​We discuss editorial humility and the question we should ask ourselves at the start of every project: Who’s the boss of the book?

Listen to find out more about:

• Why the author is the boss of their book
• The kinds of changes we make
• Explaining the why of our edits
• Working with anxious authors
• Discovering the root of the author's worries
• Sample editing to reassure both parties
• Establishing the terms of service
• How editors provide services, not products
• When editors do get to be the boss
• 'Humbly, your copyeditor' (Liz Jones, Responsive Editing)

• How to Line Edit for Suspense (multimedia course)​
• Narrative Distance (multimedia course)
• Other courses and books
  
• ​Writing resources

​If you'd like to support The Editing Podcast, thank you! That means the world to us.

'Vivacity’ by Kevin MacLeod

• Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4593-vivacity
• Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Find out why the concept of conscious language is foundational to professional fiction-editing practice.

• What is ‘conscious language’?
• ‘But I’m not part of the “woke” brigade’
• The foundations of editing
• Are you part of the professional editing brigade?
• Why conscious language is also about successful authoring
• Why conscious language is about consideration rather than prescription
• A case study
• Helping our clients
• Tools that help with conscious language

Karen Yin, founder of Conscious Style Guide, defines conscious language as ‘language rooted in critical thinking and compassion, used skilfully in a specific context'. Using conscious language involves, she says, asking ourselves the following:

• Who is my audience?
• What tone and level of formality do I want?
• What am I trying to achieve?
• How might history change the impact of my language choices regardless of my intentions?
• Who’s being excluded?

​Conversations about ‘conscious language’ are welcomed by many in the editing community. Now and then, however, these result in references being made to the ‘woke brigade’ from some quarters.
​
Oxford Dictonaries defines ‘woke’ as: 

Merriam-Webster suggests:

​Neither mention that the term is sometimes used as a slur against people who are judged to be overly politically correct, over-sensitive, overly concerned with not offending, overly prescriptive.
​
So must editors be ‘woke’?  How we answer that will depend on what we think editors are supposed to do.

Editing at its very foundations requires us to actively think about the words on the page and whether they’re doing what the author intends.

Since how we approach language will be influenced by the bubble of our own lived experience, editorial practice requires listening to others who offer alternative insights – ones we were perhaps previously unaware of – into the meaning of words and the consequences of their use.

It means allowing our prior assumptions to be challenged, to consider that what we thought we understood might need revising.

And it means opening our minds to the opportunities that are already alive in the English language – words that explain rather than exclude, and that are rich in both sense and sensibility.

If, like me, you’re not keen on the term ‘woke’ because its negative usage has become a distraction, try an alternative.

​My preference is ‘professional editor’.

Conscious language serves authors – the people who pay editors – and serves readers – the people who pay authors.

The professional editor who isn’t alert to wording that distracts from the message rather than amplifying that message isn’t doing the job that a professional editor is supposed to do: being paid to help the author prepare their book for readers. 

And so regardless of the editor’s personal opinion on this word or that word, regardless of whether the editor uses the term ‘woke’ to describe their mindset or to cast a slur, there’s a business case for conscious language.

The professional editor can’t sidestep that because it’s not about us, and it’s not our book. It’s about the author, and it’s their book.

Readers aren’t homogenous – they don’t all live in the same country, speak the same English, or spell with the same letters. They aren’t wrapped in the same skin, don’t share the same sexual orientation, practise the same faith, have identical anatomies or have one set of homogenous secondary sex characteristics.

Most authors want to sell as many books as they can. That means engaging as many readers as they can. Engaged readers focus their attention on story. Novels containing words and phrases that distract from story, rather amplifying it, don’t serve authors.
​
Deliberately reviewing novels for words and phrases that might disengage a chunk of the potential readership is therefore nothing more than good commercial practice, and it’s the editor’s job to support the author who’s striving to create something that will give them a return on their investment.

When we ask our clients to consider the impact of a particular word, we’re not prescribing ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. We’re helping them make informed decisions predicated on an acknowledgement that not all words in the English language have a single, universally accepted meaning. 

The meaning we attach to some words might differ depending on, for example, where we live, how old we are, and how we’re racialised, sexualized and gendered by others. In other words, what I mean when I use a word might not be what you mean when you use that word.

Helping our clients
A conscious-language approach to editing therefore helps us to help our clients. We can share the knowledge we’ve acquired from our colleagues in the publishing community, knowledge that our authors might not be aware of. 
​
And in doing so, they can publish a book that keeps its audience wanting to turn the pages rather than rip them out. ​

If you think conscious language is a load of old ‘woke’ codswallop, consider whether editing is the right job for you. Editors are required at the very core of their practice to consider the purpose and effectiveness of the words in front of them.
 
That doesn’t mean we have to know it all – we can’t, not least because the language landscape is always in flux. It does mean we have to be ready to listen, learn, and advise so that our clients can make informed – conscious – decisions.
​
And we don’t have to do it alone. There’s a large and diverse community of editors and writers who are with us on that journey, and tools to help us improve our practice.

Listen to podcast episodes and download a free booklet with links to useful resources created by people in the publishing community who are passionate about language and alert to its power. 

Find out why standards are core to professional practice for any editor or proofreader who wants to be fit for purpose and trusted by clients.

Listen to find out more about:

• how professional standards are defined
  
• why they’re important for editors and proofreaders
  
• who’s setting them
  
• the tools some organisations are using to set standards and ensure that
  
• editorial practitioners demonstrate and uphold them.

• Training resources
• Branding and trust resources
• Branding for Business Growth (course)
• Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
• Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)
• List of editorial societies

If you'd like to support The Editing Podcast, thank you! That means the world to us.

'Vivacity’ by Kevin MacLeod

• Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4593-vivacity
• Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Find out what narrative distance is and why fiction editors and authors need to pay attention to it.

• What is narrative distance?
• Are narrative distance and psychic distance the same thing?
• How is narrative distance related to narrative style?
• Why writers and editors need to learn about narrative distance
• Using a visual framework to understand narrative distance
• Related resources for you to dig into

Narrative means story. It’s the part of a novel that isn’t dialogue.
 
A narrator is the person who tells the story. They can be a character in the book or an entity that stands outside it.

There can be multiple narrators in a book, too. That allows the author to present events from multiple perspectives.

‘Narrative distance’ describes the space between a novel’s narrator and the reader.

• If we, as readers, feel deeply connected to the narrator and their experience of the fictional world they inhabit, narrative distance is tiny.
• If we feel dislocated from them, more like we’re looking out on the story’s landscape objectively, the narrative distance is wide. 
  ​

Yes, narrative distance and psychic distance are the same thing. Some writers and editors use one term, some the other. They’re interchangeable. Use whichever you feel comfortable with.

You might find one or other useful depending on what issues you’re dealing with when you’re writing or editing. I like the word ‘narrative’ because it reminds me what part of the prose I’m dealing with.

Then again, I sometimes use the word ‘psychic’ because it reminds me that although I’m dealing with fiction, and therefore something that’s not real, the narrator within that creative realm still has their own lived experience and a raft of emotions that come with that.
​

Narrative style refers to the way in which the narrator offers their perspective. Common narrative styles include:
​

• First-person limited
• Third-person limited
• Third-person objective
• Third-person omniscient

Each of those narrative styles come with a certain degree of distance between the narrator and the reader.

For example, first-person narrations always feel a little more intimate because the pronoun ‘I’ is used. Second-person narrations can feel equally intimate, but in a voyeuristic way.

Third-person narrations – and the pronouns that come with them – are what we’re used to using for those not being directly addressed, so in prose they naturally put space between readers and narrators using the third person.

When we move beyond a framework of narrative style and start to think specifically in terms of narrative distance, we’re able to analyse the effectiveness of prose in a more nuanced and flexible way. 
​

Take a book off your shelf and read a couple of pages. Even though the entire section might be written in a single narrative style – for example, third-person limited, it’s likely that the narrative distance still changes. 

Perhaps you’ve never noticed before, and if that’s the case, the author and their editor have done a great job because the movement is seamless.

If that movement is jarring and too obvious, it could be an indication that narrative distance isn’t being controlled sufficiently. Editors and writers who can recognize narrative distance and evaluate its effectiveness are better equipped to solve the problem, and justify their solutions.
​

Are you confused by narrative distance? Don’t worry – you’re not alone! It’s a complex topic. Even experienced line editors and authors can struggle to get their heads around it. 

My solution was to structure my own learning as a visual framework. I presented that framework at the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s annual conference in September 2021 and then for the Society of Authors in October 2021.

The framework I shared at those two events garnered fabulous reviews and convinced me to record a webinar that everyone could access.

Narrative Distance: A Toolbox for Writers and Editors is available now to anyone who wants to lift the curtain on narrative distance and use it to craft prose that offers a better reader experience.
​
Use the button below to find out what’s included in the course. 

• Blog post: 7 reasons why I’m not the right editor for you
• Blog post: How to avoid repeating ‘I’ in first-person writing
• Blog post: How to show the emotions of non-viewpoint characters
• Blog post: What’s the difference between a viewpoint character and a protagonist?
• Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
• Book: Making Sense of Point of View
• Course: How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report
• Course: Switching to Fiction

Find out what editorial style is, why it’s important, and how editors work to create, evaluate and enforce style.

