I recently posted an article on the blog about how I believe that loving reading isn’t in itself enough if you want to run a proofreading business (Proofreaders-to-be: Loving Books Isn’t Enough).
One commenter suggested that my approach was “over-complicated” and could be seen as “throwing the kitchen sink” at someone “who just wants to know how to fix a leak”. I thought long and hard about what he said, and I think he’s right. I do tend to throw the kitchen sink. But, actually, I’m okay with that. Though it's not everyone's way, it's the way I approach my business. I take it very seriously and, like every one of my colleagues and friends (in the editorial community and beyond), I’ve worked very hard to make a success of my enterprise. By “success” I mean that it delivers what I need it to deliver in terms of career fulfilment, personal satisfaction, and a decent living wage. I like surprises as much as the next person – an unexpected bouquet of flowers from a client, an unplanned visit from a dear friend, an unknown gift under the Christmas tree, an email from my partner that pops up in my inbox during the working day for no other reason than “I wanted to tell you how much I love you”. Yup, I like surprises very much indeed. But I don’t like the surprise of finding there’s not enough money in my bank account to pay the mortgage because I’ve not had enough work. I don’t like that element of the unknown that comes from wondering when the next client is going to contact me. I don’t like the idea of taking the plunge into a new area of my life and not having a strategy for how I’m going to make it work. That’s why I’m a planner. I don’t do dabbling or toe-dipping very well. I know some people who are far more relaxed than me and take a more easy-going approach to aspects of their lives in general and their businesses in particular. And that is fine. Vive la différence. Some years ago, a friend and I decided to take a trip around Italy. His attitude was: “Let’s just get there and see what happens. It’ll be part of the adventure!” I was horrified. “No way! We need pre-booked tickets and accommodation. We need to read the guide books so that we know where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. We need emergency credit cards and emergency #2 credit cards in case the emergency credit cards get stolen!” Road trips are fine for me – as long as I have a map, and a phone, something to write with, something to write on, internet access ... and emergency credit cards, of course. Lots of them! Others are happy to start their journeys and see where the roads take them. I respect them for that because that’s their way and it matches their personalities. I, however, am not a risk-taker. I’m a bit more of a straight-down-the-line person. That’s my personality and it’s therefore no surprise that this concords with the way I built my business and the approach I take when I give business advice. When I started to think about proofreading as a career, I approached it my way: For example, I found out what publishers want in terms of training, and I did that exact course. It took seven months. I found out what professional membership they respected, and I joined that organization. I found out what directories they found their proofreaders from, and I did everything I needed to do to qualify for entry. Bang bang bang, straight down the line. I researched and planned and researched and planned. I had a business plan and a marketing strategy on the go before I’d even finished my training. I’ve tweaked them both again and again as I’ve acquired new skills, explored new client groups, and learned about new resources and tools, but I was planning from the word “go”. I threw the kitchen sink at myself! Can you do it any other way? Of course you can. You can do it however you want. Sitting in a bar one night some years ago, my friend Bernie came out with some words that I’ve treasured from the minute she spoke them: “There are many ways to live a life.” She’s right – there are, and there are many ways to build an editorial business, too. But if you want advice about the other ways, ask someone else. Because if you’re a new starter and I’m the person you choose to call or email, I’m going to throw my kitchen sink at you! I’ll do it gently, I promise. I’m a nice person and an optimistic person. But I’m also an organized realist and this is my way. I can’t help it – it's like that proverb about the scorpion that stings the fox during their river crossing: it’s in my nature. So what I have learned? If there’s one very important and valuable thing that I gained from this exchange of blog comments it was this: I need to make sure that I make it clear to my readers that I don’t think my way is the only way. It’s not. Self-righteous blogging is no use to anyone and was never my intention. I welcome comments, and discussion and disagreement ... as long as they are orderly, written in nice straight lines, and come with an index ;) Oh, and one more thing – if you're one of the proofreaders-to-be whom I've thrown my kitchen sink at, I've loved talking with you and I hope I didn't dissuade you. My intention was to inspire you and to help you think about substantive ways in which you can get your business off to a good start. I want all the best for you. I want you to love your new editorial career as much I love mine, and to enjoy "success" in the way you define it. But there are indeed many ways to go about it. That's the great thing about working for yourself – you get to choose.
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.
16 Comments
I recently received a phone call from someone thinking about a career in proofreading. “I just wondered if you could spare five minutes to tell me how to go about starting a proofreading business.”
She was really sweet but at the word “five”, alarm bells started to ring. I can’t imagine a scenario where I would ever have thought that I could learn what I needed to know about running a business in five minutes …
“I love books. I've always loved books. I read two books a week. I'm a voracious reader! Always have been, always will be.” The alarm bells were getting louder. The thing is, I love eating (and I have a waistline to prove it). I've always loved eating. I eat three meals a day (at least). I'm a voracious eater. Always have been, always will be. But that doesn't make me a chef. It doesn't mean I can run a restaurant. So I let her talk for a bit longer and then I gently suggested that it’s a big decision – that it’s great that she loves reading – but that my best advice was for her to think about the other stuff, too: the clients she’s going to target, what training she needs to do, how she’s going to promote herself, what knowledge base she can bring to the table in terms of specialist experience (prior job, hobbies, education, etc.). I told her that there are a lot of us out there already doing this, which makes it competitive.
I could have talked for hours but I don't have hours to spare. And she asked for five minutes so that’s how long I talked for. I thought I’d done quite well (given the time span available) to point her in the direction of a small but substantive group of resources – none of which would cost her more than six quid, and most of which are free – that she could use when making the monumental decision to set up a new proofreading business. A silence followed on the other end of the phone. I assumed she was frantically scribbling down all this information. “The thing is, I really want to make a career out of this but there’s so much to get your head around. That’s why I called. I just need to know how to go about it. I've always loved books, always loved reading. I think I’d be good at this. I notice spelling errors when I read magazines and books and newspapers and I really love words.” I sensed I'd not told her what she'd hoped to hear. I don't for a minute think she expected me to hand her a client list on a plate. She seemed very pleasant, genuine and passionate. Rather, I suspect she'd thought that the task might be easier or more straightforward; that in these days of reduced employment opportunities, editorial freelancing would be something that was relatively simple to slip into. I tried to move her back to the issues in hand, reiterated that the resources I'd pointed her towards would help her work out "how to go about it", and I emphasized that it’s not a love of books and words that will enable her to run an editorial business. Because that’s not enough. The fact is that in the list of things that enable a proofreader (or any other type of editorial freelancer) to run a successful business, loving books is so far down on the list that I've yet to be convinced it's worth giving it a number. There is a lot of information to read and a lot of issues to consider. And so there should be. Running an editorial business isn't something you can learn to do in five minutes. It requires research, patience and commitment. It requires the wearing of many hats. It requires perseverance, business savvy and hard graft. If you love books, words and reading – great. But all that tells you is that you love books, words and reading. It doesn't tell you if you have skills such as planning, marketing, time management, financial management and accounting, client-appropriate training, an understanding of industry expectations, taking the ups with the downs, creative thinking, client negotiations, networking, and business development. And if you want to run a proofreading or editing business you’ll need all of the above in spades or you'll have to want to learn them. I’ll say it again, loving books isn't enough. There are no short cuts. Your dentist doesn't get to stick a needle in your gum by taking short cuts. Your cleaner doesn't get to make your house sparkle by taking short cuts. Your five-year-old doesn't learn to read because their teacher takes short cuts. While colleagues will be delighted to advise you of various different approaches and tactics to help you on your way, ultimately you'll have to put in a lot of hard work. It doesn't matter whether you're Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or lil' ol' Louise Harnby – when you set up a business, the basic rules of the game are the same. Do the planning, do the research and never, ever forget that you’re considering running a business first and foremost, whatever your likes and dislikes are. If you still think becoming a proofreader (or editor) sounds like a great idea, welcome on board. It really is a great job, and there’s a huge international community of editorial colleagues waiting to engage with you. And if you happen to love books, reading and words, all the better. Just as long as you remember that, in itself, that's not enough. Good luck, and see you on the other side!
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.
Considering setting up a proofreading business? Or perhaps you're already on the journey. Here are 10 things you need to know and 10 more you need to do.
10 things you need to know ...
10 things you need to do ...
