A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

If you're a new proofreader or editor, having a global mindset in regard to choosing reference resources is essential for maximizing editorial business opportunities.

Like many of my fellow editorial business owners, I’m often approached by potential new entrants to the field who want advice about getting started. One of the most oft-asked questions ​is: ‘Which reference resources – style guides, dictionaries and the like – do I need?'

Bear in mind that anyone you seek guidance from in regard to best-fit resources must respect the fact that you might not be from the same place as them, speak like them, have the same potential clients as them, and spell colour/color like they do, or as a client brief asks them to.
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Centrism, whether from the United Kingdom, the United States, or elsewhere in the world, is useless to you as a new entrant because it’s based on false assumptions about you and your potential clients.

Social science ‘styles’ from an international perspective
Here’s a wee case fictive case study. Imagine a new entrant to the editing profession tells me the following:

• They're from California.
• They have a degree in public administration.
• They have work experience in the field of policy research and implementation for a public-services organization.
• They're prepared to use their educational qualifications and work experience as an editing specialism.

Based on this, I suggest that social science publishers and academics would be good initial target markets.

Does my new starter’s location affect their choice of potential publishers clients? It’s not clear cut.

The online world has knocked down those geographical boundaries; you don’t have to spend a fortune to send page proofs to someone hundreds of miles away; you can email them to someone thousands of miles away for the price of an Internet connection.

And how does my new starter’s location in the United States more broadly affect what they need to learn in terms of styles and language preferences? Again, it’s not clear cut.

I see The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) recommended as the sole must-have resource so often in online discussions about editorial work that I worry that new entrants may fall into the trap of thinking that this ‘bible’ alone will tell them everything they need to know.

Super though it is (I love chunks of it for fiction editing), CMOS is not the be all and end all of style guides, because it depends on what a client wants, the subject matter and country-specific language preferences.

The California-based publisher SAGE Publications asks that its copyeditors have a thorough knowledge of both the CMOS and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA).

But note that these are core requirements for SAGE’s US book division. If you want to freelance for the US journal division, you’ll need to add the AMA Manual of Style and The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers to your reading list. (Bear in mind, too, that not all publishers want us to use the most current version of these manuals.)

But why stop there? If my new starter can get work with SAGE in California, might it not be sensible to tap its sister office in London? But in that case, our newbie will also need familiarity with New Hart’s Rules, The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, and Butcher’s Copyediting.

Or what if our new starter decides to target social science academics who are based in the US? They'll need to ask:
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• Will those academics all be writing books for US publishers?
• Will they submit articles only to American journals?

Actually, it’s just as likely that an eminent Boston-based scholar will submit to the European Journal of Political Research as to the American Political Science Review, Scandinavian Political Studies, or the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
This will impact on what our newbie needs to know. For example:
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• Will it be ‘behavior’ or ‘behaviour’?
• Will a comma in a sentence come before a closing quotation, or after?
• Will ‘decision-making’ lose its hyphen?
• ‘Organize’ or ‘organise’?
• Spaced parenthetical en dashes or closed-up em dashes?

Location doesn’t determine readership
Where our clients live doesn’t determine where they publish or the location of their intended readership.

Given that the editorial freelancing market is competitive, it makes sense to exploit the most obvious opportunities.

In the Internet Age, the physical barriers are gone. The only barrier to exploring an international work stream is an inability to appreciate that language conventions and preferences differ according to client (whether that be a particular publisher, a particular independent author, a particular journal), not according to one, and only one, globally recognized set of rules.

Honestly – such a thing doesn’t exist; it doesn’t even exist within many countries.

Diversity of geography, language, and preferences
It’s not so much about where we live, but where our clients live and what preferences they have.

• I live in the UK. I’ve worked with a Swedish fantasy author who wanted to use American terminology but UK spelling with –ize suffixes.
• I've copyedited indie fiction for UK-based authors who wanted to use American spelling.
• I’ve proofread for academic publishers who asked me for US spelling and ‘style’ for one project, and then, two weeks later, sent a brief for a new project that asked for something completely different.
• I’ve proofread law books that used Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA), sociology books that used Harvard, and industrial relations journals that used Vancouver.
• I’ve worked on research-methods books that were styled according to CMOS, linguistics books that asked for APA, and politics reports that used The Economist style guide.
• I’ve proofread philosophy books where the style was … let’s just call it ‘go with the flow’.
• Many of the publishers I've worked for have a ‘house’ style.

If you're a new entrant to the field and are wondering what you need to know, instead of listening to my preferences, familiarize yourself with a number of appropriate resources depending on what your clients want.

Perhaps it’s CMOS; perhaps it’s not. And even if it is, ONLY knowing this could mean you're seriously restricting the base of clients for whom you can work, the types of material you can work on, and the geographical locations you can explore.

So try the following:

• Think about which particular client groups you’re most suited to.
• Do some research that will tell you what those clients require.
• Use that information to inform the decision about which resources to invest in.

If your world revolves around CMOS, it’s possibly a smaller world than it needs to be. And if your world is smaller than it needs to be, so are the opportunities you're exploring in a market that’s already very competitive.

One other item to note. CMOS, CSE, APA, AMA, and the like are style guides; they give you guidance on whether, for example, to close up or hyphenate a compound adjective. They won't necessarily give you extensive guidance on how a word is being used, and whether that usage is considered standard, and in which community.
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Usage manuals, which give that kind of information, are as important as style guides. Using a style guide or a usage manual alone is an invitation to disaster.

Out with borders and in with flexibility
When you’re the owner of an editorial business you need to learn what your clients want you to learn, whether it’s a manual published by Chicago or Oxford, a house brief designed by a team of publisher project managers, a detailed set of guidelines issued by a European NGO, or a short brief issued by an independent author of fiction.

I encourage you to think broadly, globally, and flexibly. If someone tries to guide to towards only one set of ‘rules’, at best their advice will restrict you; at worst it will be just plain wrong or inappropriate.

There is, alas, no simple answer to the question of which resources are best. Instead, careful thought and planning centred around client- and skill-focused research is a good first step. That way, you’ll learn for yourself what resources, tools, and knowledge bases are suitable for you, your potential market, and your particular business model.
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Language usage, styles, and preferences differ – and that’s okay. Don’t let anyone tell you that’s not the case!

Here are 5 things you can do in the year ahead to put a shine on the way you run your editing and proofreading business,

1. Be the editor who says, ‘It’s down to me’
Editors who work in-house edit. As for the other stuff, someone else does that for them – marketing, accounting, branding, heating the building, providing a good-quality office chair ... all of it.

Employee editors can say, ‘It’s not my job.’ Independent editors can’t. Most indie editors don’t have assistants, in-house accountants, IT managers, marketing departments or ready-made brand strategies. 

All of those things are down to us. If we don’t make them part of our job, we risk not being able to put food on the table, not paying our bills, breaching our legal responsibilities, working in an environment that’s physically unfit for purpose and, worst of all, having no clients. And we have to buy our own chairs.

Chairs aside, having no clients means we’re not independent business owners. It means we’re unemployed.

There are bits of my job I’d rather not do. You’re probably the same. I happen to love the marketing side of things but I have friends who loathe it. One of my editor pals gets a kick from using gadgets and spreadsheets that help her manage her invoicing; I find it a bore. That’s fine – we’re different. However, we both must find clients and track our financials, whether we struggle with these tasks or relish the challenge.

Being an editor is not enough. Being an editor is the work we do. Everything else is the work we do to get the work we do and operate in a professional manner.
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Editing is only one part of being an editorial business owner. For our businesses to thrive, we must do all the parts. We can’t afford to say, ‘But I don’t like marketing’, ‘I’m not good with spreadsheets’, ‘I’m not interested in the business end of things’, or ‘I don’t have time to learn how to do those things’, because we’re not employees.

​We have to say, ‘It’s down to me.’

2. Make changes
No one gets it perfect right from the get-go. Running a business is about testing and tracking so that we discover what works and what doesn’t. If things aren’t going as we hoped, we need to be ready to invest in change.

• If our schedules have lots of gaps in them, our marketing needs work.
• If we’re not attracting the clients we want to work with, our branding needs attention.
• If we’re not earning enough to make ends meet, we need to find new clients or tweak our fee structure.
• If we’re attracting clients who let us down, we need to tweak our contracts and terms.
• If our scheduling is muddled, our time management needs fixing.

​Easy to say, harder to do, I know. But change we must. The responsibility lies with us.

3. Don't measure your own success against other people’s raw data
Track your own data and use it to assess the health of your editing business. Your colleagues’ metrics don’t matter because those relate to their businesses, not yours.

And there’s another problem – it’s often like comparing apples and oranges. Here are two examples:

• The data picked up by Google Analytics varies from website host to host. That means any comparison of my Weebly site with a colleague’s Wordpress or Wix site is pretty much meaningless.
• Even when you look at your own data, you’ll get different figures depending on the analytics program you’re using. I access analytics data using StatCounter, Google Analytics and Weebly. None of the numbers are the same, and I don't mean a little bit not the same; I mean a lot not the same. It’s not that two of those programs are wrong but that all three are recording different things.

Does that mean you shouldn’t look at analytics? Not at all. But instead of looking at just the raw numbers, think about longer-term patterns in the data and outcomes (bookings/sales).

​How does this financial quarter compare with the previous one, or this year with the previous one? Have you made changes either on your website or elsewhere that might have influenced your analytics?

We must keep our attention on the end goal. Visitors, page views, shares, likes, follows, comments, connections etc. are only starting-point visibility indicators.

To be meaningful, they need to be considered over time and evaluated within the context of, and measured against, business goals: e.g. requests to quote, confirmed bookings, quality of clients, income, and the length of your wait-list. Otherwise, they’re nothing more than vanity metrics.

As for other people’s raw stats, they tell you nothing about your own business’s needs and goals. Don't spend valuable time worrying about them.

4. Track, plan and schedule
Like all sole traders, independent editors have to do everything themselves, unless they contract out services to, say, a VA, a marketer or an accountant, any of which will incur costs.

We can find ourselves being asked to carry out impossible feats of juggling – too many activities and not enough time to do what must be done. The solution could lie in improved scheduling:
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​(1) Track how much time you spend on social media during work hours and check that all of it is relevant to your business. Be strict with your social engagement – schedule it, and stick to that plan. You’ll save time and be more productive.

(2) Schedule all tasks, not just editing. Invoicing, marketing, replying to requests to quote, and dealing with queries can cause problems when they’re not scheduled. If you have 7 hours a day available for work, allot some of that time to stuff that enables you to run your business.

​That might mean you only have 5 hours a day available for editing, not 7, which means you’ll need to assign a longer period of time to complete each project. If you need to shift things around, fine – there’s a big difference between drinking your tea at a different time and forgetting to switch the kettle on.

5. Create templates and information resources
Templates make life easier and help editors work faster. They can be customized, of course, but the underlying framework is in place, meaning we can focus on tweaking the nitty-gritty so that what we’re creating is specific to the recipient. The following all lend themselves to templating:

• Style sheets
• Editorial reports
• Replies to requests for information
• Invoices

When we find ourselves explaining the same problem to different clients, it’s time to create a resource that we can use indefinitely.

For example, if you’re a developmental editor you might have written numerous reports and queries in which you describe the fundamentals of narrative point of view. Instead of repeating yourself, create a document that outlines the principles in detail.

The initial work will take you time, but once done you can use it over and over.
You can also place that information on your website and use it as a promotional tool. 

Summing up
If you’re looking for ways to make your business life run more smoothly in the next 12 months, perhaps some or all of these 5 tips will help you to save time, increase productivity, and take action.

There are some free templates and other resources in the Further Reading section below. Help yourself.

Happy New Year!
 
Further reading

• How to become a better editor while secretly promoting your business (blog post)
• How to increase your productivity ... the AIR way (blog post)
• How to minimize cancellations and non-payment for editing and proofreading services (blog post)
• Invoicing: Excel template (free: scroll through the resource gallery)
• Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action (blog post)
• Free scheduling template
• Free style sheet template
• Marketing and branding courses and books for editors

If you’ve made yourself visible enough to be asked to quote, that quotation needs to sparkle with value. A poor response is just poor marketing. Here are some ideas about how to offer compelling quotes that go beyond the fee.

Why quoting is a part of marketing
1. You’re not alone
It’s never been easier or quicker to find an editor and get a quotation. That’s great news because any one of us can make ourselves visible. That’s just the first step, though.

Your author has probably asked more than one editor to quote. And so they should have. They’re trying to find the best-fit editor – someone with the right skills, experience, availability, fee structure, and personality.

And just because you’ve made the final three, five, ten (or whatever) doesn’t mean any of you will get the gig. If none of you float the client’s boat, they’ll head back to the search engines and directories in a jiffy. There are plenty more editing fish in the sea.

Never forget the competition when you’re quoting. You’re not alone; you’re one among thousands. Standing out is essential.

​2. Is the author really just asking for a quote?
Most of us have been interviewed at some time. Questions are asked and we respond. But we’re not assessed just on the words that come out of our mouths.

The interviewer(s) will also be influenced (even unintentionally) by how we smile; what we’re wearing; whether we seem friendly, confident and engaged; whether we arrive in a timely manner; and the degree to which the answers we deliver reflect the CV we submitted.

It’s the same when we respond to quotation requests. Our authors, too, will be influenced by the engagement we show, the speed of our response, the tone we use, and whether that matches what they were expecting.

Imagine you and I have just sat down in a restaurant. You ask me what my favourite chocolate is. My response is one of the following:

1. ‘Lindt.’
2. ‘I absolutely love Lindt. It’s delicious. Just thinking about it brings to mind Christmas when I was a kid.’
3. ‘Lindt is my top choice. That company sources high-quality beans from sustainable cocoa-farming programmes.’

If all you want to know is what my favourite chocolate is, then (1) answers the question. But if we’re chatting over dinner, I’m not exactly helping the conversation along. You might think me rather dull. You might be texting Uber. You might already have your coat on.

The other two responses tell you something more about me. Answer (2) might evoke a sense of warmth and openness. Answer (3) might evoke a sense of my political and environmental values. Either way, both show that I’m interested in your question, that I’m prepared to give thought to it.

And maybe I can hold off your Uber text for just a little longer.

Our responses to requests to quote need to demonstrate engagement and thoughtfulness too. Getting a cab with Uber is quick. Deleting an email is quicker.

3. You might be able to change their mind
Perhaps the author’s done their editor search with the intention of sourcing three hundred quid’s worth of proofreading within the next month. Based on the sample you’ve assessed, you think it needs seven hundred pounds’ worth of copyediting. Plus, you’ve got a wait list of six months.

You don’t know what the author’s budget is but that’s not what matters. What matters is that they do, and it’s way lower than what’s in the email you’ve just sent them. And the time frame is just wrong.

When you add value, you might be able to change their mind. Maybe they’ll say:

‘I’d planned to have this turned around within the next few weeks, but you’ve blown me away. You’re worth waiting for.’

Or:

‘I’ll be honest – that’s a lot more than I’d budgeted for. However, you’ve really nailed what I’m struggling with, and I think you’re worth it.’

4. Or they might become your champion
Sometimes you won’t be able to change the author’s mind because the budget or the timing just isn’t right. But that doesn’t mean you won’t stay top of mind. Perhaps they’ll say:

‘I really, really need to get this out now, so I’m going to walk away. But I want you to know that I would have loved you to edit my book. Here’s a testimonial.’

Or:

‘I’m really sad that I can’t afford you. You’re worth every penny. Next time I’ll plan ahead and save up.’

And even though they haven’t hired you, they’ll still be your champion. Perhaps they’ll tell another writer about you, or maybe they will plan ahead with the next book and save up for you.

When you add value, you’re not just quoting for this job, you’re quoting for future jobs too.

5. You’re dealing with people who don’t know you
If you’ve been contacted by someone who’s never met you before, trust issues are already in play. For the less experienced author, sourcing editing can feel like a high-risk venture.

Unlike doctors or electricians, there’s nothing to stop anyone entering professional practice. Editors can’t be struck off.

Here’s what an author recently told me:

‘My problem is one that's all too common across all aspects of the indie publishing landscape. The barriers to entry are few (a website) and the options available to a customer to confirm or verify quality are limited and poor, short of taking a test drive.’

We need to help potential clients confirm or verify quality. Adding value is part of that process.

6. Your brand is at stake
Responses to quotation requests need to be on-brand. Branding is not just about having an eye-catching logo. It’s about conveying the essence of what you stand for at every touchpoint of your business – from your website and business cards to your emails and invoices.

There’s little point in having a compelling website if your quotation responses are forgettable or off-putting.
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Whether your passion lies in editing for students, academics, corporates, or novelists, your quotations need to reflect that passion. Offering value – something beyond ‘This is what it will cost and when I can do it’ – is one way of reinforcing that brand identity and moving away from an any-old-editor mentality.

How to add value to the quote
1. Include a digital swag bag of relevant hero resources
Let’s imagine your evaluation of the sample indicates problems with dialogue tagging and viewpoint.

What if, in addition to telling the author your price and availability, you gave them two free booklets that offer guidance on how they might rectify those problems in the book you’re quoting for or their future writing.

Even if those booklets are on your website, don’t assume the author has downloaded them. Maybe they didn’t get round to it, or perhaps they found you through a different platform.

