometimes as simple as a conversation.

At the 2016 Society for Editors and Proofreaders’ annual conference in Aston, I made a new friend (Victoria Woodside) and caught up with an old one (Sophie Playle). I’d already spent several months thinking about what it is I actually do (see Section 5 below) and how I present it to potential clients. The language used to define editorial services is tangled. Editorial professionals don’t define proofreading, copyediting and line editing similarly, so why should our clients?

I was comfortable blogging about the confusion but I hadn’t managed to solve the conundrum for my own business. I was going round in circles. Victoria and Sophie came to my rescue – not in any kind of formal consultative manner, but just by giving me their time and sharing their expertise over gin and Fiorentinas. They told me how they defined their services and helped me to unpick my own. From those conversations, I found a way forward.

I doubt either woman would define her conversation with me as content marketing – yet it was. Both had valuable, useful stuff (knowledge, time and expertise) and shared it with me. Later it would put them both top of my mind when I was in need of people to refer specific clients to. One of those referrals turned into paid work.

And that’s really what good content marketing is – sharing useful, valuable stuff so that it puts you top of mind (or top of Google) when there’s a client in need of a solution. That client might come via a colleague, which means your fellow editorial pros are your customers too. Meeting and talking to colleagues, online and face-to-face, is great content marketing. Many of us do it without even realizing. And it costs nowt but time and effort. You just need to be a nice human being.

My response for my business: This experience was a great lesson in just how far content marketing stretches. It was also a strong reminder that learning takes place in a range of environments. I already attend my Norfolk SfEP group meeting on a regular basis. I’m now committed to attending the annual meetings too – to speak (if I’m asked) and to listen to others speaking.
​
Two conversations helped me align my business in action with my business in words. That alone made it worth the registration fee.

3. The hard graft and the full schedule
I’ve had an active marketing strategy in place since I set up my business back in 2006. It’s worked well for me. I have as much work as I can handle and am often booked up several months in advance … And there’s the rub.

Some clients will wait, but many won’t. To put so much time into marketing – all those booklets and guidelines and other bits and pieces of valuable stuff that I hope my indie authors will find useful – only to hear, ‘Sorry, I can’t wait that long,’ is frustrating. It feels like wasted effort.

I’m all for a referral – I can put a client in touch with the perfect specialist. Legal editor? I know one of those. Fluent French speaker or Italian translator? I’m friends with the former and related to the latter. How about a proofreader who also has experience of scientific indexing? Yep, I have a phone number.

The thing is this – it’s a busy week and I’m up to my neck in deadlines. I don’t have the capacity to be thinking about who would be the best person in my extensive network of experienced colleagues for this or that bit of proofreading or light editing. That’s time I should be using to earn a crust for me, not someone else.

As a result, from early 2015 I’d stopped actively recommending named colleagues for general proofreading or light-editing work. If an enquirer actively asked for a recommendation, I’d point them to a directory. If they asked for specialist help (e.g. legal, medical, scientific), only then would I recommend a named colleague.

All in all, I felt that a lot of hard-graft was generating a lot of missed opportunities and missed income.

My response for my business: A trusted colleague whose company subs to experienced editors and proofreaders offered me a referral deal. I get a cut of any converted leads. This hasn’t replaced my specialist referral network; rather, it’s a two-pronged approach. Named specialist referrals earn me nothing, whereas more generalist referrals earn me a small passive income. Now I feel like my marketing’s working for me again, and for others too.

4. Data, data and more data
I talked above about the problem I encountered with not having enough data to make an informed decision on whether public pricing is good or bad for my business. Data limitations also became apparent when I introduced several contact forms on my website early in 2016. I was interested to learn whether clients preferred contact forms, email, texts or phone, and whether it was necessary to provide all of these options.
My initial observations were as follows:

• Contact forms were far more popular than the other options. The results appeared striking: over 73%. Even direct email made up only 10% of all enquires in my test period. Hurrah for contact forms. Bah for email.
• All of the options were used, though, so I cautioned about removing choice, even though there are experts who claim that publishing your email can lead to problems with privacy and spamming.