• What is style?
• The differences between rules, preferences and conventions
• Flexibility in fiction and non-fiction
• What is a style guide?
• Why style guides aren't rule books
• When editors need to respect tone, register, voice and brand identity
• What is a style sheet?

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

Learn about why editing and proofreading training is necessary if you want to run a professional editorial practice. Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk skills!

• The client's perspective
• Doing the job to industry-recognized standards
• The marketing benefits for the editor and proofreader
• How training forges a healthy business mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goals that benefit the editor

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

Goals that benefit the client

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

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

Our second goal is to demonstrate editorial excellence. Those of you who are members of a national editorial society might well be bound by a code of practice that demands this.

That’s the case for members of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), which says in its CoP: ‘Good communication between client/employer and freelance/employee is essential.’

Editorial excellence isn’t just about being an expert in typo hunting, grammar correction and stylistic revision. 

Neither does it end with clarity on the project brief or issues of privacy, confidentiality and security. ​

​It’s also about communicating the why of our edits. Comprehensive editorial reports are the perfect communication tool, and the reason why we shouldn’t skimp.

When we communicate the why of our decisions, we build trust.

If a client is anxious about how we’ve edited their work because they don’t understand the changes we’ve made and/or because we’re new to them, trust is low.
​
Part of our job is to earn it. A comprehensive editorial report that demonstrates a deep knowledge of our craft creates author confidence. And that’s the key to a healthy business relationship.

​A client with a detailed editorial report that demonstrates excellence and builds confidence in your ability is more likely to do the following:
​

• Come back to you with their next project
• Wait for you if your schedule is full
• Accept your price
• Recommended you to their friends, family and colleagues

Now let's look at the benefits for the author. 

​Our fifth goal is to provide our authors with an outstanding learning tool, rich in problem/solution-focused detail, which they can use to hone their writing craft. 

The independent-author market is huge, and many in the community lack experience – they’re right at the beginning of their writing journey. They might well have talent by the bucket load but the line work we do is nevertheless extensive.

An editorial report gives us the chance to offer our guidance in a format that’s accessible and clear. And because it’s separate from their book file, they can refer to it time and again.

A comprehensive learning tool includes strengths, too. Writers can learn as much from knowing what they’re doing well – and should continue doing – ​as from knowing how they can up their game.

Our penultimate goal is to show mindfulness. As editors, we can never forget that every one of our author clients has a choice – and they chose us. They also have a passion – their book. 

It takes commitment to write a story, and sometimes not a little courage to place it in the hands of a professional editor, particularly one they haven't worked with before. That decision comes with risk.

For the editor, being selected is a privilege rather than an entitlement. We must respect that choice, the risk taken, and their investment (time and money).

Yes, we should report on weaknesses; that’s how they’ll improve their sentence-level craft. But we must do so gently and respectfully, and complement that analysis with reflection on their strengths.

Many indie-author book files end up in our editing studios without having been evaluated by a developmental editor, a critiquing editor, an experienced beta reader or even a colleague or friend in a writing group.

Our reports need to offer a critical review that explores the book’s sentence-level strengths and weaknesses.

What’s essential is that we offer solutions to any weaknesses we identify. Without those, we risk creating a shopping list of what was good and what wasn’t. That kind of analysis won’t help the author grow as a writer. Neither will it reflect our editorial excellence.

Want to learn how to do it, and love it?
If you’re a sentence-level editor and think your reporting skills could do with a boost, or a new editor who wants to nail it from the start, take a look at my new course, How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report.

Does your editorial conference budget include provision for travelling abroad? If it doesn’t, here's why you might want to consider it and what you need to factor in to make it viable.

I’m a Brit who’s been to three editorial conferences in the past 12 months. Two of them required me to pack my passport.

First up was the one day mini-conference hosted by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders Toronto Group. I travelled to Canada in early November. I bought a new winter coat for the occasion because Toronto in November is cold cold cold. The weather foxed me – it was balmy – but the conference was everything I expected. Brilliant.

Nine months later, I headed for Chicago, this time for the Editorial Freelancers Association meeting. The sunshine came as promised, not just on the lake shore but in the Swissôtel, too, where the conference took place. I received a lovely welcome and had a ball.

Three weeks after that, I was learning again, but this time in the UK. The annual Society for Editors and Proofreaders conference took place at Aston Business School. Rain threatened but never arrived, and the meeting was smashing.

Three different conferences. Three different countries. And one thing in common ...

The delegates were international.

And that’s the thing about the editorial community – we’re from everywhere, and our conferences reflect that.
​
Still, attending conventions, especially those abroad, means an investment in money and time for the professional editor, so why bother? 

Being an editor isn't a national occupation
Our clients don’t all live where we live.

Take me. I’m a Brit but I’m not an editor of British novels. I’m an editor of novels written in English ... or I should say, Englishes.

And as all pro editors know, there is more than one English. And while those Englishes come with variances in spelling, punctuation, grammar conventions and idiom, all of that can be learned and understood.

And that's one of the pulls of international conferences. What better way to hone your craft than by spending time in the places where those Englishes are spoken and written, and hanging out with the people who speak and write them?

Other factors to help you decide
Here are some ideas to help you decide whether to cross the border for your editorial training:

 1. Look at the conference programme
Are there sessions on aspects of editing, or the business of editorial work, that you can’t access elsewhere?

For example, take a look at the 2019 Toronto SfEP mini-conference programme (Wednesday, 6 November). You can learn how to identify the missing parts in a fiction narrative, how to use macros, how to master templates, how to edit indexes, and how to tackle fast-turnaround editing. There’s also an optional pre-conference workshop on raising rates.

2. Who's speaking?
Are the presenters offering learning opportunities that will be easier to learn face to face? Or perhaps there are keynoters or after-dinner speakers you’d be unlikely to meet otherwise.

At the 2019 SfEP conference in Aston, bestselling crime-fiction author  Chris Brookmyre , linguist Rob Drummond, and broadcaster/writer David Crystal were all on the schedule. We learned hard ... and laughed harder because all three make what they teach memorable through humour.

3. Can you leverage being an international speaker?
Think about whether speaking at editorial events beyond your borders is something you can leverage professionally and that will pay back your investment in the long run.

Some of our potential clients value knowing we have international speaking experience because it reflects a global trust in our specialist knowledge.

4. Is an honorarium available?
If you’re prepared to speak on a specialist topic, you might qualify for financial support.

Of course, this depends on the organizer’s budget and the value they think you’ll bring to the conference, but editorial societies are increasingly recognizing the benefits of international speakers in view of the global nature of our community. Don't assume that assistance isn’t available.

Even a contribution to flight, accommodation or meals might be the tipping point for your saying yay rather than nay.

5. Can you buddy up to reduce costs?
If a flight’s involved, you’ll have to bite the bullet. If you can drive across the border, however, you can share the cost of travel. 

And how about sharing a room? I did this with my podcast pal Denise Cowle at the 2018 ATOMICON marketing conference. We halved our costs. And neither of us snored. Promise.

We’re talking about doing ACES in a couple of years. Being Airbnb buddies will be one way we’ll make it viable.

6. Find out who else is going
Face-to-face networking is powerful. Spending time with international colleagues could lead to referrals that will earn you a return on investment further down the line.

And if you have books, courses or other training materials relevant to your editorial colleagues, you could reach new markets when you take the time to put yourself in front of your audience and speak at an international event.

We’re much more likely to buy from those we trust, and while online networking is great, and the online editorial community is vibrant and generous, nothing beats getting in front of people, talking with them face to face, when it comes to building relationships and trust. 

7. Cost it out and save up
Work out what it’s going to cost. It’s all very well my talking about the benefits of international networking and learning, but I’m not going to pretend there isn’t hard cash on the line here! 

Costing it out is the first step to creating a savings plan. That way you can prepare ... if not for this year’s meetup then for one a year or two down the road. Start with the basics:

• The journey: get some ballparks for petrol, the flight, or car hire. Share where you can.
• Accommodation costs: the conference hotel isn’t necessarily the cheapest option. A motel or Airbnb might suit you better. And with a pal on board, you can save even more.
• Meals: not all conferences include meals in the price. If you’ll need to feed yourself, check out what’s available outside the hotel. In-room dining and hotel restaurants are the quickest ways to drain your budget.
• Bar money: you’ll be socializing. A glass or two might be included in the main conference dinner or reception, but otherwise you’ll be paying for your own plonk.
• Time away from work: budget for the days (including jet-lag recovery) you won't be available for paid editing work. Budgeting sensibly is as much about knowing what we can earn as knowing when we can't.

Summing up
International conferences require more planning and a bigger investment of time and money, but if you’re canny about your preparation, think in the long term, and use them as opportunities to speak, they’re hugely beneficial.

​Where will you go next? Maybe I'll see you there!

Three questions for you:

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

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

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

Here’s another question:

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

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

And here’s another question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• AUDIENCE: Editors and proofreaders whose cupboards are bare
• RUNNING TIME: 46 mins
• WHAT YOU GET: Webinar, ebook and PDF resource sheet
• CAPTIONS: Subtitles/closed captions are included

​
Click on the button below to find out more.