Hero content adds value in multiple ways:
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• It demonstrates engagement and thoughtfulness – you’re showing you understand what the client’s problems are, and are providing solutions.
• It offers proof of expertise – you have the knowledge, and that helps to build trust.
• It stands out – most editors don’t offer free booklets or free resources.

2. Do a small sample, even if you haven’t been asked to
Even if you usually charge for sample line/copyedits or proofreads of a thousand or so words, consider doing a short one for free. This delivers value in the form of:

• Engagement and thoughtfulness – you’re giving the author something valuable that they can measure or use for comparative purposes.
• Expertise – you’re demonstrating your abilities; showing the difference it would make if the client were to choose you.
• Acknowledgement of subjectivity – you’re helping the author assess whether your style of editing fits their expectations.

3. Provide a teeny critique
Another option is to offer a mini critique of the sample they’ve sent. I’m not suggesting a five-page report, but rather a few paragraphs that summarize the main problems as you see them, illustrated with a few examples.

As with the free short sample edit, it’s something they can use, and it demonstrates your knowledge of and engagement with their craft.

This is an opportunity to show not only how you’d get under the skin of the writing, but also how working with you would push the author’s project forward.

​4. Be a little personal
How about including a personal snippet that responds to something in their enquiry that truly resonated with you?

• Perhaps they mentioned being inspired by a love of a particular author’s published works. If you’re a fan, too, tell them.
• Maybe they told you this is their first novel. If you’re an editor who’s written fiction, tell them so, and include a few words to show that you understand what it’s like to start out on the writing journey.
• Did something about the premise of their novel really stand out for you in the sample? Maybe you’ve visited a place they mentioned, or have a personal fascination with an aspect of the life/culture/society/history etc. that their story touches on.
• If they’ve expressed concerns about anything – fear of being edited, confidentiality, new-author nerves, then express your empathy and address those issues with solutions.

Whatever you choose to communicate, remember that it’s a small personal connector that says, ‘I get you.’

Don’t make it up. It must be genuine ... the thing that excites you and reflects your desire to invest in the book. When we feel that itch, we’re starting on a journey too, one that compels us to do a standout job. Communicating this in some small way can help you to earn the author’s trust.

5. Show your enthusiasm
Don’t forget to make sure that you sound like you want the job! ‘This is what is will cost and when I can do it’ won’t inspire confidence in any author who’s even slightly nervous about working with an author … not on its own.

If, like me, you love your job, and think it’s a privilege to get paid for doing something you love, use language that conveys that passion. Tell your potential clients that you want to work with them, that you’d relish the chance help them with their writing journey.

Talk to them about the price and your availability, of course. That’s what was asked for and it must be front and centre.

That’s where you should start … because when it comes to the fee you’re offering, it’s not enough to think, I’m worth that. Worth has to be proved. And in a noisy, global online market, that takes effort.

If that effort helps you secure the opportunities to work for your ideal clients, it’ll be time well spent. An editor with no work is not running a business; they’re unemployed. Every minute we spend adding value to our quotations is an investment in employment and business ownership.

Let me know what you do to add value when you quote for work!

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​With thanks to my fellow editors Cally Worden and Lesley Jones for their inspiring comments and suggestions.

This free booklet offers one example of how an editor or proofreader might approach testing which pricing model works best for their editing and proofreading business.

I discuss how and why I collect data, and the macro and micro insights I've gained that have helped me to grow my editorial income stream.

Hope you find it useful!

Click on the image above to download your copy.

Apostrophes confound some authors. Not knowing how to use them doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, but getting them wrong can distract a reader and alter the meaning of what you want to say. This guide shows you how to get it right.

What does an apostrophe look like?
The apostrophe is the same mark as a closing single quotation mark: ’ (unicode 2019).

This is worth remembering when you use them in your fiction to indicate the omission of letters at the beginning of a word. More on that further down.

What do apostrophes do?
Apostrophes have two main jobs:

1. To indicate possession
2. To indicate omission

And sometimes a third (though this is rarer and only applies to some expressions):

3. To indicate a plural

​1. Indicating possession
The English language doesn’t have one set of rules that apply universally. However, when it comes to possessive apostrophes, the following will usually apply:

Add an apostrophe after the thing that is doing the possessing.
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• If there is one thing – one noun – an s follows the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural noun is formed by adding an s (e.g. 1 horse; 2 horses), no s is required after the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural is formed irregularly (e.g. 1 child; 2 children), an s follows the apostrophe.

Possessive apostrophes and names
Names can be tricky. The most common problem I see is authors struggling to place the apostrophe correctly when family names are being used in the possessive case, even more so when the name ends with an s.
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Here are some examples of standard usage to show you how it’s done:

Note that in the Melanie Fields singular-possession example, there are two options. Both are correct but some readers will find the second more difficult to pronounce because there are three s's a row.

Hart’s Rules (4.2.1 Possession) has this advice: 'An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x, or z sound […] but an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in pronunciation, typically after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable.’

If you're unsure whether to apply the final s in a case like this, use common sense. Read it aloud to see if you can wrap your tongue around it, and decide whether the meaning is clear. Then choose the version that works best and go for consistency across your file. Pedantry shouldn't trump prescriptivism in effective writing.

2. Indicating omission
Indicating omission when one word is created from two
In fiction, we often use contracted forms of two words to create a more natural rhythm in the prose, particularly in dialogue. The apostrophes indicate that letters (and spaces) have been removed.
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Common examples include:

Indicating omission at the beginning, middle and end of single words
We can use an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing at the end of a word (dancing – dancin’), the middle of a word (cannot – can’t) and the beginning of a word (horrible – ’orrible).

Start-of-word letter omissions are commonly used in fiction writing to indicate informal speech or a speaker’s accent.

Make sure you use the correct mark. Microsoft Word automatically inserts an opening single quotation mark (‘) when you type it at the beginning of a word because it assumes you’re using it as a speech indicator.

Apostrophes are ALWAYS the closing single quotation mark (’) so do double check if you’re indicating omission at the start of a word.

Indicating omission in numbers and dates
Plural numbers don’t usually require an apostrophe because there’s no ambiguity. In fiction writing, it’s common to spell out numbers for one hundred and below, but even when numerals are used, no apostrophe is needed for plurals.

Omission-indicating apostrophes at the beginning of dates are acceptable according to some style manuals. In the example below, the 1970s is abbreviated. It’s conventional in UK writing to follow the NHR example below.
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In fiction, however, you can avoid the issue by spelling out the dates. This is universally acceptable, and my preference when writing and editing fiction.

3. Indicating a plural with an apostrophe
When indicating the plural of lower-case letters – for example, if you want to refer to two instances of the letter a – it’s essential to use an apostrophe because the addition of only an s will lead to confusion.
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In the non-standard examples below, you can see how the plurals (in bold) form complete words, resulting in ambiguity.

For that reason, it’s considered standard to use an apostrophe (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online 7.15 and New Hart’s Rules 4.2.2).

When indicating the plural of upper-case letters, the apostrophe would be considered non-standard because there’s no ambiguity.

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes and possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are the bane of the apostrophe novice’s writing life, especially its!

The following possessive pronouns NEVER need an apostrophe: hers, theirs, yours and its.

• it’s = the contracted form of it is (or it has)
• its = the possessive pronoun

​If you’re unsure whether to insert an apostrophe in its, say it out loud as it is. If it makes sense, you need an apostrophe; if it doesn’t, you don’t!

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes in plural forms
The apostrophe novice can fall into the trap of creating plural forms of nouns by adding an apostrophe before the final s.

Summary
I hope you’ve found this overview useful. It isn’t exhaustive – there are entire books about apostrophes. Fucking Apostrophes is one of my favourites.

However, when it comes to fiction writing, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about more than the basics covered here.

If you’re stuck on where to stick your apostrophe, feel free to ask me for guidance in the comments.

Further reading

• Fucking Apostrophes (Simon Griffin, Icon Books, 2016)
• How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article and free booklet)
• Punctuating dialogue in fiction (video series on my YouTube channel)
• New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

​In this article, I offer 12 tips on how to make your book file editor-ready.

Interior book design is something that should be carried out after your book’s been edited, not before.

If you’re creating a printed book, post-design page proofs are perfect for the proofreader because they can check not only your spelling, punctuation and grammar but also the layout.

Page proofs are either hard-copy or PDF versions of the book that are laid out exactly as they will appear in the final printed version.

You and your proofreader will be looking at what the reader would see if they were to walk into a bookshop, pull the title off the shelf and browse through the pages … almost. The proofreader’s job is to ensure that any final errors and layout problems have been attended to before the book is printed.

For a comprehensive overview of what needs to be attended to when proofreading designed page proofs, read this: Proofreading checklist: How to check page proofs like a professional.

With copyediting (and proofreading raw-text files for digital books), it’s a different story ...

Working with raw-text files
If you are asking a professional editor to work on the raw text of your book, follow these 12 recommendations to ensure that the file is editor-friendly.

The good news is this: it means less work for you, not more, because you’re not having to design anything … not yet, anyway.

1. File format
Most professional fiction editors work in Microsoft Word. That’s because, despite the odd glitch, it’s still the best word-processing software on the planet.

It has a range of excellent onboard tools that help your editor style the various elements of your text consistently, and quickly locate potential problems that might need fixing.

Word is compatible with a host of macros that complement the editor’s brain and eye. That means they can add an extra level of quality-control to the edit efficiently.

Even if you’ve written your book in a different program – for example, Scrivener, Google Docs or Apple Pages – place the text in a Word file before you send it to your editor. You’ll get a better-quality book edit, I promise.

2. Number of files
Unless you’ve agreed with your book editor to work serially – i.e. on a chapter-by-chapter basis – create a single master file that contains the full text of your novel.
If you send them 75 separate chapters, all they’ll do is combine them into one file … after they’ve finished weeping with frustration.

Editors want to ensure that your book is consistent – that Kathyrn doesn’t become Katherine, Catherine or Cathryn. There are Word plug-ins that can help them identify problems like this efficiently but they’re only effective if the editor is working with a single file.

The same applies to ensuring that the various elements of your text are formatted consistently. For example, it’s conventional for the first paragraph in a chapter or section to be full-out (not indented). Your editor can use Word’s styles palette to define the appearance of a first paragraph.

Once the style has been set, it’s a case of applying it to every relevant paragraph in the file. If they don’t have a master file to work with, they’ll have to create a new style for each one of your 75 chapters or import that style for the same.

Fiction editors love master files, and they will love you if that’s what you provide.

3. Fonts
You might have decided to use an unconventional font for your book interior. You’re perfectly entitled to use any font you choose ... just spare a thought for your editor’s eyes.

When it comes to the editing stage, stick to something like Times New Roman, size 14. It’s a serif font, which means it’s easy on the eye. The less your editor struggles to read the text, the better the quality of their work.

4. Colours
I recommend you use black text on a white page. Again, it’s about readability.
​
The white text on the coloured blocks below certainly stands out, and the contrast is visually appealing, but for editing purposes it’s a challenge.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to copyedit a fabulous book for an indie author. The pages were black, the text pink. The first thing I asked him – no, begged him – was for permission to change the file’s appearance to something more conventional.

He agreed to save the quirky colourway for the design stage and I was immensely grateful. So was he. I’d have had to increase my price because I would have edited more slowly.

5. Paragraphs
Open any novel on your bookshelf and it’s likely you’ll see a text layout something like this:

Those indented paragraphs are not made using the tab key. Instead, use Word’s ribbon to create proper indents.

To find out how to create a body-text style with proper indents, watch this video tutorial: Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles.

6. Spacing
At line and copyediting stage, don’t worry about how many pages your text covers. Instead, give your editor a file with the lines spaced so that the text is easy to read. Setting the line spacing at 1.25 or 1.5 works well for a font size of 12 or 14.

The line spacing function can be located by right-clicking on text and selecting PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the INDENTS AND SPACING tab. Then amend the LINE SPACING field.

7. Chapter headings
Your editor will adore you if you assign your chapter headings with one of Word’s heading styles:

You can even modify the style so that it automatically starts on a fresh page.
Right-click on the heading style, select MODIFY, then FORMAT, then PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the LINE AND PAGE BREAKS tab. Check the PAGE BREAK BEFORE box.

Why is this useful?

• It means you won’t need to hit the return button 23+ times to get the cursor to the top of the next page when you begin a new chapter.
• You’ll provide your editor with a quick way of ensuring that all chapters are listed chronologically because they’ll appear in a list in Word’s Navigation menu. If your chapters are numbered, any problems will be easy to identify.

8. Page numbers
In a raw-text work of fiction, there’s no need for page numbers or other headers and footers.
​
Word records the page number in the bottom-left-hand corner of the screen of a PC, and that’s what an editor will refer to if they need to direct your attention to a specific page.

If you plan to upload a later version of your file for ebook creation, your page numbers will need to be removed anyway.

If you’re printing, save the page numbering for design stage.

9. Section breaks
I recommend introducing three asterisks (***) to indicate a section break. You can change them at design stage of course, but they’re handy at editing stage because your editor can see that you intend for there to be a section break.

Why not just have a line space? Because sometimes a writer will accidentally hit the return button twice. Your editor will have to spend time working out whether the break is intended rather than focusing on the flow of your text and any errors that need correcting.

10. Pictures/images
If your editor needs to check copy against images and their captions, consider placing these in a separate file.

Images, especially high-resolution ones, will increase the size of your book file massively, and slow down refreshing when the editor saves. And your editor will save once every few seconds.

Sounds bonkers, doesn't it? But the editor who doesn't save regularly is the editor who finds they've lost a precious half-hour's worth of editing because there was a power cut, or a hurricane, or the oven exploded, or whatever.

And when they come to email your edited file full of hi-res images, it will be so huge that they'll have to use an external cloud-based transfer service. The file will take an hour to load (unless they have rubbish broadband speed, in which case it will take two or three hours).

They'll do the transfer in the evening so that it doesn't slow them down while they're working, meaning their teenage kid will start moaning and giving them that look because Netflix is buffering or Minecraft won't load, or something equally devastating. Save us, I beg you. 

On top of all that, amendments, deletions, and additions to the text will cause your carefully placed images to shift into spaces you didn't intend. Better to leave image placement to interior-design stage. It'll save you and your editor time and tears.

​11. Manual tables of contents
If you've created a table of contents in a Word file prior to copyediting, there's a good chance that a chunk of your page numbers and some of the chapter titles will be wrong by the time your editor has finished. 

Of course, you can pay them to fix these too. But that could add an extra hour's work onto your bill. Worse, you'll be wasting your money because when the book's interior is designed, everything will change again.

I know this because when I proofread for publishers (and that means I'm working on designed page proofs that have been edited multiple times and designed by a professional interior formatter) the table of contents is always messed up.

Sort out your table of contents before you do your final design, not at copyediting stage. It'll save you money, I promise.

12. Manual index
I'm adding this one in for non-fiction writers, just in case you're reading.

If the page numbers against a table of contents get messed up during copyediting, the damage to an index is nothing short of catastrophic.

It's not just the page numbers, but the indexed entries too. Spellings might change, so might compound hyphenation. Some key terms will have been removed or changed. Others will have been added.

Indexing should come after proofreading, ideally, but certainly not at copyediting stage.

Summing up
These are just suggestions, not book law, editing law, any kind of law. However, your editor will love you if you make life easier for them, not because they’re lazy but because they want to focus on making your narrative and dialogue sing rather than formatting text so that it’s readable.

There’s absolutely a time and a place for great interior design, but pre-editing stage is not it. Save yourself the bother and keep it simple.

For more raw-text tidy-up tips, grab this free booklet: The Author’s Proofreading Companion.

Fancy watching a video instead? Here you go!

There's a new podcast in town ... or there will be in January 2019! And it's all about editing and writing for indie authors.

What is it and who is it for?
Editing your book is essential, whether you do it yourself or work with a pro. This podcast will explore ways in which independent authors can make their publishing journeys easier.

If you want to learn how to improve your writing and self-editing with tips, tools and guidance, The Editing Podcast is for you.

Who are the hosts?
Denise Cowle and Louise Harnby are your hosts. We thought it would be fun to have two of us talking with each other rather than one of us talk at you. 

Plus, we have different but complementary specialist experience, which means we can cover more topics with authority.

​Why should you bother listening?
Because we really do know what we're talking about!

• We're experienced professional editors who've edited millions of words in fiction and non-fiction.
• We're Advanced Professional Members of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
• We're champions of independent publishing, although we both have extensive experience of working with mainstream publishers too.
• We provide training for fellow editors to help them improve their skills and grow their editorial businesses.

We have a lot in common! Having said that, our editing passions have gone in different directions. Denise is a non-fiction editor while Louise is a fiction specialist. That means we can ensure the episodes are balanced, and of value to indie authors regardless of subject or genre.

What we'll be talking about
We currently have over 50 topics lined up for discussion. Here's a selection that will give you a flavour of what's in the pipeline:

• The different levels of editing and the order of play
• The benefits of working with a professional editor
• How much pro editing costs, and how you can save money
• Self-editing tools
• Style manuals: what they are and how you should use them
• Common problems in beginner writing and how to solve them
• Sample edits: costs, benefits and evaluation
• Style sheets: what to include and how to use them
• Working with editors from other countries: benefits and challenges
• Zombie rules: why what you were taught at school isn’t necessarily best for your writing.
• Spelling variations
• Formatting guidance based on industry standards
• The editing you need if you're working with an agent
• Publishing lingo explained

When and how often will we air?
Season 1 of The Editing Podcast will air weekly from January 2019.