If you'd like more comprehensive guidance about starting a proofreading business, my books might be just the ticket. Written for those with no prior publishing or editorial experience, these practical guides take the new starter, step by step, through the basics of planning an editorial career and marketing their services.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. The Fiction Freelancing series presents the individual experiences of editorial freelancers working on fiction within both the publishing sector and the independent-author market. The Parlour’s Work Choices feature has proved tremendously popular with editors and proofreaders looking for insights into working in various genres and specialist academic/professional fields. This time round we’re looking at editing genre fiction, and sharing his wisdom is my colleague Marcus Trower. ![]() Marcus has an impressive publishing background – journalist, production editor, chief sub-editor, feature writer, film critic, contributor to men’s magazines, travel journalist, and editor. Oh, and he’s written and published a book, too. With this many strings to his bow he knows a fair bit about the written word, so I’m delighted he’s agreed to talk to us about the business of editing … Louise Harnby: Welcome to the Proofreader’s Parlour, Marcus, and thanks for taking the time to explore the field of genre fiction with us. So to start off, and for the benefit of those who are new to the field and unsure of the terminology, can you tell us what the term “genre fiction” means. Marcus Trower: Thanks for having me, Louise. The border between literary fiction and genre fiction can be a little blurred at times, but basically we’re talking about crime fiction, thrillers, sci-fi, romance, fantasy – that type of book – and the many sub-genres within those genres. Another term for genre fiction is “commercial fiction”. We’re talking plot-driven novels with an emphasis on entertaining the reader. That’s not to say that they can’t deal with big issues. They tend to be books that aren't say, experimental in form, however. These are novels in which, if there’s an unreliable narrator, it’s likely to be in the sense that he or she is someone who can’t be trusted to meet another character at a place and time they've agreed. And should you encounter navel-gazing in a work of genre fiction, it will be during a scene in which a character is admiring the midsection of his or her love interest rather than a passage in which the author, thinly disguised as the narrator, likens his life to a Buñuel film. LH: I’d like to hear more about your specialty areas. Can you tell us a bit about the editing work you’ve completed? Which particular subgenres most excite you from the point of view of an editor, a reader, and a writer? MT: I specialize in working with authors of genre fiction, and within that field, I would say 75 per cent of the total number of books I work on are either mysteries or thrillers, so crime is very much my specialism. The other 25 per cent tends to consist of sci-fi, romance, the odd translation, and the odd zombie story set in medieval England – I’m thinking of The Scourge, by Roberto Calas, which I edited recently. I have a specialism within a specialism, too: mysteries and thrillers with a Spanish language component tend to come my way, since I lived in Spain for a couple of years, and I know my way around the Spanish language. Mysteries have always appealed to me as a reader. I think that’s because I’m fascinated by the idea of hidden patterns and motivations lying beneath the familiar surface of life. Offering my services as a mysteries and thrillers specialist is a natural and sensible thing for me to do, not only because I like reading crime fiction, but also because I’ve been writing my own crime story, a tale set in the underworld of Rio De Janeiro, and I’ve studied the craft of writing crime fiction to an advanced level in order to enhance my own writing. When I started writing the novel a few years back, I made the mistake of thinking that because I’d had a work of narrative non-fiction published, I knew how to string scenes together and tell a story. Fortunately, I soon realized how wrong I was, and I subsequently took crime fiction writing classes to learn about things like POV, building tension, characterization, scene setting, dialogue mechanics, and so on. The courses I took gave me a knowledge base that is incredibly useful to me when it comes to editing the work of other authors writing crime fiction in particular and genre fiction in general. LH: I’ve proofread a fair bit of genre fiction, primarily for publishers, and at that stage my clients are really just looking for that final polish – ironing out any final inconsistencies, layout problems and typos. Editing is a whole different ball game – you’re intervening at a much earlier stage and in a more invasive manner. I do want to explore the challenges of doing this kind of work, and how you manage the working relationship with an author who’s put their heart and soul into their novel, but I think that first it would be helpful to understand a bit about the process. So, when you receive a manuscript, how do you go about it? How do you actually structure this kind of work? MT: I like to read the first couple of chapters without editing or commenting in order to bond with the material. I often make a few notes, jotting down characters’ names and so forth, which will help me later on. During a first read, I’m looking at everything – grammar, syntax, punctuation and style, as well as POV, characterization, scene setting, plot coherence, continuity, verb tense use, dialogue mechanics, possible legal issues, and so on. One moment I might be adjusting hyphenation, the next I might be flagging the fact that an author has forgotten to give a physical description of a key character or querying whether he or she has sought permission to use song lyrics. What I love about copy-editing fiction is how many levels you have to think on. As I said, during that first read, I’m looking to fix or flag absolutely anything and everything that is, or could be, an issue. But I like to keep the forward momentum going during the first read, so if there’s an issue that comes up that requires more than a little thought, I’ll usually flag the passage it comes in and return to it later. Often that’s a wise move, because your perspective on a particular issue can change quite radically the deeper you get into a novel. The first read should remove simple distractions – misspellings, say, or awkward or incorrect style choices – allowing me to see even deeper still into what’s going on in the manuscript during a second read. I spend a lot of time working on comments addressed to the author, making sure that I get the tone right, explain an issue clearly and lay out options effectively. I tend to comment a lot; on average, I write between 150 and 250 comments in the margins of each manuscript – using Microsoft Word’s commenting tool, of course, rather than writing by hand on a hard copy. I know from what publishers and authors tell me that I’m considered to be at the very-thorough end of the editing spectrum, but in my mind I’m actually trying to intervene and comment as little as possible. My aim is to support the author, not impose myself on his or her work in any way, shape or form. When I’m satisfied that I’ve finished going through a novel, I spend a good amount of time reviewing the edits I’ve made, checking that they are correct and consistent, and making any necessary adjustments. I check through all my comments, too, and finish off my editorial letter to the author, which I begin composing during the second pass, and which can run to 2,500 words in length. I like to sit on a manuscript for a couple of days before returning it and the letter, just in case something else occurs to me. LH: You were a journalist in another life, and you’re a published author. This means you edit and you’ve been edited. Is the fact that you’ve been on the other side of the fence, so to speak, a benefit to your editing practice? I feel like I already know the answer to that question, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it anyway. Is the fact that you’re a writer yourself something you take the time to explain to your clients at the outset? And on the flip side, do you sometimes feel that being an author yourself gets in the way? In other words, can you wear both hats at once or do you feel the need to separate the two at times? MT: Right, I was a journalist for many years. I started off in journalism working for music magazines in the early 1990s – publications such as Record Mirror, Kerrang! briefly, Melody Maker and Vox. I also worked for Time Out and Empire, as well as The Big Issue and Loaded at the beginning of their lives. I subsequently worked for some of the nationals, most notably The Times and a section of The Mail on Sunday that belied the Guardian reader’s stereotypical image of what a publication from the Daily Mail camp is like – in fact, a lot of the journalists I worked alongside there went on to work for The Guardian and The Observer. I freelanced in contract publishing, too, for many years. During all that time, I was always both a writer and an editor. I know what it’s like to be edited well, and I know what it’s like to have what feels like a team of boisterous hippos trample all over my copy. You have to be pretty thick skinned to survive in journalism, though, and there’s not a lot of hand holding. I found that I had to make an adjustment and be a little more delicate and diplomatic when I first started editing fiction than would perhaps be considered necessary in journalism. I don’t go out of my way to mention that I’m a writer to authors, no, but then I don’t hide the fact either, and it’s there in black and white on my website. If I did make a point of mentioning that I’m a writer, that could be a turn-off for authors. They might think I’m going to try to write their book for them, which is one of the worst sins you can commit as an editor. I do stress that I can give feedback on the sort of storytelling elements I’ve already mentioned, though, which does stem from my being a fellow author who’s studied the craft of fiction writing. I never feel like being an author gets in the way – much the opposite. It helps me develop a strong connection with authors and their work. I really, genuinely want to help other writers. To use a terrible cliché, I want to make their book the best it can be. I identify strongly with novelists. I’ve faced the same creative challenges as they have; I’ve faced the same practical ones of trying to find, or buy, the time to write while working a day job. I’ve gone through the difficult process of trying to get an agent, then the even tougher one of trying to get a publisher. I’ve had my fair share of rejection letters and emails. From personal experience, I know how hard trying to make it as an author can be. If I can help other writers by offering them good editing, then that makes me feel good. LH: Getting the author–editor relationship right has got to be crucial, has it not? MT: Yes, it really is. The first thing I do is try to establish a rapport with the author and his or her work. I send out a questionnaire that seeks to find out everything from which other writers out there the author identifies with in terms of style, to how he or she feels about serial commas. The key is to