I was also concerned about the quantity of the data I was looking at. Hurrah for contact forms and bah for email? Really?

My response for my business: I committed to continue my monitoring of new-client contact methods. I’m nearly a year down the line now so I have more data. Good job too. Now, my observations are as follows:

• My contact forms are still popular, but I’m glad I was cautious about removing choice based on the initial test-period results. The numbers have changed because the short-term skew has been smoothed out. With more data, I can now say that contact forms are used by 52% of new enquirers and the direct-email option accounts for 35%. Hurrah for contact forms! And hurrah for email!
• If I’d removed my email address based on a small amount of data, I’d have been responding incorrectly to my customers’ preferences.

5. More than a proofreader
Well into 2016, a couple of things had become blindingly obvious:

• My client base had shifted dramatically in 10 years of freelancing. Back in the early days, I was almost exclusively a publisher’s proofreader (working mainly on social science monographs). A decade on, I’m almost exclusively an author’s proofreader (working mainly on fiction).
• It’s not just who I do it for that’s changed, it’s also what I do. In fact, sometimes I’m proofreading. Often, though, I’m copyediting. Sometimes I’m line editing, too.

The above raised several issues:

• My website text didn’t reflect my current business model clearly enough.
• My pricing structure was off-kilter, too.
• The definitions of proofreading, copyediting and line editing differ depending on whom you speak to. That makes things tricky for professionals, never mind clients.

I needed to rethink and tweak. I needed to find a way of defining my business such that it made sense to my primary client-base but didn’t harm my existing SEO. I didn’t want to damage the ‘proofreaderiness’ of my brand but I did want to reflect the breadth of my service.

My response for my business: I wrote, I pondered, I talked to myself. Then I had a conversation with two friends (see Section 2 above). Clarity emerged from confusion. I redefined (and repriced) my service packages so that they reflect the reality of what I’m providing. I’m confident and clear about how my services are differentiated. More importantly, I’m no longer worrying about what my colleagues are doing, or what definitions they’re using. My friends gave me the confidence to carve out my own way of doing things.

Summing up
I hope you’ve enjoyed this personal review. I’m sure you’ve had many of your own ‘Hmm, that’s interesting’ moments over the past 12 months. Perhaps you’ve shared some of the same experiences but responded differently. No matter – there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to any of these issues. The important thing is that we use the review process as an opportunity to see not what we’ve done badly but what we can do better.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

​Perhaps a better question is: Where isn’t my market? Most proofreading and copy-editing is done onscreen these days. Even traditional page-proof markup, using proof-correction symbols, is increasingly taking place in a digital environment. That means geography is not the barrier it once was.

Thirty years ago, an author from Colorado wouldn’t have hired me to proofread his crime thrillers – not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t find me. Now, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, he can and he has.

• If you live in Dublin, your market isn’t just Dublin.
• If you live in Tromsø, your market isn’t just Tromsø.
• I live in Panxworth (it’s a hamlet in Norfolk, England – even the satnav struggles to find me). If my market were limited to Panxworth, I’d be unemployed before breakfast.​

If you live in Dublin, your market is people who want to work with someone who lives in Dublin, and people who want to work with someone who lives in Ireland, and people who don’t care where you live but believe you have the skills to solve their problems. Same kind of thing applies to the Tromsønian and the Panxwegian.