Each season will include 10 standalone episodes of complementary topics. That means you can listen to them when you want and in the order of your choosing. 

You'll be able to access the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, our Libsyn podcast page, and both our websites.
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Get in touch or subscribe
We’re really looking forward to making your writing and editing life easier! To stay in the loop, visit The Editing Podcast’s Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

And if there's a problem you'd like us to solve on the podcast, get in touch.

If you're a first-time writer, working out which editorial services you need help with and what you can do yourself can be tricky. Is proofreading enough or do you need additional assistance? A key question is: How does your reader dance?

Here's a free PDF booklet that covers the key issues. In it, you'll find guidance on:

• The different levels of fiction editing: developmental editing, line editing, copyediting and proofreading
• Which services you might need: including thoughts from Silo series author Hugh Howey
• Your readers' perspective: are they free-wheelers or pedants, and how might this impact on reviews and sales?
• What's possible at proofreading stage: why your proofreader isn't a magician

Click on the image below to get your free copy.

Good proofreading practice means acknowledging that changing one word, or moving one line, can have unintended and damaging consequences throughout the rest of the book if we aren’t careful.

If we want to proofread for publishers, packagers and project-management agencies, or if we're checking self-publishers' print-on-demand books, we need to be comfortable with working on page proofs. 

What are page proofs?
The proofreader will usually be asked to work on page proofs. What are they?

​In this case, the proofreader does not amend the text directly. They annotate the page proofs.

You might be required to work on both hard-copy page and PDF page proofs – it will depend on the client’s preference. You'll be looking for any final spelling, punctuation, grammatical, and consistency errors that remain in the text. However, you'll also expected to check the appearance of the text.

Checks will include the following:

• the running heads match the chapter title
• the chapter title matches the entry in the contents list
• the design of the various text elements is consistent (e.g. correct font, text size, use of bold/italic, consistent capitalization, correct paragraph indentation, line spacing, etc.)
• the chapter title drops are consistent throughout
• the text on facing rectos and versos (right-hand and left-hand pages) is balanced
• in-text citations are presented according to preferred style and can be located in the book's references or bibliography
• footnote/endnote markers are present and correct in text and correspond to relevant footnotes/endnotes
• odd page numbers always appear on recto pages
• bad word breaks are flagged
• part titles always appear on new recto pages

​​This isn't a comprehensive list but it gives you an idea of how this type of proofreading goes beyond just checking the text for typos. Click on the image below to access this free proofreading checklist if your client doesn't supply you with one.

What's important here is that every amendment you suggest might have an impact somewhere else. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the amendment; it means, rather, that you need to be mindful of the consequences of your actions – the knock-on effects.

What are knock-on effects?
Professional proofreaders often refer to the indirect consequences of their mark-up as knock-on effects. A useful way of thinking about this is in terms of dominoes because it provides us with the perfect description of what’s at stake.

Imagine you've lined up four dominos: A, B, C, and D. You push over A and it pushes over B. B then knocks over C, which in turn causes D to fall. Domino D’s topple was caused indirectly by Domino A, even though A didn’t touch D.

This process can occur on page proofs and can have serious consequences. The changes we make can, if we’re not careful, impact on the text flow, the pagination, the contents list, and the index.

An example
Here’s an example to illustrate the point. Imagine the publisher’s brief tasks the proofreader with attending to orphans and widows (those stranded single lines at the bottom or top of a page).

Solutions that involve instructing a typesetter to shuffle a line backward to a previous page, or forward to the next page, in order to avoid the widow/orphan might cause one, or all, of the following problems:
​

• The repositioning of a line onto a different page automatically forces a reflow of text. Things look fine for the next six pages, but on the seventh page after the amendment was made, a new orphaned or widowed line has now appeared. The previous arrangement of the text prevented this.
• Let’s imagine that the seventh page is still widow/orphan-free. But the reflow of text means that this seventh page now contains a line that appeared on the previous page. This line includes a keyword term that is cross-referenced 130 pages later. The cross-reference is now incorrect.
• The index is being created simultaneously by a professional indexer. It’s not uncommon for proofreaders to never see the index, nor to spot check it. The line that’s been repositioned on a different page contains an author citation that is included in the index. The indexer doesn’t know what the proofreader’s done, and the proofreader doesn’t know which terms are being included in the index. Neither of them knows that the index entry now has the wrong page number attached to it.

In all three cases, the proofreader has prevented one problem but caused others. Consequently, good practice involves more than blindly placing mark-up instruction on any given page.

Thought needs to be given to how the problem can be tackled and the impact managed so that there is no knock-on effect. Spotting an orphaned or widowed line is not enough. We might also have to consider the following:

• Providing additional instructions to the typesetter regarding to how to manage the problem by compensating elsewhere on the page (e.g., increasing or reducing line spaces and page depths, new line creation, etc.) so that the impact of moving one line is restricted to the page where the change has been made and its facing recto/verso.
• Telling the project manager about the suggested line move so that the manager can inform the indexer.
• Looking out for obvious key words or citations in lines that have been moved to check whether they are cross-referenced in the text (having a PDF, even when working on hard copy, is a must in these circumstances).

Summing up
If you’re considering training as a proofreader and want to be fit for the purpose of marking up page proofs, check that your course includes a component about knock-on effects.

Even when we are supplied with detailed briefs about an ideal layout, the publisher client expects us to be mindful of the consequences of our amendments. The proofreader’s job is to find solutions to problems in ways that don’t cause unintended damage.

(An earlier version of this article was first published on An American Editor.)

Here are 10 tips to help you prepare the way for editing and proofreading fiction for independent authors and self-publishers.

If your editorial business is relatively new and you’re keen to specialize in fiction editing, there are some core issues that are worth considering. Some of these certainly apply to other specialisms, but fiction does bring its own joys and challenges.

You'll need to be sensitive to the fact that your clients may not be familiar with conventional editorial workflows or the terms we use to describe them!

​Clarify what the client expects, especially when using terms like ‘proofreading’ and 'editing'.

• Most authors who ask for proofreading actually want what editorial pros would traditionally call copyediting – checking and correcting the raw text files in Word (usually using Track Changes).
• Editorial pros themselves don’t use universal terminology. One editor’s copyediting could include developmental work, while another's could be strictly sentence-level editing.
• Offer advice on the different levels of editing, and be honest about which ones you’re capable of supplying.

​

​Clarify the extent of revision required before you agree a price.

• A final quality-control check for spelling, punctuation, grammar and consistency errors may be the least of what’s required.
• Deeper problems may exist that ideally would have been attended to at an earlier editing stage – for example, problems with clarity, plot holes or inconsistencies, repetitive words and phrases, mangled sentence structure, dangling modifying clauses – all of which disfigure the text.
• Your copyediting could well include line editing – that takes longer and has to be factored into the budget.

​

​Find out how many stages of professional editing the file has already been through.

• If you’re the first, it’s more than likely that you’ll make thousands of amendments.
• Perfection, while aimed for, will be impossible unless you have superpowers!
• Make it clear that one pass is not enough to ensure that every literal and contextual error is attended to.
• Be honest about what’s possible within the available budget.
  

​

​What’s required according to the editorial pro and what’s desired by the client (owing to budget or some other factor) could well be two very different things.

• You’re entitled to decline the work if you feel you can’t do what the client wants, given what hasn’t gone before.
• The client is also entitled to not take their book through four stages of professional revision if they choose. If they want your help and you think you can help, and you’re both clear about how far that help can go, then by all means work with the author. If you prefer to wave goodbye, then that’s fine too.

​

​The authors we’re working with are at different stages of writing-craft development.

Some are complete beginners, some are emerging, others are developing and yet others are seasoned artists. If they’re in discussion with us, it’s because they think we can help.

• Even the beginner and emerging writers I’ve worked with have many strengths. Perhaps the sentences are awkward and repetitive, and yet the story they support and the characters who live within the narrative are amazing.
• An editorial report that summarizes strengths and weaknesses can help the author to develop their craft. I don’t provide professional manuscript evaluations/critiques or development/structural editing. That doesn’t mean I can’t tell the client what I liked, what I think they can work on, and where they might go to develop their skills.
• My editorial summaries range from a few paragraphs to a couple of A4 pages depending on what I find. They don’t take long to produce because I jot down notes as I work through the books – short reminders to myself about the points I want to make.

​

​Sometimes the author and the editor are simply not a good fit for each other. In the case of fiction, this can be because the editor's can't emotionally connect with the story.

• If, for example, deeper line editing is required, the editor will need to ‘get’ the author, be able to feel their way into the soul of the text so that they can polish without stripping out the author’s voice or style of writing.
• Repeating the mantra ‘It’s not my book’ can help but the ability to mimic the author is often intuitive more than anything else.
• If you don’t feel that intuition kicking in when you see the initial sample of the book – if it’s not grabbing you – it might well be necessary to walk away unless you’re being hired for micro correction work that focuses on spelling, grammar, punctuation and consistency.

​

​There are challenges and benefits to fiction editing and proofreading.

• On the one hand, fiction lends itself to flexibility with regard to strict adherence to pedantry, especially when that pedantry does more harm than good.
• Editing and proofreading fiction is in some ways nowhere near as technically demanding as an academic project with a book-length style guide attached to it and a reference list of a similar length.
• On the other hand, however, that very flexibility makes fiction work trickier too. Improving prose so that it meets publishing-industry standards while retaining authenticity of voice, flow, mood and style requires not a little artistry.
  
• If you've been hired to copyedit or proofread, you might not expect to have to deal with viewpoint problems. Still, they arise often enough with self-publishers that it's worth understanding how POV works so that you can query or fix. This post is how I explain it to beginner crime-writing authors but the principles apply across genres: A beginner's guide to narrative point of view in crime writing.
• Being emotionally responsive to the text is essential. That's a difficult thing to learn on a course. 
• Every change or suggestion needs to be carried out gently and elegantly so that the editor’s input is invisible to the reader. Some editors and proofreaders steer well clear of fiction; for others, it’s the best job in the world! There’s no shame in deciding it’s not for you.

​

​Unless you’ve previously worked with the author, work on a short sample so that you know what you’re letting yourself in for.

• Sometimes it’s only by actually working on a piece, rather than just reading it through, that you get a sense of where the problems are and whether you’re capable of solving them within the asked-for brief.
• This will help you to get the fee spot on, too, because you’ll be able to extrapolate how long it should take to complete the project.

​

​All querying requires diplomacy, but fiction needs a particularly gentle touch.

• Your authors have poured their hearts and souls into their novels. When you’re highlighting problems or suggesting recasts, it’s essential to get the tone right so that you don’t come across as critical.
• If it sounds like I’m stating the obvious, bear in mind that when you’re drawing attention to dangling modifier number 87 and you’re only on Chapter 5, it’s easy for notes of frustration to creep into your comments! I know this because one of my regular authors joked with me that she’d sensed this in my commenting in one of her books. Eeek! That made me pull my socks up.

​

Some of our self-publishing clients are pulled a thousand-and-one ways every day. And, yet, they’ve found the time and energy to write a book. We must salute them.

Some are right at the beginning of the journey. There’s still a lot to learn and they’re on a budget; they’ve not taken their book through all the levels of professional editing that they might have liked to if things had been different.

Some haven't attended writer workshops and taken courses, and they probably never will – there’s barely enough time in the day to deal with living a normal life, never mind writing classes. They’re doing the best they can.

With that in mind, respect the journey.

• We're professionals and we're hired to fix problems. If your author has struggled with a sentence and made an error that you think is amusing, fix it or suggest a recast, and move on.
• Don't share that error in an editing Facebook group (regardless of that group's privacy settings) so that you and your colleagues can have a giggle about it. Our clients are the people who pay our mortgages and food bills. None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes. We're hired to sort out these problems, not use them as fodder for relaxation and networking.
• Those 'closed' online groups can feel like private, intimate spaces where we can chat and let off steam with a select group of editor friends, but that's not what's happening in reality. What goes online, stays online. If you're sharing a head-desk moment, it can be seen by hundreds, perhaps even thousands of other editors, most of whom don't know you (though they might just know your author).
• If you're in doubt about whether you're oversharing, ask yourself how you would feel if you were the author. If the words 'hurt', 'offended' or 'disrespected' come to mind, you know what to do (or not to do).
• That the author's name hasn't been mentioned isn't an excuse. We are being paid to edit the words, not share unintentional blunders with 500+ colleagues. At best it's rude and unprofessional. At worst, it's a breach of privacy.
• If you need guidance from colleagues on how to recast or make sense of a piece of writing, create a fresh example that illustrates the problem and ask them for advice on that, not the original.
• Plus, if authors never made mistakes, we'd be redundant. And there's nothing funny about being an unemployed editor.

​We must always, always respect the writer and their writing, and acknowledge the privilege of having been selected to edit for them.

Those are my 10 tips for working with indie fiction writers! I hope you find them useful as you begin your own fiction-editing journey!

And drop me a note in the comments if you think I've missed anything out!

Three questions for you:

1. Do you hate marketing, or at least dislike it?
2. How about editing or proofreading. That’s your job. Do you like it?
3. What about learning how to do your job better? Those courses you take, books you read, and conferences you attend – do you enjoy those?

​
​If the answer to all three is yes, you’re in marketing heaven!

I’m not kidding you. If you love learning about how to do your job better, and are prepared to make time in your business schedule for this continued professional development (CPD), you have at your fingertips all the marketing tools you need.

Here’s another question:

Do you think there comes a point when you’ve learned all there is to learn about being a better editor?

If you answered no to that, you’re in even better shape from a marketing point of view because you will never run out of ideas to connect with your target client.

And here’s another question:

Do you think you have no time in your schedule to learn how to become a better editor?

If you answered yes, you need to make time. Every editor needs to continue learning. Our business isn’t static. New tools, resources and methods of working are a feature of our business landscape. Language use changes as society’s values shift. Markets expand and retract, which requires a response from us in terms of how we make ourselves visible.
​
If you answered no, that’s great news because it means you have time for marketing. I know – you don’t like marketing. But that’s fine because we’re not calling it marketing. We’re calling it CPD, which you do like!

Making time for business
Everyone who knows me knows I love marketing my editing business. Lucky me – it’s much easier to do something necessary when you enjoy it.

What a lot of people don’t get is how I make time for it and how I get myself in the mindset to devote that time to it.

I don’t have a problem with calling it marketing. But the truth is that so much of the marketing I do is not about marketing; it’s about communicating what I’ve researched and learned.

I love line and copyediting crime fiction. I think I’m really good at it. But I don’t think I’ve learned everything there is to learn. Not for a single minute.

That leaves me with stuff to do. I have to learn.

So off I go to various national editorial societies’ websites. I head for their training pages. I look for courses that will teach me how to be a better crime-fiction editor.
There aren’t any.

I turn to Google. Plenty of help for writers, but not specifically for editors. That’s fine.
And so here’s what I’ve done: read books about crime writing, and attended workshops, author readings, and crime-writing festivals (I live a stone’s throw away from the National Centre for Writing and the annual Noirwich festival). And I’ve continued to read a ton of crime fiction.

And to help me digest what I’ve learned, I’ve taken notes along the way. It’s what I’ve done all my life when I’m learning – O levels (as they were called in my day), A levels, my degree … notes, notes and more notes.
​
How much time has it taken? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been having too much fun. I love reading; I don’t count the hours I spend doing it. How long did the author event last? I’ve no clue. My husband and I had dinner afterwards though, so it was like a date. And it would have been rude to look at my watch.

Is it a blog post?
I wrote a blog post recently about planning when writing crime. I couldn’t churn out 2,000 words just like that; I’m not the world’s authority on the subject.

So I referred to my notes from the event with a famous crime writer (the one where I had a dinner date with hubby). Turns out the guy talked about planning, and told us about his and a fellow crime writer’s approach to the matter. I reread a chapter from a book on how to write crime and found additional insights there. More notes. I read 14 online articles about plotting and pantsing too. Yet more notes.

And then I put all those notes together, which really helped me to order my thoughts. I created a draft. Redrafted. Edited it. And sent it to my proofreader. Soon I'll publish it and share it in various online spaces.

It’ll be on my blog and on the dedicated crime writing page of my website. Some people might call it content marketing. And it is, sort of, because it helps beginner self-publishers work out when they will attend to the structure of their crime fiction – either before they start writing, or after.

From that point of view, it is useful, shareable, problem-solving content, which is a perfectly reasonable definition of content marketing.

Or is it CPD?
But look at it another way. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know before. I can use that knowledge to make me a better editor.

I took notes and drafted those notes into an article. This is no different to what I did at least once a week at university. I wasn’t marketing then; I was learning.
​
What is different is that no one but my professor was interested in my article. That’s not the case for my planning piece. That article will help some self-publishers on their writing journey. A few might just decide to hire me to line or copyedit for them.
It’s happened before. Maybe it will happen again tomorrow, or next month, or next year. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter – the article will stay on my site for as long as it’s relevant.