get as good an understanding as possible of what an author is trying to do in his or her work, and to get across right at the beginning that I’m here to help him or her do that. I think it’s very important to set the right tone right at the outset of a book edit in margin comments. On the initial pages, you’re trying to make it clear to the author that he or she is in good hands, you’re not here to mess with his or her style and vision but to enhance the novel, and you’re also trying to establish clearly the principles and reasoning behind certain alterations you’re making so that you can save yourself the trouble of repeating yourself again and again throughout the manuscript. That’s also why it’s a good idea to write a thorough editorial letter. Much of the time I lay out options, since a lot of fiction editing involves making subjective decisions rather than the more objective types of calls you make as a proofreader, say. For example, a comment might begin “You may want to consider . . .” Diplomacy and tact are key. If I spot a dangling participle and a rewrite is in order, I don’t write – and I’m going to exaggerate here – “Honestly, what kind of idiot are you? Do you realize you’ve written a dangler?” but instead something like “There’s a dangler here at the beginning of this sentence . . .”, then quickly move on to laying out a couple of rewrite options, which should prove helpful to the author. You’re there to give constructive help and support. LH: Is editing genre fiction different from editing other types of writing? MT: Obviously there is a lot of crossover with editing other types of writing – there is the same confusion between “it’s” and “its”, or between defining and non-defining relative clauses, say, that you’ll see in all other types of writing. A big difference, though, is that you need to also analyse the storytelling elements I mentioned earlier – POV, scene setting, characterization, etc. Some people would call this big-picture editing, or developmental editing, and not see it as part of the copy editor’s job, but I’ve always offered that kind of feedback and analysis as part of my service, partly because that has been what publishers have asked me to do, and partly because I really do think it is part of the job. If a writer has slipped into omniscient mode while telling a story, but up to that point he or she has been keeping POV discipline and telling the story from the viewpoint of a single character, for example, to my mind that’s just as much a slip as a mistake in grammar or syntax, and it needs to be flagged. There are also style and even punctuation conventions in genre fiction that make it different from other forms of writing. To take an example, in academic writing an ellipsis (…) is used to show the omission of words from a quoted passage, but in genre fiction an ellipsis can be used to indicate that a speaker has paused or trailed off in dialogue, or in narration as a tension-building device – which is something that the crime writer Mark Billingham does, for example. A sentence will begin like this one and be about to reveal some crucial information, and it will . . . have an ellipsis like that one just before the revelation. It’s a little bit like the pause in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when a contestant has given his or her final answer, and Chris Tarrant draws out the tension by pausing before revealing whether the answer is correct while that bass-drum music rumbles away in the background. Perhaps, in fact, I should refer to that kind of ellipsis as a Tarrant from now on. Some people might consider it a melodramatic device, but there it is. LH: Newbies reading this will be curious to know how you go about getting work, Marcus. Running your own editorial business in a crowded market can be a tough gig – so how do find your clients or how do they find you? MT: I work quite a lot for CreateSpace’s Thomas & Mercer, 47North, Montlake Romance and AmazonCrossing imprints, which are based in the States. They represent a different side of Amazon’s publishing business from the self-publishing side that everyone’s familiar with. I got work with CreateSpace by taking and passing their editing test. Working for them set me on a trajectory of editing fiction written by US authors, and most of my clients are American. I’m a member of an American organization called the Editorial Freelancers Association, and clients find me through a listing I have on its website. I recently started blogging, and a few authors have found me through my website and blog, too. I don’t really go out to actively find clients, to be honest. Maybe I’m a bit naïve, but my attitude is that if I do good work, people will hear about me and find me, so I focus most of my energies on doing a good job, and I let marketing take care of itself, really. One thing I would say, though, is that in my opinion it’s important to have a specialism, as I have. I think it’s better to come across to authors as a specialist in a particular field than it is to sell yourself as a generalist. I don’t worry about losing opportunities by being a specialist, either. The fact is I do get to work on novels other than crime novels anyway. LH: One of the best things about editorial freelance work is that you can live where you want. Given you live on the Maltese island of Gozo and do a lot of work for the US market, is the fact that you don’t live in the States ever a disadvantage, or doesn’t it matter? MT: Yes, I can live where I want in theory. Great, isn’t it? Thank you, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. If I became complacent and started to believe the Brits and Americans use the same language, I would create a problem for myself. Obviously we do share a language, but there are a lot of differences, as we all know. I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m effectively working in another language, though it’s one I’ve been exposed to from a young age through American TV, films and music, and so on. I’ve had to make some adjustments. I write my editorial letters and comments using American punctuation and spelling rules, and I have to use American grammar and punctuation terms when I communicate with authors. There are many good resources, both online and on my bookshelf, in which I can usually find clarification of specific points that relate to US English and crop up during editing. If I do get stuck – and it doesn’t really happen very often, truth be told – there are always people I know in the States I can run a colloquial expression by to check a preposition used is correct, say. I’ve never really thought about this before, but since the US is such a vast place, maybe a New York-based copy editor has to do the same thing if he or she is working on a manuscript that uses a dialect spoken in the Midwest, for example. Obviously, as a copy editor you amass a big pile of language knowledge, but I think that one of the keys to editing, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, is knowing what you don’t know – and to look up whatever that is. Which I don’t think Rumsfeld went on to say. LH: We’ve primarily talked about your editing; now I’d like to focus on your writing. You post some fabulous articles on your website that are of interest to writers and editors alike. Tell us a bit more about the motivation behind that. And what kinds of things will you be posting about in the future? MT: That’s very kind of you to say. The blog series I write, Be Your Own Copy Editor, aims to help authors, but of course I’m very flattered that fellow editors are reading it, too. Its strapline is “Self-editing advice from the front line of fiction editing”, and that’s the key to the blog for me. It developed because in my work I kept seeing – and still do, of course – the same issues crop up again and again in authors’ manuscripts. I realized that some of these subjects weren't really dealt with properly by grammar books, style manuals and books on writing fiction. There are a lot of resources out there that talk about things such as subject–verb agreement, say, or the difference in meaning between “compliment” and “complement”, but there isn't much guidance about things like when and how to style inner monologue using italics, which I've covered in a blog, or identifying a three-verb compound predicate and punctuating it correctly, another subject I've covered, since compound predicates with three or more verbs are common in genre fiction. I intend to keep posting about issues that are specific to genre fiction but don’t get much coverage, if any, and subjects that are covered elsewhere but which I think need to be both looked at in more depth than they often are and viewed specifically from the perspective of genre fiction. By the way, the series may be called Be Your Own Copy Editor, but I’m not suggesting authors should bypass having their work copy-edited by a professional. My thinking is that the better the shape they get their manuscript in before submitting it to an editor, the more control they have over the final version, and the fewer things there are that can potentially go wrong. I think that’s good for both editors and authors. LH: You also had a non-fiction book published by Ebury Press, The Last Wrestlers, which received some great reviews, and you said you’re writing a crime novel. The two sound a million miles apart! So how did the former come about, and where are you with the latter? MT: They do sound far apart, however a couple of reviewers of my wrestling book were very perceptive in that they described it as being like a crime novel, which I think is true. Like a detective, I was running around the globe – I visited India, Mongolia, Nigeria, Brazil and Australia to do research – trying to discover who had murdered real wrestling and why. The Last Wrestlers grew out of an obsession with wrestling I had during my twenties – with doing it rather than watching it, I should add. I wanted to get to the bottom of why it meant so much to me, and also why it had declined in Britain. I thought, “Hang on. Wrestling is great. It’s a sport with real soul, dignity and history, yet it’s a laughing stock in Britain, where it’s associated with those guys prancing around in spandex on TV. What went wrong?” I spent over two years in the field, as it were, trying to answer that question and other questions. ![]() My crime novel is set in the underworld of Rio De Janeiro, a city where I lived for a couple of years, but actually the story sprang partly out of an interview I did with a gunda, the Indian equivalent of a mafia don, while researching my wrestling book in Varanasi. Meeting him affected me a lot. He was young, high caste, physically slight and wore glasses, yet he had personally murdered about eight people, and he controlled elections, politicians and banks in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In a key opening scene in my crime novel, I transpose certain elements of the meeting to a favela in Rio, and the crime king in my novel is the boss of a fictional drug-dealing crew with similarities to Red Command, which runs a lot of shanty towns in Rio. LH: What was the experience of being published like? Again, we’re back to the point about editing versus being edited – that sense, perhaps, of handing over control to someone else. Did you find the process a comfortable one? Do you hope to go down the publisher route with the crime novel or would you consider, or even