Another email from a Parlour reader ... the answer will be of interest to anyone with similar manual dexterity issues.

Rachel asks:

‘I am looking into a career in proofreading. I have multiple sclerosis and need to work from home. I was wondering if you know whether any of the online courses cover the use of things such as Track Changes. Unfortunately, I have lost almost all manual dexterity and am unable to mark up on hard copy. I am, however, able to use a keyboard and mouse comfortably.’

Thanks so much for your question, Rachel.

So the good news is that because you can use a keyboard and mouse, and you therefore prefer to work onscreen, professional proofreading is certainly a viable option for you (assuming your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are up to scratch, and you're ready to market your business effectively).

Furthermore, there are industry-recognized training courses and resources that will support your onscreen learning.

One thing we need to look at is how different client types’ expectations of what proofreading entails present challenges for you.

It’s important to me that you’re forewarned about this so that you can target your clients appropriately, and communicate your service offering in a way that makes it clear what you will and won’t do.

I’ll tackle that issue first and then move on to the training options available.

Proofreading – expectations and possible challenges
So, you’ve told me that your MS affects your manual dexterity, but my first thought was whether it also leads to fatigue. You didn’t mention this in your email, but I think it’s worth discussing for reasons that I hope will become clear.

In my first decade of proofreading practice, almost all of my clients were mainstream publishers. Now I work exclusively with self-publishers (a few businesses but primarily writers of fiction).

What’s clear from my experience is that the expectations of what has to be done and how it has to be done often differ depending on client type.

Furthermore, how much will be done by the proofreader is often (though not always) quite different.

What and how much does a proofreader do? Traditional publishers
When working for traditional publishers, a proofreader is usually annotating designed page proofs. These are the pages (either paper or digital) that are almost identical to what readers would see if they pulled a book off the shelf.

It’s a quality-control check of a book that’s been through developmental-, line- and copy-editing. The author has reviewed the files at each stage. Once the team is happy that the book’s ready to be laid out, an interior designer or typesetter will format the book to professional, industry-recognized standards.

The proofreader’s job is to find anything missed during an extensive copy-edit, that no errors have been introduced at design stage, and that the various elements of the book are rendered consistently, correctly, and according to the design brief.

In this case, the proofreader is looking at more than just spelling, punctuation and grammar. She’s also spotting problems with page numbering, chapter headings, line spacing, paragraph indentation, running heads, image captions, table and figure numbering, widows and orphans, page depth, prelims and end matter, and more.

In my experience, because most of the problems in the text have already been attended to during previous rounds of editing, there might be only a few changes that warrant querying or marking up on each page.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but, on the whole, most of a proofreader’s time is spent carefully reading and checking rather than marking up.
That’s important for you because while your hand movement is somewhat impaired, your vision isn’t.

And because you wouldn’t have to make thousands of changes, the strain on your hands wouldn’t be excessive or challenging.

What and how much does a proofreader do? Non-publishers
Outside of the mainstream publishing industry, things become a little more tangled. The role of the proofreader is not nearly so well defined.

It’s not unusual for clients to ask for a service they call ‘proofreading’ but that a traditional publisher would call ‘copy-editing or even ‘line editing’. Here the raw text is amended (or suggested recasts to the text are made using Word’s commenting tool).

Furthermore, it’s not unusual for the so-called proofreader to be the first professional to work on the text.

And that means that the changes made might well run into the thousands. We’re not talking about a few amendments on each page, but hundreds per chapter, perhaps even per several pages.
​
Of course, it does vary, but every change, every query, requires the use of one’s hands. So you need to be aware of the potential impact of this kind of work on your health, and think carefully about how it will affect your hands and your fatigue levels.

I’m not saying that working for non-publishers isn’t an option for you. Rather, you’ll need to take your speed and fatigue levels into account and factor them into the time you assign to complete projects.

If you're working in Word, I suspect that =2K–10K-word business documents, Master’s dissertations, journal articles, short stories, brochures and newsletters won't present you with the same challenges as book-length work of 80K–100K words will.

How does a proofreader mark up? Traditional publishers
Because the proofreader is usually providing a pre-publication quality-control check on designed page proofs, most publishers like the annotations to take the form of industry-recognized proof-correction marks. In the UK, these are BS 5261C:2005.

Any decent professional training course will teach you how to use these appropriately.

Traditionally, these annotations were made on paper but publishers are increasingly providing PDF proofs.

This affords you an opportunity because you can use a keyboard and mouse to annotate the page proofs in a way that mirrors a paper markup. There are a few options, but many proofreaders use a combination of a PDF editor’s (e.g. Adobe Reader DC, Acrobat Pro, or PDF-XChange) onboard comment and markup tools and digital proofreading symbols (custom stamps).

I supply free files of stamps that proofreaders can download and install in the stamp palettes of their PDF editors. These stamps conform to BS 5261C:2005.
 
How does a proofreader mark up? Non-publishers
Because many non-publishers supply Word files, you’ll be working directly in Word and using Track Changes.

You’ll also be able to take advantage of several macro suites and find/replace strings that will improve your efficiency and reduce the strain on your wrists and fingers.

That’s good news for all of us – with or without MS or other manual-dexterity issues – in terms of time, quality and consistency.

Summary of what, how, and how much
So, all in all, it’s worth your taking the time to think about the types of clients you’ll work for, how many changes you might be required to make, how those client types will expect you to mark up, what length the projects will be, how long it will take you to complete the different project types, and how all of those things fit in with your specific health condition.

Professional training
My two recommended online proofreading training providers in the UK are the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and The Publishing Training Centre.

The SfEP has practical online courses on the technical aspects of professional proofreading, a grammar brush-up course, and editing in Word. Of the latter, the SfEP says, ‘It includes chapters on styles and templates, find & replace and wildcards, and macros. Guest chapters have been written by Paul Beverley on FRedit, Daniel Heuman on PerfectIt and Jack Lyon on The Editorium. All chapters contain downloadable study notes, exercises and model answers.’

The PTC offers a grammar course, and its flagship Basic Proofreading course.
Before you sign up, I’d recommend you have a conversation with either or both organizations in order to assure yourself that the course materials are usable in a way that suits your needs.

Additionally, there are numerous free online tutorials and screencasts on how to use Word’s Track Changes, so Google will be your friend here. Search for one that matches your own version of Word.

The most important issue for any professional proofreader is understanding first what to change, and making sure that she and the client are on the same page, figuratively speaking, about what degree of intervention is expected and how it will be rendered.

Online books and resources
Here are some resources that should help you on your journey:

• My favourite punctuation guide is R.L. Trask’s Penguin Guide to Punctuation – straight to the point, lots of easy-to-understand examples, logically organized, and short! If you can manage print, there’s a paperback on Amazon.
• If you need an online version, try this guide by the same author, and available free online via the University of Sussex: Guide to Punctuation.
• New Hart’s Rules online: If you’re a UK library member, you can access the premium version of Oxford Dictionaries, which includes NHR and a number of other excellent online grammar and style resources. I like it because it’s easier to search than the paper version, but you’ll benefit from the fact that you can access its content using a keyboard and mouse. You'll need your library card number.
• The Chicago Manual of Style: There’s a searchable online version of this too. Great for all the same reasons as NHR!
• Jack Lyon’s Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word is brilliant for helping the complete novice learn how to use wildcards to save time when editing/proofreading Word docs. It’s a small book, but, again, if the print version’s going to impede access, then use Google Search. Try, for example, Graham Mayor’s Find and Replace using Wildcards.
• Check out the myriad macros on Jack’s The Editorium, too.
• PerfectIt is a simply gorgeous Word add-in that, in my opinion, is a must-have for any professional editor or proofreader working in Word. There are lots of tutorials on the developer’s website.
• Rich Adin’s EditTools is also popular with non-fiction Word editors and proofreaders.
• ​And let’s not forget the mountain of macros available via Paul Beverley – do check these out; they’re all free!
• Finally, for a tiny but excellent summary of BS 5261C:2005 proof-correction marks, visit the SfEP website. There are freebies online but they’re not always up to date. This is still, for me, the best and cheapest reference guide to the marks. It comes as a sturdy piece of folded card, so I’m hoping it won’t be a challenge for your hands.

I hope this helps you move forward, Rachel, and wish you all the very best in your search for a career that will work for you alongside your MS rather than in opposition to it.

Good luck!