Change your language
If the idea of marketing your business leaves you feeling overwhelmed, rethink the language you use to describe what’s required.

You probably don’t consider attending an editorial conference a marketing activity, even though it might lead to referrals. It’s more likely you think of it as a business development and networking opportunity.

You probably don’t consider a training course to be marketing. It’s more likely you think of it as editorial education.

You probably don’t consider reading a book about the craft of writing to be marketing. It’s more likely you consider it knowledge acquisition.
​
So how about this?

• Pick up a book, attend a course, watch a webinar, complete a tutorial – whatever you think will teach you how to be a better editor and do a better job for your clients. This is training.
• Make notes based on that research. This is embedding knowledge.
• Turn those notes into something readable, just like when you were at school or uni. This is writing an essay.
• Place that essay somewhere other than your teacher’s in-tray. Like a blog or somewhere on your website where a potential client might learn from it too. This is publishing research.
• Now use social media to drive awareness about that essay. It’s a kind of open-access thing … just like the academics do. This is sharing subject knowledge.

Training, embedding knowledge, writing essays, publishing research, sharing subject knowledge. Smashing stuff. Nicely done.

And between you and me, it’s great content marketing too. But, shh, let’s keep that quiet. I know you don’t like marketing.

Make your marketing about your editing
If you don’t like marketing, maybe that’s because the kind of marketing you’re doing isn’t likeable. In that case, think about what you do like about running your business, and make those things the pivot for your marketing. [Click to tweet]

In other words, it doesn’t need to be about choosing between marketing your editing business and learning to be a better editor, but about the former being a consequence of the latter. Two birds. One stone.

Me? I’m off to read the latest Poirot. Just for fun, mind you!

This article shows you what it might cost to get your novel copyedited or proofread. However, the short answer is: it depends ...

• on the individual editor
• on which industry surveys and reports you read
• on the required turnaround time
• on the complexity of the project

This post headlined in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #94

I’ll look at each of these points in turn, then offer you some ideas of what you can do to reduce the financial hit.

First of all though, a quick word on whether you should bother and, if you do, what type of service you should invest in.

Do you have to work with a professional editor?
Not at all – it’s your choice. That’s one of the biggest benefits of self-publishing. You get to stay in control and decide where to invest your book budget.

However, I absolutely recommend that your book is edited ... by you at the very least, but ideally by a fresh set of eyes, and even more ideally by a set of eyes belonging to someone who knows what to look out for. And the reason for that recommendation is because 99.99% of the time, editing will make a book better.

We can all dream about first-draft perfection, but it’s pie in the sky for most, even those who edit for a living.

I’m a professional line editor, copyeditor and proofreader, and today I wrote a guest blog post for a writer. I wrote, and then I edited ... first for content, then for flow, then for errors. I found problems with each pass.

That’s not because I can’t write. It’s not because I can’t string a sentence together. It’s not because I didn’t edit properly in the first round. The reason I found problems is because writing is one process – editing is another:

• When we write, we’re focused on the telling of the story – and all writing tells a story of one kind or another, whether it’s fictional, academic, professional, technical or scientific.
• When we edit for content, we’re looking at the big picture – whether the structure works.
• When we edit for flow, we’re looking at the sentences – how they work and feel.
• When we edit for errors, we’re going even more micro – spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency.

And the different types of editing attend to different kinds of problems and have different outcomes. Trying to do everything at once is like trying to mix a cake, bake it, ice it, eat it, and sweep up the crumbs all at the same time.

Breaking down the writing and editing processes into stages is a lot less messy, and the quality of outcomes is much higher.

Still, that has a cost to it, and it’s a cost that the self-publisher will have to bear because there’s no big-name press to bear the burden for them.

Cost of editing: the individual editor
The independent editing market is global and diverse. Editors specialize in carrying out different types of editing. Some specialize by subject or genre. They have different business models and varied costs of living. And that means that despite what you might read in this or that survey, there is no single, universal rate.

Neither is there a universal way of offering that rate:

• Some editors charge by word
• Some editors charge by hour
• Some editors charge by page
• Some editors offer a flat fee

My preference is to charge on a per-1,000 words basis. My 2018 rates are around £17 per 1,000 words for line/copyediting, and £13 per 1,000 words for proofreading, subject to seeing a sample of the novel.

If I’m asked to work on a novel serially, as I’ve recently agreed to, the price goes up to £22 per 1,000 words because of the additional challenges involved and the economies of scale that are lost.

So it depends on the parameters of the project.

Some editors charge more than me, some less, and some the same. My colleagues live all over the world, and fluctuations in the currency-exchange markets mean that comparisons will yield different results from day to day.

Cost of editing: industry surveys and reports
Some professional organizations suggest or report minimum hourly rates for the various levels of editing. They’re ballparks, nothing more, for reasons outlined below the table.

ARE THESE RATES REALISTIC?
​​Do these figures bear any relation to what individual editors charge? Sometimes but not always. Most organizations recognize that these reported prices don’t always reflect market conditions, and they’re right to do so. Many editors and proofreaders, myself included, aim for rates at least 30% higher.

Why? Because that’s what it takes for our businesses to be profitable. Editing and proofreading aren’t activities we do in our spare time. They’re careers that enable us to pay the bills. If we can’t meet our living costs, we become insolvent, just like any other business owner.

The problem with these ballparks is that they don’t reflect the speed at which an individual works, the complexity of each job, the time frame requested, or the editor’s circumstances.

An additional problem is that how these organizations define ‘proofreading’, ‘copyediting’ etc. might not reflect an author’s understanding of what the service involves, or what an editor has elected to include.

And then there’s the age-old issue of currency-exchange rates. What might seem a high rate to you one day could turn into something quite different the next, and not because the editor’s or the author’s life has changed, but because of Trump, or the Bank of England, or a hung parliament here, or a banking crisis there.

Bear in mind that independent editors are professional business owners, and just like any other business owner they are responsible for tax, insurance, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity/paternity entitlements, training and continued professional development, equipment, accounting, promotion, travelling expenses, pension provision, and other business overheads.

Cost of editing: turnaround time
The table below gives you a rough idea of the speed at which an editor can work. Again, we’re dealing with ballpark ranges because the true speed will depend on the complexity of the project and how many hours a day the editor works.

Experienced editors have years’ worth of data that enables them to review a sample of a novel and estimate how long a project will take based on the level of editing requested.

The figures in the table above represent a working day of around 5 hours of actual editing. Additional time will be spent on business administration, marketing and training.
​
Here’s how costs might begin to creep up. Imagine you ask your editor to copyedit your 80K-word novel. The editor estimates the job will take 50 hours, or two weeks. You need it in one. If you want to work with that editor, they’re going to have to work 10 hours a day, not 5. That means they have to pull 5 evenings on the trot in addition to their standard working day.
​
That evening work is when they spend time with their families, recharge their batteries, catch up with friends, support their dependents, carry out the weekly food shop, help their kids with the homework ... normal stuff that lots of people do.

​If you want them to work during that time, it’s probably going to cost you more. For example, I charge triple my standard rate because my personal time is valuable to me – and to my daughter, who will need bribing!

Cost of editing: the complexity of the project
The more the editor has to do, the longer the job will take and the higher the cost.

Some authors might not be aware of the different levels of editing and what each comprises. And editors don’t help – we define our services variously too!

​For that reason, sometimes it makes sense to move away from the tangled terminology and focus on what each project needs to move it forward. An author might ask for a ‘proofread’ but the editor’s evaluation of the sample could indicate that a deeper level of intervention will be needed ... something more than a prepublication tidy-up.

​I’ve copyedited novels whose authors had nailed narrative point of view at developmental editing stage, so I didn’t have to fix the problem. I’ve also copyedited novels in which POV had become confused. The sample-chapter evaluation highlighted the problem, and I had to adjust my fee to account for the additional complexity.

How to reduce your editing costs
So, there we have it – 1,300 words that tell you not what editing and proofreading will cost, but what they might cost, depending on this, that, and everything else!

Here are some ideas for how to reduce your costs.

GENERAL MONEY-SAVING TIPS

• Do some pre-editing prep. Familiarize yourself with the different levels of editing so you do the right kind of editing at the right time. This booklet offers some guidance: Which Level of Editing Do You Need? 

• Call on friends, family and writer buddies. It goes without saying that you want people on board who have the appropriate language and story-craft skills.
• Plan ahead to avoid premium fees for rush work. Start sourcing your editor several months before you need them – that way you can find the right editor to fit your needs and your budget. Here’s some guidance on how to find editorial professionals: How do I find a proofreader, copyeditor or developmental editor?
• Get quotes along with sample edits. These will enable you to compare how the work of several different editors, and what they're charging, makes you feel. Some editors charge a small fee for samples to cover the couple of hours they devote to the project.

SAVING MONEY ON DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING
Hone your story craft by reading books, taking writing courses, and joining writing groups through which you’ll be able to access fellow scribes! You can critique each other’s work and help each other with self-editing. I recommend these books:

• How Not to Write a Novel (Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman)
• The Magic of Fiction (Beth Hill)
• Write to be Published (Nicola Morgan)

Rather than commissioning a full developmental edit, you could pay for a critique or manuscript evaluation, or a mini edit. Those will help you to identify what works and what doesn’t so that you can make the adjustments yourself.

SAVING MONEY ON LINE EDITING
Hone your sentence-level mastery, again through books, courses and groups.
Some editors offer mini line edits for this stage of editing too.

​Here, the editor offers a line-by-line edit on several chapters and creates a report on the sentence-level problems with the text with recommendations for fixing them. The author can then refer to the mini line edit and mimic the sentence smoothing and tightening.

This kind of service is particularly useful for beginner authors who already know they’re prone to overwriting.

SAVING MONEY ON COPYEDITING
Learn how to use Word’s amazing onboard functionality, and macros and add-ins that flag up potential errors and inconsistencies. Here are some tools you can use:

• Watch this video. Use Word’s styles to format the various elements of your book consistently: Visit my Writing resources page and scroll down to this video: Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles
• Download this booklet and use find/replace to locate and remove a whole bunch of nasties: The Author's Proofreading Companion
• Create a style sheet, so your editor doesn’t have to. This article includes a free style-sheet template: What's a style sheet and how do I create one? Help for indie authors
• Run a spell check
• Hunt out words you often confuse using this macro: Using proofreading macros: Highlighting confusables with CompareWordList
• Check the consistency of your proper nouns with this macro: A nifty little proofreading and editing macro: ProperNounAlyse
• Create a word list and check your spelling consistency using TextSTAT: How do I find spelling inconsistencies when proofreading and editing?

SAVING MONEY ON PROOFREADING
​If you’re working on designed page proofs, there are a series of checks you can take your novel through.
​

• Download this checklist: How to check page proofs like a professional
• Proofreading is the final prepublication tidy-up, but if you’re working in Word you can also use the tools I listed in the copyediting section above.

That’s it! I hope this article has given you a sense of what you might have to spend, and how you might be able to save during the editing process.
​

If you're suffering from yet another dry spell, this free webinar will help you get editing and proofreading work in the next few days and weeks.

I'll show you 10 steps you can take to move out of famine mode quickly.

​Forget theory. This is all about doing ... step-by-step guidance on short-term fixes that will give you peace of mind in the now, and head space to dig deeper in the future.
​

• AUDIENCE: Editors and proofreaders whose cupboards are bare
• ​PRICE: Free
• RUNNING TIME: 46 mins
• ACCESS: Available instantly – no login or sign-up required
• WHAT YOU GET: Webinar and PDF resource sheet
• CAPTIONS: Subtitles/closed captions are included

​
Click on the button below to access the video and the PDF.

PerfectIt is the premier consistency-checking software for many professional editors and proofreaders around the world. Developer Daniel Heuman and I sat down for a chat about what's new!

So Daniel was in New York, and I was in a tiny hamlet in Norfolk called Panxworth. Despite the 6,000 miles between us, the construction works going on outside his apartment, and the internet-connection problems in my somewhat rural neck of the woods, we managed to produce a video of our chinwag!

​For those of you who want to jump to specific parts of the conversation, here are the key themes and associated time stamps:

​▶️ Louise introduces Daniel Heuman, developer of PerfectIt: 00:00:00
▶️ What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful: 00:00:24
▶️ PerfectIt Cloud – the new solution for Mac users: 00:04:08
▶️ Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?: 00:06:12
▶️ The subscription model and a new lower price: 00:09:27
▶️ The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support: 00:12:27
▶️ PerfectIt and Office 2016: 00:14:54
▶️ PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both? 00:18:35
▶️ Features of PerfectIt 4: 00:20:24
▶️ Sign-off: 00:25:44

​And below is the conversation in full. Click on the Play button to begin listening. I've included subtitles in case you need to turn the sound off or can't understand our British accents!

There's a full transcript below. I've edited this for readability but essentially it's the words as they were spoken on the day.

THE VIDEO

​THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Louise introduces Daniel Heuman
LH: My name is Louise Harnby and I’m a fiction editor, and today I’m going to be talking to the founder of Intelligent Editing and the developer of a piece of software beloved by many editors all over the world. And that’s PerfectIt.
 
Before Daniel and I start chatting about all the PerfectIt news, Daniel’s going to tell us a little bit about what PerfectIt does, because some of you might not know. So over to you Daniel!

What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful
DH: Thank you! It’s lovely to speak to you! This is very exciting. I don’t know that they’ve ever done a video interview like this before so thank you! OK. PerfectIt – for the people who have not come across it before (which is probably exactly who won’t be watching this, but hopefully they are!)
 
LH: You never know!
 
DH: You never know! Exactly! So PerfectIt is mostly consistency-checking software, and the key place where it comes in is that when you’re editing work it’s almost always under, you know, time pressure, and with a pressure to produce perfect work.
 
It’s ultimately dealing with the fact that everything is going to be on a budget. So given a limited time, what is the best document you can produce? And PerfectIt really fits in there. It saves time; it helps you edit faster.
 
And the way I was trying to explain it the other day was at the ACES conference. I have new way of explaining it ... I thought a little bit about what gets people into editing. And I think that without delving into the deep psychology of what makes anyone an editor, I think one of the things that does not drive people is the difference between tiny consistency mistakes.
 
So, yes, it’s fun sometimes when you spot ‘e-mail’ with a hyphen in one place and not in another but mostly that’s not what’s driving people. People get into editing because you care about words, you like reading, you care about communication, you want to explain stories, you want to help people connect better with readers.
 
And these little tiny mistakes that take so much time to spot are not the reason. They are a distraction. They’re significant because they jump out at readers but they’re not the reason why we get into this. And they’re certainly not the reason why one should be spending a lot of time on a document.
 
LH: And you’re so right because they take so long to deal with. I’ve had manuscripts before where, actually, particularly if an author’s got a budget, people like me are spending perhaps hours and hours and hours when we’re using just our eyes, dealing with these tiny inconsistencies, which as you say are red flags.
 
And, yet, actually what we want to do is immerse ourselves in the narrative in front of us and to make it better. And the more time we can spend focusing on the flow of the words ... because every time you come across a hyphen that’s inconsistent, or inconsistent capitalization, as an editor, you’re dragged out of the flow of the work as well.
 
And so being able to do that, to save time by having a piece of software like PerfectIt to do that for you is just wonderful. And you still get the pleasure of knowing that you’re bringing this consistency to the work. But it is back-breaking doing that manually. I think that’s the thing that a lot of editors feel. It’s just back-breaking work.
 
And I would rather an author paid me to do other things with my time. I want them to feel that I’m going to do those things but I don’t want to have to spend more time than necessary doing it, and that’s where your software comes in.
 
DH: Absolutely, and we put on the homepage something like: you spend the time on what matters most, which is your words and their meaning.
 
LH: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it.

PerfectIt Cloud – the solution for Mac user
LH: So, Daniel, in the past, PerfectIt’s only been available to Windows users.
 
Well, that’s not quite true. I do have Mac-using friends who have been able to use PerfectIt but they have to be running something like Parallels, or I think it’s called VM Fusion Ware or something. Or they’ve had to go buy a cheap Windows laptop.
 
So I suppose that’s the thing that everybody’s talking about. Like, what’s new for Mac users?
 
DH: That is the news! So first off, it’s been touching and amazing, the extent to which people have been going to use PerfectIt.
 
Like you say, they’ve been installing Parallels. People have been buying computers to run this program, which is touching. I know that buying another computer doesn’t cost as much as it used to but, still. But for Mac users who hate Windows and just run it for one program has been phenomenal to see. But yes, no longer!
 
So we are producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is ... you’re going to have to forgive ... in the background you can probably hear the construction noise! I’ll do my best to speak over it. So we’re producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is an Office Store add-in.
 
And the great thing about Office Store add-ins is that they are compatible in any version of Office 2016. So if you are on a Mac, if you’re on a PC, if you’re on an iPad, even in Word Online (which I don’t know that anyone actually uses), no matter which version you’re on, you see the same add-in. So the functionality is exactly the same across.
 
And we’ve been developing this for ... I mean, you know, the amount of times people have heard me saying, ‘A Mac version is coming soon. It’s just a few months. It’s just a few months.’
 
But, no, as of 26 June we will have PerfectIt Cloud, which brings compatibility to Mac and to iPad for the very first time. So it’s really exciting!

Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?
LH: So what about Windows users? I have PerfectIt 3. I’ve had all the versions since it first launched. I work on a PC. Should I rush out and get PerfectIt Cloud?
 
DH: In a word, no. So the introduction of PerfectIt Cloud is primarily for Mac and iPad users at this stage. So if you’re using PerfectIt 3, if you’ve got a Windows PC, that’s still going to be the best version that we offer.
 
And it’s going to be strange because PerfectIt Cloud looks so much better! The interface is even easier than it was before. It’s a beautiful product, but underneath there are a few things that PerfectIt 3 can do that we haven’t been able to do for Cloud yet.
 
So the most important one of those is customization of styles. That’s still going to take some time to bring into PerfectIt Cloud. The ability to check footnotes – we’re going to be dependent on Microsoft for them to make some changes before we can bring that in.
 
So if you have PerfectIt 3, if you have a PC, in most cases the thing to do is not to rush out, and not to buy this at least until we produce a new version for the PC, which will be PerfectIt 4.
 
There’s one exception, which is, you know, all those people who ... the ones, the amazing wonderful users that you’ve described who have gone and bought VMware, and Parallels, and even separate computers.
 
A bunch of those users are really frustrated with having to turn them on every time, and going through Windows updates, which take forever. And just to get PerfectIt up and running takes two hours. And it’s saving them a lot of time so they do it, but if you’re one of those people who has both a PC and a Mac, in those cases, yes, you would.
 
Not all the options are included but it’s close enough that you may not want to be uploading and updating your Windows computer each time just to run PerfectIt.
 
LH: Yeah, and I suppose also for people perhaps who are, I don’t know ... I was thinking about the increasing number of editors who are location-independent. And, actually, maybe they don’t always have the latest ... you know, they’re don't want to be worried if their computers break ... and the idea perhaps of just knowing that it doesn’t matter which PC you’re on, or which Mac you’re on, that if you’ve got something, a machine in front of you, you can do your work and you can access the core functionality of PerfectIt wherever you are.
 
And that’s an important thing, I guess. I mean, I’m not location- independent. I am very much dependent! I’m in Norfolk with a rubbish broadband speed and so I’m kind of quite keen to keep things offline and local when I can. But knowing that I’ve got the choice – that will be a big issue for me.

The subscription model and a new lower price
LH: Can we talk about price now? Because in the past, once every two or three years, you bring out a new version, and I’ve paid you, I don’t know, $90? I can’t remember the price off the top of my head. So that’s the way it’s worked. But you’re doing things slightly differently now, aren’t you?
 
DH: Yes. So we are switching to a subscription ... sort of a subscription.
 
And I know the minute I use that word people are turning off this video, don’t want to know anything more. because everyone is sick to death of subscriptions with, you know, Netflix and Amazon, and, oh my God, you can get a subscription for your vegetable delivery now, which is bonkers!
 
But I think what we’re doing is really different to that. We switched to a once-a-year payment. At this point at least, there’s no handover-your-credit- card or anything like that. You pay each year if you want to continue using it.
 
And switching to that kind of model means we can drop the price by a lot. So instead of being a $99 one-off purchase, we’ve made it $70 per year.
 
And on top of that, we’ve really dropped the price for, you know, independent editors. So we’ve worked with as many of the editing societies around the world as we can – certainly all the big ones – to have a kind of a discount.
 
And that’s going to be an additional 30%, so the price is going to be just $49 per year for independent editors who are, you know, a member of any of the big editing societies anywhere in the world.
 
So subscriptions mean we can get down the price down a lot, and they mean we can create a really compelling, simple offer, which is that you will buy PerfectIt and then you will get any version you want on any number of devices you want, and not pay a separate charge, which I think is really what bothers a lot of people.
 
So you buy PerfectIt and you can install the PC version on your PC, you can install the Cloud version on your iPad. You only pay once for that and you don’t get stuck with that additional charge you described, which was the upgrade charge.
 
So, yes, we used to have a one-off price but people liked this product and much more than 60% of people paid the upgrade price anyway. So, really, there was a hidden recurring element.
 
And by switching to ... we can call it a subscription, we’ve made everything included in that price very transparent. And you get all the upgrades, you get all the updates, you get support. So I think the way we’ve switched the pricing is really gonna be attractive, and especially attractive for independent editors.
 
The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support
LH: I think it’s wonderful because, I mean, I’m a big fan of the subscription model, even with things like Microsoft Office, because I’m a professional, I want the latest software, and I want it to work in an environment that’s stable as well. And so I like having the most up-to-date version of Word.
 
I had a situation a few years back when I first plonked a download of Windows 10 on my Windows 8, or Windows 7 computer or something, and I was trying to get PerfectIt to operate in an environment basically with two operating systems, and guess what? It wasn’t happy.
 
And so at that point ... because PerfectIt was key to my editorial day-to-day working, it was one of the things that triggered me to actually think, ‘You know what? You need to get yourself an up-to-date computer with the latest operating system already installed, so it's not fighting with anything else.’
 
And to know now that I’m always going to be running the latest edition of Word on the latest operating system and that the plugins that fit into that software, like PerfectIt, are going to be the latest editions too ... for me, that’s just one less worry.
 
It means that I can get on doing the business of editing rather than thinking, ‘I want to be able to do X, Y or Z but I can’t because it’s broken.’
 
And so I’m really excited about this because, as you say, it’s upfront, it’s clear, everybody knows what they’re gonna pay and what they’re getting.
 
And you mentioned something there as well, and that was the issue of support. Because in days past, it was the case that if you decided to stick with an older version of PerfectIt you wouldn’t have access to you.
 
And sometimes, you know when you get stuck on things, you just want to be able to ask the person who actually really knows the answer. It’s not guesswork. And knowing that that’s always going to be ... you get the full package. So I’m really excited about it. I think it’s a really good deal.
 
I think the price is a steal as well. And for those of us who are members of professional societies, what a perk of membership to know that you can get one of your core pieces of editing software at such a huge discount! Thank you!
 
DH: Yeah, those societies and the editors within them are absolutely the reason why we are where we are today. That’s been the core of this business so now I absolutely think that it’s important to support them.
 
PerfectIt and Office 2016
DH: And I agree with you completely about thinking about Office and updates that way.
 
I know that a lot of editors have been disappointed when we’ve said that PerfectIt Cloud is only gonna work in Office 2016. And they said, ‘Well, I’m never moving to Office 2016 because I’ve heard all these terrible things about it.’
 
And I just wonder every time I hear that ... I think, I know those stories are true – when you have a piece of software like Microsoft that is installed everywhere then you always are going to have some things that don’t work and that are gonna get on Facebook. And they’re gonna look to seek help. And they’re always going to be the ones who have some kind of problem.
 
You never get someone who installs the latest version of Microsoft and says, ‘Yep, that worked’ and tells all their friends.
 
So our perception of these versions has been really sort of distorted by, I think, the relatively lower number of people who have had problems in perspective to the total, in relation to total.
 
And as you say, when you actually look at the package and what Microsoft are offering, I think it’s really good. And I’m fortunate that I’ve never had any sort of problems with it. I’ve used Word on the iPad, I use Word on the PC. I think they’ve done a really good job of making those two similar and in line. In the past, there’s been big differences between those things.
 
You know, I was able to switch as a long-time PC-user to the iPad version. I had no trouble doing that. And they do it at a low monthly price. And what I’ve sort of been saying to anyone who’s asked about it is something like, yes, there are some users who’ve had problems, and there have doubtless been lots of glitches, and there always are with endless Microsoft updates, but what about trying it for one month? They offer a monthly price. And see if it works for you.
 
And you’ve got your old version and you can always go back, but those old versions, they’re at this point ... you know, Microsoft has stopped supporting Office 2011 anyway, so we’re out of that period really.
 
Yeah, I think I think as you say, the package they’re offering is very good, and especially the kind of value in the monthly offer. It makes a lot of sense.
 
LH: Yeah, and I think the other thing to mention is that, you know, I think sometimes there are people in, well, not just the editing community but all sorts of communities who are trying to run say 2016, or with all the updates, 2018 software but on decade-old computers.
 
And that’s a bit like taking your mobile phone to medieval times and complaining you haven’t got signal!
 
You know, we need as editors to be, I think, working with the latest equipment. Within a budget, of course. Most of us aren’t rich. But I always think, get the best RAM you can ... get the best processor you can for your money.
 
And then things like PerfectIt, within Word, within Microsoft Office, will work the best for you.
 
DH: Absolutely! And we all make these mistakes! I’ve been screaming at my printer all morning and pressing over and over again, and wasting so much time trying to get this printer to work.
 
And I know the reason why it doesn’t work – it’s because it’s really old, and would cost next to nothing to replace.
 
But, you know, we’re old enough to remember that these things used to be very expensive, and it’s so difficult to get rid of them. But, actually, you know, when running a business, to spend my morning yelling at a printer is probably not the best use of my time!
 
PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both?
LH: So can I just check something with you? Can we talk then about the next version of PerfectIt that will be also usable locally?
 
So we’ve got PerfectIt Cloud but there’ll come a point I’m assuming when there’ll be the next version, like PerfectIt 4 that will be in the cloud. Will that also be something that someone like me who’s got a little bit of an iffy broadband connection can, if they want to, download to their computer?
 
DH: Oh, so we are NOT moving to the cloud in any way, shape or form. We’re doing very much that kind of approach that Microsoft has gone for where you pay once and you have different parallel versions for different devices.
 
We are not switching to the cloud. There will always be a local version. As I said earlier, it’s still kind of the best version for a number of reasons.
 
And so at the moment, if you get a subscription, you will get PerfectIt 3 and PerfectIt Cloud, and as of the end of this year you’ll get PerfectIt 4 and PerfectIt Cloud.
 
And we’ll keep the two in parallel so that they’re running off ultimately the same code, so that you’ll get the update for PerfectIt 4 locally, and at the same time, almost at the same time, we will update PerfectIt Cloud automatically, and they’ll offer the same checking.
 
LH: OK, great, that’s good. I just wanted to be sure of that because ... just because my broadband is a bit of a nightmare here!
 
DH: No, no, I don’t think we communicated that properly in our in our literature so it’s a really good question to ask. I’m sure a lot of people will be concerned about that.
 
Features of PerfectIt 4
LH: So can we talk about ... do you have any specific plans for what will be new with PerfectIt 4 yet, or can we suggest things?
 
DH: Well, obviously, I’m going to dodge that question because the trouble with that question is that if I start saying we’ve got plans for PerfectIt 4, that we’re working on ... I suspect if I start saying the things that I’m working on, the disappointment that will follow when we say we’ve failed ... [laughing].
 
But I like the idea of suggestions. As I said, this business has very much been built by support from editors, and feedback from editors.
 
So if we wind the clock like all the way back to the first time that I was at SfEP conference, I remember someone mentioning en dashes and and why they could be in the hyphenation-consistency check.
 
And let’s let’s be honest, at that point, which was been ten years ago or so, I didn’t understand the significance of that. Why would we need to be looking for en dashes and hyphenation? What’s the point?
 
And actually it was that feedback which we then took on. And it got quite a few people explaining and saying, well, actually, this is the error that we’re looking for. This is what comes up. It’s really difficult to spot because of this. Is there anything you can do?
 
And I think it was in PerfectIt 2 but certainly in PerfectIt 3. And we’ve built in an en dash versus spaced-hyphen consistency check.
 
LH: And em dashes too.
 
DH: Yes, the way we do the checking for those is a little different but, yeah, it ultimately came down to the same reason, which is editors suggesting that these were the things that they wanted to see.
 
And I’d love to get those suggestions for PerfectIt 4. So, particularly ...
 
LH: I’m thinking legal and medical might be obvious.
 
DH: Yes, legal. I’ve got a long, long list of changes that we want to make for legal, but medical, pharmaceutical scientific ... I know we have a lot of editors working in those kinds of fields and I feel like we haven’t done as much for them as we should and could.
 
So I’d love to get suggestions from every kind of editor, but especially those ones would be really good, because we need to do more in that area.
 
LH: And speaking as a fiction editor as well, I think there are certain functions I’m using ... the possibilities are there but there are certainly things I could think of in terms of the similar-word-find function that maybe even we could put forward some suggestions that might help you to push that stuff further forward, and help us to adapt the style sheets more so that we could get more benefits in that field too.
 
And I’ll certainly be thinking if there’s anything else from a fiction point of view that I can push your way.
 
DH: Definitely. You know, we always get a nonfiction writer saying, ‘Can this be used for nonfiction too?’ We get fiction writers saying, ‘Can it be used for fiction?’ And we hadn’t been quite communicated clear enough that, yes, it’s for all of those things.
 
And, yeah, the similar-words function. Lots of people are using that for character names. Can we improve that? Can we make it clearer that that’s a possibility for character names? Can we look and see if there are ways of improving that?
 
And already you have got me talking about features that I swore just two seconds ago I wouldn’t get into! Some of those things people are really gonna be telling me, ‘But you promised, but you promised!’
 
I will avoid saying more about that but I am excited by that kind of change and by doing things that are specific to different kinds of editing, for sure.
 
LH: I think from my point of view as an editor, and for people who are watching this who haven’t tried PerfectIt yet, knowing that you’re responsive to ways in which you can develop the software is a really important thing to emphasize, because the various iterations that I’ve used over the years have just got better and better. And that means I’ve saved more and more time.

And so I want to say to people that when you invest in this software you are working with a company and a business owner who will listen to you, and that's a good thing.
 
DH: Thank you! And my guess is that at this point in the video, between the dogs barking outside and the helicopter going overhead, anyone who is completely new to this software will probably have stopped watching 20 minutes ago!
 
But, yes, anyone with us longer hopefully has experienced that we are ... it’s actually the other way around. It’s editors who’ve helped build this and made all this stuff possible, so we are absolutely listening, and will continue to iterate and improve.
 
If we improve the product for actual editors, everyone else who uses the software benefits. And, you know, we really have the best people in the world advising us, so I think it’s fantastic.

Sign-off
LH: Daniel, thanks very much! That’s been really, really useful. So I’m excited about ... not just the cloud but also PerfectIt 4 coming out. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to use it on multiple platforms, in different spaces. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to get it cheaper than I did last year!
 
So thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been brilliant.
 
DH: Thank you! And thank you for all the support through all the years.
 
The excitement and enthusiasm is so encouraging after we’ve been telling people, you know, soon, soon just another month, just another couple of months. Now that it’s done, now this here, it’s fantastic! Thank you.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the best posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

My thanks to this month's contributors!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• 2018 goals: Midyear update by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘At the end of 2017, I published my Year in Review and Goals for 2018. I promised I’d post a midyear update to take stock of where I’m at now with my business, so enjoy!’
• 5-minute branding by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘This quick exercise will help you sharpen your written voice and add consistency to all your communications.’
• Compromise or opportunity? How does your editing garden grow? by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Running an editing or proofreading business is a journey, not a moment in time. Some of us will be offered work that’s not ideal. Is accepting this work a compromise or an opportunity?'​
• How to use bubble charts to get a snapshot of your clients' value to your business by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘A bubble chart is a great way to get a snapshot of your clients’ value to your business, both monetarily and in terms of how much you like working with them. It can provide helpful clarity about how you conceptualise your clients’ value to your business, enabling you to set smarter goals for the future.’
• Pricing models II; or why a per-word rate benefits freelance copyeditors by Jeanette Fast Redmond, published on the FastEditing Eye. Jeanette writes: 'I review a common pricing model for copyediting – namely, the per-word rate – and examine how a per-word rate lets freelancers separate money from time in our pricing models.'
• Pricing models IV; or why copyeditors should pitch a flat fee (and why clients should accept) by Jeanette Fast Redmond, published on the FastEditing Eye. Jeanette writes: 'These days I often convert my word rate to a project rate so I can pitch a flat fee to my copyediting clients. In this post I look at project rates, or flat fees: what they are, why to pitch them, when to pitch them, and how to calculate them.'

​CLIENT FOCUS​

• A beginner's guide to narrative point of view in crime writing by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Beginner authors sometimes get in a tangle with narrative POV. This post offers an overview, and features examples from published crime fiction.'
• Author revision time: what should you do after you’ve received your sample edit? by Lesley Jones, published on Perfect the Word. Lesley writes: ‘Authors sometimes have between a few weeks and several months to wait from receiving their sample edit and the substantive work commencing. Should they be thinking of tweaking their manuscript during that time in the light of their editor’s comments?’
• Be irresistible: The secret of good scientific writing by Claire Bacon, published on Bacon Editing blog. Claire writes: ‘Many scientists think that their writing should be dull and complicated. I challenge this view and explain how to liven it up.’
• How to get an agent by Rachel Rowlands, published on The Parlour. Rachel writes: 'If you want to get published traditionally, agent are key. Getting an agent is competitive, and it isn’t easy. I hope my journey and what I’ve learned along the way will inspire you and help you.'
• Theses and dissertations (part 1): An easy way to make sure tense is consistent by Beverley Sykes, published on Superscript Proofreading. Bev writes: ‘Tense is almost always inconsistent in the theses and dissertations I work on, but you can easily avoid this by following the simple guidance I suggest in this blog post.’
• Theses and dissertations (part 2): How to avoid inconsistency of style by Beverley Sykes, published on Superscript Proofreading. Bev writes: ‘Inconsistency of style might seem like a difficult problem to sort out, but there is a really simple way of tackling this early on to save yourself time.’