prefer, self-publishing? MT: I put my heart and soul into my wrestling book, and the research journey I went on nearly killed me – I mean that in the literal sense. I came back from Nigeria with a very serious tropical disease that the best doctors and professors of tropical medicine in the UK couldn’t diagnose and consequently couldn’t treat properly. Fortunately, I recovered spontaneously. But anyway, the point is that my book was incredibly important to me and told a very personal story, and in some ways I paid a high price to research and write it. So yes, it is difficult to hand over a project like that to someone else. But I was very fortunate in that I had input on the developmental editing level from John Saddler, a brilliant agent who was a creative mentor to me, too, and Hannah MacDonald, then at Ebury Press, who was very perceptive and who I felt really understood where I was coming from as an author. She’s a novelist, too, which of course must help her engage with authors. There were one or two anxious moments, such as when I was told readers were unlikely to be able to stomach a book of over 80,000 words in length from a first-time author, and I’d written over 120,000, I think it was – but I felt like I was in really good hands. And in the event the word count wasn't cut dramatically. ![]() I was fortunate enough to be published very well indeed. Since I lived in Brazil at the time, Random House kindly let me stay at the Random House flat in central London for a few days at the time of the book launch. I was given a PR handler, who took me around various radio studios, where I gave interviews. My book was reviewed in the Telegraph, The Sunday Times, twice by The Times, the Literary Review, The Independent, Arena, and a number of other publications. I did Excess Baggage on Radio 4. The book didn’t then go on to sell in the tens of thousands, though it had respectable sales. In hindsight, I think the title may have been a barrier to finding a readership for the book. Essentially, the book is about being a man in the modern world and it speaks about the topic by talking about my obsession with wrestling; it isn’t a book simply about wrestling. But if you look at the book’s cover and read its title, you probably won’t come away with that impression. I have to say I get a little irritated when authors who identify heavily with the self-publishing and indie publishing boom talk about agents and editors at traditional publishing houses as though they are evil incarnate. I know I had a particularly good experience when my book was published, and not everyone is as fortunate as I was, but a lot of nonsense is talked about the traditional route in publishing. A lot of the people who work in publishing or work as agents are doing it because they genuinely love books, and they love breaking new authors. With my own crime novel, I will try to get an agent for it and then a publisher. I came very close to getting represented by a big agency in London when I submitted it to them about 18 months ago – but a miss is as good as a mile, as they say. My first thought – actually, that’s a lie; it was probably my third thought, and the first two thoughts are unprintable – was that the manuscript just wasn’t good enough to get published, and I needed to work on it further. I hope to produce another draft this year, and if the manuscript gets rejected again, no, I won’t self-publish. I’ll take it as another sign that the novel isn’t good enough and try to improve it. However, I am thinking of revising my wrestling book and producing print-on-demand and eBook versions for sale in the States, partly because I know the book will have some appeal there, and partly because I’d like to go through the process of putting out an eBook and print-on-demand book, because that will help me understand the publishing processes involved, which will in turn help me when I work with authors who are self-publishing using print-on-demand and eBook services. LH: Marcus, thank you so much. The editorial knowledge you've shared is gold dust, both for new entrants to the field and for more experienced editors considering expanding their focus into genre fiction. I've also found the description of your journey as a writer fascinating, particularly given the changes in the publishing market taking place, but also in terms of how you use your experience to enhance the editorial service you provide. And as a keen reader of crime fiction, I'm looking forward to your book! MT: You're very welcome, Louise. It's been great chatting to you. Visit Marcus Trower's blog: Be Your Own Copy Editor. And if you fancy picking up a copy of his book (I'm off to buy a copy now!), it's available on Amazon: The Last Wrestlers. Other posts in the series cover proofreading for trade publishers (Part I; Louise Harnby), editing fiction for independent authors (Part II; Ben Corrigan), and editing adult material (Part III; Louise Bolotin).
A note from Louise: In October 2012, I attended an indexing workshop for proofreaders, run by the UK's Society of Indexers. Ann Hudson, a fellow of the SI, was our trainer and she did a wonderful job of sharing her extensive experience and illuminating the world of the indexer. Ann's kindly agreed to write a guest article for the Parlour about her work. If you think it's a string you might like to add to your editorial freelancing bow, or you're just curious as to how an indexer works, then read on ... ‘Any simpleton may write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index.’ (Rossiter Johnson 1840–1931; from Hazel K. Bell (ed.), Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction. London: The British Library, 2001) ![]() Do you enjoy reading? Do you have a logical mind, and take pleasure in creating order out of chaos? Can you encapsulate a complicated concept in a succinct phrase? If so, you may be suited to indexing. Many indexers also do proofreading and/or copy-editing, and some of the requirements overlap, such as good language skills, methodical working habits, meticulous attention to detail and a good eye for spotting errors. Computer skills are also vital: most indexers use dedicated indexing software which deals with the more mechanical aspects, leaving the indexer to do the brainwork. And as electronic formats develop indexers will be required to create linked indexes for ebooks and websites using html and xml tagging, or embedded indexing systems. Indexers are often asked whether search engines have not made their work redundant, but this is far from true. A search engine will find mentions of the exact words that you type into it, but will not find alternative spellings or synonyms. Effective indexing is not just a question of extracting words from a text and putting them in alphabetical order. The skill is in devising entries which describe a whole section of text, bringing together references to the same concept which may be described in different words, and in making connections within the index, by means of cross-references and double entries, so that readers will be led to all the references they need. The ability to organise material clearly, so that readers can easily find their way around, is also essential. Indexers rarely receive praise, because when an index works well it is taken for granted – though people are quick to complain about an inadequate index! In order to index effectively it is essential to understand what you are reading, and to know what sort of information will be useful and relevant to the likely readership. All indexers should be capable of indexing popular texts aimed at the general reader, but more specialised and academic books demand detailed knowledge. Many indexers offer specialisms, often in subjects studied to degree level or beyond; in particular, medical and legal books require detailed subject knowledge and skills. There are also indexers who specialise in cookery books, children’s books, technical manuals, and many other fields. Indexing is usually a second (or third or fourth) career, and many indexers started out as librarians. Others come from careers in publishing, academia, IT, education and many other areas. The first port of call for anyone interested in indexing in the UK is the Society of Indexers (SI). Other indexing societies include the American Society for Indexing, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers, and the Indexing Society of Canada. Details of other indexing societies worldwide can be found through the SI website. SI runs a distance learning course which provides a thorough training in the fundamental principles of indexing; it is web-based, with detailed study materials to download, practice exercises and resources online, four formal tests, three online tutorials, and a practical indexing assignment. Successful students become Accredited Members of the Society of Indexers, and are entitled to an entry in the SI’s online directory of ‘Indexers Available’, widely used by publishers. After two years’ experience Accredited Members can apply to become Advanced Professional Members of SI. SI works hard to support professional indexers in many ways: providing a full programme of conferences, workshops and other CPD activities for indexers; raising the profile of professional indexers in the publishing world; and recommending minimum rates for indexing work. The recommendations for 2013 are £22.40 per hour, or £2.50 per page, or £6.75 per 1000 words. These rates are applicable to straightforward texts; experienced indexers working on specialised and complex projects can command higher rates. Inevitably work is becoming harder to find while the UK is in recession, but well-established indexers are continuing to get regular work, and a good proportion of the 15–20 newly Accredited indexers each year are managing to establish themselves, though it may take several years to acquire enough regular clients to give up the ‘day job’. As with any freelance work, you need good business and communication skills, flexibility and a lot of persistence to get a career off the ground. The work is mentally demanding and you must be willing to work long hours to meet urgent deadlines, especially when you are building up your business. It can be lonely work, and to some it would be pure drudgery. But there is plenty of support available from other indexers; SI members are a friendly bunch, with a lively email discussion list, annual conferences, and local groups in many parts of the UK which meet regularly for indexing-related talks and discussions and social activities. For me and many others indexing is a dream job, the culmination of all our previous working experiences, and the ideal way to earn a living – ‘being paid to read books’! Ann Hudson Fellow of the Society of Indexers www.annhudson.moonfruit.com Copyright 2013 Ann Hudson A note from Louise: The Parlour's series on Work Choices for editorial freelancers continues with this super post from my colleague Liz Jones. It's particularly pertinent given a recent discussion on the Society for Editors and Proofreaders forum about getting work based on particular subject specialisms. Several contributors made the point that it's not only the freelancer's education and career skills that come in useful, but also practical and hobby-based skills and knowledge. With that in mind, I was delighted when Liz suggested a guest article on editing cookery and craft titles. Read on ... ![]() When you’re thinking about potential