Further reading

• Not all proofreading is the same: Part 1. Working with page proofs (Louise Harnby)
• Not all proofreading is the same: Part 2. Working directly in Word (Louise Harnby)
• PDF Editing – Making the Most of the Stamps Tool​ (Louise Harnby)
• Does Training Matter? What Publishers Say about Proofreading & Editing Courses (Louise Harnby; The Proofreader’s Parlour)
• The Proofreader’s Corner: Page Proofs and the Domino Effect (Louise Harnby; An American Editor)
• Proofreading Practice: Exercises with model answers and commentary, 2nd ed. (contact Margaret Aherne direct)

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

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

If you're an author, you might like to join Louise’s Writing Library. Members receive monthly updates featuring self-publishing news and resources.

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

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

Many thanks for your question, Amanda!

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

Because, essentially, this is a marketing issue.

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

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

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

1st-stage marketing (pre-qualification)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another mantra – be interesting and be discoverable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what should she do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The Publishing Training Centre
• Society for Editors and Proofreaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck with the next steps!

Louise

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

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

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

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

So what did Charlie want to know?

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

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

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

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

​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Training has three core benefits:

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck!

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

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

Edibuddies, and why they're brilliant!
This article is for editorial folk who currently choose to operate their businesses in isolation. There's nothing wrong with that at all if that's your bag, but I hope this will show you just some of the benefits of networking.

In ‘The rates debate’ and 'The highs and lows of editorial fees', I argued that colleagues shouldn’t be the primary determiners of the price we set or accept for editorial work.

They are, however, our go-tos for much else, and the professional editor and proofreader would be bonkers not to take the opportunity to exploit the myriad learning opportunities on offer from those with different skills, levels of experience, subject specialisms and environments!

Rather than just writing a list, I thought it might be more interesting to give you a few examples of how some of my colleagues have helped me to develop my editorial business. The list isn’t exhaustive – it would be a book if it was – but it should give you a flavour of what’s on offer.
​

Learning a new macro
I like to consider myself pretty strong on the editorial tech-tool front. And yet I’d lost count of the number of times I’d forgotten to switch Track Changes back on after I’d toggled it off. I needed a solution – some sort of visual or audio reminder.

My pal Gordon Hooper came to the rescue. Gordon’s a fellow member of the Norfolk SfEP local group. Turns out that my other colleague Paul Beverley had already tackled the problem with a macro: if you fancy trying it for yourself, you can read about how it works and how to install it at ‘How to never forget you’ve switched off Track Changes!’.

Tightening up my marketing message
Last year, I spent some time thinking about how I could better present my services so that they reflected the reality of what I spend most of my time doing – proofreading and copyediting for indie authors.

I understand perfectly well the traditional definitions of these skills but in the real world they’re rather tangled (see, for example, ‘The proofreader’s corner: Untangling proofreading’). Again, it was my professional network that came to the rescue.

• Conversations with Sophie Playle and Victoria Woodside helped me to unpick my own services and gently redefine them while staying true to my brand.
• Then John Espirian hooked me up via Twitter with marketing masters Andrew and Pete, who are helping me and thousands of others to make our businesses more engaging and visible.
  

Understanding another skill
Development editing isn't a service I offer. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in learning about it, though. I've started to expand my knowledge via colleagues who have experience in this macro level of editing.

• At one of my Norfolk SfEP group meetings, Sarah Patey, John Ingamells and Julia Sandford-Cooke talked through what their non-fiction development editing roles involve. One of the most interesting points to come out of the discussion was not just the similarities in what they do but also the differences – demonstrating the importance of getting more than one viewpoint when you’re leaning something new.
• Then Sophie Playle recommended Nicola Morgan's Write to be Published, which I found to be a thoroughly engaging text (and I'll be posting soon about why I think its novel-craft guidance is useful for copyeditors and proofreaders even if they don't offer developmental editing services). Sophie's Liminal Pages blog is also full of interesting and accessible posts on big-picture work and well worth a read for those who want to learn more about developmental fiction editing.
  ​

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

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

​

Using a gadget
One of my bugbears has always been having to use hyphens for en dashes on my iPad and iPhone. A discussion on the SfEP forum, started by Lisa Robinson, showed me that Apple has provided en and em dashes – I just hadn’t realized that if you hold down the hyphen button a small window opens and you can slide your finger to your preferred dash. I was delighted, and I wasn’t alone! That thread was full of useful tips. If you’re an SfEP member, you can access it via ‘Dashes’.

Discovering new tools
I love any editorial tool that can increase my productivity or enhance my professionalism. Colleagues alerted me to two particular favourites.

• Sophie Playle used Facebook to ask whether anyone else had encountered a wee problem with Jack Lyon’s FileCleaner. I don’t know how but I’d missed out on that little gem. I went and checked it out and promptly signed up for the free trial. You can read about it on The Editorium website.
• CK MacLeod’s article ‘DIY design with Canva’ on Tech Tools for Writers was another eyeopener and got me completely hooked on Canva. This neat online graphic-design tool is a staple when I want to create icons, badges, business holiday cards, and covers for my books and booklets.
  ​

Maxing out an existing tool
I hadn’t been getting the best out of PerfectIt, even though I’m a long-time user. At another SfEP Norfolk meeting, Mary Sheridan and Sarah Patey taught me how to use the wildcard function more effectively.

This, combined with Jack Lyon’s Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, has been a real productivity enhancer. PerfectIt tends to handle wildcards a lot better than Word when Track Changes is switched on, something else Sarah taught me via Facebook!

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

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

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

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

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

You get the point.

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

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

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

Finding your tribe
There’s a tonne of other stuff that colleagues can help with – I’ve only scratched the surface. If you’re reading this and you’re not connected, consider the benefits of changing the situation.

• Your editorial society’s annual conference might be a fab opportunity. If you find the idea a little daunting, try a chapter meeting first where the numbers are smaller, or join in the discussion in an online forum.
• If you attend a course, take business cards with you so that you have something to hand out that will remind other attendees who you are.
• If you’re already a member of an editorial society but there’s no local group in your area, why not start one yourself? It could turn out to be one of the best moves you ever made!

Ultimately, editorial freelancing is about running your own business, but there are plenty of people who’ll support you in its growth if you find a comfortable space in which to meet them!

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

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

At the time of writing, I’ve had 5 requests in 5 days for advice on transitioning to a proofreading/copy-editing career.

​Self-reflection isn’t uncommon at this time of year – we use the time to think about what the future might bring and what changes we can make to achieve our life goals and business objectives. Here's a summary of the advice I offered my five enquirers based on the questions they asked.
​
This brief article only scratches the surface, but I hope it gives those who are considering a new career some food for thought.
​

​Probably! See how I answered that without knowing a thing about your educational and career experience?

​Here’s the thing – if you want to specialize in medical editing for publishers and you have a degree in economics, a rethink’s in order. Social science publishers, though? That’s more like it.

Ultimately, it’s about aligning your experience and skills with those who speak the same language.

• My background education and work experience is in the social sciences. I don’t know medicine like my doctor pal, Jon. So if I’m proofreading a file that mentions both inulin and insulin (which Wikipedia tells me are both connected to sugar in some way or another!), I’m unlikely to have a clue about whether the mentions of either are correct. At best, I’ll be querying my heart out; at worst, I’ll fail to spot an error.
• Give me a book on politics or social theory and it’s a different story. I know when those two little dots in Jürgen Habermas’s and Loïc Wacquant’s names have been omitted – I don’t have to look ’em up!

So, yes, you do probably have the right background to enable you to transition to a proofreading or copy-editing career.

​Just make sure you focus (initially) on targeting clients to whom you have the best chance of offering an exemplary service – clients who’ll think you’re interesting and hireable because you’re comfortable with the language of their subject.

That doesn’t mean you have to specialize forever, or stay with the same specialization over the course of your career.

When I launched my editorial business, I worked almost exclusively for social science publishers. These days, I work mostly on fiction, specializing in proofreading and copy-editing for indie authors. A lot can change in a decade.
​

​In a nutshell, yes. Why?

• Professional training provides a confidence boost when you’re on track … and plugs the gaps when you aren’t.
• Training is one way of helping potential clients to identify your professionalism. It’s therefore a great USP (unique selling point). I like knowing that my electrician learned how to do the job. I don’t let unqualified dentists near my teeth. My kid’s taught by people with an appropriate educational qualification. I think clients are more likely to think I’m a catch because I can demonstrate that I’ve invested in industry-recognized editorial training.
• Training focuses your mind on the technical aspects of following a brief, marking up according to industry-recognized standards, and knowing when to change, query or leave well enough alone.
• There’s more than one way to mark up. Paper markup isn’t yet dead, but it’s not far off – some clients will want you to work in Word; others will prefer PDF; yet others specify another digital platform. Being able to work in the way that the client prefers is essential, otherwise you’re limiting your customer base. Furthermore, if you want to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, you’re advised to embrace a range of tech tools that combine traditional and contemporary skills. Training will help you prepare for these demands.