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• When editorial project managers expect too much by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘When a project manager expects too much of a freelancer – or of themselves – it can introduce the risk of things going awry. This post considers three key ways to mitigate the risks that will inevitably arise in text-based projects of all sizes.’

LANGUAGE MATTERS

• A very sweary dictionary by Kia Thomas, published on Kia Thomas Editing. Kia writes: 'I like to swear, so much so that last year I decided to do daily tweets of my sweary style choices, under the hashtag #TheDailySwear. This post is a compilation of those tweets, resulting in a resource you never knew you needed – a dictionary of compound swearwords.'

• How Star Trek: The Next Generation predicted meme culture by Madeleine Vasaly, published on Twin Cities Geek. Madeleine writes: ‘A comment that editor and linguist James Harbeck made at the ACES conference in April comparing the classic Star Trek episode "Darmok" and how we use memes online inspired me to write a whole article about the subject. I reached out to James and to “Internet linguist” Gretchen McCulloch for insight.’

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Have proofreading symbols passed their use-by date? It’s a controversial question, but one that we definitely need to ponder. So, as an unconventional ‘celebration’ of 30 years in publishing, Melanie Thompson is setting out to answer this question – and she needs your help ...

Over to Melanie ...

​A few months ago a colleague asked me whether (UK-based) clients want proofreaders to use British Standard proofreading symbols or whether they prefer mark-up using Acrobat tools on PDFs.

‘Good question,’ I replied. ‘I hope to be able to answer that later this year.’ That probably wasn’t the answer they were expecting.
 
The widely different expectations of clients who ask for ‘proofreading’ has been niggling at the back of my mind for a couple of years.

What's changed in three decades
I have been a practising proofreader for 30 years, I’ve managed teams of editors and proofreaders, and I’ve been a tutor for newcomers to our industry. Yet I still learn something every time I proofread for a new client.
 
It’s several years since I was last asked to use BS symbols for a ‘live’ project,* but I use them a lot on rough draft print-outs – because they’re so concise and … well, let’s face it, to some extent those symbols are like a secret language that only we ‘professionals’ know. I like to keep my hand in.
 
But proofreading is now a global business activity, and ‘proofreading symbols’ differ around the world – which kind of defeats their original objective.

And now so many of us work on Word files or PDFs (or slides, or banner ads, or websites or … ) and there are other ways of doing things.
 
This all makes daily work for a freelance proofreader a bit more complicated (or interesting (if challenges float your boat). We might be working for a local business one day and an author in the opposite hemisphere the next.

It’s rare, but not unheard of, to receive huge packets of page proofs through the mail and to have to rattle around in the desk drawer to find your long-lost favourite red pen. Usually, however, things tend to arrive by email or through an ftp site or a shared Dropbox folder.

Digital workflows

The ‘digital workflow’ is something we’re now all part of, whether we realize it or not. But clients are at different stages in their adoption (or not) of the latest tools and techniques, and that leaves us proofreaders in an interesting position.

We need to be able to adapt our working practices to suit different clients; ideally, seamlessly. For that, we need to understand what the current processes are, and what clients are planning for the future.
 
And that’s where I need your help.

​A new research project: proofreading2020
I’ve launched a research project, proofreading2020, to investigate proofreading now and where it might be heading.

The study begins with a survey, asking detailed questions about proofreading habits and preferences. Once the results are in, I’ll be conducting follow-up research for case studies and, early in 2019, publishing the results in book form.
 
​You can find out more and complete the survey at proofreading2020. It's open now, and closes on 30 June 2018.
 
Almost 200 proofreaders, project managers and publishers have already completed the survey. Several have contacted me to say it was really useful CPD, because it made them think about how they work and why they do things. So I hope you’ll be willing to set aside a tea-break to fill it in.
 
It takes about 20 minutes to complete, but it’s easy to skip questions that aren’t relevant to you.

​There are only a handful of questions (at the beginning and end) that are compulsory (just the usual demographics and privacy permissions). Beyond that, the sections cover the following:
​

• Proofreader training and qualifications
• Taking/making bookings and negotiating fees
• The materials people proofread (end products and the formats they’re created in)
• Marking up techniques (on paper, on screen, software tools etc.)
• Collating proofs and dealing with queries
• A bit of fun (yes, really!) and sci-fi proofreading

​* If a client does ask for BS symbols, I recommend downloading Louise’s free stamps for use on PDFs – they will save you a lot of time and help you deliver a neat and clear proof.

Melanie Thompson is an Advanced Professional Member of SfEP and an SfEP tutor.

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Running an editing or proofreading business is a journey, not a moment in time. Some of us will be offered work that’s not ideal because of fee, content, client type, time frame, or for some other reason.
​
Some might tell us it’s a bum job, that we should run a mile. But is it? Should we? Would acceptance be a compromise or an opportunity?

The problem with ‘ideal’
Ideal is something to aim for but rarely what lands in our laps, especially in the start-up phase of a business.

• Perhaps the fee is a lot lower than we’d like or than some of our editing friends are earning.
• Perhaps the subject or genre on offer isn’t what we dreamed of when we set up our business.
• Perhaps the client is a publisher whereas we’d prefer to work with corporates.
• Perhaps the client wants the project completed in a time frame that means we’d have to work outside our preferred office hours.

The challenge of visibility
Being discoverable is a challenge for many new starters. Ideal projects are out there, but the editor or proofreader isn’t yet visible enough in the relevant spaces.

And even if they can be found, they might not yet have enough experience to instil the trust that leads to initial contact.

Broadly, it’s easier to get in front of publishers because we know who and where they are. They’re used to being contacted by us, too, so we can go direct and cold.

With non-publishers, it’s more difficult. Not every business, charity, school, indie author, or student wants an editor or understands the value we might bring to the table. Going direct and cold is a trickier proposition.

The issue of trust
It’s not just the mechanics of visibility. Emotion plays a part too, especially trust.

With publishers it’s easier to overcome the trust barrier. They know what they want, what we do, are used to working with us, speak our language, and are experienced in evaluating our competence.

Non-publisher clients are more of a challenge. They might not be familiar with the different levels of editing.

Many will not have worked with a professional editor before.

Some – for example fiction writers – might be anxious about exposing their writing to someone they don’t know.

And for the inexperienced client, evaluating a good fit is more difficult.

In the start-up phase of business ownership, editors and proofreaders with less experience might therefore find it easier to acquire work with publishers than with non-publishers.

The choices on the business journey
So visibility and trust issues mean that new entrants to the field might not have the same breadth of choice as the more mature business owner.

It might mean deciding to accept work that isn’t ideal in the shorter term.

We could describe this as a compromise, but might it in fact be an opportunity?

Does the terminology matter?
I believe the terminology does matter because a compromise has negative connotations.

• A compromise implies a cost; an opportunity implies a benefit.
• A compromise implies a loss; an opportunity implies a win.
• A compromise puts us on the back foot; an opportunity pushes us forward.

Negatives leave us feeling dissatisfied, that we’ve been ripped off, that we’re not in control. We’re more likely to begrudge the choices we’ve made.

Positives are empowering. We’re more likely to see the choices we’ve made as rational and informed.

All of this might sound like a mindset game but there’s more to it than that. Decisions to accept work that isn’t ideal have measurable benefits.

​However, we need a longer-term approach, and that can be tough for the new starter who’s surrounded by colleagues who are booked up months in advance with the work that they want.

If that sounds like you, think of your editing business like a garden.

The editorial garden
What you do this year is not separate from what will happen next year, or the year after, or five years down the road. All the choices you make on your business journey are connected.

The seeds you plant now will grow if you look after them. Give them a little additional feed and they might sprout this season ... if the weather holds and you’re lucky. However, you will not get a tree, not this year, I guarantee it. Trees come later.

If you don’t plant anything, however, nothing will spout, not now, not next year, not five years down the road. You will be treeless.

Is planting the seeds a compromise? I don’t think so. It’s the opportunity to grow a tree.

Should we begrudge all that work of watering and feeding for just a few green shoots in this season? Again, not to my mind. The effort we make now will bear fruit later.

Our businesses are the same.

A patch of my editorial garden
I thought it might be helpful to share a story about my own business journey. It’s about how I accepted work that was way below my ideal price point, and did so with pleasure, because I believed I’d be able to leverage it later.
​
See these books?

• The Rats ​– this is a reissue of one of the UK’s most famous horror author’s first novels.
• Dracula – this is the centenary edition of possibly the most famous Gothic horror ever written.
• Then we have the Pulitzer-prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad.
• Three Moments of an Explosion is a short-story collection from one of the hottest ‘weird’ fiction talents in the market.
• And even if you haven’t read the books, you’ve probably heard of or seen the movie adaptations of The Stepford Wives and Cool Hand Luke.

These are some of the books I was commissioned by publishers to proofread a few years ago.

I proofread these books for about 13 quid an hour.

These days, I aim to earn between £35 and £40 per hour. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I hit my mark in the last financial year when I averaged out my annual project earnings. A few years ago, my aim was around the £30 mark.

Those books pictured above earned me less than half what I was aiming for. Did I compromise? Well, it depends how you look at it.

If I believe that each decision I make exists in the bubble of now, and that nothing affects anything else further down the road, then yes, I compromised. If I think that what I’m earning now is despite my decision to accept those proofreading projects, it was a massive compromise.

If, however, I decide that each decision I make can affect my choices down the road, that the walls around those individual decisions are permeable, it’s a different story. If I think that what I’m earning now is because of my decision to accept those proofreading projects, it’s a story of opportunity.

Authors make decisions to work with editors based on a whole host of factors, but the first step is deciding to get in touch in the belief that the person they’ve found feels like a good fit.

Back to trust
To take one example, those of us who edit fiction for self-publishers are asking those authors to put their novels into the hands of complete strangers.

Many of those authors have never worked with an independent editor. Some are anxious about the process of being edited. And for some, the editor’s might be only the second pair of eyes to read the text.

It’s a big ask that takes courage. And that’s where the trust comes in.

The editor who can instil trust quickly is more likely to compel authors to make the leap and hit the contact button.

And what better way to instil trust than offer a portfolio of mainstream published books written by big-name authors?

And that’s how I leveraged those half-my-ideal-fee books. They tell an anxious indie author that publishers of big-name books trusted me a few years ago. And that helps the author trust me now.

Those proofreading projects – and the £13 ph fees that came with them – encourage authors to contact me now, and trust that my £35­–£40 ph line/copyediting fee is a worthwhile investment. And I know it’s true because they’ve told me it's so.

I didn’t compromise. I planted a seed. Now the tree has grown, and I’m able to harvest the fruit. I had to wait a few years but the decisions I made then affect the choices I have now.

And that’s how an editing garden grows.

Your choice
I’m a great believer in leveraging for future opportunity. It’s not everyone’s bag. It doesn’t fit with every editor or proofreader’s business model. And that’s fine.

I offer this not as THE way of thinking, but as one approach. It’s something that those at the beginning of their journey might like to consider if they are still building visibility, but struggling with the age-old rates debate!

As independent business owners, we are free to accept or decline fees from price-setting clients as we see fit. We are also free to propose rates that meet our individual needs, regardless of what our colleagues are offering.

If you’re offered work, can see the benefit of that work for your portfolio, but can’t stomach the price, decline. But if you wish to accept, even though others tell you the price is ‘too low’ or ‘unfair’, go for it.
​
The hive mind of the international editorial community is there to offer support and to share its wealth of experience, but no one knows your business and your needs better than you!

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the best posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

My thanks to this month's contributors!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• 5-minute branding by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘This quick exercise will help you sharpen your written voice and add consistency to all your communications.’
• Blog republishing strategy by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘Bloggers can stop worrying about duplicate content penalties from Google. With this advice, they can press ahead with republishing their articles on LinkedIn and Medium, helping their content reach a wider audience.’
• Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action by Louise Harnby on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Business promotion can feel overwhelming, and that can lead to inaction. This article includes some tips to help you move forward ... gently.'
• PayPal fees and your right to profits by Erin Brenner, published on Copyediting. Erin writes: 'The world does not owe you a profitable business. If you run a business to make money, the general rule is that you have to spend money first.'
• The editorial rates debate – why I don’t charge by the hour by Jen Toyne, published on the Jet Proofreading blog. Jen writes: ‘This article is about how charging by the hour does not work for me and how I made peace with my simple approach to pricing based on number of words.’ 
• Things I have learned in a year of running a business by Renee Moodie, published on the Safe Hands Web & Content Services blog. Renee writes: 'There’s been much to learn in a year of freelancing, starting with understanding that I am not in fact a freelancer but rather the owner of a business.'
• What to do when someone asks, 'What’s your rate?' by Molly McCowan, published on Copyediting. Molly writes: 'Do what you can to avoid offering up your hourly rate. Instead, gracefully “pivot” by answering with a question that will give you more insight into the project.'

​
​CLIENT FOCUS​

• Q&A on what to expect from a thesis proofreading service by Kate Haigh, published on the Kateproof blog. Kate writes: 'I work with a lot of postgraduate students and often get asked the same or similar questions. This blog post is a collation of the most common questions, with answers, which will hopefully help prospective clients but also other editors and proofreaders looking to work with this client set.'
• Proofreading tip – checking for mistyped words by Laura Ripper and Helen Stevens, published on the School Proof blog. ‘Teachers often have to proofread their own or their colleagues' student reports. We share some tips to help teachers and other professionals spot commonly mistyped words that Spellcheck won't flag up.’
• What is your writing worth to you? by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes, ‘Where’s the rule that says novelists have to accelerate from zero to pro with no professional guidance – and at no cost? Help clients put their editing costs into perspective.'
• Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your crime fiction: Advice for new writers by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: ‘I discuss the negative impact that just one word can have on narrative tension: Suddenly. I don't suggest that writers should eradicate it, but rather use it judiciously and with intention.'

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• How to close an editorial project effectively by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘Adding that last missing comma is not the end of a project. The way you close an editorial project has a huge bearing on how clients remember you (and thus whether your name pops into their head for future work) and how you manage your business’s development.’​
• Silent Changes by Eleanor Abraham, published on  eleanorabraham.com. Eleanor writes: ‘Word’s Track Changes is an amazing function letting you see all the revisions your editor is suggesting. But is it really necessary to see all the changes they make to your Word file?’
• Sorting text in Microsoft Word by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘I recently participated in a Facebook discussion on this topic and then decided to write a blog post about it. I hope this is helpful to other writers and editors!’
• The editing and revision process for self-publishers by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. In this newly revised article, Lisa writes, ‘Add more opportunities for feedback, more opportunities to check specific elements, and more opportunities for a fresh look.’

​FREELANCE LIFE

• Success in freelancing: Is it luck or hard work? by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘I’ve always been interested in this topic—what factors determine success? (And what defines “success” anyway?) I decided to share my thoughts about how this specifically relates to freelancing.’
• The Perfectpreneur by Sara Donaldson, published on Northern Editorial. Sara writes: ‘If you find you’re constantly comparing yourself to the Perfectpreneur – the businessperson who has it all – here’s an exercise that can help you come back down to earth.’ 
• This proofreader’s approach to GDPR by Kate Haigh, published on the Kateproof blog. Kate writes: 'With the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) coming into force in May 2018, affecting anyone working with clients in the EU, I thought it would be useful for clients and colleagues to see how I have approached compliance. This blog post has more detail than my new privacy policy, giving detailed reasons about why I store what data and where.'
• Unimposter-able me by Kia Thomas, published on Kia Thomas Editing. Kia writes: 'Imposter syndrome comes for most of us at some point in our careers. But lately I’ve been learning how to fight it, with the help of some classic 90s pop.'

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Here's a treat for PerfectIt users ... a custom style sheet that includes the find-and-replace strings in my free ebook, The Author's Proofreading Companion.

If the Companion has made your life easier, you'll love what my colleague Andrea Kay of Yours Truleigh Editing has done. Yep, she's upped the efficiency game for all of us by creating a custom style sheet that can be imported into PerfectIt.

Thank you so much, Andrea!

For those unfamiliar with either the software or the booklet, I've provided an overview of both, and the benefits of importing the style sheet.

Andrea's also created a style sheet for the Student Proofreading Toolkit. Double thanks!

Below that are the installation instructions and the ready-to-download files for the Companion and the Toolkit.

​How to import your style sheet
Importing the style sheet is a doddle, I promise, Follow the instructions and screenshots below. If PerfectIt is already installed, the process will take no longer than 20 seconds.

1. Unfortunately, I can't upload the files to Weebly, so I'm using my bot Lulu and delivering via Messenger.

​Click on the green button below. That will take you to a post on my Facebook page. There you can comment with the word 'perfect' and Lulu will send you the files. Click on each one to download to your device.

2. Once you've installed PerfectIt, open the Word document you want to check.
3. Launch PerfectIt.
​4. Click on Manage Styles.

5. Click on the Import button.

6. Select the pft from your device and click OK.

7. Click OK in the Manage Styles window.

8. Select the your pft from the Current Style drop-down box.

9. To run PerfectIt on your current Word document using the custom style sheet, press Start.

If you're not a PerfectIt user ...
If you're not yet ready to invest in PerfectIt but still want access to the find-and-replace strings and other tools in the ebooks, click on the images below. They'll take you to the download pages.