areas of publishing to target or publishers to focus your attentions on, it’s worth considering the cookery and craft* genres. They account for a big chunk of the market, with hundreds of titles being published anew every year, or updated or repackaged. The two genres share certain characteristics and considerations. *Under the banner of "craft" I’m including a range of practical subjects, including knitting, crochet, dressmaking, spinning yarn, quilting, painting, drawing, origami, calligraphy, jewellery making … the list is long. Who can do it? In the case of both cookery and craft books, while practical experience and a working knowledge of the subject are both helpful, common sense and a willingness to engage with the material are arguably more important. It is your editorial skill set that you’re being hired for, and any subject-specific knowledge is a bonus. If it’s a subject area that’s a little outside your comfort zone, by all means confess this to the in-house editor, but don’t necessarily let it stop you taking on the job. Having said that, if you are passionate about any particular practical discipline, do draw attention to this when you approach a publisher in these genres. It’ll make you instantly more memorable – and employable. Does practical experience help? You don’t need to be a fantastic cook or a highly accomplished needleworker to successfully edit or proofread a book on the subject. However, some practical experience helps. Take cooking: it’s desirable if you can picture what a pinch of salt looks like, or 4 tablespoons of flour, or 50 grams of butter. A basic understanding of the science behind baking a cake, or a working knowledge of how to make pastry will stand you in good stead. You might not be the next Heston Blumenthal, but you need to care about why a recipe might work … and why it might not. It also helps if you’re into food – possibly even passionately so, even if you don’t do much cooking yourself. (In our house, my husband is the main cook, but we talk about food and recipes all the time.) Know your ingredients. Keep up with food trends. And read lots of cookery books! If you love food, this won’t be a chore. By reading around the subject you’ll get a feel for how recipes are put together, what new ingredients are on the market, how different publishers present similar kinds of information, and what’s desirable in a finished recipe. For craft, it’s important to understand how publishers like their instructional text presented, and to be able to get to grips with the specific jargon relating to the subject. Again, familiarity gained from reading the kinds of titles you’d like to work on is essential. Once you get to know the conventions of the genre, you are as equipped as anyone else to spot problems and inconsistencies in the text. This applies especially to proofreading, and once you’re more comfortable with the subject area it’s straightforward to move into copy-editing if you want. It can be reassuring to know that for cooking, crochet and knitting titles, publishers will often employ a freelance tester or pattern checker who will make up the recipes or projects, as well as an editor and proofreader. What characteristics do these books share? Both genres depend on the reader being able to understand a set of instructions in order to be able to exactly reproduce something at home. Therefore these instructions need to be unambiguous and clear. They should also be free from waffle – the reader does not want to get lost in flowery descriptions while they’ve got their hands covered in icing sugar or superglue. It’s likely you’ll have to wrestle with units of measurement. Sometimes these are given in both metric and imperial, and many jobs therefore require a certain amount of conversion or checking of measurements, or adding-in of missing information. This may seem dull – but it becomes considerably less boring when you consider how much your reader is depending on these measurements being accurate. You need to develop a sixth sense for those that seem "a bit off". Surely they can’t mean 15 kg salt? Why on earth would a patchwork skirt for a human take 35 metres of corduroy? How could a delicate beaded necklace possibly be threaded on wire 25 mm thick? Practical texts are often integrated with images, often in the form of numbered step-by-step sequences. Sometimes the publisher will send you the pictures to look at, and sometimes they won’t. If you have the pictures you need to look closely at each one against the text it accompanies. In this way, especially for craft subjects, a willingness to engage with visual material is important. With instructional text, editing can be about moulding the material to fit a publisher’s paradigm. Many craft titles are templated before they are written, with the author writing to fit a set of presentation layouts. Finally, we’ve all been taught to reject the received wisdom that the passive voice is inherently evil. However, this is less the case when editing cookery and craft texts. The active voice is often preferred – some publishers will even specify this. And when editing instructions, the imperative is often used to get the point across quickly. How should I approach a craft or cookery edit? The heart of any cookery or craft book is the recipes or projects. These often break down into three parts:
Editing the introduction is just like editing any other kind of text – try to retain the author’s voice as much as possible, as this is what gives the book its particular flavour. Then there’s the list of ingredients, or tools and materials in the case of craft. This is where you need to start getting really picky about consistency. The publisher’s house style will often tell you what units of measurement they prefer – metric, imperial, by volume (spoons and cups), or some combination of these. It may also detail exactly how you should phrase the specification of particular items. For instance, is it "a handful of chopped fresh parsley"? Or "a handful of fresh parsley, chopped"? It doesn't only look messy to vary this kind of information – it also makes a difference to accuracy. The ingredients (or materials) should usually be listed in the order in which they are used in the method or instructions. This area often requires your attention, and it should go without saying that every ingredient listed needs to be mentioned in the method, and that every ingredient mentioned in the method needs to be listed. The method or instructions for a dish or project are essential to get right. You need to weed out any ambiguities and inaccuracies; don’t leave the reader wondering what to do with that bowl of freshly melted chocolate, or one bead short of a pair of earrings. Eliminate as much redundancy as you can so that the text is clear and to the point. If a process is repeated throughout the book, try to keep the wording that describes it the same or very similar each time, so the reader understands that it’s the same process. Make sure you understand everything, and can picture what is meant to be happening, even if the subject matter is slightly unfamiliar to you. Don’t assume that an expert reader will be able to understand a description of a process that makes no sense to you. And do watch out for silly mistakes, such as an oven that gets preheated the night before the rest of the recipe happens. What work opportunities are there? In terms of the work you might be asked to do on craft or cookery titles, of course there is copy-editing and proofreading, as well as project managing. There is also plenty of work to be found if you can turn your hand to Americanizing or anglicizing text. Cookery and craft titles, as mentioned, frequently feature units of measurement, and converting these into a format acceptable for the US or UK market is a bit of a headache. This is where you come in. In this case, being prepared to work onscreen, in InDesign, can be a major benefit; publishers often make the UK or US edition of a book in a great hurry after the primary edition has gone into production. As well as the measurements, you’ll also need to adjust the grammar and vocabulary, of course. Both craft and cookery subjects feature a lot of jargon that is different in UK and US English (frying pan/skillet, coriander/cilantro, selvedge/selvage, double crochet/single crochet, cast off/bind off … etc.). There are many specialist publishers out there, and it’s worth approaching packagers, too, who often produce complex, highly illustrated titles for major publishers and can be a great source of freelance work. So … should I go for it? Craft in particular might not seem the most highbrow area of book publishing (let’s face it, no one is ever going to win the Man Booker Prize for a book about painting watercolour flowers), but it can be interesting, and reasonably well paid once you get used to the subject matter. You’re also fairly likely to work on books that you’ll later see in your local Waterstones, which can be a buzz in itself. Cookery and craft books are often gorgeously designed and produced, which is nice if you’re a bit of a book fetishist (aren’t we all?). You might even have the thrill of working on a high-profile title that receives lots of media attention – though in this case, don’t necessarily expect to be able to tell anyone about it. At the end of the day, you’re not helping to disseminate information that will one day bring about world peace, or a cure for some terrible disease. But you will have the satisfaction of knowing that the books you work on are helping to make a lot of people happy – or, if you mess up, extremely frustrated. Copyright Liz Jones 2013 About Liz: Liz Jones has worked as a full-time freelance book editor and project manager for the past five years, following ten years as an in-house editor for four different publishers – the last of which was a packager specializing in practical art and craft titles. Her work has two distinct strands: highly illustrated non-fiction books, and educational resources. When not editing she is usually playing with her children, playing the flugelhorn or writing. Visit Liz Jones Editorial Solutions for more information.
A note from Louise: Receiving payment for editorial freelancing can leave us editors and proofreaders feeling a little down in the mouth when we see chunks of our hard-earned cash being swallowed up by transaction and currency-conversion fees. Only recently I had to add £15 to an invoice for a Canadian publisher in order to cover my PayPal fees – not something I felt good about, considering this client is a vibrant start-up with a fair-trade policy for its authors. Lloyds TSB also charged me over £13.60 for the privilege of receiving a payment from a Spanish client. For an invoice of approximately £200 this felt like a kick in the teeth. ![]()
I'm therefore delighted to welcome my editorial colleague Averill Buchanan to the Parlour with her excellent guest article about CurrencyFair. From their website: "Our unique, new peer-to-peer marketplace ensures big savings on exchange rates and fees ... an efficient and safe alternative to ridiculous bank and broker charges." Interested? Read on ...
I've just completed my first set of transactions using CurrencyFair, a peer-to-peer marketplace that allows you to exchange and send funds in a wide variety of currencies, and thought that others might be interested (especially after hearing some horror stories about PayPal freezing people’s accounts).