It’s not always about where you live or where your clients live, but whether you can find each other, and whether, once you have, you can instil a belief in those clients that you’re the right person for the job.
​

​This question gets rehashed over and over. There’s no quick answer. Here are some thoughts:

• What do you need to earn? You can’t work out whether your freelance editorial business will be viable unless you know what your baseline is.
• Rates vary within and between client sectors, and within and between countries. Theirs isn’t a market rate, whatever anyone tells you. Instead, there’s what you need to earn, what you want to earn, how much time you have available to work for those earnings, and what the clients who can find you are prepared to pay. Somewhere in the midst of that is a little bit of paradise where all four align. Don’t expect paradise to land in your lap – it takes time.
• Some editorial societies offer suggested minimum rates. These are guidelines not facts. They reflect neither the maximum that some clients will be prepared to pay, nor the minimum that some clients will hope to pay.
• In the start-up phase of your business, you might decide to accept lower rates than you want because of other benefits – glowing testimonials, a strong portfolio and superb experience. All of those things can be used as USPs that can make you more attractive to better-paying clients further down the road – future leverage. 
• A client’s value cannot be measured purely by the fee it pays, especially when the editorial pro is starting out. I used to work with a publisher who put a shed load of work my way. I considered their rates low but the experience, volume of work, references and full schedule were worth every hour I spent on their books. I no longer work for them because I’m now visible enough that I get better-paying offers. I’m not critical of their fee structure (they have a business to run, too); instead, I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity they afforded me.​

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​Yes, if you’re prepared to be an active marketer.

Don’t wait – start thinking about your marketing strategy as soon as you can. Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable.

If you’re not interesting, it won’t matter who finds you because they won’t feel compelled to hire you. If you’re invisible, it won’t matter if you have a wardrobe full of USPs because no one will know you exist.

• A good marketing strategy uses multiple promotional tools across multiple channels. That’s because different clients use different platforms to source us.
• Those tools and channels are interconnected. The website you build, the useful content you share, the social media platforms you engage with, the directories you advertise in, the networking meetings you attend, the business cards you hand out, the CV you publish, the portfolio you build, the testimonials you acquire, the emails and letters you post, and more, should all be branded consistently so that clients and colleagues can recognize you and your editorial business.

If you’re not ready to do what’s necessary to make yourself visible to good-fit clients, you’re probably not yet ready to run your own editorial business. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are best suited to employment rather than self-employment.

If you think that word of mouth will be enough at the start of your editorial career, think again. I do have a few colleagues who’ve relied, successfully, on that but they’re few and far between, and they have a lot of experience (and clients to spread the word).

Being active puts you in a position where, over time, you acquire choice. Choice is the road to alignment – where what you need to earn, what you want to earn, how much time you have available to work for those earnings, and what the clients who can find you are prepared to pay all come together in a way that works for you and your business.
​

​It’s always about the client. When you’re creating content, put yourself in your client’s shoes and ask, ‘If I were searching for a proofreader, what would I want to know and what problems might I have?’

Some experts would say that my website has too many words and too many pages, that the portfolio is too cluttered, that there’s too much information below the fold, that my blog titles are too long ...

I do break some of the ‘rules’ of online promotion; I also follow many of them. I’ve tried and tested different ways of doing things and found what works for me. Next year, I might be doing things differently. Nothing’s set in stone.

If you’re struggling to organize your message, ask yourself the following questions. If the content you create answers them, you’re on the right track.

• Who are you?
• Who is the client?
• What are their problems?
• How can you solve them?
• How can they contact you?

​

​If you’re still excited about building a freelance editorial business, then there’s an international community of colleagues waiting to welcome you.

​Thirty years ago, freelancing could be a lonely business. In 2017, independent proofreaders and copy-editors chat, ask for advice, share knowledge and expertise, and learn … together. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and editorial-society forums provide just some of the online spaces that editorial pros use to connect with each other.

We work solo but the digital watercooler has never been busier. See you there!

​Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Today's article is all about optimizing your editorial business website so that it works for clients using different device types.

My website is the single biggest driver of my proofreading and copyediting work. It’s therefore essential that it shows potential clients my best face.

​I’ve spent years tinkering – tweaking current content, adding new information and removing text and images that have outgrown their usefulness.