Take advice from your national editorial society on the most appropriate training course. The list I’ve linked to includes organizations in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​

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

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

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

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

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

A note from Louise: In 2013, I published my first book – an introductory editorial business-planning guide entitled Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers. I wanted to provide readers with a real-world view of what it’s like to enter the world of editorial freelancing.

Three of my colleagues were kind enough to act as case studies, sharing insights into their experiences of building an editorial business: Johanna Robinson, Mary McCauley and Grace Wilson. At the time of publication, all three were relatively new to the field (their start-ups were under two years old). Each of them created vibrant, successful editorial businesses, working with a range of clients across the UK and Ireland. Their candid accounts illustrated the challenges of editorial freelancing – but also suggested how the path to success could be achieved through determination, skills acquisition, strategic planning and targeted marketing.

Here we are three years later in 2016. My colleagues left behind their new-starter status a long time ago. They’re now established editorial business owners who are not only working for paying clients but also helping less experienced colleagues navigate their way through the world of editorial freelancing via training programmes and conference presentations.

It’s therefore with great pleasure that I hand now you over to Mary McCauley of Mary McCauley Proofreading. Below, Mary tells us what’s changed and what’s stayed the same; how her business has developed; what she’s learned; and what her plans are for the future …

It’s nearly four years since I first wrote a guest article for The Proofreader’s Parlour on how I set up my editorial business, and subsequently appeared as a case study in Louise’s debut book Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers. It feels like a lifetime ago; back in December 2012, I never imagined how my editorial journey would continue. Thankfully, it has been a good four years for me.
 
What has and hasn’t changed since I started out in 2012
Business hours
I have moved to full-time hours and my work schedule has been more or less fully booked up for the past two years. However, I no longer regularly work weekends unless I have agreed a premium rate with my client. As for most people setting up a business, the early years involved long hours of work and weeks without a break. This worked for a while, but I learned that I cannot work that way indefinitely; I need regular time away from my desk or I can’t do my best work. And as my turnover has increased year on year as my business grows, I’m now able to take proper holidays at Christmas and during the summer.
 
Services offered
When I started out in 2012, my main service offering was proofreading and a little copy-editing; now copy-editing work has overtaken proofreading. I also offer some project management services (including liaison with typesetters, designers and illustrators; picture research; and artwork coordination), as well as e-book conversion review services.
 
Additionally, I’ve become involved in training delivery. In June 2014, I was invited to present an editing masterclass for fiction authors at our local Wexford Literary Festival. Not long after, I presented a Marketing Tools for the Freelance Editor seminar at the 2014 SfEP conference and, while it was a daunting but exhilarating experience, I learned a lot from it. Last year I was approached by Irish writer and lecturer Claire Keegan to teach a two-day course on grammar, punctuation and style to her students. It went well and we ran the course again earlier this year. The Wexford Literary Festival invited me back this summer as a panel member for an Industry Experts Q&A discussion and I’m also a regular guest speaker on my Local Enterprise Office’s Start Your Own Business course. More recently, I’m signed up as a speed mentor at this year’s SfEP conference. So through contacts and referrals I’ve slowly gained experience in editorial and editorial-business training, and I’m interested in how I might further develop it as a business offering.
 
My clients
At the start, I cast my net wide in search of clients – anything to get experience. I have since narrowed down my client base. On the fiction side, the majority of my work is for independent authors. Not all of these wish to self-publish; some are preparing their manuscript for submission to an agent, publisher or competition. On the non-fiction side, while I also work with independent authors, the majority of my clients are businesses, public sector bodies and publishers. Due to schedule constraints and short turnaround times, for the moment I no longer work for students.
 
Continuing professional development (CPD)
Investing in quality training has been a priority for me over the past four years and my short-term aim is to continue to invest in learning new skills in a bid to expand the range of services I offer. I’ve completed six editorial courses (SfEP/PTC/Publishing Ireland) since 2012. Each has directly helped pay for itself; for example, the SfEP’s On-screen Editing 1 helped me work more efficiently and thus earn a better rate, while the Publishing Training Centre’s (PTC) Rewriting and Substantive Editing course gave me the confidence to take on an well-paid editing project I otherwise wouldn’t have.
 
Recently, AFEPI Ireland members have been able to take advantage of the PTC courses now running at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. Ireland-based editors can now avail themselves of these without travelling to the UK as many would have done in the past. The courses also have the added benefit of presenting an opportunity for freelance and in-house editors to meet.
 
I regularly learn new ideas and tips from the AFEPI Ireland/SfEP/EAE forums and save shared links for future reference. I find these forums an invaluable source of CPD.
 
Professional membership and networking
Though it is one of my larger yearly expenses, I value my membership of both AFEPI Ireland and SfEP. The support of Irish and UK colleagues, and colleagues further afield, has been one of the most warming experiences of setting up my business. Catching up with AFEPI Ireland friends and colleagues at meetings and training courses in Ireland has been wonderful and energising, and I always come away having learned something. Attending the 2014 SfEP conference in London was an unforgettable experience and I finally understood what ‘finding your tribe’ means.

Marketing
I joined Twitter in 2012 and continue to find it a useful learning platform that has helped me meet and interact with publishing professionals in Ireland and abroad.

When I receive business enquiries I always ask how the person found me, as I need to know which of my marketing efforts are working. The majority of my enquiries come via my website, which enquirers say they found following a Google search. My website’s probably due an overhaul but I’m pleased with how it has worked for me. I also started my own blog, Letters from an Irish Editor, at the start of 2014. I admit I really struggle to find the time to post regularly (it takes me several hours to write a single article!) but as there is always increased traffic to my website when I do, I’ll battle on.
 
When I upgraded to Professional Member status, I took out an entry in the SfEP Directory and I’ve seen some enquiries and work from this direction. After my website, most enquiries come via my AFEPI Ireland Directory entry and from referrals from colleagues. I think my AFEPI Ireland entry is more successful than my SfEP one due to my location, both in terms of my Irish clients preferring an Ireland-based service, but also from a currency point of view.
 
I have had a listing on Find A Proofreader since 2012; as well as receiving the regular job postings I’ve also had direct enquiries and work from it. While a lot of the jobs have too short a turnaround time for my schedule, my entry helps with my website SEO, so at the current advertising rate I find it’s worth the cost.
 
What I’ve learned since 2012
While I’ve continued to work extremely hard to grow my business and client base, the most important thing I’ve learned is to recognise valuable clients and to pursue a client base that offers me the best rates and projects. As I’ve gained experience and undertaken additional training, I’ve become more confident in my editorial and business abilities and in the worth of my service offering when quoting to clients. I’ve come to realise that some clients cannot afford or are unwilling to pay for my services and that if I clog up my schedule with low-paying projects, I won’t have the capacity to work on a more desirable project when it presents itself.
 
Keys to success
The following are key ideas/values that I believed in and tried to pursue from the start and which have proven invaluable to my business during the past four years:

1. Good customer service and reputation are essential for business success.
2. Training pays for itself in the long run and facilitates the introduction of new services.
3. Interacting with trusted colleagues is a valuable source of support and work.
4. It is important to trust your business instinct.
5. Recognising and seizing an opportunity when it presents itself is essential for business growth.
6. Extensive use of macros has a direct positive impact on your profitability.

 
Personal highlights of the past four years

1. Starting my blog in January 2014
2. Upgrading to Professional Membership of the SfEP in February 2014
3. Making some wonderful friendships in the editing community
4. Attending the 2014 SfEP conference and presenting a seminar
5. Helping to establish and initially run the AFEPI Ireland Twitter account
6. Expanding my range of services
7. Being able to take holidays from work
8. Being invited back as a speed mentor at the 2016 SfEP conference

 
Plans for the future

1. Upgrade to Advanced Professional Member of the SfEP
2. Continue to market my business to gain more valuable clients and to safeguard against client attrition
3. Complete a Train The Trainer course​

Mary McCauley runs an editorial business providing project management, copy-editing and proofreading services to authors, publishers, corporate clients and public sector bodies. She is a Full Member of the Association of Freelance Editors, Proofreaders and Indexers (AFEPI Ireland) and a Professional Member of SfEP.

She has taught self-editing courses as part of the Claire Keegan Fiction Clinic series, and has presented seminars at the Wexford Literary Festival and the SfEP’s 2014 conference. She is a regular guest speaker on her Local Enterprise Office’s Start Your Own Business course.