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

What free is good for
Free is brilliant when we’re starting out, particularly in the following circumstances:
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• We’re not yet sure whether an editing career suits us.
• We’ve yet to establish where our skills gaps are.
• We need time to explore the lie of the land – what’s available, from where and whom, and how we’ll access it.
• We need time to get our finances in order but don’t want that to hold us back.

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

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

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

​Free helps us to turn expense into investment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples might include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How fast would you hang up?

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

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

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

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

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

Further reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A focus on core tools

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

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

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

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

​Let’s dig a little deeper ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are just 3 examples:

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

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

Just a few examples include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courses
I recommend the Publishing Training Centre and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) for foundational copyediting and proofreading training. I’m based in the UK, and those are the two training suppliers I have experience of so I’m in a position to recommend them.

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

• Essential Proofreading: Editorial Skills One (Publishing Training Centre)
• Essential Copy-Editing: Editorial Skills Two (Publishing Training Centre)
• Proofreading 1–4 (CIEP)
• Copy-editing 1–4 (CIEP)
• See also this list of professional editorial societies; they’ll be able to advise you if you live outside the UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courses and reading
Explore the following to assess whether they will fill the gaps in your knowledge. Check the curricula carefully to ensure that the modules focus on the types of fiction editing you wish to offer and provide you with the depth required to push you forward.
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• Switching to Fiction (Louise Harnby; course: webinar and book)
• Introduction to Fiction Editing (CIEP; course)
• Developmental Editing: Fiction Theory (Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages; course)
• Developmental Editing: In Practice (Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages; course)
• Editing Fiction (Publishing Training Centre; introductory e-learning module)
• ​Write to be Published (Nicola Morgan; book)
• The Magic of Fiction (Beth Hill; book)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck with your fiction editing journey!

Some blogs are poorly right from the get-go. If yours is feeling under the weather, here are 6 treatments that will turn it, and your website, into a vibrant resource centre that drives your business forward.

​I’ve been blogging since 2011 and my blog is the single biggest driver of traffic to my website – around 36,000 page views per month. Given that 99% all of my clients come to me via Google and two online directories, having a strong web presence is the difference between being booked up six months in advance and being unemployed.

Those visitors end up on my blog for three reasons:

• They want to hire me because of the job I do (copyediting fiction books)
• They want to find out how to do the job I do
• They’re already doing the job I do but are stuck

Big-picture focus
This article doesn’t focus on the technical minutiae of whether to use Wordpress or Weebly, filling in metadata, writing great headlines, breaking up text with pictures, adding in calls to action, SEO keywords, paragraph length and so on and so forth.

​That’s not because all the micro stuff isn’t important, but because none of it will amount to anything if the macro issues aren’t in order.

Instead, I focus on six big-picture reasons why blogs become poorly, and offer some medicine that will turn them, and the websites hosting them, into vibrant resource centres that drive our businesses forward.

Problem 1: The blog doesn’t solve problems
Some of the blogs I wrote between 2011 and 2015 are a technical disgrace but they worked – and still work – because the content is helpful and shareable.

A blog that doesn’t solve problems is a written exercise in self-indulgence and won’t make us the go-to professionals for anything. At best, we’ll be instantly forgettable; at worst, people will talk about us for all the wrong reasons.

A colleague recently told me about a piece of video content he’d watched: ‘After 10 minutes I’d lost the will to live. After 20, I’d lost the will for the vlogger to live.’ I trust my colleague, whereas I don’t know or trust that vlogger. Consequently, I didn’t watch the video.

There are a ton of online examples of desperate business owners employing attention-seeking methods to get eyes on their content. It can work once, maybe twice. But if we rely on shock, surprise, upset or gaining  sympathy with our audience, and no solution, our content-marketing successes will be short-lived.

Don’t puke over the reader
We all have problems – that doesn’t mean we have to vomit over our audience with our content. Plus, shock and controversy have a short shelf-life. Today’s audiences are easily desensitized and quickly bored, so high-quality problem-solving content will trump the shock factor every time.

Nothing should appear on our blogs that doesn’t help the reader move forward in some way. And if we can’t solve a problem, we should hold off, research and rewrite.
Only once we have a solution should we publish.

When we do solve problems, we make ourselves valuable. People are more likely to talk about, share, like and comment on our blog content.

And that has huge SEO benefits over time because the search engines love seeing evidence of a great user experience. Focus on solving the audience’s problems from the get-go and we are well on the way to building a platform that puts us top of mind and discoverable in the search engines.

Problem 2: The blog is published irregularly
Lack of regularity is probably the most common reason for blog failure. We do it for a bit, then run out of ideas, or time, or passion.

This is how a reader perceives a blog that publishes content irregularly:

• The blogger doesn’t know their stuff well enough to solve problems
• The blogger isn’t committed or can’t be bothered to solve problems

Those feelings don’t inspire trust. If your window cleaner couldn’t be bothered to clean your windows on a regular basis how quickly would you try to find a replacement? It’s the same with blogging. No one’s going to talk about or share our content if we can’t be bothered to create it regularly.

Earning the rankings and referrals
We have to earn the right to be top of mind for referrals and benefit from our colleagues’ and clients’ SEO-driving activity.

And without those likes and shares, Google won’t recognize us as business owners who are actively engaging. That will impact negatively on our rankings.

Build a blog plan
If you don’t have the time or commitment for blogging, that’s absolutely fine. Don’t do it – focus on making your business visible in other ways. Blogging is just one option.
However, if you do want your blog to be your primary content platform, the solution is to build a blog plan beforehand.

Here are four initial steps for your plan:

• Identify your audience. Consider colleagues as well as clients.
• Create 52 draft titles for problem-solving content. If you plan to publish once a week, that’s a year’s worth of content ideas; twice a month and you’ll have two years’ worth.
• Decide on your publication schedule.
• Draft your promotion schedule.

Here are four ideas for how to generate content:

• Take inspiration from your job. What do your clients and colleagues struggle with? What have you struggled with? Answer those questions on your blog.
• Take note of the questions people ask in your industry’s forums and at conferences. Answer those questions on your blog.
• Invite questions on your website via a box or pop-out.
• Review products, apps, courses, books, tools, forums and conferences related to your industry.

Here are four ideas for how to save time:

• Write efficiently – create batches of articles around a theme.
• Repurpose existing content (e.g. from slideshows, presentations, case studies, reports, guest articles, books, meetings and conferences) as blog posts.
• Update stale content using your existing knowledge base. Blogging is a journey and it’s perfectly acceptable to revisit old topics; you’re demonstrating your readiness to review and adapt.
• Set aside time in your working week for your blogging.

Problem 3: The blog is unnavigable
No one searches online for a blog. They search online for solutions. If they click through to our websites, the first place they’ll head for is unlikely to be the blog tab. And even if is, will our visitor find the answer to their problems in the content that’s visible on the first page of the blog?

If we only have 10 pieces of content, yes. What if we have 40? How about 500?

Second homes
The solution is to create second homes for our blog content – libraries, hubs, resource centres ... call them what you will.
​
I have two on my website – a self-publishers page and an editor resources page.

There is not one single piece of fresh content on those pages. They’re libraries of titled images that depict what problem I’m solving. However, if you click on the images you’ll end up reading the full articles on the blog.

These libraries help my audience find my very best content – the stuff that’s most likely to be talked about, get me known, and make my visitors think I’m helpful and knowledgeable.

I only started creating content for one of those libraries in May; it’s already the fourth most popular page on my site ... and that’s because it’s obvious what’s on offer and whom it’s for.

Few business bloggers funnel their content through to other pages, and it’s the biggest lost opportunity I can think of. Do this and you will stand out from your competitors for very little additional effort.
​
Here, we’re using our blog content to turn our websites into resource centres rather than all-about-me-and-how-great-I-am sites.

Problem 4: The blog is shallow
My marketing coaches Andrew and Pete preach the art of creating content that makes people fall in love with you. I love this idea because it focuses on emotion – of getting under people’s skin, making them feel something.

This sits nicely with the problem-solving principle discussed above. When we solve problems we make people feel something – happy, grateful, relieved, empowered.

Emotion born from solutions
Just to be clear, those emotions should be evoked as a result of our solving a problem. For example, our funnies alone won’t be enough to make anyone subscribe to and share our content in the long term. No one will waste time reading a funny photographer’s blog if he or she doesn’t solve photography problems too. That’s because if all we want is a laugh, Dara Ó Briain and Rich Hall will do it better.

Tone on top of solutions
Even if our content is technically good, we have competition. Readers need to hear our voices and our personalities in our posts so that we stand out. I tend to go for warm and friendly.

Other tone options might include cheeky, funny, blunt, sweary or ranty. All of that stuff is great but bear in mind that it’s just dressing at the end of the day. It should always hang on a body of solutions.

Going deeper with solutions
There are already a bajillion blogs with the basics just,  about everything. Repeating the same old stuff is boring, and boring blogs are a killer. We need to bring our blog posts alive with case studies (made-up ones if necessary), and stories based on our own experiences, so that our readers have gravy on the meat and two veg.