Weebly, like many web-hosting services, allows me to optimize my website for mobile devices.* ​

​It takes my chosen desktop theme and adapts the design for optimal viewing on a smaller device such as a tablet or mobile phone. This function has been available for several years. I can’t remember when I became aware of it, but I figured it made sense to switch it on because I couldn't imagine anyone with a smart phone having the patience to navigate through my content if it wasn’t mobile friendly. I congratulated myself on being so forward-thinking, and carried on as normal.

Note: If you're unsure whether your website is mobile friendly, it's easy to find out. My colleague Averill Buchanan alerted me to Google's Mobile-Friendly Test site.

Is it pretty, or pretty awful?
Most website-hosting services help non-designers like me to make our websites look pretty. They give us dividers, shaded boxes, spacers, columns, textboxes and image placers to enable us to put our content exactly where we want it. The result is that on the desktop version, at least, everything looks just so.

You might be the kind of person who likes to keep things simple – you might have opted for minimal text on your site, and the text you have placed might not be broken into separate textbox elements. To date, I’ve not been this kind of person. I’ve overly complicated things, and, I might add, it hasn’t done me any favours. Here’s just one example.
​
This is the contact information on my site:

Now, back in 2011, when I first typed this information into my contact page, I didn’t like the vertical alignment of the information after the colons. Weebly doesn’t allow tabbing, so I created two textboxes (below, outlined in red) and placed them next to each other in two columns.

Okay, so it was never going to win a design award, but I’d achieved my goal. However, there was a problem – it looked perfect in the desktop view, but the mobile layout was a disaster:

This wasn’t Weebly’s fault, it was mine. Weebly’s mobile optimization tool was working perfectly logically – finding content in a single textbox and ensuring that said content remained unbroken.

The solution was simple – I had to restore my original layout, putting all the text back into a single box – but the impact was huge.
​
It did mean sacrificing the alignment issue that I’d had a bee in my bonnet about, but it was worth it. Now my mobile display looks like this (on iPhone 6):

It’s not perfect (there are unsightly end-of-line breaks on smaller mobile screens), but it’s a far more sensible and logical design for my mobile visitors. I’ll shortly be making decisions about how to reword this information so that I can remove the unwanted wordbreaks – it needs some care because I don’t want to compromise the design of the desktop view.

What devices are my visitors using?
The crux of the matter here is that I want to put myself in my customers’ shoes. I need to bear in mind the following:

• Different customers will use a variety of different devices to access my content. For example, not all customers have a smart phone; and even if they do have one, they might prefer to access web content on a larger screen.
• One customer might use multiple devices to access the same content. For example, I tend to access web content using my tablet at home during the evening, my phone when I’m out and about, and my desktop during working hours.

A webpage that looks perfect on a mobile might be less pleasing to the eye on a desktop screen, and vice versa.

I’m under no illusion that I can optimize my design for every potential client all of the time. But paying attention to the mobile display has been a learning experience for me.

​I’ve discovered that I’ve not been showing my best face, and that’s simply not an option in the current market. I know this because my data tells me so.

Looking at the data
Honestly, I’ve only recently started looking at data about which devices my visitors are using. The following was taken from one of the analytics programs I use, StatCounter.

​The above image shows two days’ worth of data (8–10 October 2016). A whopping 30% of my visitors used mobile phones and tablets to access my content.

Some tablet screens are big enough to make browsing my website in desktop view perfectly palatable, so some of the visitors using these devices may not be looking at a mobile view.

Here’s the thing, though – I don’t know which view they’re seeing and it’s not under my control. It’s therefore important that I do what I can to put my best face forward, just in case.

​Even one lost customer who searched and found me via their mobile, and then dismissed my services because my content was illogically presented, is something I want to avoid.

The view from an expert
My friend Andy McNair, who’s forgotten more about website analytics than I’ll ever know, pointed out that two days’ worth of data could be horribly skewed by a range of factors. He prompted me to dig a little deeper using my Google Analytics historical data.