​They're free and you won't have to hand over any personal data to access it. Enjoy!

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

If we’re serious about setting up an editing and proofreading business, free resources will get us so far, but only so far.

What free is good for
Free is brilliant when we’re starting out, particularly in the following circumstances:
​

• We’re not yet sure whether an editing career suits us.
• We’ve yet to establish where our skills gaps are.
• We need time to explore the lie of the land – what’s available, from where and whom, and how we’ll access it.
• We need time to get our finances in order but don’t want that to hold us back.

Free is equally great when we’re experienced but looking to shift the goalposts:

• We’re thinking about offering a new editing service but want to learn whether it’s a good fit for us.
• We’ve identified skills gaps but need to plan a staged approach to filling them – no one can do everything at once.
• We want to stick with the same editing services but focus on niche subject(s) or genre(s). That means exploring how we might expand our knowledge base such that we’re a more attractive proposition to potential clients.

Free stuff is about discovery, so that when the time comes to reach into the coffers we’re spending money in the right place.

​Free helps us to turn expense into investment.

What free is not good for
Free isn’t great in the long term because the offering usually comes with limitations. It will give us a glimpse, enough to help us on the journey. But that’s all.

The reason free has its limitations is because even creating free stuff and offering free help takes time, and time is money.
​
Imagine the following scenarios:

What tasters teach us ... and what they don't
In both cases, the freebies are of exceptionally high quality and Jane and Jack learn a ton from them. Creating that content must have taken time and effort.

However, free articles, blog posts and webinars are tasters. Those kinds of things help us understand the lie of the land, and give us a deeper sense of what more we need to learn.

What they won’t do is teach us everything we need to know.

We can’t learn how to become professional developmental editors from those resources alone ... any more than we could learn to cut hair or wire a house to acceptable standards without proper training and guidance.

Same goes for marketing. Take me, for example. It’s not luck and Google that made me a strong marketer. I pay a monthly sub to learn how to do it well from professional marketers, and invest time in implementing the strategies I’m learning.

If Jane wants to become a professional developmental editor and Jack wants to become a strong editorial marketer, both need to take all those freebies and use them to make informed decisions about the money they will invest to turn their investigations into reality.

Examples might include:

• A good-fit training course
• Recommended books written by experts

​
Free will help Jane and Jack make decisions. Investment will make them fit for professional purpose.

A better money mindset
It’s perfectly okay to decide that you can’t afford to run a professional editorial business ... but only as long as you decide not to run a professional editorial business.

No one on the planet owns a business that doesn’t have operating costs. Business owners have to take responsibility for training, equipment, invoicing, money transfer, software, marketing, client acquisition, office space, pension provision, taxation responsibilities, and more.

It’s true that the international editorial community is incredibly generous, which means that free resources and guidance abound on multiple platforms.

However, those who are serious about running an editorial business know they have to avoid hobbyist and employee mindsets.
​

• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I can’t afford it.’ They say, ‘I’ll work out a budget, take it step by step, and save up for it.’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I don’t know how to do it. I need someone to do it for me for free.’ They say, ‘Can someone recommend the best ways of learning how to do it?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘How do I get out of paying for X?’ They say, ‘Is that a reasonable cost of business and will it enable me to remain in profit and increase my income in the longer term?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I’m only looking for free stuff.’ They say, ‘Can anyone guide me towards some useful resources that will help me plan how to invest wisely?’

The shoe on the other foot – when you’re asked for a freebie
We can’t have everything we want when we want it. We have to make choices. Freebies help us make the right choices so that the money we spend actually increases our prospects and income in the longer term.

And imagine yourself on the other side of the fence for a moment.

A potential client calls you. They have a book that needs copyediting. ‘The thing is,’ they say, ‘I can’t afford professional editing. How can I get out of paying you? To be honest, I’m just looking for free stuff.’

How fast would you hang up?

Now imagine another writer calls you. ‘I’m in the middle of doing as much self-editing as I can using some free tutorials I found online and some advice from my writing group. There’s a fair way to go,’ they say, ‘but I figured I’d start saving now. Can you give me a rough idea of how much it might cost and how much notice you’d need? That way I can start planning my book budget.’

That’s the kind of client I’m excited about working with.

The editor with the same mindset will be rewarded with guidance and help because they deserve it. The editor who wants it all for nothing won’t and doesn’t.

By all means, grab all the freebies. The creators of those resources want you to have them. Making free stuff that’s invisible and unused is a waste of time and effort.

​Just don’t forget that free is the starting blocks. Investment is what gets us to the finish line!

Further reading

• “I want to be an editor – when will I start earning $?” and other unanswerable questions
• The cost of editorial training – are you hitting the mark or missing the point?
• The highs and lows of editorial fees (or how not to trip up during rate talk)
• Why you MUST market your editorial business. Part I
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work
• Who finds your editing and proofreading clients for you?
• PayPal fees and your right to profits (Erin Brenner, Copyediting)

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

​If you’re an editor, making Word work hard for you is a must. The new and revised edition of Editing in Word 2016 is one of my recommended resources. Here's why.

I’m a fiction editor who works solely for indie authors and self-publishers. I work on raw-text files, and Microsoft Word is one piece of software that I cannot afford to be without.

Word has its snafus but I don’t know of any word-processing software that comes close to offering its superb functionality. I don’t just edit in Word; I’ve also created print- and digital-ready books directly in it.

So when fellow editor and author Adrienne Montgomerie asked me to review the second edition of Editing in Word 2016, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’ve been using Word since 1991, so could Montgomerie teach this old dog a few new tricks? How about younger pups?
​
Let’s see ...

More than an ebook
This is a digital self-study course. Yes, you get the ebook with all the contextual information and foundational teaching. But there are also videos that show Word in action, and a bunch of exercises with which to practise what you learn at each stage of the process.

I love the fact that the advice is actionable. You read, you see, you learn, and then you do. There’s no better way to ensure it’s all sunk in.

A focus on core tools

We certainly do. Here are some of the tools that Montgomerie focuses on:

• Track Changes
• Comments
• Spellchecking
• Formatting
• Find and replace
• Styles
• Readability stats
• The equation editor
• Macros – creating, editing, running and using
• Recommended add-ins, plug-ins and apps

If you don’t know 8 out of 10 of the above tools inside out, you’re likely not as efficient or productive as you could be. That alone makes this course a worthy purchase.

That it’s a steal at just under 25 quid (excluding VAT) makes it a no-brainer.

​Let’s dig a little deeper ...

Screens, operating systems and how we work with Word
One of the best things about this course is its acknowledgement that editors work in different ways.

• I like Windows; you like a Mac. No problem.
• I like a ribbon/mouse combo; you like keyboard shortcuts; and he likes Mac menus. All those preferences are incorporated into the instructions.

Top tips
This course is rammed with useful and actionable tips on how to get stuff done and in ways that respect your preferences. For example:

• Pre-editing file preparation
• Different ways to do things: for example, running a macro or using keyboard-shortcuts instead
• Customizing your onscreen work space
• Incorporating additional plug-ins and apps into Word that will make editing even more efficient

And along the way, Montgomerie includes ‘Pro tips’, ‘Read more’ and ‘Troubleshooting’ callouts to keep you on track.

Video demos
I’m a big fan of multimedia learning. And when it comes to editing, sometimes just hearing your tutor’s voice and watching them go through the motions onscreen can trump the written word.

In addition to the ebook, there's a support website with 27 video tutorials for both Mac and Windows users.

This feature is excellent. I’ve come across a lot of editors who’d like to enhance their digital skills but are held back through fear. Montgomerie takes the stress away via accessible walkthroughs that even the most tech-nervous of nellies will be able to follow.

Here are just 3 examples:

• How to record a macro
• Installing an existing third-party macro
• Setting up autocorrect preferences

Practice makes perfect
There are 24 exercises in this course that help you to hone your skills and start doing what’s written in the book and shown in the videos.

Just a few examples include:

• Using autocorrect
• Locking Track Changes
• Language selection
• Comparing documents
• Customizing Word’s ribbon

A note on versions
This course was created in 2017 using Word 365 on Windows 10 and Sierra OS. Given that the author’s using the latest software and operating systems, you might find that the instructions need a little tweaking here and there if you’re using medieval Word (or should that be Wordeth?)!

For example, older versions of Word might have different ribbon displays, icons and menu options.

That’s unavoidable, and a reminder that, as professionals, we should be aspiring to use up-to-date equipment. I’d prefer my dentist not to fill my teeth with 10-year-old composites; we should treat our clients similarly.

My verdict
Did I learn anything new? Yes, I did. But editorial training isn’t just about finding out what you don’t know; it’s also great for affirmation of what you do know. I was pleased to learn from a pro that a lot of my Word usage is on track.

Here’s another thing, though: there are functions in Word that I use infrequently (e.g. erasing time stamps). I know it’s possible but I’ve simply forgotten how.

​And instead of trawling Google or spending valuable time asking questions in editing forums, I can have Editing in Word open on my desktop. From there, I can search, locate and solve my problem in seconds.

I recommend this without reservation for any editor who wants to get the very best from Word with a one-stop shop, especially those who've been held back by fear. Montgomerie will take that away from you – I promise.

Information and access

• Editing in Word 2016, 2nd ed.
• ISBN: 9781775045717
• Author: Adrienne Montgomerie
• Format: PDF 3.62 MB
• Price: £24.93 (excl. VAT)
• Access: Lulu. To get your copy of EIW16, click on the button below

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

How do you get fiction editing and proofreading work? This post offers some pointers for newbie freelancers, and experienced editors looking to shift specialisms.

1. Start with baseline training
To be fit for working in any editing discipline, fiction or otherwise, training is the foundation. Even if you’ve been devouring your favourite genres for years, you need to understand publishing-industry standards.

This isn’t about snobbery. It’s about serving the client honestly and well, especially the self-publisher, who might not have enough mainstream publishing knowledge to assess whether you’re capable of amending in a way that respects industry conventions.

It’s about the reader too. Readers are canny, and often wedded to particular genres. They’re used to browsing in bookshops and bingeing on their favourite authors. They have their own standards and expectations.

One of our jobs as editorial professionals is to ensure we have the skills to push the book forward, make it the best it can be, so that it’s ready for those readers and meets their expectations.

And so if you want to proofread or edit for fiction publishers and independent authors, high-quality editorial training isn’t a luxury: it’s the baseline.

What kind of training you need will depend on what services you plan to offer.

Courses
I recommend the Publishing Training Centre and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders for foundational copyediting and proofreading training. I’m based in the UK, and those are the two training suppliers I have experience of so I’m in a position to recommend them.

That doesn’t mean that other suppliers aren’t worth exploring. Rather, I don’t recommend what I haven’t tested. Keep an open mind. Check a range of suppliers and their course curricula. Then choose what suits your needs.
​

• Basic Proofreading: Editorial Skills One (Publishing Training Centre. Despite the word ‘Basic’, this is a comprehensive, flagship, industry-recognized course)
• Essential Copy-Editing: Editorial Skills Two (Publishing Training Centre)
• Proofreading 1–4 (Society for Editors and Proofreaders)
• Copy-editing 1–4 (Society for Editors and Proofreaders)
• See also this list of professional editorial societies; they’ll be able to advise you if you live outside the UK

If you want more information about how the PTC and SfEP courses compare, talk to the organizations’ training directors.

2. Decide which fiction editing services you want to offer
Some beginner self-publishers don’t understand the differences between the different levels of editing, which means they might ask for something that’s not in their best interests (e.g. a quick proofread even though the book hasn’t been critiqued, structurally edited, line- and copyedited).

It’s essential that the professional fiction editor is able to communicate which levels of editing they provide, and recommend what’s appropriate for the author.

That doesn’t mean the author will take the advice, but the editor must be able to articulate her recommendations so that independent authors can make informed decisions.

3. Invest in appropriate specialist fiction training
The next step is to gain skills and confidence with fiction editing and proofreading work. As with any type of editing, the kinds of things the editor will be amending, querying and checking will depend on whether the work is structural, sentence-based or pre-publication quality control.

When deciding what specialist fiction editing courses to invest in, bear in mind the following:

• Even if you have experience of developmental editing non-fiction, this skill will unlikely transition smoothly to story-level fiction editing without specialist training.
• Even if you’re an experienced sentence-level fiction editor, this skill will not make you fit to offer structural editing or critiquing without specialist training.

Courses and reading
Explore the following to assess whether they will fill the gaps in your knowledge. Check the curricula carefully to ensure that the modules focus on the types of fiction editing you wish to offer and provide you with the depth required to push you forward.
​

• Introduction to Fiction Editing (Society for Editors and Proofreaders; course)
• Developmental Editing: Fiction Theory (Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages; course)
• Developmental Editing: In Practice (Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages; course)
• Editing Fiction (Publishing Training Centre; introductory e-learning module)
• Introduction to Developmental Editing (Author–Editor Clinic; course)
• Write to be Published (Nicola Morgan; book)
• The Magic of Fiction (Beth Hill; book)

This isn’t a definitive list but it’ll set you on the right track.

4. Get in the right mindset
Fiction editing requires a particular mindset for several reasons:

Style and voice
We’re not only respecting the author, but the POV character(s) too. The fiction editor who doesn’t respect the voices in a novel is at risk of butchery.

Being able to immerse oneself in the world the writer’s built is essential so that we can get under the skin of the writing. If we don’t feel it, we can’t edit it elegantly and sensitively.

Intimacy
Non-fiction is born from the author’s knowledge. Fiction is born from the author’s heart and soul.

If that sounds a little cheesy, I’ll not apologize. Many of the writers with whom I work are anxious about working with an editor because they’ve put their own life, love and fear into the world they’ve built.

A good fiction editor needs to respect the intimacy of being trusted with a novel. If that doesn’t sound like your bag, this probably isn’t for you.

Unreliable rules
At the recent fiction roundtable hosted by the Norfolk group of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, guest Sian Evans – an experienced playwright and screenwriter – talked about how punctuation in screenplays is as much about ‘the breaths’ the actor is being directed to take as about sentence clarity.

These ‘breaths’ exist in prose. They help the reader make sense of a sentence ... not just grammatically, but emotionally. And so the addition or removal of just one comma for the sake of pedantry can make a sentence ‘correct’, or standard, but shift tone and tension dramatically.

The fiction editor needs to be able to move beyond prescriptivism and read the scene for its emotionality, so that the author’s intention is intact but the reader can move fluidly through the world on the page and relish it.

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that if you want to get fiction editing work, and keep on getting it, you’ll need to embrace rule-breaking with artistry!

Fiction work requires us to respect both readability and style. The two can sometimes clash so gentle diplomacy and a kind hand will need to be in your toolbox.

5. Read fiction
If you don’t love reading fiction, don’t edit it.

And if you don’t love reading a particular genre, don’t edit it.

Editing the type of fiction you love to read is a joy, and an advantage. If you read a lot of romance fiction, you’ll already be aware of some of the narrative conventions that readers expect and enjoy.

I started reading crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers before I’d hit my teens. I turned 51 in March and my passion for those genres hasn’t waned. That stuff makes up over eighty per cent of my work schedule too. Here’s the thing though – my pleasure-reading has supported my business.

I get to see first-hand how different authors handle plot, how they build and release tension, how they play with punctuation, idiomatic phrasing, and sentence length such that the reader experiences emotion, immediacy and immersion. And that helps me edit responsively.
​
Honestly, reading fiction is training for editing fiction. In itself, it’s not enough. But professional training isn’t enough either. Love it and learn it.

6. Learn from writers
​If you want to understand the problems facing the self-publishing author community, listen and learn.

Join the Alliance of Independent Authors. Even lurking in the forum will give you important insights into what self-publishers struggle with an how you might help.

Take advantage of online workshops aimed at beginner writers. Penguin Random House offers regular free online webinars via The Writers' Academy. Experienced writers and instructors take you on whistle-stop tours of setting, dialogue, characterization, point of view, crime fiction writing, children's books and a whole lot more.

Listen to published novelists’ stories. My local Waterstones hosts regular author readings/signings. I’ve seen Garth Nix, Jonathan Pinnock and Alison Moore speak. In April 2018, Harry Brett is chairing a session on how to write crime with Julia Heaberlin and Sophie Hannah.

In May, fellow editor Sophie Playle and I are attending 'Why Writing Matters', an event hosted by the Writers' Centre Norwich in association with the Norwich & Norfolk Festival. And Jeffery Deaver's coming to town too. Ticket booked!

These workshops cost from nothing to £12. That's a tiny investment for any fiction editor wanting to better themselves.

7. Get in front of publishers
The best way to get publisher eyes on your editing skills is to go direct. Experienced fiction editors are sometimes contacted direct but sitting around waiting to be offered work never got the independent business owner very far and never will.

Experienced ... but not in fiction
If you’re an experienced editor or proofreader who already has publisher clients but they’re in a different discipline (e.g. social sciences, humanities) you’ll likely have built some strong relationships with in-house editors.

Publishing is a small world – in-house staff move presses and meet each other at publishing events. It might well be that one of your contacts knows someone who works in fiction and, more importantly, will be happy to vouch for your skills.