That kind of deeper detail draws people in, makes them feel like we’re really talking to them, not just stuffing our websites with keywords. That is not to say we shouldn’t aim our content at beginners or focus on the basics – far from it. Rather, our content needs to have personality and detail.

When we go deep we make an old subject sound fresh because it’s rich with our voices and our experiences.

Problem 5: The blog doesn’t fulfil audience expectations
I don’t visit a dentist’s website expecting to find a treatment for the verruca on my foot. I’m there to sort out my teeth. A blog needs to have a recognizable and understandable raison d’être too.

We’re busy and none of us has time to read everything, join every group, watch every vlog, listen to every podcast, do our jobs, and have a life. Blogs that don’t give people a very good reason to be there are doomed. They won’t be bookmarked, subscribed to or shared. If a reader doesn’t understand why they should bother, they’ll quickly lose patience and go elsewhere.

There are two reasons why an audience could become confused and disengage:
The content is coherent but isn’t aligned with the business creating it. This happens when the blogger has misunderstood the audience’s expectations even though there are myriad specialist solutions that could be offered.

The content is incoherent and there are too many audiences. This can happen when a business – usually a product-based one – can’t sustain long-term content creation around the product alone. To compensate, the blogger covers multiple topics for multiple audiences whose problems are already being solved in depth by relevant specialist bloggers elsewhere.

Here are two examples where those problems have been solved.

Coherent and aligned: The pro presenter
There’s plenty one can write about presenting, and that content can be targeted at non-presenters who need to tackle the process, and those who want to run a presentations business.

Relevant content might cover the following: dealing with stress, introversion, lack of confidence, speech impediments, organization and planning, which software to use, which venues are best, managing acoustics, scheduling, equipment, payment terms, contract problems, learning resources, apps and plugins to aid preparation, training opportunities, marketing a presentations business, getting published, creating engaging slides, finding and retaining clients, and so on.

The presenter is blogging about topics aligned to their core service and targeting an audience with problems related directly to it. The blog is therefore coherent and aligned.

Coherent and side-aligned: The condom company
There’s only so much one can write about condoms. Durex knows that it will not be able to sustain its audience’s interest in latex and lube, and there are only so many flavours and colours.

However, it also knows that its audience is interested in sex, otherwise people wouldn’t need condoms.

Durex has created a blog called Love Sex that offers all sorts of tips about perfect massages, advice on STDs, relationships, other forms of contraception, orgasms, positions ... you name it, it’s there.

It’s a very clever way of creating content about a related but more interesting issue.
If you can’t sustain long-term content creation around your product or service, shift your thinking sideways but make sure it’s focused on your audience’s problems.
Durex isn’t blogging about condoms, but it’s still focusing on content that’s related sideways to its core product. Its blog is therefore coherent and side-aligned.

Nudging with a name
Naming our blogs can help signal purpose. Mine’s called The Proofreader’s Parlour, which should be an indication that my focus is on words.

I also publish a lot of content about marketing, but it’s marketing for editors and proofreaders. And I offer content about training, but it’s training for editors and proofreaders. It’s not as interesting as the Durex blog but it solves my clients’ and colleagues’ problems and that’s all that matters!

Problem 6: The blog is invisible
Blogging without blog promotion is a supreme waste of time. It matters little that we’ve nailed all of the above if our blog’s invisible. We could spend hours crafting beautiful content for our target audience, but if we don’t invest the time or effort in making it visible it will have no purposeful business or economic value.

Superhero delivery
There are numerous ways to promote a blog, and what works for you might not work for me. One thing’s for sure though – social media is the superhero when it comes to content delivery.

Three huge platforms – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook – offer a superb suite of tools to help us get seen out there.

What clear is that it’s about more than just posting links and pretty pictures, now more than ever. Indeed, we have to work increasingly hard on these busy platforms with their ever-shifting algorithms.

However, persistence pays and there is no faster way to get your blog content, and your business, in front of people than by embracing social media.

Automating to make space for crafting
Content should be scheduled regularly because on some platforms, Twitter especially, the feed moves so fast that your blog-post links are more likely to be missed than seen. I post on Twitter ten times a day, seven days a week.

Automate your evergreen posts where you can (full automation will shortly not be possible on Twitter via the likes of Recurpost). That will free up time for posting manually on your core platforms. Manual posting allows us to craft our posts with the algorithms in mind.

An example: Crafting for Facebook
Here are some of the ways in which you might promote your blog content on Facebook:

• Upload blog posts natively (direct to the platform) rather than linking.
• Create mini summaries of a blog post on a Page that invite conversations. Place a link to the blog post in the first comment.
• Upload cute, shareable videos that summarize the core themes of a post.
• Run chatbot campaigns that include booklets repurposed from blog content.
• Upload vlog versions of blog content.
• If your broadband connection is stable, go live with a discussion of your content.
• Post links to blog posts in groups if that content answers a specific question. If in doubt check with the admins that this is acceptable practice.
• Join blog carnivals (threads of links to blog posts) in Facebook groups where the practice is encouraged. If it doesn’t yet exist, suggest it to the admins.

Six-tip summary

• Be purposeful with problem-solving
• Build trust with regular publishing
• Spotlight your best content in second homes
• Infuse the key takeaways with deeper stories and case studies
• Align or side-align your content with your business so that it makes sense for your audience to bother with it
• Commit to promotion so that your hard work is visible

​Good luck building a healthy blog!

Here's a free ebook. Visit the Blogging page in my resource library to download this free booklet.

And if you're ready to dig even deeper, take a look at my course Blogging for Business Growth.

Yolanda is a self-published author who wants to build a fiction proofreading and copyediting business. In this Q&A I consider the steps she should take to get her editorial business off the ground and fit for purpose.

Says Yolanda:

I am a fiction author located in U.S. and I've been self-publishing for almost 6 years under various pen names. I still work full-time (over 20 years in the administrative field), however I would like to start a freelance career as a fiction proofreader/copy-editor. I am a certified legal proofreader but outside of my day job & my own books I don't have experience proofing. I intend to use freelance job sites & my connections with self-published authors to build my portfolio. As far as blogging, I'm not sure what I would discuss since my focus is fiction & I'm not an expert yet to give other proofreaders advice.
 
What would be my next steps to transition from fiction author to fiction proofreader/ copy-editor for self-published authors as far as getting my business up & running, classes (if any), pricing, etc?
 
Hi, Yolanda!

Thanks for your question. I’ve broken down my advice as follows:

• Training
• Services
• Visibility ... especially content marketing
• Pricing

 
Training
I think you’re wise to consider training. It’s essential that your knowledge of grammar, spelling and punctuation conventions is top-notch. If it’s not, you won’t be able to correct your clients’ files to industry standards.

I'd recommend that you search for a grammar brush-up course as a first step. That will enable you to discover whether your technical knowledge is on point and if there are any weaknesses that you need to attend to. Here are a couple of options for you to consider: 

• Grammar Lion (via Ellen Feld)
• Grammar 1 and Grammar 2 (via Copyediting)

Fiction work does require an empathetic hand because editors and proofreaders are often faced with the dilemma of how to amend such that we remove errors and improve readability but respect narrative voice and flow.

However, it’s only when you know what a problem is that you can decide whether to fix it! Training is absolutely the right place to discover your weak points. Better that than via a disgruntled client.

Your second step should be to undertake professional editorial skills training. This will be of particular use to you because it'll move you into the editing mindset and away from the authorial one that you're used to.

I appreciate that you've self-edited, but editing one's own work is a very different proposition to offering professional services to paying customers, as you clearly realize. 
 
Professional training will also enable you to determine the level of intervention that each type of editing requires. In turn, that will help you avoid scope-creep and undercharging. Especially when proofreading, knowing when to leave well enough alone is an art in itself!

Here are some reputable US-based programmes to consider:

• Editorial Freelancers Association: Education
• Copyediting: Individual Training
• Editcetera: Educational Programs
• University of Chicago: Editing Certificate Program
• University of California San Diego: Copyediting Certificate

Services
You’ll need to develop a service model that differentiates between the different levels of editing. Many self-publishing authors don’t know the differences between proofreading, copyediting, line editing, and developmental editing.

Many editors' definitions vary too. And so while the lines are often blurred, especially when we compare different independent editors’ service descriptions, professional training will help you clarify how you'll describe your services so that your clients understand exactly what’s on offer.

You can see some examples of how I’ve tackled definitional issues here:

• The different levels of editing. Proofreading and beyond
• Louise Harnby: Proofreader & Copyeditor: Services

I’d advise taking a look at a range of editors’ websites to familiarize yourself with the breadth of services on offer and the way your future colleagues describe these. There’s no right or wrong. Rather, it’s all about clear communication and helping the client understand how you can solve their problems.

Visibility
Blogging needn't necessarily be your primary content platform, though I think it works well for editors and proofreaders because our wordy clients are comfortable with wordy information!

Even if you don't concentrate on vlogging or podcasting, at least think about how you can introduce audio-visual material into your marketing mix in order to stand out and offer your audience alternative ways to get what you're offering.

You don’t need to focus on colleagues either. Far from it. Fifty per cent of my content is created for beginner authors.