I needed to pay a membership fee to an organization in Dublin who don't offer PayPal as a payment option (because it costs them too much). So I set up a business account with CurrencyFair (CF), transferred money from my sterling bank account, exchanged it through CF (they make the process very easy), after which it went into my CF euro account. I was then able to pay the organization their membership using IBAN from my CF euro account. The entire cost to me was €3. I finished an editing job for a client in Ireland and invoiced him in euros. I gave him the details of the CF account in Dublin along with my CF reference number. He paid online using his regular bank interface on Thursday (presumably at no cost to him) and I received the money in my CF euro account the following Tuesday. I then exchanged it to sterling (for a fee of £3) and transferred it to my own bank account on the same day. Had I invoiced and been paid by my client through PayPal it would have cost me at least £20 more, and PayPal doesn't allow you to shop around for the best exchange rate. They process payments in and out of the US, just like any other currency. They charge a flat fee for each transaction – 3 units of whatever currency you are exchanging to/from. As a freelancer, you are required to set up a business account with CurrencyFair (something to do with money laundering), but a business account doesn't cost you anything – it’s just the same as a personal account in every other respect. They will want to see scans of passport and other documents proving your address – just as if you were setting up a regular bank account – and it takes a day or so to set up a new account. But what I’m most impressed with about CurrencyFair is the personal attention. Tim Porter, an Associate Director, took the trouble to phone me at a time that suited me, to answer all my questions, and he’s been on the end of emails all through the process. Should anyone else like to try CurrencyFair as a replacement for PayPal (and I highly recommend it), Tim is quite happy to speak to you about it. His email is [email protected]. If you want to read more about the benefits, the website gives some live examples of what you can save by using CurrencyFair instead of a regular bank or broker. No doubt there are other providers offering similar services, so if you know of any that you'd like to recommend or share your experiences about, please leave a comment. Copyright 2013 Averill Buchanan
Bio: Averill Buchanan is a freelance editor, proofreader and book indexer.
Accidentally deleted a file or folder? If it's in Dropbox, you can recover it up to 30 days after hitting the delete button.
Think Dropbox is great for cloud-based file-sharing and back-up? It's a business life-saver too.
You can restore any deleted file or folder you'd saved to your Dropbox account. Here's how to do it: Recovering and restoring deleted files or folders on Dropbox. It's a doddle. I put it to the test after a tech-meltdown led to hundreds of precious family photos disappearing from my PC. The're safe and sound and the recovery process took under a minute.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you're looking for an easy and free way to schedule your editing and proofreading projects – clients, income, payment-due dates – this free Excel template is for you.
Keeping track of editing and proofreading projects is essential for every professional editor.
Download this free Excel template to get you started. The figures are completely made up but show the basic structure. If you're a newbie, you can use this as an interim way of managing your accounts and your schedule; one less thing to worry about for now! This template includes a number of columns with formulae that I find useful.
I like to differentiate between different stages of the process:
It helps me to see, at a glance, what's going on in my schedule, especially when a client asks about availability. I also track how the job will be returned to a client: via email, the post office or courier (at the client's expense). The UK's HMRC allows the freelancer to offset a percentage of mileage costs against their tax liabilities. There's a summary box at the bottom of the spreadsheet. This shows me my average earnings, my average hourly rate and my average rate per 1,000 words. These figures are really only for curiosity, since each job varies quite considerably in size, type, budget, difficulty and speed. If I was doing any serious analysis I'd look more deeply into the data to assess whether there are patterns in terms of, say, client type, service offered and subject matter. Still, it's useful for grabbing quick-and-dirty data for annual comparisons. Feel free to copy, amend or ignore as you see fit. You can add your own formulae to particular columns if the way in which you charge for your work differs.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. A note from Louise: Do you issue a contract before you start an editorial project? If not, take a gander at the advice from my editorial colleague Cassie Armstrong. Working without a net Most of you wouldn't think of beginning an editing project, or making a major purchase, without a contract in place. I was like that, too. I never began a new project without either a signed contract on file or an email where both parties made it clear what they would and would not do. But I didn't do that with a recent project. That mistake cost me time and money. Take a minute and learn from my mistake. I answered a job post for a proofreader a few weeks ago. The project was interesting, so I sent an email to the person who posted it. We talked about what the work involved, why a proofreader was needed, and about my hourly fees. I was thrilled to be accepted because the project piqued my interest. I could relate. But in my haste to begin, I didn't take the time to discuss a contract with my client. I should have stopped right there and corrected this mistake. Ask if there’s a budget In the early talking stages, when you and your potential client are discussing the project, take the time to ask if there is a budget for the work. I usually always ask. If I like the project and want to be involved, I will often times accept it even if the potential client’s budget is lower than my hourly fee. That decision is up to you, but it’s one that you need to consider in the beginning talking stages for any project. Money isn’t the only reason to be involved. In the recent project I suggested an hourly fee but didn't ask about a budget. For the next piece of work, I plan to avoid this mistake and ask the question. It would be in your best interest to ask the question, too. Remember to ask it during the project’s conversational phase, before you accept job. Don’t do anything without a contract I didn’t suggest or push for a contract because my client wanted the project completed in a week. I thought requesting a contract would slow down the process. This was my third mistake. Always take the time to draw up a contract. If you don’t want to be that formal, you can write the potential client a letter that explains what you will do and how you will do it. The letter and contract don’t have to be complicated and KOK Edit has some good examples that you can review and modify to suit your needs in her Copyeditors’ Knowledge Base (Contract between editor and book publisher; Contract between editor and client). An email will also serve as a contract If you don’t want to draw up a formal contract and take the time needed for both parties to sign it and return it, an email where you specify what you will do, how long the project will take, and the overall or hourly fee will also suffice as long as you have a statement of agreement from your client in a return email. This acceptance email will serve as the contract for the job. Ask for a deposit Just as a contract is important in any project, so is a deposit. Depending on the length of the project, you may want up to 50 per cent in advance and payment on billable hours every two weeks. The amount of deposit as well as the project’s billing cycle is as individual as the project and editor. These items should also be spelled out in the contract. For some small projects, I have edited without a deposit. For me, it’s a gut reaction. Just as each contract is different, so is requiring a deposit. For short projects with rapid turnarounds, deposits may not work. Do what works for you and is best for your circumstances at the time. In all cases, make sure you have complete contact information and consider using PayPal. Add a kill fee No matter what kind of contract you write, either traditional, a letter or email, make sure the contract contains a kill fee. The kill fee will save you a lot of grief and will provide an out for both you and your client if things don’t progress the way you'd planned. Just as a deposit helps protect you from doing a lot of work and then not getting paid for it, a kill fee, cancellation fee, or rejection fee serves a similar purpose. The kill fee ensures that you’re paid for all the work you’ve done up to the time the client notifies you that they are not going to work with you any longer, or when you decide to walk away from the project for one reason or another. Both you and the client may decide to cancel the project for any number of reasons, including timing, money, or change of focus. You both may decide to cancel the job because you aren't happy with the initial work, may think that you aren't working well together, or may not want to continue for some other reason. Whatever the grounds, the kill fee helps cover your billable time and any tangible expenses (delivery fees, for example) incurred so far in the project. Make sure you understand what the project entails Through conversations and drafts, make sure that the project requirements are crystal clear for all parties involved.