With specialist fiction training, you’ll be able to leverage that referral to the max. So, if you have a good relationship with an in-house academic editor, tell them you’d like to explore fiction editing and ask them if they’d be prepared to share a name and email and give you a recommendation.

Newbie
If you’re a new entrant to the field, it’s unlikely that a cold call to HarperCollins or Penguin will be fruitful. The larger presses tend to hire experienced editors with a track record of hitting the ground running.

There are two options:
​

1. Target smaller, independent fiction presses. Ask if they’d consider adding you to their freelance list. Be clear about the training you’ve done and your genre preferences. The fees might not be great, but I recommend you look at this as a paying marketing and business-development opportunity. You’ll be able to leverage the experience, the testimonials and the portfolio entries later.
   ​
2. If the small press responds by saying that they aren’t in a position to hire external editorial work, ask if you might do a one-off gratis proofread/edit for them as a way of gaining experience and supporting their independent publishing programme – mutual business backscratching. Again, you can leverage this experience when targeting paying fiction clients (publishers and indie authors).

8. Be visible online
There’s no excuse for any twenty-first-century professional editor to be invisible. There’s no one way to visibility – take a multipronged approach.

Directories
If you’re a member of a national editorial society, and they have a directory, advertise in it as a specialist fiction editor/proofreader.

If you’re not a member, become one. It won’t be free, but running a business has costs attached to it. If we want to succeed, we need to be seen. That doesn’t land on our plates; we must invest.

If your society doesn’t have an online directory, lobby for one to be set up and promoted. I’d go as far as to argue that a professional editorial society that isn’t prioritizing the visibility of its members isn’t doing its job properly.
​

• The Society for Editors and Proofreaders IS doing its job properly. I rank highly in Google for certain keyword phrases, but it’s not always my website that shows up – sometimes it’s my SfEP directory entry. It thrills me to know that my membership sub is providing me with networking, friendship, training opps, and visibility in the search engines.
  
  If you don’t qualify for inclusion, make doing what’s necessary a key goal in your business plan.

 

• Reedsy – despite what you might have heard – does NOT set low rates that encourage a ‘race to the bottom’. Editorial professionals set their own rates and Reedsy takes a cut of the fee. I receive several requests a month to quote for fiction copyediting or proofreading via Reedsy and have worked with some wonderful authors. Entry in Reedsy’s database is free but you must have a certain level of experience to be invited.
  
  Again, if you don’t qualify for inclusion, make doing what’s necessary a key goal in your business plan.

Create content for indie fiction authors
Any self-publishing fiction writer looking for editorial assistance is more likely to think you’re wowser if you help them before they’ve asked for it.

Create resources that offer your potential clients value and you’ll stand out. It makes your website about them rather than you. And it demonstrates your knowledge and experience.

Doing this might require you to do a lot of research, but what a great way to learn. Don’t think of it as cutting into your personal time but as professional development that makes you a better editor.

And think about it like this: Who would you rather buy shoes from? The shop where the sales assistant tells you all about her, or the shop where the sales assistant helps you find shoes that fit? It's no different for authors choosing editors.
​
I have an entire Self-publishers page dedicated to resources for fiction authors. I’m not alone. These fiction editors have resource hubs too: Beth Hill, Sophie Playle, Lisa Poisso, Kia Thomas and Katherine Trail. There are others but I’m already over the 2,000-word mark!

Shout out your fiction specialism
Shout your fiction specialism from your website’s rooftop. Why would a fiction writer hire someone who doesn’t specialize in fiction when there are so many people dedicated to it?​

Related reading
Here are some additional articles that you might find useful if you're considering moving into the field of fiction.

• The different levels of editing: Proofreading and beyond
• How do mainstream publishers produce books?
• What makes a good fiction editor?
• Should a writer hire a freelance editor before submitting to an agent?
• What's a sample edit? Who does it help? And is it free?

Good luck with your fiction editing journey!

And one final thing ... here’s a PDF booklet you can download. That way, you can review the guidance on getting fiction editing and proofreading work at your leisure, and on your preferred device.

If you think there's no place for macros in fiction editing, think again. My friend Paul Beverley has collated a core group of macros that will have any fiction line editor, copyeditor or proofreader drooling! Self-publishing authors will love them too!

I don't use all of these (every editor has their preferences) but some of them are staples and save me oodles of time! 

Some of the macros apply when you’re looking at the whole text of a novel, while others are selective ... for use while you’re editing line by line. Bear in mind that they're designed to be used with MS Word files.

Macros that work with the whole text
These macros are ideal near the beginning of the edit, when you’ve put together the whole book in one single file, and you want to look for inconsistencies.

ProperNounAlyse searches the novel for any words that look like proper nouns; it counts their frequency, and then tries to locate, by using a variety of tests, and pairs of names that might possibly be alternative spellings or misspellings, e.g. Jayne/Jane, Beverley/Beverly, Neiman/Nieman, Grosman/Grosmann etc.

FullNameAlyse is similar to ProperNounAlyse, but it searches for multi-part names, Fred Smith, Burt Fry, etc.

ChronologyChecker is aimed at tracing the chronology of a novel. It extracts, into a separate file, all the paragraphs containing appropriate chronology-type words: Monday, Wednesday, Fri, Sat, April, June, 1958, 2017, etc. This file is then more easily searchable to look at the significance of the text for the chronology.

WordsPhrasesInContext tracks the occurrence of specific names through a novel. You give it a list of names/words/phrases, and it searches for any paragraphs in the novel that contain them. It creates a separate file of those paragraphs, with the searched element highlighted in your choice of colour.

CatchPhrase searches your novel for over-used phrases and counts how many times each phrase occurs.
​

Macros for when editing line by line
FullPoint/Comma/Semicolon/Colon/Dash/QuestionMark/ExclamationMark
These macros change
he said, you know ...
into he said. You know ... 
​or he said: you know ...
​or he said – you know ...
and so on.

FullPointInDialogue and CommaInDialogue
These two macros change
“Blah, blah.” He said.
into “Blah, blah,” he said.
and vice versa.

ProperToPronoun
This macro looks along the line to find the next proper noun, deletes it and types ‘she’. But if you then type Ctrl-Z, it changes it back to ‘he’.

MultiSwitch
You give this macro a list of changes that you might want to implement:
Jane
Jayne

Beverley
Beverly

that
which

which
that

When you click in a word, and run the macro, it finds your alternate and replaces it. It also works with phrases and can also provide a menu of alternates:

he said
he opined
he shouted
he voiced

she said
she opined
she shouted
she voiced

To access the macro scripts, download Paul's book.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

If you're looking for an online network of fiction and creative nonfiction specialists, the Association of Independent Publishing Professionals (AIPP) is worth checking out. I became a member earlier this year after being drawn to the organization's global outlook and creative niche. 

My guest today is ​AIPP co-founder Crystal Watanabe. Here's what she has to say ...

The power of private networking
​Being a freelancer can be an amazing experience. You get to work at home, you have no commute, you can work in whatever clothing you like, and if you’re an introvert, you really don’t have to talk to anyone.

That said, with those wonderful benefits usually comes the inevitable problem. Or worse, an irate client. Ask any editor who has been in business for longer than a year whether they have a Client from Hell, and the likely answer is yes. After all, we’re in the business of pointing out other people’s flaws. It’s a touchy subject for many.

Usually when something like this occurs, the foremost thing on a freelancer’s mind is to feel lost. Like you’re alone, and no one but you has been through such a terribly stressful ordeal.

This is where networking becomes an invaluable resource.

There are many networking options open to people working from home: Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, and forums. But oftentimes these methods of communication are open to the public, and if there’s one thing to learn about airing frustrations online, it’s that you never know who is silently reading your negativity and judging you for it.

This is where more private modes of communication come in handy, and to find the most relevant and helpful discussion and advice on any problems that come up, a professional organization is more often than not the best place to go.

When I had my first problem client, I’ll admit, I was sobbing on my couch, feeling awful and alone. After I wiped my tears away, I went searching for people like me, and I ended up at the Editorial Freelancers Association. I joined, began interacting, and learned a lot from other members. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure the EFA was exactly what I needed.

The AIPP – focusing on fiction and creative nonfiction
I work primarily in fiction, and I found myself skipping over a number of discussions pertaining to a variety of other editing fields. In the end, I helped cofound the Association of Independent Publishing Professionals (AIPP) with fellow editors Anne Victory and Nikki Busch in 2016.

Starting an organization is no easy feat, but nearly two years later, we’re still growing.

The AIPP is dedicated to freelancers who work primarily in fiction and creative nonfiction, including both self-published authors and authors hoping to submit their manuscripts to traditional publishers.

Our membership includes but is not limited to:

• editors
• proofreaders
• formatters
• cover designers
• graphic designers
• website designers
• illustrators
• author assistants
• voice actors
• book designers

Membership benefits and fees
In addition to a wealth of wonderful benefits (discounts on Merriam-Webster, PerfectIt, Deposit Photos, 17Hats, FreshBooks, and more), the AIPP has introduced a new lower membership fee in 2018. Applying to the AIPP is just $45, including a nonrefundable $10 application fee. Renewal is just $35 per year.

Whether you’ve recently opened your business or have worked on more books than you can remember, the AIPP may be the right organization for you. Our members praise the sound advice given when problems arise and in general enjoy the feeling that they’re not alone.

Click on the button below to find out more about the AIPP. 

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

If you’re feeling the pinch because publishers, packagers and agencies aren’t offering your desired fees, think about the issue from a marketing perspective.

The fees on offer from publishers and packagers are a perennial topic of conversation for professional editors and proofreaders. Some feel frustrated and anxious about the rates; others enjoy the security afforded by a stable workflow that requires no client-acquisition effort.
​
It’s important to remember that not everyone’s lowest-paying clients are publishers. If yours are, it might be that you need to switch clients not types of client. Here’s my wise friend and fellow editor Liz Jones:

Here are a couple of made-up case studies. The numbers are inevitably loose – editorial earnings vary hugely depending on subject area, type of editing, country of residence, and individual experience so it’s impossible to generalize. And global comparisons are problematic because of currency fluctuations and cost-of-living variances.
​
Just think of these examples as glimpses rather than universal statements of how the market is!

Case study 1: Working with publishers
Joe Word-King is a professional proofreader specializing in the social sciences. He works exclusively for publishers. In the past 12 months he’s been commissioned by 5 publishers to proofread 32 books by 32 authors.

Joe’s working day
Joe starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 4.30 p.m. He takes an hour for lunch and 15-minute breaks every 90 minutes to give his eyes a rest.
​
This means he has a total of 6 hours per day available for proofreading. During the breaks he does stuff like checking his emails, grabbing cups of tea and something to eat, and taking a little fresh air.

How he acquired those publisher clients
One found him in the Society for Editors and Proofreaders’ Directory of Editorial Services. Four added him to their freelance list after he emailed them and asked if he could take their proofreading test (which he passed).
​
How the work offers come in
The publishers do the author-acquisition work. The book production managers from those presses email him to ask if he’s free to take on a project of A pages, B words, with a budget of C hours and a total fee of £D. Joe decides whether he will accept or decline the work. 

Case study 2: Working with self-publishers
Alicia Sentence-Queen is a professional copyeditor. She works exclusively for independent fiction authors. In the past 12 months she’s been directly ​commissioned by 19 authors to copyedit 19 books.

Alicia’s working day
Alicia starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 4.30 p.m. She takes an hour for lunch and 15-minute breaks every 90 minutes to give her eyes a break.

She also spends an average of 75 minutes per day writing blog articles and sharing her content online so that her website is visible in the search engines.

This means she has a total of 4 hours and 45 minutes available per day for copyediting. During the breaks she does stuff like checking her emails and social media accounts, grabbing cups of tea and something to eat, and taking a little fresh air.
​
How she acquired those self-publisher clients
Fourteen came directly from Google, three from the SfEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, and two from Reedsy.

How the work offers come in
Alicia does the author-acquisition work. She makes herself visible online so that her clients can find her. They then get in touch directly. A process of evaluation, sampling and quoting begins. Alicia offers a price for the project and waits to see whether the author will accept or decline.
​
Most of the enquiries that Alicia receives don’t turn into paid work – perhaps the author doesn’t like the price, the time frame doesn’t work, or Alicia doesn’t feel she’s the right fit for the job. For that reason, Alicia needs to attract enough people for whom the price, the time frame and the fit will work.

Alicia has a change of heart!
Alicia’s heart is in copyediting and she figures that if she had a bunch of publisher clients doing all the author-acquisition work she wouldn’t have to devote 75 minutes per day to making herself visible.

She earns a minimum of £35 per hour. Given that she spends 6 hours and 15 minutes each week marketing, that time costs her £218.75. That works out at nearly a grand a month!

She and Joe are good mates so she gets in touch with him and tells him that she’s thinking about working for publishers. They chat about fees – Joe says he earns an average of £23 per hour, which is two thirds of what she’s getting from her indie authors. Given that Joe proofreads for academic presses, Alicia does a little more digging.

She talks to a few fiction specialists. The fees for trade publishers seem to be lower still, such that she could end up averaging around £18 an hour, half of what she’s earning now.

• If she started working only for publishers, she’d have 6 hours a day available for editing, meaning she’d earn £540 (£18 x 6 x 5) per week.
• If she carries on working with indie authors she can earn £831.25 per week (£35 x 4.75 x 5).

Working for indie authors is more lucrative, but she must devote over 6 hours of her working week to being visible. That’s 6 hours she could be doing something she enjoys more – editing.

What could Alicia do?
If Alicia loathes marketing and can meet her weekly needs with £540, she could take the hit and switch to working with publishers, who will do all her author-acquisition work for her and let her concentrate on doing what she loves best. Yes, she’ll earn less but she’ll be happier.
​
If Alicia loathes marketing but needs to earn at least £750 a week to meet her needs, the switch won’t work. She can’t not do the marketing because the reason why she’s able to attract the clients who are prepared to pay her £35/hr fee is because she’s visible, and being visible means doing marketing.

If Alicia’s determined to switch solely to publishers, she’ll have to make up a shortfall of £210. That means reducing her monthly spend or increasing the hours she spends on copyediting.

She’ll need to decide whether either option would add a level of stress into her life that exceeds her hatred of marketing. If it does, she’d be better off maintaining the status quo!

Joe has a change of heart too!
After chatting with Alicia, Joe feels a little strung out. Thirty-five quid an hour? He’d love to earn that. Joe’s not averse to putting in the marketing work, not if he can earn the money that Alicia’s on, but it’s not going to happen overnight – Alicia told him that it took a few years for her marketing strategy to kick in so that’s she’s never without work.

At the moment, Joe doesn’t have to do anything to find his authors; the publishers do all the grind for him. Sure, he had to get those publisher clients, and he put in a lot of effort – he contacted 70+ presses initially, most of whom weren’t taking on new indie proofreaders.

Nevertheless, having now secured a strong publisher base, he sits back and lets the work come to him. There’s a cost to this, of course – someone else is finding the authors and so they get to control the price. His only control over the rate is his right to accept or decline the work.

What could Joe do?
If Joe can introduce efficiencies into the proofreading process he’ll be able to improve his hourly rate. If he’s already as efficient as he can be, he’ll need get his marketing hat on now and start building his visibility.

Over time, he’ll be able to slide out his lower-paying publishers, confident that he’ll attract enough good-fit clients to provide him with the same income stability that the publishers currently afford him.

If he needs to maintain his current earnings, he’ll have to do the additional marketing work outside of his normal office hours. In the longer term, as the visibility strategy kicks in, he’ll be able to mimic Alicia’s model and build this marketing activity into his business day.

Joe needs to decide whether the impact on his work/life balance is something he’s prepared for. He needs to set the pressure of the additional work against the anxiety born from the publisher fees, and decide whether the change is the right move for him.

Different markets, different benefits, different burdens
On the surface, it might seem like the Alicias of this world have a better deal than the Joes. But there’s more to running a business than just numbers. We have to take into account not just what we need to earn but also what we have to do for what we earn.

If you’re happy to be an editor and a marketer, you’ll be able to reap the benefits from wearing those two hats purposefully. If your heart lies in editing only, you have some choices:

• Do the promotion work anyway, even though you’d rather not.
• Suck up the (sometimes) lower fees and enjoy the stability and security of knowing that someone else is doing the stuff you’d rather not.
• Negotiate with your current publishers and see if you can increase your fees. Even a marginal increase might make the rate more palatable.
• Search for new publisher clients who pay higher rates. Again, even a small increase might make you feel happier,

I worked exclusively for publishers for a good few years and at the time it suited my life very well. I had a toddler to look after and preschool trumped business promotion. Now I have a teenager and marketing trumps Minecraft!

Plus, I happen to love marketing my editorial business so it's not a stress point for me. But that might not be the same for you.

Furthermore, the editorial market isn’t binary. Joe and Alicia might look nothing like you. You might sit somewhere in between. You might earn more than them or less than them, and have a ton of demands in your life that J&A will never experience. There’s no one size fits all.

Just don’t forget that if you’re not finding your own clients, but your schedule is full, someone else is doing the job for you.

There’s a cost to that, and it’s fair that there should be.

Further reading

• Bang for a limited buck: Liz Jones, Eat Sleep Edit Repeat
• How to make proofreading for publishers profitable: Digital efficiencies
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work
• 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

​Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

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

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.