I’d recommend you consider using your experience as a self-published author of fiction to guide potential clients on how to navigate their own publishing journeys.

Think about what their problems and questions might be. Think about what your own problems and questions were! For example, you mentioned having used a pen name; that would be an interesting topic to any beginner author wondering whether they should publish under their own name.

Great content marketing solves problems. If you decide to blog, offer fantastic value by helping other writers solve their conundruns using all your knowledge and experience ... the rough and the smooth. Everything you’ve learned on your own journey has the potential to help others.

Don’t forget that your experience of self-publishing can be used as a unique selling point that makes you stand out. Combine that with high-quality training and you’ll be on the way to building a compelling online presence.

Consider how you might make your content visible beyond the blog (or vlog or podcast) by creating a resource hub that makes what you’ve created accessible via different pages on your website.

It’s my belief that having an individual, standout online fingerprint is essential for those entering the editorial freelancing market. There’s too much competition out there to create a website that looks just like everyone else’s. So do focus on your marketing so that over time you can be as discoverable as possible.
 
Here are a few examples:

• Louise Harnby: Proofreader & Copyeditor: Self-publishers
• Lisa Poisso. Book Editor. Writing Coach: Clarity: Tools and Skills for Authors
• Julie Gray Story Editing: Writer Resources

Pricing
Many national editorial societies have guidelines or suggested minimums for what editors should charge. I look at these but don’t use them to determine my own rates because they distract me from the important things than any pricing model needs to take account of. These are:

• What I need to earn in order to make my business viable (e.g. my expenses)
• What I want to earn in order to achieve job satisfaction
• What various clients will pay

In relation to your needs, it matters little if the Editorial Freelancers Association thinks that $30–50 per hour is a common and acceptable rate for copyediting if you need $70 per hour to keep the bailiffs from the door.

With that in mind, when you start to think about pricing, work out first what you need to earn as a minimum to make your business viable. That’s your baseline. From there you can work upwards to what you want to earn and what your clients will bear.
 
Self-publishing authors aren’t a homogeneous market when it comes to writing skill, genre or budget. Some will be shopping for an editor whose fees are lower than that which you need to earn. Others will be prepared to pay more than you want to earn. Yet others will sit somewhere in the middle.

It’s not only the budget that will vary; your authors' locations will too. And so if your potential client is based in Sweden, it’s likely that what $40 will buy in Sweden is not the same as what it will buy in the US.

Since the cost of living varies from country to country, what an American client thinks is a high rate might seem an absolute steal to the Swede. And that’s another problem with professional association pricing tables – they focus on the domestic market whereas your potential market lies well beyond the sovereign state in which you reside.

That’s why it makes more sense to build your pricing model on your own needs rather than some notion that there’s one universally applicable rate (or range) for editing or proofreading. There isn’t.

There’s some excellent detailed guidance on editorial rate-setting from Rich Adin on the American Editor blog. Start with the following:

• Business of Editing: What to Charge (Part I)
• Business of Editing: The Quest for Rate Charts

 
Sign-off
I hope all that gives you a few ideas for how to move forward, Yolanda, and I wish you well on your editorial business-building journey!

There’s plenty more information on my blog in the following archives: Money Matters, Marketing, Starting Out and Training. Dig into that and start connecting with other editorial pros online. There are lots of us on Facebook (the Editors’ Association of Earth is a good place to start), Twitter and LinkedIn ... and beyond!

See you there!

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

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

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

Sharon is a self-published author who’s improving her self-editing skills with professional editorial training. However, she’s worried that her chosen course isn’t worth the money she’s paying.

Says Sharon:
 
Dear Louise, I am a self published author. I am trying to improve my skills on proof reading and copy editing. I am doing a course for [training provider redacted]. Can you give me any advice, are courses a waste of time and money. What do you advise me to do please help, many thanks Sharon

Hi, Sharon! Thanks for your question. I’m more than happy to guide you. My view is that there are several issues to consider:

• Pro courses: what they do
• Assumed prior knowledge
• Your needs and the course’s intention: Is the fit good?
• The limits of self-editing for pro self-publishers

 
After I’ve discussed these issues, I’ll offer you my recommendation on how best to proceed.
 
Pro courses: what they do
I believe that professional editors and proofreaders should undertake professional training to ensure that they’re fit for purpose ... just as an engineer, a plumber, a teacher or a doctor does.
 
And while the course you mention isn’t one that I’ve done, the provider is recognized and respected by many UK editors and proofreaders and publishers.
 
Let’s have a quick look at some of the key modules:

• How book publishing works
• How to use the BSI proof-correction symbols
• Finding and marking up errors
• Understanding when to intervene and when to leave well enough alone
• Copyediting techniques and editing styles
• Finding work with publishers and non-publishers
• Overview of English-language skills including grammar, punctuation and usage
• Onscreen proofreading and copyediting
• Proofreading and editing web content

 
Here’s a brief summary of the differences between copyediting and proofreading as defined by the UK publishing industry. The two skills are different (though the terminology does tend to blur outside the mainstream).
 
Says the Society for Editors and Proofreaders:

Assumed prior knowledge
The most important thing to recognize is that professional proofreading and editing training providers assume a level of proficiency in regard to the student’s existing sentence-level language skills.
 
The courses are not designed to teach people standard spelling, grammar and punctuation (SPaG). Rather, they’re designed to help those who already have a solid grasp of SPaG to mark up, or directly amend, written materials in a manner that respects professional publishing conventions and the client’s brief and style.
 
And while your course does include a module to help students assess whether their language skills are up to scratch, comprehensive grammar and punctuation training is not its focus.
 
Your needs and the course’s intention: Is the fit good?
There’s nothing wrong with your course’s syllabus. For someone who wishes to build an editorial business, and has an existing appreciation of conventional SPaG, the training is right on track.
 
For that person, the course is not a waste of time or money. It’s a wise investment that will ensure they’re fit for purpose when they begin copyediting and proofreading for clients.
 
However, I don’t think that course is the right fit for you. It’s teaching you skills that are not, for the most part, relevant to your immediate requirements. Instead, I think you should focus on strengthening your grammar and punctuation. See more below in ‘My recommendation’.

The limits of self-editing for pro self-publishers
A word of caution! I’m a professional copyeditor and proofreader. I blog regularly and know as well as anyone that self-editing has its limitations.
 
Most of us, no matter how strong our language skills, cannot self-edit our own work as effectively as we’d edit another’s. That’s because we’re too close to our own writing; we see what we want to see on the page rather than what’s actually there.
 
Carrying out several checks at intervals can help eradicate most errors but perfection is unlikely.
 
It’s for that reason that I pay a colleague to proofread my blog posts before I publish them (with the exception of these Q&As, which I publish quickly because a reader’s asked for help and I don’t wish to keep them waiting).
 
And even if my pro editor doesn’t find any literal errors, it’s unusual for them not to offer several improvements to the sentence flow for the purposes of clarity and engagement.
 
And so once you’ve developed your SPaG skills, you’ll be able to remove many of the errors in your books, but not all of them. And it’s likely that a professional line or copyeditor will be able to help you smooth the text in a way that improves the flow of your narrative and dialogue.
 
I realize that budget is an issue for some self-publishing authors. Nevertheless, I recommend commissioning professional editorial services if the author can afford it.
 
Professional editors hire pros; so should pro authors if they want to mimic the standards that traditionally published authors strive for. Not doing so will mean that errors, inconsistencies and structural problems might still be evident to the paying reader.
 
At the end of the post, I’ve included links to some resources that discuss the different levels of editing and the order of play, in case you (or other readers) need some additional guidance.

My recommendation
I commend you for seeking to develop your editing skills, Sharon. Self-editing is vital; the more you can do, the more money you’ll save when it comes to investing in professional editing!
 
However, I think you’d be far better off investing in training that’s dedicated to teaching English-language grammar and punctuation standards.
 
Start by searching online for grammar courses run by your local college or university. Before you enrol, speak to the course supervisor and explain what your problems are. That way you can ensure that the course is a good fit.
 
Developing these skills will really help to drive your sentence-level editing forward. If your budget allows for it, consider seeking the assistance of a developmental or story editor before you start worrying about the detail.
 
A manuscript evaluation or critique will help you deal with any big-picture issues before you spend time on the nitty-gritty. Sentence-level editing (by you or a pro) without prior structural assessment can be rather like trying to build a house on boggy ground – even if the walls look pretty at the outset, it won’t be long before cracks appear!
 
Now it may be that you’re already attending to story craft. In which case, my apologies. Still, the advice will serve other indie authors who are wondering about the order of play.
 
I hope my response helps you decide on where to go next. Thanks again for your question. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments if you want to follow up on anything I’ve mentioned.
 
Resources

• Review of PerfectIt: an excellent consistency checker.
• ​The different levels of editing. Proofreading and beyond.
• Should a writer hire a freelance editor before submitting to an agent? (includes information on the order of play).
• Library of resources for self-publishers (books, blog posts and videos).
• Can you combine types of editing to save money? Super post from my colleague Lisa Poisso on how to combine editing services and save money.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. 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 & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

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

This week’s reader question is from a teacher of English language, literature and creative writing. She’s looking for a new direction – something beyond the school environment that will allow her to use her educational experience and existing knowledge base.