Offer to fix any errors If you make a mistake in a project because of a lack of communication or because the client is not happy with one aspect of your work, offer to fix the problem. Taking a few hours to make a client happy will be your best reward in the long run. It will make you feel good and there’s also the possibility of receiving future work from a satisfied customer. Keep the lines of communication open Communication in a project is key. You can communicate via email or via the telephone. Establish the best way to keep in touch before the project begins and discuss how many times a week you will be in contact. If the client prefers telephone conversations, exchange numbers. Ask when the best time to talk is and keep in mind any different time zones between you both. Keep all conversations brief and on point. Be courteous but businesslike. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied If you find yourself in the position where you’re doing more than the contract specified, take a minute and regroup. Go over the contract specifics. Make sure to review the specifics and discuss the new project requirements with your client. Explain that the new requirements will take more time and will cost more than the original fee. Offer to fulfil the new requirements for an additional fee and specify how this will be paid. Keep all conversations light but remain in control. Don’t allow yourself to be pushed into doing something that you’re not comfortable with or making changes that weren’t discussed previously. If you have to make changes or correct an error, don’t allow the client to deduct the cost of these changes from the original project fee. Explain your position to your client and stand your ground. Standing your ground is something that many of us aren't comfortable with. However, in business, and real life, it’s necessary if you don’t want to be bullied. If a situation like this occurs early on in the project, the kill fee you included in the contract, letter, or email will come in handy. Use it and walk away. Never put yourself in a situation where you are not in control or where you have second thoughts about a client or project. It isn't worth it. Bottom line Bottom line: a well-designed contract should avoid any potential problems in a project. Before I begin another project, either with an individual or with a publisher, I plan to make sure that the job specifics are spelled out and crystal clear. I will also add a kill fee to the contract and if there’s an inkling that the project is not going well, I will walk away. Copyright 2012 Cassie Armstrong Cassie Armstrong is a professional editor and the founder of MorningStar Editing. She's a recovering college English teacher and member of the Editorial Freelancers Association with over six years' editing experience. Her clients are primarily individual authors and trade publishers who specialize in fiction and non-fiction subjects, from biographies to YA novels. Cassie enjoys working with yarn and thread in her spare time and is developing a complementary speciality in editing books about crafting. Contact Cassie via her website MorningStar Editing, Twitter @MorningStarEdit, and LinkedIn. In this interview, I talk to author Michael K Rose. I love hearing about the the joys and challenges of being a self-publisher, the new technologies and procedures indie authors are using, and how they manage the process of being both publisher and writer. I'm a massive a science-fiction fan so when, in 2011, a Twitter pal posted something about Michael's work, I took note and started reading. I wasn't disappointed. The thing I love about Michael's stories is that they stray well beyond the boundaries of what some might consider to be traditional sci-fi; his readers are as likely find themselves exploring the inner space of the mind as the outer reaches of space. This interview was conducted in 2012, at which stage he'd published a collection of short stories, and one novel, with a second in revision stage. Since then, that book's been published, and he's added another 11 to the stable! Louise Harnby: First of all, Michael, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing? Have you always focused on science fiction, broadly speaking? What’s the appeal of this genre for you? Michael K Rose: I've always enjoyed the broad genre known as speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, etc.) but sci-fi has, for me, been a life-long love, whether it be in the form of films, television shows or books. Some of my earliest writings were science fiction, and while I have dabbled in other genres (and have several non-science fiction projects in the works) I believe that the majority of my work as a writer will be science fiction. LH: I read The Vast Expanse Beyond: 10 Short Stories a few months ago and absolutely loved it. I’m already a fan of both the short-story format and the sci-fi genre, but what really stood out for me with this collection was how it managed to surprise as well as entertain me – I didn't always know where the boundaries were between sci-fi and psychology. Is that something you particularly like to play with in your writing? MKR: I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I don't always know where a story is going to take me, especially when writing short stories (for my novel-length works I have a clearer idea, and I do outline, but nothing is off the table even then). I love all types of science fiction (hard, soft, over easy) but, as others have stated, science fiction is ultimately about people. And people experience things psychologically, emotionally, not just physically. Placing a story in a science-fictional setting with all its wonderful technology and meticulous world-building should not be an excuse to neglect this aspect of story-telling. We, as readers, don't always know the state of mind of the characters. Even if the story-teller (me, in this case) indicates one thing, there is no way of knowing if I'm even being honest with you. Straight story-telling is fine, and for the most part that is what you'll get in my novel Sullivan's War, but when it comes to short stories I tend to try different things. It's how I can play without wasting a month's worth of work if it doesn't turn out. I will mention that the sequel to Sullivan's War, Sullivan's Wrath, does play a lot more with psychology and characters' states of mind. LH: One of the stories in the collection, "Sergeant Riley’s Account", is a prologue the Sullivan’s War series. How did that come about? Was it harder to write with a pre-existing story line in your head, or did it help you flesh out the first novel in full? MKR: "Sergeant Riley's Account" was written long before the idea for Sullivan's War emerged. I also had most of a novel called Chrysopteron written, but I didn't feel as though it was close to being ready for public consumption. So for my first novel-length project, I decided that I wanted something action-oriented, something that would be fun to write but that still had some depth. "Sergeant Riley's Account" gave me the universe in which to set Sullivan's War as well as the narrative style that I wanted to use. I also had a couple of short stories that made their way into Sullivan's War, and that helped flesh out the novel quite a bit. ![]() Are there other short stories to which you might return in the future because you have more to say? In “Inner Life”, for example, I felt that devilish itch a reader sometimes gets with a great short story to explore the protagonist’s world just a little more! MKR: Thank you! Your saying that means that I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. If a reader is left wanting more, s/he is likely to seek out more work by the author. I don't plan on revisiting any of the characters in The Vast Expanse Beyond but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Right now I'm writing twelve novels in twelve months [see below] so short stories are, for the moment, on the back burner. But I love writing (and reading) them, so there will definitely be another collection at some point in the future. LH: Can you tell us a little about your editing process, Michael? Do you use proofreaders or copy-editors to put the final polish on your work before it gets published? If so, what does the process involve for you in terms of finding the right person for the job and communicating your expectations to them? Do you have any concerns about this element of the process? MKR: I actually don't use an editor or proofreader at this time. When I first began self-publishing, I had everyone and their dog telling me I needed an editor. Some even went so far as to say that any book published without an editor would, essentially, suck. I began by e-publishing a few short stories. I wasn't too concerned about it at that time. But when I put together my first print book, my collection The Vast Expanse Beyond, I knew that any errors could not be easily fixed once it went to press. So I did the work that needed to be done. I'm blessed (and cursed) with a rather meticulous mind and I tend to notice errors in just about every book I read. I also spent not a little time researching grammar, punctuation, etc. Can I edit as well as a professional whose spent years doing the work? No. Of course not. Can I self-edit to the point where the vast majority of readers will not notice an occasional missing comma? Yes. And for me, the difference between my work before being looked at by an editor and after being looked at does not justify the expense. I do have friends who beta read for me and they also help me find some errors, but by the time my work is ready to be published I have personally gone through it at least half a dozen times (including re-reading during the writing and revision process). And the work has paid off. Several people have complimented me on the professional appearance of my books. But I do not recommend self-editing for most authors. However, if an author does decide to self-edit, I would strongly recommend taking the time to brush up on grammar and punctuation. When I did so I discovered that I held many erroneous assumptions about proper usage. LH: Earlier, you mentioned the #12NovelsIn12Months writing project. You prepared a Q&A in anticipation of the questions you thought you’d be asked. The first was, “Are you insane?” I’m not going to repeat that here because such an ambitious project clearly deserves closer scrutiny. Would you talk us through it? MKR: Right now, my circumstances allow me to write full-time. That may not always be the case, so I have decided that for the next year I will write a full novel each month. As I wrote on my blog, I have a dream to make a living solely from my writing. If I don't pursue that dream now and do everything I possibly can to make it happen, the opportunity may not come again. I do not want to wake up one morning ten years from now and realize that I let my dream slip through my fingers. I will fight for it. Even if it does not come to pass, I can resign knowing that I did everything that was in my power to make it happen. Producing twelve full novels over the next year is, quite literally, everything I can do. LH: To date, you've self-published. It’s exciting to see talented writers taking this particular journey and, in the process, bending the traditional rules of publishing. I imagine you've put a lot of hard work into not only the writing but also the digitization and marketing of your books. Have these elements of the publishing process come easily to you or have there been challenges along the way, too? MKR: Of course there have been challenges. I spent countless hours playing with html formatting and researching how to create particular effects to make my ebooks as professional as possible. Writing a story and letting Amazon's (or some other entity's) software convert it into an ebook for you is easy. But that ebook is probably not going to look the way you want it to look. I also learned how to use photo-editing software to create book covers, which prior to self-publishing I had only toyed with. I began developing my social media presence, making connections with other authors, starting a speculative fiction webzine, giving interviews. This is on top of the work I did honing my grammatical skills so I could properly edit my work. Oh, and there was a little bit of writing in with all that, too. It has been an incredible amount of work and anyone who wishes to self-publish must know that if you want to be successful at it (and I do consider my results so far a success) then you have to either spend the money to have someone do all the things I've talked about or else take the time to learn how to do them and do them well. LH: Would you ever go down the traditional publishing route, now that you've mastered the art of doing it yourself? Would you feel that you’d lose some degree of control or would you welcome this as another avenue of opportunity? MKR: If the terms were agreeable, I would of course consider "trad" publishing. But I am very proud of what I have accomplished as an Indie writer and will always support Indie writers when I can. LH: You probably get asked all the time to give advice on how to go about publishing your own novel, so I’m going to throw the question on its head and ask you what your top three “Don’ts” are. MKR: Hmmm ... 1) Don't go in with any expectations with regards to sales or reception. The only thing you can control is your book, not how people will respond to it. If you are happy with what you have done and know that you have given it your all, that is a success, even if you never sell more than a hundred copies. 2) Don't go it alone. Even before you begin to think about self-publishing, start making connections with other self-published authors. I was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity I found in the Indie community and have done what I can to help other authors who have sought out my advice. There are people out there to help you. Don't be afraid to ask, but don't be upset if they decline. Most Indie writers must write in addition to holding a day job, raising children, etc. Ask for advice but don't ask too much of others unless you've developed a strong relationship with them. 3) I'll quote Henry James: "Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind." You never know who your next biggest fan/supporter will be. Avoid divisive discussions about politics, religion, etc. Treat others with respect. Don't make negative comments about other writers. If you act like a professional, people will treat you like a professional. LH: And finally, what plans do you have for the future, Michael? Anything in the pipeline that you’d like to share with us? Yes, I want to know about Chrysopteron! Can you give us a little teaser of what we can expect? MKR: Chrysopteron is the next novel that will be published. It is currently under revision and I hope to have it out by Christmas. This is the blurb that appeared in the back of The Vast Expanse Beyond: "Five generation ships were sent from Earth in the hopes of colonizing distant planets. The Chrysopteron was one of them. In a tale that examines issues of faith and self-determination, Michael K. Rose explores just what it is that makes us human. Will we ever be able to engage those who are different from us with love and understanding, or is the human race destined to forever be divided by trivial concerns? Even though we may leave the Earth, we cannot leave behind that which makes us human." I am sure the blurb will undergo several revisions between now and publication but hopefully that will have whet readers' appetites. I've lived with the characters in Chrysopteron for about three years now and they are very real to me. I am taking my time with it because I owe it to them to get this one right. Thank you so much for the interview! LH: Thank you, Michael. The glimpse you've given us of how you go about writing, editing and publishing is fascinating and inspiring. I appreciate your taking the time to share it. Michael K Rose is a science fiction, fantasy and paranormal author. His first major work, Sullivan’s War, has been called “… a sci-fi thriller that definitely delivers!” His second novel, Chrysopteron, has been hailed as a “… gem of a novel…” and “a masterpiece.” Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Arizona State University. He currently resides in the Phoenix area and enjoys board games, tabletop role-playing games and classical music. For more information, please visit his official website or his blog Myriad Spheres. You can also connect with him on Twitter or Facebook. Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this interview, Jo Bottrill talks about life in the busy project management agency Out of House Publishing.