Says Andy in relation to industry at large:

I followed Andy’s advice and compared data in four quarters (August–October) from 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

• The percentage of mobile-user visitors has more than doubled. In 2013 it was 1 in 10. In 2016 it's 1 in 5.
• Tablet use has remained relatively static.
• The desktop view still easily dominates.

This rather basic analysis supports Andy’s industry view and has encouraged me to continue to work on my mobile optimization to ensure that it’s user-friendly, while respecting the fact that desktop visitors are still the most important group. Therefore, mobile responsiveness mustn't come at the expense of the desktop-user experience.

When thinking like a editor isn’t enough
This exercise has shown me how, until recently, my website design was dominated by two modes of thinking:

1. I think like a desktop user, as I’ve primarily used a desktop or tablet to view content, and I’ve accessed that content in desktop view.
2. I tend to consider the design of a webpage from a human visual point of view, rather than from the point of view of an automated tool. I’ve failed to consider the logic of automation – for example, what is the widget looking for when it ‘decides’ to move several horizontally displayed elements into a vertical layout?

I now know that I need to think less like an editor and more like a designer and a potential client when I’m building webpages.

Taking the long view
Keeping an eye on user behaviour is a work in progress, but I'm on the case. Four years ago, mobile usage mattered less. Now, to me, it matters twice as much (though the desktop-user group is still by far the most important). 

So, take a look at your analytics to assess what devices your visitors are using.

If mobile has become more important and your website host allows you to easily optimize your design for mobile devices, without compromising your core visitor group, do use the function. But check that the results are showing your best face. 

​A few small tweaks could make a very big difference.

​More importantly, they could turn a closed page into a closed deal.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

In Part I, I considered the problem of low rates and some potential solutions:

• negotiating efficiency increases
• changing industry policy
  
• feeling aggrieved
  
• and an alternative – saying no in the knowledge that there are better-paying clients in the offing

The alternative is premised on the idea that you can market yourself into a position of choice.

Here in Part II, I take a closer look at the benefits of proactive marketing. I position this within a framework of business ownership that takes responsibility and shuns entitlement.

Generating interest and discoverability
Marketing is about being interesting and discoverable. If enough potential clients can find you (i.e. you’re discoverable) and are persuaded to contact you (i.e. you’re interesting), you can, over time, put yourself in a position whereby you can turn down the work that doesn’t fit (because of the fee or otherwise), and accept the work that does – and have a full schedule to boot.

One fictive example, with a bit of maths!
The following is based loosely on my particular situation – I’m a proofreader who works on relatively uncomplicated book-length projects that take around a week to complete. I do take on shorter pieces of work and fit them around my larger projects, but, for the most part, it’s a project-in/project-out workflow. I specialize in working for independent authors, academics, students and publishers. I do a little bit of work for businesses and marketing agencies on occasion, but these clients don’t make up the bulk of my working week.

Let’s say that 90% of the new clients who contact me want to pay less than I want to earn. That means that only one in ten jobs will pan out. For simplicity, let’s give each month twenty-two working days (I like to take weekends off). Let’s also say that I can fit in roughly one book-length job in five working days, plus perhaps one or two smaller jobs if required.

The reactive marketer
Let’s imagine that I’m not as interesting and discoverable as I could be, and am not being found by potential new clients on a regular basis. I receive ten offers of work every two months. Given that 10% of the jobs will pan out into work that pays what I want it to pay, that’s one hit in that two-month period. I consider the remaining nine jobs to be poorly paying. However, because I’m not being found and asked to quote as often as I might be, I don’t have any other hits in the bag. I don’t want to be without work for the bulk of those two months, so I accept the nine lower paying job offers, and feel a bit sorry for myself, consoling myself with the thought that at least I’m being paid something. Then I go and get myself that extra-big hug from my partner and wait for my sympathetic friend to say ‘poor you’.

The proactive marketer
Now let’s imagine that I actively market my business on a regular basis. I receive an average of thirty offers from new clients every month. As before, only 10% pan out into confirmed work that pays what I want it to pay. That’s fine, though, because that 10% is enough to fill my schedule when taking into account offers from existing well-paying clients.