Here’s what Noella had to say:

Dear Louise,

I'm a UK-based secondary-school English teacher of language, literature and creative writing, and am looking to move into editing or publishing.

I feel that I already have some of the skills required but I'm also on a budget and would like to know how someone like me could perhaps sneak into this area of work via a recognized route that isn't too costly.

Essentially, I want a better work/life balance and to feel more in control of my career. Hope you can advise me.
 
Hi, Noella! Thanks so much for your question.

Work/life balance
Given that flexibility is important, I’m inclined to recommend the path of independent editor (freelancer), rather than working in-house. Running your own business will give you control.
​
Setting up on your own will require a lot of hard graft at the outset (as I’m sure you realize). However, it will provide you with the freedom to choose your own hours, set your own rates, and decide which projects you wish to take on.

The different levels of editing
I think it’s worth summarizing the different levels of editing as this will show you where your current skills might slot in.

• Big picture: The terminology is tangled but here we’re dealing with macro solutions that help authors to shape their work. Services include book coaching, manuscript evaluation, manuscript critique, developmental editing, structural editing or substantive editing. Writers learn to develop their novel craft through plot, characterization, pace, narrative point of view, tense and story arc.
• Sentence level: Again, the terms differ depending on whom one talks to but here we’re dealing with micro solutions that help authors to smooth, correct and polish their work. Services include stylistic editing, line editing, copyediting, proof-editing and proofreading. Writers learn to keep their readers engaged through attention to sentence flow, clarity, consistency, and standard spelling, punctuation and grammar.

There’s more information in the following articles:

• The different levels of editing. Proofreading and beyond
• How do mainstream publishers produce books? And should you mimic them? Help for self-publishers

What would suit you?
Given that you’re already immersed in teaching creative writing – albeit to a younger audience –  you might do well to focus your training on big-picture work because you could utilize an already-developed skill set.

Another route to consider is offering private writing tuition. Many first-time authors want to develop their craft, and if you enhance your existing knowledge base with specialist professional training and professional society membership, you'd have a powerful key selling point not only to local writers but those searching online too.

And if you enjoy working with secondary-school students, there’s nothing to stop you offering private tuition to them too. You’ve already proven yourself within the school sector, but this option would allow you to continue teaching while achieving control and flexibility over your working hours.
​
Training
I’ve covered the issue of training in previous Q&As so take a look at the following articles for information about high-quality courses that focus on the broader practice of editorial work:

• Are free online proofreading and editing training courses reliable?
• Q&A with Louise: Can a teacher get work as a proofreader, even with no publishing experience?
• Q&A with Louise: Which online proofreading and copyediting courses do you recommend?
• SfEP: Society for Editors and Proofreaders (courses)
• The Publishing Training Centre (courses)
• Training archive here on the blog
• Why should you bother with professional proofreading training?
• Worldwide list of editorial societies

If you do decide to focus on big-picture editing, I’d recommend specialist training. Perhaps you’ll discover nothing new, but that will be a huge confidence booster. And if there are gaps in your skill set, you’ll find out where they are and be able to rectify the problem before you begin working with clients.

Sophie Playle of Liminal Pages is an experienced developmental editor who runs two relevant courses:

• Developmental Editing: Fiction Theory
• Developmental Editing: In Practice

Also take a look at the Society for Editors and Proofreaders’ Introduction to Fiction Editing. Note that the SfEP assumes basic copyediting knowledge for this course.

Getting noticed
One of the biggest challenges for any new editorial business owner is getting noticed. Again, I’ve discussed marketing in previous Q&As, so you might like to review the following:

• Content Mavericks with Andrew and Pete (webinar programme; complementary book available shortly)

• Content Marketing Primer (book)
• Marketing archive here on my blog
• Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
• Q&A with Louise: Can a teacher get work as a proofreader, even with no publishing experience?
• Social Media with Purpose (Copyediting masterclass)
• SOS Marketing Strategy (free booklet)

If you were to go down the route of offering creative writing courses for beginners, consider researching local writing groups; and talk to local bookshops to see if you might publicize the courses through them.

How about your local chamber of commerce? Is there support there – perhaps local contacts who are involved in self-publishing? You might collaborate with the chamber to provide a beta course or seminar series that would help you learn what works and what doesn’t. This would enable you to mine your existing teaching skill set while expanding your local network.

And, of course, self-publishers aren’t the only market. Mainstream publishers are a superb client base with whom to build your portfolio once you’ve completed your training because they already understand the value that professional editors bring to the table.

It’s worth bearing in mind, too, that there are fewer specialist developmental editors than copyeditors and proofreaders. Moving in this direction would mean you have less competition once you begin actively marketing your new business.

Budget
One thing I can’t advise on is whether my suggestions are ‘too costly’! Price is always relative in any case. My recommendations are based on quality rather than affordability because I see no sense in suggesting training that won’t help you achieve career independence and fitness for purpose.

Your career background will offer you a strong foundation on which to build your editorial business, and if you’re prepared to combine those skills with additional professional development and a commitment to marketing, I believe you could do very well indeed.

Good luck, Noella!

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

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

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

This week’s reader question is from Pritti, who’s already secured publishing work but wants to move out of her science commissioning role. Lack of practical experience and relevant qualifications are holding her back.

​Pritti says:

Thanks so much for allowing this to be a open forum/platform for beginners like me to ask questions! 

I am a 23-year-old law graduate who currently works as a commissioning editor for a online science publishing company. However, even though this has been a 'foot in the door' type of position, my heart is really set on going into trade publishing and becoming a freelance editor. 

Not only that, my position here as a commissioning editor isn't what it actually says on the tin – it's more on the commissioning side of things rather than editing. In fact, I do no editing whatsoever, in my opinion! So I feel like I'm not gaining the necessary skills I need for the industry. 

I was thinking that obtaining a well-recognized qualification would help get me noticed, as my ultimate goal is to become a freelance editor – but without gaining the necessary experience in my current role, and without the qualifications, I do feel like I'm at loss here. I've also applied for a number of roles but been unsuccessful owing to my lack of experience. Freelance agencies have also rejected my application for the same reasons – not having enough experience. 

Furthermore, there's also no way of acquiring clients where I work. Please help! 
 
Thanks so much for your question, Pritti!

I accept that your current role won’t give you the practical experience you require because you’re in a commissioning rather than production role. However, I don’t think that needs to stand in your way of embarking on training that will prepare you for developmental editing, line editing, copyediting or proofreading in a freelance capacity.

No training provider will turn you away because you don’t already have the experience! The UK’s Society for Editors and Proofreaders, for example, offers a suite of online training courses designed for novices and experienced professionals alike.

I wonder whether because you’re working in-house you’ve got yourself into a mindset of thinking like an employee. If want to work as an independent editor, you need to start thinking like an employer (of yourself). That means sorting out everything for your business from your training to marketing to administration.

Getting qualifications
My first piece of advice is therefore to sort out the qualifications issue. I’ve covered this in several previous Q&As, so take a look at the articles and the list of national editorial societies below. You haven’t told me where you live but there are several distance-learning options available (in Canada, the US and the UK, for example).

• Are free online proofreading and editing training courses reliable?
• Q&A with Louise: Can a teacher get work as a proofreader, even with no publishing experience?
• Q&A with Louise: Which online proofreading and copyediting courses do you recommend?
• Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading
• The Publishing Training Centre
• Why should you bother with professional proofreading training?
• Worldwide list of editorial societies

Once you’ve acquired the practical skills, you’ll be in a position to begin the journey of acquiring work. Again, though, I think you need to shift into the mindset of a business owner.

Getting work
Freelance agencies are certainly one option, but that’s a narrow approach to take given the many others worthy of exploration. Here are some additional ideas:
​

• Develop your marketing strategy. You can begin this now and add to it as you learn. Check out my books and the marketing archive here on the blog
• Join a professional editorial society and advertise in its directory
• Create a business website that shows how you can solve your target clients’ problems and what services you offer
• Create professional social media accounts (e.g. a Facebook Page and LinkedIn and Twitter profiles) that enable you to engage purposefully with fellow editors and potential clients
• Contact publishers and ask to be added to their freelance banks. I don’t mean two or three – I mean for you to get serious about it! (See SOS Marketing Strategy)

Your subject specialism
You told me that you’d like to work in the trade publishing sector. The term ‘trade’ refers to the publishing of materials for a general audience.

If you want to be found by, for example, independent thriller writers, you’re going to need to be visible, and that may take time while you build your portfolio and your SEO.

If you want to do freelance work for trade publishers (for example, Pan Macmillan or Little, Brown) you’ll might well struggle until you have more experience under your belt (unless you get lucky). I think this is something you should set your sights on further down the road.

In the meantime, focus your efforts on building your freelance business – marketing yourself and practising your post-qualification craft.

I always recommend that new entrants to the field focus attention on the market where they’re most likely to stand out. Specialize in what you know first; diversify later.

You have a law degree. I don’t. That’s why I’d never copyedit for a law student or an academic submitting an article to a legal journal. And while I have proofread law books for academic publishers, those clients never asked me to copyedit.