Mary lives near Wexford in the south-east of Ireland. You can contact Mary at info@marymccauleyproofreading.com, through her website Mary McCauley Proofreading, or via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Do you ever wish you could edit novels? No matter whether it's a good old-fashioned romance, a high-octane thriller or a sci-fi romp – you just want to get your teeth into some fiction.
 
But instead, here you are – editing user manuals. Or textbooks. Scientific papers. Cook books. Dissertations. CVs. All because you can't edit fiction. You don't know how. Your skills don't transfer. You can't handle the creative nuances. You just know you'd mess up the author's vision. You're simply not cut out for this.
 
Or so you keep telling yourself. But what if I told you that you don't need some innate kind of creative instinct to be able to do this? That editing fiction is a skill you can learn?
 
Well, it is – and it's easier than you might think. Here's what you need to know:
 
The different types of fiction editing
In an ideal world, a fiction manuscript will go through three stages of editing: macro, sentence, and proofreading.
 
A macro edit will look at the big-picture components of a manuscript and assess how good the story is and how well it’s been told. Manuscript critique and development editing fall into this category.
 
Sentence-level editing addresses issues at, well, the sentence level. This category includes line editing (sometimes called substantive editing) and copy-editing. Line or substantive editing looks more closely at the artistry of the sentences with the aim of improving the writing; copy-editing looks more at the mechanics of the writing, with the aim of correcting the punctuation, grammar and spelling and addressing inconsistencies in style.
 
Proofreading is the last level of quality control, designed to make sure no errors have slipped through after the previous stages. It's the final polish.

How to break into fiction editing
Copy-editing and proofreading are the easiest gateways to fiction editing because they focus more on addressing the mechanical issues rather than the stylistic ones. If you’re an experienced editor in another field, you’ll find that it’s fairly simple to transfer your technical editing skills to fiction editing.
 
The main thing to keep in mind when copy-editing or proofreading fiction is that there’s more scope for ‘rule breaking’. It’s important to remember that style guides and conventions of grammar and punctuation are guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules that must be obeyed.
 
Use your judgement to decide whether the author hasn't followed convention for effect or because they simply didn’t know a particular guideline. And if the author writes in a slightly unconventional but consistent way (which doesn’t impede the reading experience), unless you’ve been asked to address the issue, you can let it slide.
 
Special issues to address when editing fiction
Novels contain long narratives, so when editing fiction it’s critical that you keep track of not only technical details (such as whether the author prefers the serial comma), but certain story details too – those of consistency, logic, time and point of view.
 
Consistency: Using a style sheet that includes lists of each main character’s details will help you spot that David has blue eyes in chapter three but green eyes in chapter seventeen.
 
Logic: Be alert to plot details as you edit. How has Jasmine just switched on the television when she’d stormed out of the room three paragraphs ago? How is it that Zach knows what clouds are when he’s lived his whole life in a dystopian underground city?
 
Time: Create a basic timeline of events as you edit. This way you’ll be able to spot whether a two-hour drive accidently takes all day, or whether a week accidently has two Mondays in it (God forbid).
 
Point of view: All novels have a narrator in one form or another, and the perspective through which the narrator is experiencing the fictional world is known as the point of view. Good novels use point of view consistently and for effect. If the point of view jumps from one place to another in a jarring or illogical way, this is called ‘head hopping’ – usually a result of an author not fully understanding (or slipping up with) point of view. As a fiction editor, you should keep an eye out for this issue and correct it (or flag it up for the author to address) where necessary.
 
How to become an informal expert (and why this helps)
Perhaps you don’t feel fiction is your expertise. However, I bet you love reading novels. You probably have a favourite genre, too, and have devoured hundreds of books. Your love of a good story might seem like just a hobby – but it’s likely you’ve subconsciously absorbed a lot of knowledge.
 
To become a better fiction editor, you simply need to go one step further: read more books slowly and analytically. Pay attention to the nuances of language, the rhythms of sentences. Why did the author choose to put that comma there? What effect did it have? Why did they use this verb over another? You’d be surprised how much you can learn by observing and thinking.
 
And you can go another step further than this, too: read books about novel writing. That way, your editorial decisions will be grounded in the same guidance and information as the writer’s decisions. I recommend Write to be Published by Nicola Morgan to start.
 
Why you should specialize in fiction editing
I don’t recommend that you add fiction editing to your existing editing business. If you target vastly different types of client – such as fiction authors and technical writers – you’ll find it difficult to build a cohesive brand and focus your marketing. (Though I do think the exception to this rule is if you want to offer proofreading to multiple types of client, since the skill is so transferable – just look at Louise’s awesome brand!)
 
Choosing a niche will help you be seen as a specialist – and that's important. Being a specialist means you’ll attract more clients and be able to charge them more. You might think you’re excluding a huge number of potential clients, but in fact the opposite is true. Instead of competing against every other editor, you’ll stand out to your target client – who is presumably searching for things like 'science fiction editor' or whatever your chosen niche is. If you want to work with novelists and fiction publishers, who do you think they will be more likely to hire? The editor who edits anything for anyone, or the specialist fiction editor?
 
If you’re not satisfied with your existing specialism (or you don’t even have a specialism) and you think fiction editing could be for you … Why not go for it? Try it out. You could even build up a separate brand and test the waters before deciding to become a full-time fiction specialist. You’d be surprised at how deciding to focus your business increases your confidence – and make you see yourself as a specialist, too.
​

Each week I provide a new set of information, instructions and assignments (which I give personalized feedback on). By the end of the course you’ll be that much closer to your editing dreams – and may even be ready to go right off the bat!
 
Head on over to StartFictionEditing.com to learn more (and grab your free introductory module!).

In 2013, Kate Haigh (Kateproof) hosted a Q&A with several editorial freelancing colleagues (including me) to find out how things were going, what their goals were and how they envisaged their futures. Now, in 2016, she's revisited those same colleagues to see what's changed and what's stayed the same: The middle years – questions and answers.

You can read the individual freelancers' responses to Kate's questions, but she's also provided a really useful overview of the middle years of editorial business ownership, based on her own thoughts and the insights provided by her colleagues.

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

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

My guest article for the Indian Copyeditors Forum blog takes a look at why traditional proofreading skills are just as relevant in 2016 as they were 40 years ago.

I discuss the differences between proofreading (or proof-editing) directly in Word and proofreading post-design page proofs.

Being able to work with page proofs enables proofreaders to offer their services at different stages of the production process. In this way, self-publishers can bring their books to market secure in the knowledge that their work has received the same level of professional attention as any mainstream published title.

To read the article in full, visit the Indian Copyeditors Forum: 'Proofread like it’s 1976'.

Then again, if you fancy giving your eyes a rest, get yourself a cuppa and listen to the podcast.

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

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

Someone recently emailed me to ask my advice about returning to the world of editorial freelancing after a break. In particular, they wanted to know whether free courses were worthwhile, and, if so, which one they should take.

My answer was that the issue of free versus paid missed the point. Rather, it depends on what is required by the individual.

If your skills are sound with the exception of one particular gap in your knowledge, e.g. how to use proofreading markup symbols, and you find a free course that teaches this, then it’s going to be a great course for you, one that's worth doing despite the fact that it costs nothing but your time.

​If, however, you need a comprehensive tutor-based course that teaches you how to use markup language, make sensible decisions about when to mark up and when to leave well enough alone, how to work with paper and onscreen files, and provide you with a solid grounding in how publishing and production processes work (and your place within them), then this free course, which only teaches you how to use markup language, will be next to useless.

Of course, we all have budgets. I love a freebie as much as the next person and I've taken advantage of several free or low-cost tutoring programmes over the years. I've also forked out hundreds of pounds in the process of learning new skills. Which of those courses were the most worthwhile? The freebies or the bank-account drainers? The answer is, all of them. That's because I picked the courses that I felt would teach me what I needed to know.

When training for professional business practice, the primary indicator of whether the training is worthwhile is not the price; rather, it is the degree to which the course content fills our knowledge gaps.

A few fictive case studies
Jenny is a social worker from Dublin who is thinking about transitioning to freelance proofreading.

She has no previous editorial experience, though her academic and career credentials are outstanding. As I said, she's thinking about transitioning – she hasn’t yet made up her mind whether this is the right move.

She contacts theAssociation of Freelance Editors, Proofreaders & Indexers (AFEPI), Ireland’s national editorial society. One of the joint-chairpersons tells her that the society is running a half-day “introduction to proofreading” session. The course is a bargain at only 40 euros. She also finds a free online proofreading course that takes about an hour to complete.