Those existing clients are paying us what we want to earn – they’re people who have already discovered us and considered us interesting enough to hire and rehire. They provide an additional safety net that enables us to make choices.

The point is that the more offers you receive, the stronger your position. You can afford to say no. Any percentage of a big number is a very different proposition from that same percentage of a small number.

Proactive marketing gives you the numbers. Bigger numbers mean you have a higher chance of more hits (confirmed work that fits your financial needs). If you’re in a situation where you’re being forced to accept work that doesn’t pay what you want to earn, you need to increase your discoverability, or improve your interestingness, or both.

My colleague Rich Adin sums it up rather nicely: 'The primary difference between proactive and reactive marketing is that proactive marketing makes sure you can say no while enjoying the higher rewards when you say yes, whereas reactive marketing ensures that you will never be able to say no and will always “enjoy” low rewards that force you to constantly say yes when you want to say no. No is empowering and proactive is empowerment​' (Adin, personal correspondence, 2016).

‘But my work is different to yours’
I acknowledge that some editors’ workflows will look very different to mine. You may be someone who works on complex long-term projects that take weeks or months to complete. The project fees will run into thousands rather than hundreds of pounds. This kind of specialist work may mean you are always going to be dealing with a smaller pot of hits and misses than a proofreader with a more straightforward workflow. For you, the numbers will look different, and negotiation may play a larger role when considering how to handle fee issues.

The principle stands, though – however different your business model is to mine, if you aren’t getting enough hits, then you will still benefit from marketing yourself so that you increase the size of your pot and, thus, the proportion of confirmed jobs that pay what you want to earn.

Who’s responsible?
Expecting others to take responsibility for the success of my self-owned editorial business is a path to failure. My colleagues are obliged to look after their interests. My clients (and potential clients) are obliged to look after their interests. I’m obliged to look after mine.

Even established editorial business owners should be actively promoting because they can’t predict how the market will shift over time. A profitable client today could be a loss-making client tomorrow. 

Ultimately, expecting clients to fall in our laps because we’ve decided to go freelance is employee-like thinking, not business-owner thinking. Considering rates in terms of what’s fair, and what’s respectful is unhelpful. It shifts the freelancer’s focus from one of professional business-ownership to one of entitlement. When you’re self-employed there’s no room for entitlement.

Big-brand practice
If you’re still not convinced about the value of marketing, think about some of the TV, radio and direct-mail advertisements by well-known brands that you’ve recently encountered. They haven’t stopped marketing their products and services because they already have lots of buyers. Rather, they’re still looking for new customers who value what they offer. So should we.

Looking forward rather than feeling aggrieved
Sometimes the potential client and I will find a place where we’re a good fit, but often we won’t. That’s fine. I don’t begrudge those potential clients who offer me jobs with fees that I think are too low, or those who ask me to quote but choose to go elsewhere (perhaps they like someone else’s price better, or they think someone’s a better project fit) because that’s their informed choice. If I market my business effectively, their choices won’t affect me because I’ll have enough offers of work that are a good fit from elsewhere.

Being discoverable to a bank of potential clients who are prepared to pay you what you feel you are worth enables you to take a positive and forward-looking view of your business, rather than expending negative mental energy on how you’re worse off in real terms than you were X number of years ago.

Summing up
Being the owner of an editorial business means building regular marketing into the foundations of running that business. When we do things to maximize our discoverability and interestingness, we work towards choice. Regular, proactive marketing gives you a bigger pot from which to pick a smaller number of well-paying, schedule-filling hits, some of which will turn into repeat clients. No choice, on the other hand, means settling for what’s on offer. Just remember that those extra-big hugs and sympathetic ‘poor you’s aren’t billable.