Your law degree means you speak a language and have a knowledge base that I don’t (and many other experienced editors don’t). You can use that to differentiate yourself.

When I began my editorial business journey, I had professional training, a politics degree and experience of working in-house for a social science publisher. I didn’t spend valuable time trying to get my business off the ground by asking Gollancz if I could proofread their SF Masterworks series (much as I would have loved to do that!).

Instead, I went and knocked on the door of social science publishers and spent several years honing my craft with politics, sociology, philosophy, economics and media studies books.

Over time, new opportunities arose as I became more visible and my marketing efforts began to bear fruit. But it did take time, and while that happened I concentrated on where my strengths lay so that I could gain experience. I believe that you need to do the same.

I think you should focus on the following client groups to begin with:
​

• Publishers with law lists
• Social science and humanities publishers (think related disciplines such as criminology, international law, public policy and administration, and philosophy and ethics)
• Legal students and scholars
• Independent authors of commercial non-fiction (this is your where you'll get your related trade experience that you can sell on later to trade publishers)

Some academic publishers also have trade divisions/imprints and so the academic work can deliver trade opportunities to the independent editor.

Summing up
I hope that helps you get your thoughts in order, Pritti. If you take things one step at a time, I’m confident you can get to a point where you’re immersed in the trade sector. But I’d recommend building up to it by playing to your market strengths.

​Good luck!

Lisa got in touch to ask for help with getting her proofreading career off the ground. She’s feels as if she’s between a rock and a hard place because of a lack of academic qualifications, career experience and time. 

Lisa asks:

Hello, Louise! It seems that a lot of future editors have great educational experience. They can build on that to start with as a marketing tool. What can I do if I have spent 25 years raising children, and I don't have more than an associate's degree in General Studies, no experience, and not a lot of time to spend on learning marketing? I am a dog-walker and pet-sitter during the day, and I want to start marketing myself as a proofreader. Help!

Hi, Lisa! Thanks so much for your question.

I can appreciate that you probably feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall at the moment. I do have two books that take you through the steps of editorial marketing, and one free booklet.

I’ve posted links to those at the bottom of the article. They’ll give you the detail; here on the blog, I’m going to focus on the basics and try to get you in the right mindset.

Time constraints
Time management is a tough one, but it’s something that everyone who’s set up their own freelancing business has experienced. The challenges don’t go away once we’re established either.

Take me for example. I have to find time to work on my business, too – time for marketing, time for administration, time for advanced training, time to train others! I, too, have a family and a business to run (my fiction editing work) during the day. Time for the business of running my business has to be found, and it’s tough.

That’s why I’m writing a blog post now, at 9.30 p.m. on a Monday evening on my laptop in front of the TV. The dog’s to my left, the girl’s in her room, the hubbie’s on the other sofa! My life is all about multitasking and there’s no way around it.

I know a lot of people who do their marketing out of hours, or chunks of it at least. We all have the same 24 hours in a day and we all juggle our backsides off to make it work. It’s just the way it goes. There’s no way of cheating it, no shortcut for any of us!

Here are some ideas:

• When you’re dog walking, could you listen to some audio masterclasses? Copyediting.com has a bunch of recorded classes that you could listen to while you pitter-patter with the pooches. That way you get to build your training portfolio and marketing skills, do some exercise and get paid at the same time! Yes, some of those courses will have complementary slides and written materials, but you could review those when you’re pet-sitting (rather than walking).
• When you’re at home in the evening, what are you doing? If you’re cleaning, ironing, washing or vacuuming, could you do some of these things a little less often? I’m not saying give them up completely, just cut down a little so you can devote time to your professional development and marketing.
• How about cooking? If you’re the person who takes responsibility for feeding your family, can you delegate the task to others so that they’re at least sharing the burden? You could redirect that time towards an hour of business-building. Explain to your family that they’re supporting your career. If you live on your own, might you go down the ready-meal route a few times a week? Better yet, get a cheap slow cooker. Chuck everything in first thing in the morning, go to work, come back and lift the lid. Dinner! I luuuuurve my slow cooker – healthy food for no effort!
• Do you spend time in front of the TV and take baths? I did an entire 7-hour content marketing programme in front of the TV over the course of several weeks (earphones plugged in, tablet on my lap). The course required some deep thought and self-brainstorming exercises; I did some of them while taking a long soak in the bath. In fact, I came up with some of my core brand values while in the bath! (See the resources for info on that programme).

​Do you work 7 days a week, 365 days a year? For some people in the world, that’s a reality not a horror story, and if that’s you, you have my genuine sympathy. But if you do take weekends off (or one or two other days during the week), and if you do take some annual leave, might you consider using it as a busman’s holiday – devoting it to your business (marketing, training, etc.)?

This isn’t most people’s idea of fun; it’s certainly a sacrifice. But if it gave you that 50 hours of professional training that you need to get off the starting blocks, it would be a sacrifice worth making, an investment for your future.

Training
Once you’ve borrowed some time, you need to decide what to do with it. I mentioned training briefly above but let’s dig a little deeper. You didn’t tell me what pro training you’ve completed, so for safety’s sake I’m going to assume it’s limited.

Professional training is, I think, a requirement for anyone wanting to be taken seriously in today’s editorial freelancing market. It gives you confidence, ensures you’re fit for purpose and puts you on a par with the thousands of trained colleagues with whom you’ll be competing.
​
Having pro training is no longer stand-out, it’s stand-ard. You might be worried that you don’t have time to do in-depth professional classes – you’re at work all day so can’t attend on-site training.

Above, I talked about Laura Poole and Erin Brenner’s online classes via Copyediting. The Society for Editors and Proofreaders and the Publishing Training Centre in the UK both offer outstanding distance-learning courses for copyediting and proofreading, too.

Those are just a few examples, but nailing the classes means you can demonstrate on your website that you’re a professional – with pro training, a pro attitude and pro commitment.

I believe that our marketing messages should focus on our clients’ problems first and foremost, but backing that up with training is a no-brainer. So let’s talk about marketing.

Marketing
The thing about marketing is that you can get right on it – start doing it while you’re learning it.

Perhaps there are some editorial freelancers who have client lists as long as their arms and can rely completely on word of mouth. Or they have lots of publisher clients who offer repeat work (I’ll talk about that below). But the new starter in today’s market has to think bigger.

Some types of marketing are slow burn; some can have a much quicker impact. Here are some ideas that fit into both categories:

• Get yourself a website now so that you can start building it into your shop front (just like you’re already doing for your pet-sitting/walking business).
• Create a professional editorial Facebook page to complement your existing timeline. You won’t have much to put on it right now so use it as a curation resource – useful stuff for colleagues and clients that shows you’re committed and engaged with the editorial profession and the problems your clients face.
• Use social media purposefully! I’m a great one for messing around on social media – I love seeing what people are up to on Facebook and Twitter – but I’ve learned to use it with intention, too.
  The chattering aspect is great for building relationships with editorial friends (especially as a large percentage of my edi-pals don’t live nearby), but I use it to build trust and engagement too – it’s a place where I share the resources that I and my colleagues have created to help each other (and our clients). If you’re interested, I’m presenting a masterclass on purposeful social media marketing via Copyediting.com in December (see below).
• Join a professional editorial society. I think you’re in the US, but if I’m wrong, no matter. There’s a list of worldwide pro editorial societies at the bottom of this post. If your national society’s directory has a directory of editorial pros for hire, make sure you’re in it. If you don’t qualify, use your borrowed time (or your busman’s holiday) to do what’s required to get in it. My CIEP and Reedsy profiles are valuable lead drivers, second and third only to Google.
• Once you’ve got your initial training sorted, follow the instructions in my SOS Marketing Strategy booklet (see below) and start contacting publishers. If you focus on the arts and humanities, you’ll likely not need a higher degree. Publishers are great clients, especially while you’re developing your visibility. They already know what we do and why we’re valuable, so we don’t have to persuade them; they already have their hands raised.

​And that final point leads us onto something else worth considering …

Client focus
When it comes to marketing, every editorial business owner needs to think about which clients they’re going to target. For you, this may feel trickier because you don’t have a career background that lends itself to a particular subject specialism.

Here are just a few examples that will help you develop your marketing message:

• Publishers – professional industry-recognized training: We’ve already talked about how you might secure that.
• Publishers – readiness to take a test: Publishers increasingly use tests to evaluate their freelancers. That’s because each press works differently and they want to make their own assessments of a candidate, not rely solely on a piece of paper. This could play to your advantage. Though I came into the professional with a politics degree, during my days working exclusively for publishers I proofread books in law, philosophy, economics, research methods, education … you name it! The publishers didn’t want a scholar; they wanted a pro proofreader.
• Students – many students are looking for help with language polishing. If they're not fluent in English, that you are is a selling point.
• Students – citation and reference styling. Being able to say you know, for example, The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed., like the back of your hand will be a great selling point because getting citations wrong can be a grade-breaker. That’s something you can learn in your borrowed time online or by grabbing yourself a second-hand copy of the manual. The same could apply to any of the industry-recognized style guides.

Focusing your message on solutions to your clients’ problems means they see you concentrating on them rather than on you.