Are these worth doing? In Jenny’s case, they are excellent opportunities that will give her a taste of what professional proofreading involves but won't require her to invest large amounts of her hard-earned cash before she's made up her mind about her future career steps.

Will they make her ready to hit the ground running in the world of professional proofreading practice? No, but that's not what she needs at the moment.

Dan is former experienced and highly recommended copyeditor and proofreader from Toronto.

He put his career on hold while he took on the full-time care of his partner, who'd been diagnosed with a long-term illness. Dan’s been out of the editorial freelancing world for 15 years and is now ready to re-enter the marketplace.

He's no newbie but he does feel very rusty. The editorial environment has changed somewhat in the past decade and a half. More work is being done digitally than was the case when he was previously in practice, so his tech skills are out of date.

His research enables him to identify the gaps in his technical knowledge. He's located a series of free online tutorials that will enable him to develop these tech skills.

Dan is also concerned that because he hasn’t worked on professional material for a long time he's forgotten some of the foundational principles that underpin his practice. He decides that full Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC) certification in copyediting and proofreading might be overkill at this point.

However, the Toronto branch of the EAC runs a number of brush-up seminars that will be useful to him. In addition, the EAC offers two relevant study guides for a total cost of just over CAN$100.

Price-wise, the investment is not insignificant by any means, but he thinks that that the curriculum covered will bring his knowledge up to date. Later, he may use this study programme to become certified.

Mati is a successful London-based professional English/Italian translator. She wants to extend her service portfolio to include proofreading.

In addition to working with independent authors and academics, she wishes to proofread for publishers. She decides to source an industry-recognized and comprehensive course that will train her to professional standards.

She's short on money because her London flat costs her a fortune each month.

She's identified a number of free online proofreading programmes, and a couple of books dedicated to the subject.

None of them offer her the depth of content that she feels will give her the confidence to enter professional proofreading practice; plus, she’d really like to have a tutor for mentoring purposes.

The course she thinks will be perfect for her is the run by the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) but it costs £395. The free course options or the books will solve her financial issues, but they won't give her the detail or the mentoring.

The PTC option will give her the detail and the mentoring but will leave her unable to pay next month's rent.

She decides to save up for the PTC course over six months. In the meantime, she continues to focus on her translation work, and uses the time she’d set aside for the PTC proofreading course to develop a marketing strategy aimed at building a proofreading client base that will complement her existing translation-client work.

Curriculum before cost ...
Free or cheap can be superb or it can be useless. Expensive can be comprehensive or overkill. That's because the cost of the course is not the right indicator. Rather, the content of the course, and the degree to which that content addresses a particular skill gap, is what counts.

​Certainly we must not ignore free or low-cost tutorials, webinars, books, courses and conferences – if they teach us what we need to know they'll be a boon for our business development. On the flip side, we shouldn’t dismiss training that we consider to be expensive if that training is what will enable us to compete in the editorial freelancing market effectively.

When we find that the training we need costs more than we can currently afford, we need to develop a plan to finance that training. If I can’t afford the course that I’ve identified as the one that will fill the gaps in my professional knowledge, I might decide to save up for it, just as Mati did.

Imagine that your child’s nursery teacher, your electrician or your dentist told you they couldn’t afford to do the training they'd identified as making them fit for purpose and so they’d opted not to bother, instead turning to cheaper or free courses that only taught them a few of the things they needed to know. Would you let them near your kid, your fuse box or your mouth? Our clients are no different. They want us to be fit for purpose.
​
Curriculum is always the primary indicator that we should focus on when evaluating how worthwhile a training course is. Using content as the basis of selection will drive us into a position where we acquire the skills we need to solve our clients’ problems such that they will hire us repeatedly and recommend us to their colleagues.

Some of that content will be free, some of it will cost a pretty penny, and some of it will sit somewhere in between those two extremes. Take your pick but base your choice on what you need to learn, not on what you'd like to pay.

If you want advice on the editorial training that's most appropriate to your circumstances, talk to the training director of your national editorial society. Most associations offer a range of learning opportunities within different environments to suit people's varying needs, skills and levels of experience.

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

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

I've been delighted to read how, recently, a number of UK-based proofreaders-in-training have successfully completed the Publishing Training Centre’s Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning, a course that is well respected within the UK publishing industry.

I took this course in 2005 and I believe it provided me with a foundation that made me ready for the practical side of actually doing the job. Consequently I have no problem recommending it to those who ask my opinion on the matter.

I learned a huge amount from this course (which I took seven months to complete) and also from colleagues in my prior workplace.

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of knowledge I acquired, and that I needed in order to make a proofreading career viable from a practical point of view, was the necessary mindset.

Old working practices
I come from a publishing background. My first job was in the European marketing, sales and distribution office of Williams & Wilkins, the Baltimore-based STM publisher. I was a sales promotion manager.

From there I moved to SAGE publications, a well-known independent social sciences and educational publisher (though their publishing programme has expanded somewhat since my day). I was employed as a senior journals marketing manager and remained so for the rest of my office-bound career.

The colleagues with whom I worked most closely were commissioning editors, fellow marketing execs, and editorial production managers.

• Within the commissioning department the focus was on vision – working within the house’s goals to publish the very best scholarly research and further the dissemination of top-quality educational material. Commissioning editors needed to be enthusiastic, creative, driven and persuasive. They needed to be able to see the bigger picture – of how X book or Y journal would provide solutions for individual scholars and the institutions who employed them, and how that scholarly material would fit within the press’s wider publishing programme to enhance its reputation as a publisher of note.
• Within the marketing department the focus was on creativity – working within the house’s goals to promote and sell the acquired books, journals and software to specific customer groups: academic libraries, individual researchers and students. Marketing managers also needed to be enthusiastic and creative, able to think in left field and not be afraid to experiment in a budget-conscious manner with new ideas and communication tools. Jumping in and bouncing around ideas was expected, encouraged. We were tasked with making the company’s products interesting and discoverable.
• Within the editorial production department the focus was on detail – ensuring that the authors’ scholarly research and commissioning editors’ vision physically emerged as an end product (whether print or digital) in a timely manner, reflected the company’s commitment to quality and rigour, and represented the house brand. Production editors needed to be pedantic, patient, time-management focused, organized, sticklers for the minutiae, and strict on method and process. It's my view that their job was the most demanding, particularly given the sheer volume of their workload.

Learning from editorial production …
I finally left SAGE to dedicate a couple of years to child-rearing. My little family moved to the Norfolk countryside and we revelled in the stunning rural views from the windows of our home and enjoyed the space, the grass, the deer, and the short drive to the beach.

And then I got itchy feet. I wanted back into publishing but I wanted it on my own terms – freelance proofreading seemed like the solution. But my editorial production colleagues had already taught me to ask an important question:

Do I have the right mindset for the actual practice of proofreading?

As I've said, my background was in marketing. I was used to being in a work environment that was about ideas and experimentation. I'm not saying that there were no processes to attend to or that I didn't have certain business parameters to work within. I did, of course. But following a brief, pedantic punctuating and a careful, methodical, almost plodding attention to detail weren't the criteria at the top of my job description.

If I was going to transition to a proofreading career, I would need to ensure that the appropriate mindset was embedded in the way I approached my work. I knew I had a tendency to get a bee in my bonnet and jump in without looking where I was going. It’s in my nature! To be a proofreader I needed to slow down. I needed to be a detail person. Left field needed to be left behind!

Learning from professional trainers …
That’s why I chose the Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning course. I wanted a comprehensive training tool that would make me practice-ready, but I wanted to be assessed, too. I needed to be able to see where my weaknesses were, as well as my strengths. And I needed to practise being a detail person – to embed that mindset of attending to the method, the process, the instructions, so that I could do what the client wanted.

A target market for me was always going to be social science publishers – I've a politics degree and in-house experience, so it made sense right from the start. I knew these publishers would have demanding expectations of their proofreaders and I wanted to be ready. Ready for the house brief, ready for the method, ready for the deadlines.

Practising the mindset …
How did I prepare? I read each chapter’s theory several times. I photocopied the exercises several times. I’d do them, trying my best to mark up in the way the chapter had advised.

I’d mark my own efforts, make notes about my weaknesses, re-read the appropriate course material, and then put the exercise away for a few days.

Then I’d do it all over again – this helped me see if I’d learned from my previous mistakes or whether the information had gone in one ear and out of the other.