Recommended related reading

• ‘The Business of Editing: The Agony & the Ecstasy of “No”’ (Rich Adin, An American Editor, May 2016)
• ‘The Business of Editing: Fee Negotiations’ (Part I, Part II and Part III) (Rich Adin, An American Editor, October 2014)
• ‘Editing rates and negotiating’ (Jake Poinier, Dr. Freelance, November 2015)
• ‘You need to watch your own tail’ (Jake Poinier, Dr. Freelance, October 2015)
• ‘What Low Editing Rates Teach Us’ (Erin Brenner, Copyediting, February 2016)

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Why marketing is just worth it!
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?

• Negotiate?
• Work more efficiently?
• Lobby the industry via a union or professional society?
• Talk a lot about how unfair these clients are being, how disrespectful it is considering the value you bring to the table, how they’re taking the biscuit and making a mockery of professional editorial work?

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.

Related reading

• ‘The Business of Editing: The Agony & the Ecstasy of “No”’ (Rich Adin, An American Editor, May 2016)
• ‘The Business of Editing: Fee Negotiations’ (Part I, Part II and Part III) (Rich Adin, An American Editor, October 2014)
• ‘Editing rates and negotiating’ (Jake Poinier, Dr. Freelance, November 2015)
• ‘You need to watch your own tail’ (Jake Poinier, Dr. Freelance, October 2015)
• ‘What Low Editing Rates Teach Us’ (Erin Brenner, Copyediting, February 2016)

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're a newbie editorial freelancer and are attending this year's annual Society for Editors and Proofreaders' conference in Birmingham, come and grab one of these little voucher cards from me. The voucher entitles you to a 20% discount on the PDF omnibus edition of my business-planning and marketing books.

I'll be arriving on Friday 9 September and leaving on Monday 12 September. If we don't run into each other during one of the sessions, you'll be able to find me by the bar or the coffee machine during the conference!

I'll also be co-hosting a speed session for newbies in which Liz Jones (pricing), Sue Littleford (finance) and I (marketing) will focus on talking you through the basics of building, managing and growing your new editorial business with confidence and enthusiasm: Speed start-up: things newbies need to know.

We look forward to meeting you in September and hope you'll join us for our session!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also the author of Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers, Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business, and Omnibus: Editorial Business Planning & Marketing Plus.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, follow her on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

In ‘On Ethics: The Ethics of Ballpark Quoting’ (An American Editor, June 2016), Rich Adin posed the following questions:

1. Is it ethical for copyeditors to ever do ballpark pricing as a way to induce clients to hire them?
2. Does the editor have an ethical obligation to not give ballpark quotes, because they can mislead a client about the real cost?
3. If the editor gives a ballpark quote, is there an ethical limit to how much the final bill can exceed the ballpark price?

He concluded that the ballpark pricing mechanism is unethical.

Rich asked me whether I’d like to write a rebuttal, given that we disagree on the matter, and I accepted.

You can read my response in full here: ‘On Ethics: The Ethics of Ballpark Quoting – A Rebuttal’.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also the author of Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers, Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business, and Omnibus: Editorial Business Planning & Marketing Plus.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, follow her on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

In Part 1, I looked at why I, and some of my freelancing colleagues, have embraced ballpark pricing. There are, however, some valid concerns about the ballpark quotation that need to be considered before rushing into offering such a service.

Here in Part 2, I take a look at some of these and share how I tackled these for my own business. I do so, however, while respecting the fact that not all of my colleagues have editorial workflows that look like mine. Caution is therefore urged when necessary.

Taking account of project variances …
Wrong focus – money over value …The argument goes that this type of quote focuses 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 customer needs is not always the same thing as what a customer wants. Giving advice to someone who actually just wants a price isn’t good customer service (even if you know that your advice, value, etc. would, in reality, be in their best interests). It’s just aggravating. Personally, I prefer to give my advice later, once I’ve provided what the client asked for – the price.

However, see the section below headed ‘The gap between the ballpark and the actual price – the problem of accuracy’. Adin’s comments are insightful because they remind us that what works for me might not be appropriate for you. If, like him, the kinds of clients you specialize in working for have such complex requirements that a detailed response is the only option, then offering ballpark fees might not be as easy for you to implement as it is for me.