Imagine this … you walk into two shops, intent on buying a new pair of shoes from one or other. In store A, the assistant spends half an hour telling you about her feet. In store B, the assistant asks you about your own. Where do you want to buy your Jimmy Choos – A or B?

All of us need to make our clients want to buy editorial services from us, so we need to focus our message on their problems and their needs, not how brilliant we are. And in fact, though, we can demonstrate our brilliance precisely by being focused on them. It comes down to good old-fashioned customer service.

Hope that helps. I wish you well on your editorial business-building journey, Lisa!

Resources

• Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers (book)
• Content Mavericks with Andrew and Pete (book)
• How to Do Content Marketing (book)
• Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
• Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)​ (courses)
• SOS Marketing Strategy (free booklet)
• The Publishing Training Centre (courses)
• Worldwide list of editorial societies

Should you invest several hundred pounds in professional proofreading and editing training when there are free online courses available? A reader asked me whether the freebies are worth their salt …

Malika asked:
 
Hello Louise. Your blog has helped me with a lot of things. However, I am currently doing a BA. I want to learn editing and proofreading side by side. I wanted to ask whether the websites providing free online courses on editing and proofreading are reliable.
 
Thanks for your question, Malika!
 
Foundational English-language skills
First, I always recommend that those considering a career in this field focus on their language skills before they embark on professional editorial training.
 
Professional proofreading and editing courses teach the practice of how and when to amend or annotate. They assume an existing above-average knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar that accords with English-language convention.

Proofreading and copyediting – what do those terms mean?
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of your question, I’d like to talk about what’s meant by the terms ‘proofreading’ and ‘editing’. The terminology is often tangled. I define the various stages of editing as follows:
​

• Structural, developmental, or substantive editing – big-picture, shaping work
• Line editing – sentence-level smoothing work that focuses on structure, flow and sense
• Copyediting – sentence-level correcting work that looks at spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and logic
• Proofreading – prepublication quality control for spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and professional layout (often working with designed page proofs)

 
The training we do (whether it’s free or charged for) needs to reflect the skills needed to carry out these levels of editing.
 
At the end of this post I've provided a PDF that offers more detail about the problems proofreaders and editors aim to solve at each stage.

Reliability, promises and intention
Now to your query. I think that an evaluation of a course’s reliability needs to ask two questions:
​

• What is the course offering or promising?
• What do you intend to do with the training when you’ve completed it?

 
EXAMPLE
The course:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Proofreading
• Advertised on Study.com as a ‘free online non-credited editing course’
• Offering: ‘Focuses on strategies for detecting typos and grammatical errors that slip by grammar and spell checkers. Some common grammatical errors covered are faulty parallel structure, comma splices and run-on sentences. Practice exercises in areas such as grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and paraphrasing are also available.’

 
Your intentions:

• If your intention is to improve your language skills so you can attend to the quality of your own written BA course work, great! Sign up and get learning. It looks like a winner to me.
• If your intention is to secure work from exacting clients such as publishers, self-publishers and businesses, this course is completely unsuitable. It’s teaching written-language skills, not how to mark up designed page proofs or carry out a professional developmental, line or copyedit.

 
The course has been designed to help Purdue students with the thesis-writing process, not train proofreaders to professional standards. The course is reliable in the context of its intention. It’s just not a good match for you or anyone else seeking to set up an editorial business.

Client perceptions and expectations
There’s a marketing issue at stake, too. However ‘reliable’ the free course is, it’s worth asking yourself whether it has the potential to enhance or damage your trustworthiness.
 
Here’s the problem – there are thousands and thousands of editors and proofreaders online. The market is global, too, thanks to the internet. If a client finds you and five others, how will they decide who’s worth getting a quote from?
 
Imagine your home needs rewiring. You’ve already had one small electrical fire and want to avoid a future catastrophe. Who do you hire? The professionally accredited electrician or the spark who did a free tutorial on YouTube?
 
People searching for editorial services are just as discerning. They’re handing over hundreds, even thousands of pounds to a stranger. They want a professional who’s passionate about their business, takes it seriously enough to invest in high-quality training, and knows how to fix what’s wrong to industry-recognized standards. If you can’t demonstrate that you’re that person, you won’t be able to compete effectively.
 
Some client types, publishers for example, expect an editorial pro to have completed courses from specific training providers. Others will focus on your successful completion of a test. To pass the test, you’ll need to know your stuff. If your free course doesn’t provide you with the required knowledge, you’ll come unstuck.

Ask colleagues, clients and professional organizations
Some years ago, I asked a group of UK publishers about professional training. You can read what they said in ‘Does training matter?’ (see ‘Further reading’ below). If you’re based outside the UK, call a few publishers and find out what professional training they recommend.
 
Your national editorial society will also have guidance. There’s a list of worldwide national editorial societies in the ‘Further reading’ section, too.
 
Practising editors and proofreaders will also have opinions. Ask in online forums about any free course you’re considering, and how it stacks up against paid-for options.
 
Here’s one editor’s opinion: I recommend the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) for UK editorial training. That recommendation is based on my experience (I’ve not done any free editorial training) but it’s an opinion, not the law! My colleagues will have their own preferences, some of which will be based on where they live.

Pro training courses – what’s on offer
Compare any free course’s syllabus with that of an industry-recognized course.
 
Let’s take a look at the CIEP's proofreading training:
 
Proofreading 1: Introduction (online £103)
Time: 10 hours
‘This course is suitable for beginners contemplating a career as a proofreader and for those who need to proofread as part of their job but have had little formal training. [It] teaches the very basics of proofreading; on its own it does not provide the thorough grounding needed to work as a professional proofreader. Apart from introducing the basics of proofreading, the course is designed as a taster to answer the question “Is proofreading for me?”’
 
You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 1: Introduction; it includes:

• what a proofreader is looking for
• how much a proofreader should intervene
• proofreading PDFs:
• BSI proofreading marks and proofreading on paper
• how much to change
• proof-editing in Word

 
Proofreading 2: Headway (online £156)
Time: 20–25 hours
‘This course is for people who have some knowledge and experience of proofreading and would like to learn more. It […] builds on the basic skills you already have to improve your concentration, focus and judgement.’
 
You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 2: Headway; it includes:

• tutor-assessed assignments
• editorial conventions
• house styles
• developing good judgement
• layout issues including handling illustrations, tables and notes

 
Proofreading 3: Progress (online £156)
Time: 20–25 hours
‘This course guides you through more complex general and specialised material, including texts with illustrations, tables, notes and references.’
 
You can see the full syllabus here: Proofreading 3: Progress; it includes:

• tutor-assessed assignments
• proofreading publications with illustrations
• tables, notes and references
• proof-editing
• proof collation

 
This is staged professional industry-recognized training that aims to make you fit for purpose and ready for market. It’s not cheap, nor should it be given that it’ll take a minimum of 50 hours to complete. No one gives away 50 hours of anything for free!
 
If you find a free online proofreading course and it doesn’t include the content covered by the full staged CIEP syllabus outlined above (or an equivalent professional association’s course in your own country), ask yourself whether the material is sufficient for your learning requirements.
 
When free is great – the springboard
That’s not to say that freebies aren’t valuable. However, we need to recognize that, usually, what’s on offer is a glimpse, a taster. That taster might well offer insights, knowledge, tips and tools to start us on our journey.
 
Freebies are a springboard. I use them to gauge my fit with what’s on offer. I chose to invest in professional marketing coaching earlier this year. But first I signed up for some free stuff to see whether I liked the hosts and their training methods.
 
I provide my own freebies – my website is packed with them … PDFs, ideas, advice, booklets. These are snippets; people have to pay for my substantive books. Many editors offer free sample edits to give clients a taster; the full editorial service costs.
 
And so it is with editorial training. The PTC offers a free taster programme for its flagship distance-learning proofreading course. The CIEP offers a free proofreading test. Will either make you ready to offer proofreading services to clients in the open market? No. Will they act as signposts for what kinds of issues you need to look out for and whether a proofreading career is for you? Definitely. But you get what you pay for!

Being a professional
Editorial work is no different to accountancy, social work, teaching, graphic design, building, or electrical engineering … you can do it well and to professional standards, or you can do it badly.
 
If you do it well, you’ll be able to give your clients excellent customer service. They’ll use you repeatedly and refer others to you. They’ll give you testimonials that will build your social proof.
 
If you do it badly, you’ll let your clients down. If you’re lucky they’ll only complain and ask for their money back. If you’re not, they’ll tell others how awful your work is – a PR disaster.
 
Any courses that promise miracles for very little to no money and time need to be viewed with caution. Use them to evaluate whether a professional editorial career is right for you. Beyond that, financial investment will be necessary.
 
I hope that helps you, Malika!
 
Further reading

• Does training matter? What publishers say about proofreading & editing courses
• List of national editorial societies
• Not all proofreading is the same: Part I – working with page proofs
• Not all proofreading is the same: Part II – working directly in Word
• Proofreading: How to choose the right training course
• Q&A with Louise: Which online proofreading and copyediting courses do you recommend?
• CIEP: Proofreading – Test yourself
• The cost of editorial training – are you hitting the mark or missing the point?