Then I’d do it a third time – leave alone for a few days and then repeat the exercise. When I was confident I’d nailed it, I’d photocopy the assessed test so that I had three copies.

Then I’d do the test, put it away, re-do the test, compare, see if I was consistent, put it away, go through it one last time, attend to anything I’d missed, and then submit.

It was laborious. But I learned to slow down; I learned what my weak points were; I learned a systematic method of working practice that focused on my client's instructions and objectives.

I became so used to working like this that it embedded this careful attention to detail in my mind – something that I rely on every time I'm commissioned to work on a project.

​Of course my publishers don’t budget for me to do multiple passes on a piece of work, with several days of quiet reflection in between! Now that would be a luxury! But I'm glad I had the space to do this, to learn that mindset, to get used to being a detail person.

So, if you fancy proofreading as a career, ask yourself the same question:

Do I have the right mindset for the actual practice of proofreading?

If you’re not sure, use your training* space to practise the careful, methodical process of attending to detail, according to the instructor’s brief. You won’t regret it and the time taken will be an investment that you can carry with you throughout your future career.
________________
​
* If you're still deciding which course to take, your national editorial society will be able to offer advice about the training options available in your region.

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

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

The readership of the Proofreader's Parlour continued to grow in 2013 and I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to visit, contribute and comment. 

As any regular business blogger knows, it takes commitment to keep a blog vibrant and up-to-date with fresh, high-quality content. There's a lot of thoroughly useful information in the blogosphere, all of which is free to access. However, navigating that space to find what you want is the time-consuming bit! With that in mind I thought I'd provide readers with (a) a short summary of this year's most-read Parlour posts and (b) a list of some of the go-to editorial business blogs that I've found most beneficial to my professional development in 2013.

What you've been reading on the Parlour ...
This is a list of the twenty most-read articles in 2013 (ranked by number of page views). And it's great to see three of my guest writers featuring in the top ten!

1. Does Training Matter? What Publishers Say about Proofreading & Editing Courses
2. Proofreading: How to Choose the Right Training Course
3. Free Downloadable PDF Proofreading Stamps
4. Book: Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers
5. “Can you proofread my thesis by tomorrow?” – Editorial Freelancing in the Student Market
6. Proofreading – Does it Pay? (Shani D’Cruze)
7. Building a Freelance Proofreading Business – The Usefulness of Objectives (Mary McCauley)
8. Why I Hate the Term “Freelance Proofreader” – A Letter to Newbies
9. Proofreaders-to-be: Loving Books Isn’t Enough
   
10. Working for Academic Editing Agencies (Anna Sharman)
11. Going Direct – Using “Cold” Cover Letters to get Freelance Work with Publishers
12. Proofreader and Editor CVs for the New Starter
    
13. Setting Up a Proofreading Business: 10 Things You Need to Know and 10 More You Need to Do
    
14. But Who Are You? … One Proofreader’s Guide to Personalized Professional Online Communication
    
15. Roundup: Websites for Editorial Freelancers – Why? How? What?
    
16. Value-on or Money-off? Putting a Price on Your Editorial Services
17. Building Your Editorial Business: A Fictive Case Study
18. Proofreading in Word – One of my Favourite Find/Replace Strings
19. Money-saving Tips for Editorial Freelancers
20. Lessons Learned #3: Three Steps to Effective Directory Advertising
    

What I've been reading elsewhere ...
These are my ten go-to business-development blogs/resource hubs (in alphabetical order). Keeping the list to ten meant I had to leave out some really useful and enjoyable reading provided by editorial colleagues, but I hope this gives a flavour of what's available, especially for the new entrant to the field. (For some of the other excellent sites I regularly visit, scroll down to the blogroll on the Parlour's right-hand sidebar.)

• An American Editor – thought-provoking editing and business advice from Rich Adin
• Beyond Paper Editing – tips for writers and editors from Corina Koch MacLeod and Carla Douglas
  
• Catherine, Caffeinated – self-publishing advice (useful for editorial types working with independent writers)
• Copyediting – informative editing and language blog
  
• Copyeditors' Knowledge Base – Katharine O’Moore-Klopf's excellent editorial resource centre
• The Freelancery – ideas, tools and know-how about freelancing
  
• Full Media – insights and opinion on online media, with a strong marketing focus
• Libro Editing – Liz Broomfield's small-business advice and Word-usage tips
• Right Angels and Polo Bears – lots of super tips, tools and resources on editing from Adrienne Montgomerie
• Subversive Copy Editor – sensible editorial advice from Carol Fisher Saller

Here's to 2014 and to another year of sharing information and ideas about how to navigate the always fascinating but sometimes bumpy world of editorial freelancing!

About Louise Harnby
Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, follow her on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or find her on LinkedIn.

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Stephen Cashmore, the SfEP's training director, has kindly agreed to tell Parlour readers a little more about the exciting developments in online/distance learning editorial training being offered by the Society ...

Louise has invited me, as training director of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, to explain what the thinking is behind making our training courses available online, and what lies a bit further down the road.

The "why" is simple enough: there’s a strong demand for distance learning courses that are accessible online. The SfEP office regularly receives enquiries from people outside the UK, asking when we’re going to deliver training online so that they can benefit from it. For that matter, we regularly get enquiries from would-be students in the UK, asking exactly the same question. Why? Because they can’t afford the time away from their desk, or they have family commitments, or they can’t afford the travel (and sometimes accommodation), or the dates of the classroom-based course are inconvenient. This demand for online courses was also highlighted in the last annual membership survey.

As our publicity material says, the benefits of learning material being available online include:

• no travel or accommodation costs
  
• being able to study at your own pace, at a time to suit you, wherever you are
  
• having immediate access to learning materials and exercises in an electronic format
  
• one-to-one interaction with a tutor, if you have any questions
  
• the opportunity to interact with other students via the course forum.

This is not to say that there’s no place for classroom-based courses. They have their own unique advantages in their networking opportunities and the fact that you can put your hand up and immediately ask awkward questions of the living, breathing tutor in front of you.

In short, training is demand-led. We are making our courses available online because there is a demand for it, and we will continue to deliver classroom-based courses for as long as there is a demand for them.

What next? Our flagship course, Proofreading 1: Introduction, is already available online. The plan is to put four more courses online this year:

• Introduction to Copy-editing
• Proofreading Problems (to be renamed Proofreading Progress)
• Copy-editing Problems (to be renamed Copy-editing Progress)
• Brush Up Your Grammar.

We are planning to make Copy-editing Progress available online before the Society’s conference in Exeter. (Are you going to the conference, by the way? If you are not, well, I would encourage you to check out what’s on offer via the SfEP website.) The other three courses should be online before the end of 2013.

Once these entry-level courses are in place, my aim is to target the "specialist" market and provide half a dozen online-only courses on specific topics, although these are only a glint in my eye at the moment. Budget constraints mean that I can target only one of these courses during 2013/14: the others will, I hope, be developed early in 2014/15.

So there’s a lot happening. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and keep an eye open on our website for future announcements on the progress of SfEP’s delivery of online training.

Stephen Cashmore
Training Director, SfEP

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The Society for Editors and Proofreaders recently launched its new entry-level online course, Proofreading 1: Introduction.

This is great news for the new starter who wants a distance-learning course that introduces them to the nuts and bolts of proofreading. And since it's been developed by the SfEP, the student can be confident that the learning goals addressed are in line with publishing industry standards.

More information about this course is available here.

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20 tips to help you set up a freelance proofreading business
Are you considering setting up a proofreading business? Or perhaps you're already on the journey.

Here are 10 things you need to know and 10 more that you need to do to ensure you get off to a good start and develop good-sense habits that will benefit you well into the future.
​
10 things you need to know ...

1. There’s a lot of competition.
2. The work won’t land in your lap overnight. It takes time to build a healthy small business.
3. Owning an editorial business requires hard work, commitment and patience.
4. Proofreading is not the same as copy-editing or substantive editing. And proofreading isn’t necessarily easier than other types of editorial intervention; it’s a different (though related) discipline. The Society for Editors and Proofreaders offers excellent guidance.
5. There’s no magic formula when it comes to earning potential – rates vary according to customer type and each freelancer's business model.
6. Having a good eye for detail and a strong grasp of language is only the start. For example, depending on which customers you work for, you might be required to use a particular mark-up language, utilize specific software or understand particular industry-standard conventions.
7. Quality training is not a waste of money – it’s an investment in your future business success.
8. Marketing is an active, not a passive, activity and requires creative, strategic thinking and planning.
9. There is more than one customer type, and different customers have different expectations (e.g. publishers vs self-publishers vs corporate clients vs students).
10. “I’ll proofread anything” isn’t an effective or professional pitch that inspires confidence in a potential client.