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.

To ameliorate this, consider other ways to emphasize your value at the point where customers are likely to contact you.

I decided to add a list of testimonials to my ‘Get a Quote’ page. You might try this, or make a splash about a particular tool or resource that you offer potential clients.

Furthermore, there’s nothing to stop you responding to ballpark-price requests with not only the estimated fee but also brief information about your relevant unique selling points – imagine you offer a ballpark price to a self-publishing author and that you’ve proofread for many other such clients. You could respond to the ballpark-pricing query with something along the lines of: ‘Thanks so much for getting in touch – a ballpark price for X,000 words is £Y. I’d really appreciate the opportunity to evaluate a sample of your novel and have a more in-depth discussion about how I can help you. I have extensive experience of working with independent writers in your genre – you can see what some of them have said about my work here [link to testimonials page on website]. I do hope we can continue the conversation.’

Payne’s point about using value to make you a more hireable prospect is a good one, 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 a proofreader who can’t follow a brief. If I can’t listen to a client’s request at the very first point of contact, how can I expect them to trust me to listen further down the line?

The gap between the ballpark and the actual price – the problem of 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 are very different from my own. I don’t copyedit ‘2,800-page biology text[s] with thousands of references’ and I don’t have the added complication of negotiating based on ‘whether the required level of editing is “light,” “medium,” or “heavy,” the subject matter, and the number of references and reference style’ (‘The Business of Editing: The Standard Editing Workday & Workweek’, An American Editor, 2016).

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’).

In my rather less complicated proofreading business, these problems aren’t evident. I’ve tracked my data, and my workflows are relatively straightforward, so I have a pretty good idea of how much time it takes to provide a thorough proofread for a client. I’ve not been stung yet by offering this service. But the maximum number of words I’ve ever worked on was 250,000. And that project had been edited before it came anywhere near my desk.

Would I be able to bring accuracy to the table if I was offering more varied and complex levels of editing? Would I falter if I offered indexing or translation services? I honestly don't know because I don't do those things. My response is therefore to ask you to consider whether there are parts of the editorial service you provide, or particular client types with whom you 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.

You could set up a trial and design the service in a way that, to the best extent possible, you ameliorate some of the concerns you have. Then you would 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. Or you could tweak the way in which you present the service. Or you could amend the maths behind the construction of the ballpark quote so that the figures you’re presenting change. It’s up to you.

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 ready yourself for should you decide to undertake the test itself.

Summing up
Think about the types of work you are asked to quote for. Are they complex projects that require an in-depth evaluation in order to even begin working out a price? Or are you generally asked to work on projects whose parameters are more clear-cut? Ballpark pricing may be more applicable to some types of editorial work than others.

Are there questions that you can ask your client to answer as part of the estimation process that would help you to build a ballpark-quotation tool? For example, level of edit required (including links to descriptions), type of work (academic, novel, thesis, webpages etc.), number of words, figures, tables, references.

Are you tracking your data so that you know how long it takes you to carry out a particular level of editorial intervention? It may be that you are a new entrant to the field and so can’t confidently estimate how much time a project will take you. If that’s you, start tracking your data now so that, further down the road, you can use it to help you decide whether ballpark pricing is appropriate for your business (or parts of it) and how you might use this tool to increase customer engagement.
​
If you are curious but nervous, consider testing the use of ballpark quoting with a particular client group or specific type of editorial service.
For some of you, the ballpark price may not be appropriate – ever. For others, it might be a useful tool for some types of editorial work (for example, proofreading for students, businesses or independent authors). For yet others, it may be a mechanism that you can implement universally.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Even if you're a generalist in practice, you should be a specialist when it comes to marketing communications ... that's what I argue in the latest addition to my column on Rich Adin's An American Editor blog. To read the article in full, visit: 'The generalist/specialist dichotomy and the editorial freelancer'.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.