10 things you need to do ...

1. Make a business plan – you’re about to become a business owner; it's important to behave like one. In particular, be realistic about the length of time it will take to get your business up and running.
2. Become an effective marketer – if your customers don't know you exist, you won't get work, even if you're the most able proofreader on the planet.
3. Network – other editorial freelancers are a virtual goldmine of information. Nearly every day one of my colleagues teaches me about a new resource, tool or idea. Join the editorial groups on social media and connect via your national professional editorial society.
4. Research the field so that you understand the profession and what your customers’ expectations are. For example, publishers might have different needs and expectations to self-publishers.
5. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes – once you understand who your customers are and what they want, make sure that both the language you use and the information you highlight when pitching to them reflect that understanding.
6. Think in a joined-up way – all the things you do when you build your proofreading business are connected – for example, the way you communicate on social media will have an impact on your colleagues’ and customers’ perceptions of you.
7. Make sure you’re fit for purpose – do the appropriate training to prepare yourself for market. Contact your national editorial society for guidance.
8. Get the tools you need for your home office that will enable you to do your job. A pencil and a red pen are not enough, though you will need those!
9. Act like a professional business owner – from every email you reply to, to the way you brand your letterhead, to the way you communicate your pitch in your promotional media, to the invoices you post, to the way you organize your accounts.
10. Consider specializing when you start up your business and target the appropriate customers – your prior educational and career background will help you to develop a strong pitch that sells your skills. You can always diversify later.

If you'd like more comprehensive guidance about starting a proofreading business, my books might be just the ticket. Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, these practical guides take the new starter, step by step, through the basics of planning an editorial career and marketing their services.

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

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

If you want to set up your own proofreading or editing business, here's a resource to get you started ...

Some people just love the smell and feel of a traditional book! If you're one of those who wants something solid to pop on your bookshelf, then this is for you: by popular demand, Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers: A Guide for New Starters is now available in paperback.

For a PDF sample of the internal content, click on the "OPEN ME!" call-out box. 

Published in association with The Publishing Training Centre, this practical guide takes new freelance proofreaders and copyeditors through the basics of planning their career. Chapters focus on the different aspects of editorial freelancing, training, client focus, getting experience, financial assessment, promotion, networking, tools for the job and real-world case studies.

More information about this title, including some super reviews, can be found on the book's dedicated webpage here: Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers.

You can buy the paperback through your regional site Amazon site (e.g. Amazon.com, 
Amazon.co.uk) or CreateSpace (take care to pick the option that best suits you in terms of postage and speed of delivery if you live outside the USA). 

The e-version is available through Smashwords (discounts apply) and your regional Amazon site (e.g. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca).

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

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

I'm delighted to announce the launch of my e-guide, Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers: A Guide for New Starters, published in association with The Publishing Training Centre.

Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, this practical guide takes new editorial freelancers, step by step, through the basics of planning their business.

There are some super early reviews on the book's dedicated page, written by publishers and fellow professional editorial freelancers.

Don't have an e-reader? Not a problem. This guide comes in a variety of formats, including PDF, allowing you to download to your computer if you prefer.

I'd like to take the opportunity once again to thank my fabulous contributors for helping to make this guide a really useful first piece of kit for any new starter in our industry: Kate Haigh, Liz Jones, Nick Jones, Janet MacMillan, Mary McCauley, Johanna Robinson, Anna Sharman, Marcus Trower and Grace Wilson.

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

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

Here's some exciting news from The Publishing Training Centre that I know many new starters will be pleased to read about: a new version of the highly respected Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning course.

I did a previous version of this course back in 2005 and found it excellent. There are some super new features (digital proofreading) but the core components that drew me to the course eight years ago are still there, too. Key for me was tutor assessment. That's where I acquired such valuable guidance and feedback on my assignments – where I learned what my strengths were and identified any early weaknesses that needed attending to.

Here's the press release from the PTC ...

We are delighted to announce that the latest version of this popular course has now been launched. This new version contains new exercises, updates to the course text and a whole new section on digital proofreading.

Basic Proofreading begins by taking you through the proofreader's place in publishing and the differences between proofreading and editing. You will learn the British Standards Institution symbols and, more importantly, how and when to use them.

Throughout the course, you will learn about the practical side of working as a proofreader, benefiting from the years of experience accumulated by the course's authors and by your tutor. Different types of publishing are covered, giving you the confidence to deal with anything from children's fiction and promotional material to academic and educational texts.

The course is designed to set you on the path towards becoming a true publishing professional.

You can buy the course online at www.train4publishing.co.uk/courses/distance-learning/basic-proofreading or you can download a brochure from that same page and complete the enrolment form.

If you have any questions that are not answered on our course page or in the FAQ section, please drop us a note at publishing.training@bookhouse.co.uk or call us on 020 8874 2718.

I'm pleased to announce the launch of my ebook, Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers: A Guide for New Starters, published in association with The Publishing Training Centre. For those who'd like to read what editorial and publishing professionals are saying about this guide, there are now some fabulous reviews here on my website.

Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, this practical guide takes new editorial freelancers, step by step, through the basics of planning their business. 

Key features:

• Chapter outline: why a business plan is necessary; the different aspects of editorial freelancing; training; client focus; getting experience; financial assessment; promotion; networking; and tools for the job.
• Tasks and learning goals in each chapter are enhanced with useful tips, tools and focus sections featuring experienced practitioners.
• Illuminating case studies: recent new starters reflect candidly on their editorial freelance journeys.
• A comprehensive list of linked resources is provided, including training providers, editorial societies, software, reference material, blogs and knowledge centres.
• Don't have an e-reader? Not a problem. This guide comes in a variety of formats, including PDF, allowing you to download to your PC or Mac if you prefer. Also available for a range of devices including Kindle, Kobo, iPad, smart phone, and more.

​

Who have I been working with?
The project is published in association with The Publishing Training Centre, one of the UK's premier training providers for the publishing industry. I've been training with the PTC since I began my publishing career over 20 years ago and I'm delighted that they feel this guide is worth associating their good name with. Their editorial input and publishing guidance have been instrumental to the content and the production process.

The guide also benefits hugely from the contributions of several editorial colleagues and friends who worked with me on the practitioner focus sections and case studies: Kate Haigh, Nick Jones, Liz Jones, Janet MacMillan, Mary McCauley, Johanna Robinson, Anna Sharman, Marcus Trower and Grace Wilson. These real-world examples enrich the key learning goals discussed and I'm grateful to these editorial professionals for taking time out of their busy schedules to share their views and experiences.

Why publish?
The Proofreader's Parlour has proved extremely popular with new entrants to the field. However, not everyone feels comfortable in the blogosphere, nor do those unfamiliar with the platform always find it easy to navigate between the different archives.

Consequently, I regularly receive emails and telephone calls from "newbies" wanting help with how to move forward.

Since I'm busy running my own proofreading business, I had to make a decision:

1. stop offering help
2. start charging consultancy fees to compensate for lost work hours
3. present the information that I feel is core to building a new editorial business in the more structured format of an e-book. 

Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers: A Guide for New Starters is the result.

UPDATE: this book is now also available in paperback. Click here for more information, including how to order.

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

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

For some excellent proofreading guidelines, including using the BSI 5261-2 (2005) proofreading marks, take a look at the Society of Editors and Proofreaders' (SfEP) page on Accreditation in proofreading: Guidance for candidates.

This article is an overview for those proofreaders considering taking the SfEP's accreditation test. However, it's worth a read even for those who aren't. It includes some useful advice (and reminders for working proofreaders), with examples, for how to proofread to a high standard while employing good sense and adhering to your client's brief.

I was prompted to revisit this page following a fruitful discussion with a group of editing/proofreading friends about using up-to-date mark-up symbols and the differences between real-world practice and testing. My thanks to them, as always, for their advice, wisdom, knowledge-sharing and support.

Microsoft's free online video training tutorials may be of interest to less experienced users or to those transitioning to later versions.

There are various training options: Office 2007, 2010 and 2013. Whichever version you're using, the tutorials feature the most commonly used applications, including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and OneNote. Publisher 2007 is also offered.

Once you've selected the version and the application you're interested in your can search by key word for the courses you're interested in.

With thanks to SfEP colleague Hilary Cadman for the heads-up about what's on offer.

<< Go to the blog homepage    << Search this blog    << More on training

Editing Digital Products is a fabulous London-based 1-day training course run by the Publishing Training Centre (PTC). I'm attended recently and highly recommend it.

I'd originally intended to mention this in my Link of the Week feature, but on reflection I felt it merited a more detailed, stand-alone review. This is because on the 4-hour journey home I had time to think about all that I’d learned and consider how I might apply it to my day-to-day freelance proofreading business.

What’s in it for the freelance proofreader?
First of all, Editing Digital Products is not designed to teach the skills of onscreen editing (or proofreading).

Thus, if like me you spend much of your day working with (a) printed material, (b) onscreen content that will be printed further down the line, or (c) onscreen material that will be handled as if it was print (covering letters that will be emailed, for example), then the relevance of this course may not be immediately obvious.

Bear with me, however, because I've come to the conclusion that aside from the excellent foundational training I did to learn the method and practice of proofreading (Basic Proofreading my Distance Learning, also from the PTC), Editing Digital Products might well be the most important chunk of learning I've carried out in my freelance career.

High praise, you might think, but here’s the reasoning.

Future-proofing your editorial business
The world of publishing is changing. It’s highly likely that proofreaders (and editors) who work within mainstream publishing will come across an increasing number of opportunities to do what they do but within a digital setting. I’m not just talking about proofreading PDFs or editing Word documents; I’m talking about being asked to engage with specifically online material that works in a different way to traditional print media – interactive learning and entertainment resources that incorporate links, animation, games, click-and-drop functionality, and so on. You’re probably already using these types of resources on the various gadgets you have at home, such as your phone, your tablet, your PC, your e-reader.

If you want to be able to show publishers that you’re not afraid of engaging with digital material over a number of platforms, you need to be able to “think” in a digital way – to understand what it means to publish digitally and to manage, or operate within, digital workflows. And that’s what Sarah Sodhi, the course tutor, will help you to do. 

If you like to sit quietly on your backside and let the tutor do all the work, then this course won't be for you. Sarah's style is very much one of interaction, encouraging students to work together in groups and in whole-class exercises that require them to engage and think creatively about:

• what digital workflows look like
• the opportunities/benefits and disruptions/challenges of digitization
• new technologies and platforms
• digital language and systems
• the role of the editor/proofreader within digital processes
• project management in a digital environment
• print and digital content – differences and similarities
• and a whole lot more besides.

So, it’s about expanding your understanding of a changing publishing environment and guiding you towards an enhanced skillset that will be attractive to publishers working with digital products.

Adding value to the service you offer outside the traditional publishing environment
One of the services I offer to independent non-publisher clients is that of “proofreading your website”. This service has, until now, focused on making sure all the spelling, grammar and punctuation is in order, and ensuring any links are intact. But now that I've learned about “thinking” digitally, I can offer a more tiered service to clients. 

Creating a website is easier and cheaper than ever, and many local, small businesses are taking advantage of self-build functionality in order to enhance their online profile. 

Editing Digital Products made me think about layout, about the words in which links are embedded, about the depth of a website’s click-throughs, and about the structure of digital content.

“Proofreading” a website means something different to me now than it did before. I can offer a two-tier service to these smaller, independent clients – yes, I’ll polish the text but I can go further if they want me to by offering to review the website as a digital entity and how it works for their visitors – usability. I can also engage with the meta tags at a basic level to ensure that they’re taking advantage of the SEO options available to them – searchability.

Enhancing my own digital presence
Editing Digital Products has helped me to think about how best to present the digital product that’s closest to me – my own business. If I can add value to a small business in Norwich, I can apply the same usability and searchability to my own website and my blog.

​Starting at your own front door is the best way to put new-found skills into practice. I’m scheduling time to review my own metadata, the way in which I embed links on my website and my blog, and the way I structure the information that I offer to my website's visitors. 
​

What next?
​As is often the case, the very best training doesn't just fill knowledge gaps – it opens one's eyes to new ones.

Certainly I think there’s much, much more I can learn about mark-up languages, digital platforms, digital content management software, and SEO. It isn't that I was ignorant about these issues before; rather, my application was often accidental and ad hoc. It lacked strategic direction. 

​No training course can provide all the answers but it can put you on the right path. Editing Digital Products gave me that much-need focus – I can see how pre-existing skills, newly acquired knowledge and future training can be applied strategically to my ongoing business planning and service provision in a digital environment.

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

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

“Aggregation of Marginal Gains”: Not for the first time in my editorial career, I have to tip my hat to my colleague Paul Icke. It was Paul who told me that the GB Olympic cycling team use this phrase to underpin their performance philosophy (Guardian) and it was Paul who alerted me to the fact you don’t have to be wearing Lycra to apply it to your own business. Paul’s a member of my local SfEP group and he’s a master of turning a minor tweak into a big opportunity.

“Aggregation of marginal gains” is like evolution – make some very small changes and further down the line you’ll have something much bigger.

So what does it mean for editorial pros? For me, the philosophy fits in very nicely with two things: (1) continued professional development – a course, maybe one a year, that teaches me a new skill or refreshes a current one; (2) refining my business strategy – taking stock of how I present my business and where my key markets are, and carrying out the necessary tweaks to make my goals achievable. 

My 2012 marginal gains
This year I’ve achieved several marginal gains:

• I joined my local SfEP group
• I tweaked my domain name 
• I booked a course on digital editing 
• I booked a course on proofreading/editing indexes
• I contributed to a live Q&A
• I uploaded an online résumé
• I experimented with new advertising opportunities
• I revamped my SfEP directory entry

Joining my local SfEP group enabled me to meet new colleagues and build friendships – these experienced editorial professionals have taught me new skills and supported me in new endeavours.

This led directly to the tweaking of my domain name, which delivered consistency to the way in which I brand myself on brochures, my website, my résumé and networking platforms. The introduction of an online downloadable résumé provided an additional way for clients to store information about me.

Experimenting with new directory advertising opportunities has given me insights into how I might access other areas of the proofreading market should I wish to in the future. The revamp of my current SfEP directory advertisement forced me to reassess my primary markets and the message I was communicating.

The live Q&A on the PTC forum was a completely new experience that allowed me to interact with hundreds of colleagues in real time, make contact with many new entrants to the field, and share my experiences with them.

And the two courses focused on aspects of my editorial knowledge that needed improvement and clarity, and I enjoyed learning from colleagues who have more experience in these fields. 

The aggregate impact
None of the above marginal gains is a major revision of my original business planning, but when taken as a whole the impact is big. By the end of 2012 I’ll have changed a few things, added a few things, learned a few things, and shared a few things. But when I add up those “few things” and consider how each one is connected with another, the aggregate impact is a “tighter” business – my skill base is stronger, my brand is clearer, my market knowledge has improved, and my business network has expanded. 

What's great about this philosophy is that it acknowledges the importance of doing the small things –things that be quick and easy to implement, things that may not cost you anything, things that may even be fun – and yet the overall benefit you'll accrue will be large. If you've achieved some marginal gains that made a big impact when added together, please share them with us in the Comments section. I'd love to make some more tweaks in the next twelve months that I borrowed from a colleague!

Further reading
If you want to read the notes of the Norfolk group meeting where we discussed lots of marketing ideas, including the domain name issue, click here. You might also be interested in my article Eight Reasons to Place Your Résumé Online. For a more detailed exploration of how to go about professionalizing your domain name, look out for Paul Icke’s guest article on the subject.

For information about training and CPD courses in the UK, check out the PTC’s course catalogue and the SfEP’s online course booking pages. If you live outside the UK, visit your national editorial society’s webpage for advice.

For information about joining your local SfEP group, click here. 

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

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

The following is a summary of the articles related to editorial freelance training that have been published on The Proofreader's Parlour to date.

• “Aggregation of Marginal Gains”: Olympic Catchphrases for Editorial Freelancers
• Course Review: Editing Digital Products (Publishing Training Centre)
  
• Does Training Matter? What Publishers Say about Proofreading & Editing Courses
  
• Editorial Training and Industry Consensus? A View from the UK
  
• Link of the Week: Hewlett-Packard Learning Center
  
• Link of the Week: Introduction to Web Editorial Skills (SfEP course)
  
• Link of the Week: Publishing Training Centre – New Online Forum
  
• Link of the Week: SfEP's Online Course Schedule and Booking
  
• Link of the Week: Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP)
  
• Link of the Week: The Publishing Training Centre
  
• Proofreader Training Courses
  
• Proofreading Training: Three Case Studies
  
• Proofreading: How to Choose the Right Training Course 
  
• Roundup: Training Resources for Editors and Proofreaders
  
• Successful Freelance Proofreading – Keeping Your Skills Current