Louise Harnby: Thanks for agreeing to talk to the Parlour, Jo. First of all, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into the publishing business?
Jo Bottrill: I lead the Out of House team in helping academic and education publishers produce books and digital content. I have worked as a production manager with some of the leading scholarly publishers, working across print and digital media. For much of my career I have worked with XML and I am excited about the opportunities for bringing print and digital production together. I enjoy finding solutions to the challenges publishers face. It's important to me to keep things simple and efficient – by doing so we can do more with less. My interest in publishing started at school, where I was torn between my love for the sciences and English literature – I decided to follow the science route but resolved to get into publishing or journalism to marry the two. I started my career in science publishing but now work across all the academic subjects. LH: Could you tell our readers a little about the company you run? What services do you offer and in which subject areas do you specialize? JB: Out of House Publishing is a publishing production company based in Stroud, Gloucestershire. We specialize in producing books and digital content for academic and education publishers, organizing every aspect of the production process from manuscript development to final delivery. We understand the demands publishers face and tailor our services to anticipate their needs. We help produce over 200 new titles each year across a wide range of subject areas – I looked at our list this morning and we have titles ranging from Optical Magnetometry to a study of the Victorian novel, and everything in between. LH: Editorial freelancers who’ve never worked in publishing are sometimes unaware of the procedures and pressures of that production staff face. What are the main challenges you have to deal with in your business? JB: We’re working hard to produce high-quality books in a reasonable time and for the best price possible. While we put the quality of our work at the forefront of our efforts, we neglect schedules and budgets at our peril. Our customers depend on absolute timeliness and are working to very tight margins, as are we. What’s more, we have the good name of our publishers to uphold – not only are we producing books, we’re also looking after authors – making sure they are justifiably proud of the book we've produced together. It’s important that they look back on the production process fondly. In all of this we are looking after people and that’s our biggest single challenge – making sure that everyone is happy and that where things have gone wrong we put them right quickly. LH: What about new developments in the industry (e.g. digital production). What changes in the publishing world are having the biggest impact on you and do you see these as exciting opportunities or are they sometimes obstacles? JB: For me, the most exciting opportunity is in bringing print and digital production together. Having our editors and proofreaders getting their hands dirty with content gives us a perfect opportunity to think about how digital versions are going to work, from simply checking that cross-references are correctly hyperlinked, to identifying opportunities for adding enhanced content such as video, audio or animation. Start-ups and visionaries are pushing the boundaries of technology; our job is to make sure the simple things work, that end-users receive high-quality content that will work on their preferred devices. There’s a temptation to overcomplicate these things – my interest is in building efficient workflows that produce without too much fuss! LH: So, when you’re hiring a new editorial freelancer what are the primary qualities you’re looking for and how do you assess these? Do you expect them to have a particular training background, previous experience, or knowledge of the subject areas in which you work? Are there are other factors that are important to you – references and testimonials perhaps, or a specific educational background? JB: Training. Experience. Test. Those are the three hurdles we need freelancers to cross. We can be flexible – some of our most trusted freelancers have little or no formal training but bucket loads of experience and a great reputation. We really only take Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) and Publishing Training Centre (PTC) courses seriously – they both seem to give people a genuine feel for the needs of their future customers. We do take degree and postgraduate qualifications into account when considering which subject areas a freelancer will be best suited to. Experience must be relevant, we won’t be recruiting a copy-editor experienced in editing novels to copy-edit a complex humanities title with short-title references. LH: One of the things I've been most struck by (and find most useful) is the detailed feedback that the members of your in-house team give your editorial freelancers. Is this something that’s house policy and if so what was the driving force behind this? JB: Sending feedback is a definite house policy – we encourage all of our project managers to pass constructive feedback to our suppliers; and we seek the same feedback from the customers and authors we work with. We’re very deliberate in the way we take on freelancers – modelling our pool of suppliers to the volume and type of content we expect to be working on. In so doing we’re aiming to build a team of people who understand our business, and who in turn we understand and respect. Equally we rely on our freelancers to point out where we’re going wrong, to help us improve our service and to keep things as efficient as possible for everyone involved. LH: How to you find your editorial freelancers? Or do they find you? JB: Freelancers increasingly find us, and we do carefully consider every approach from a prospective supplier. We have advertised with the SfEP in the past, and if we have a shortage in a particular subject area we will search the SfEP and Society of Indexers directories. LH: You’ve told us about the challenges and pressures of working in the publishing project management business. What’s the nicest thing about your job – the element you enjoy the most? JB: Getting excellent feedback from a happy author is the best feeling. Meeting an impossible deadline also gives me a real buzz, but best of all is taking pride in the team we've built under the Out of House banner – both in-house and freelance. LH: From your particular business point of view, what are the most exciting developments taking place in publishing at the moment? JB: There are too many to mention. Digital is clearly opening up so many new opportunities for selling and consuming content. With opportunity comes risk and we need to be wary of the disruption digital developments will bring to the supply chain and respond accordingly. If we’re passionate about getting good content out to people who want to read it then we should be excited about the future. In that vein, Open Access is a major force that will play a big part in moulding and disrupting the industry that gives us our living. Consumers of scholarly books and journals are pushing hard for more open-access content. There are numerous models for funding this but it’s likely that we’re going to be working more closely with the scholarly community in quite different ways very soon. Changes in the classroom promise to shake things up too – Apple iBooks is only just getting going and digital textbooks, elearning and remote teaching all have the potential to significantly change what we produce. We’re at the coalface of content production and that puts us in a great position to take the lead.
You don’t necessarily need to have a legal background to proofread law books. If you’re comfortable with often dense and highly complex material, huge numbers of footnotes, and lengthy citations – and the legalese doesn't scare you to death – then this could be the work for you!
The many faces of the law
The law covers just about every aspect of human life, so the books on offer tackle a multitude of subjects. I’ve worked on legal books with a focus on public health, marine conservation, labour law, genetic resources, constitution building, piracy, family law, comparative law, European law, intellectual property rights, religion, climate change, competition law and cartelism, and environmental governance. Since I came to this work with a strong background in the social sciences, it suited me down to the ground. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the readability of most of the law books I’ve proofread. They’re often written by lawyers for lawyers (or by law professors for their colleagues and students) so you won’t be confronted by the impenetrable sea of words that often appear in legal documents. The authors aim to communicate with their readership just like any other writer. If you have experience of proofreading high-level academic books and journals, legal work shouldn’t present you with a problem.
What are clients looking for?
Rather than making assumptions based on my own experience, I asked one of my publisher clients to tell me what she looks for in a legal proofreader. Here’s a summary of our discussion:
Other points to bear in mind
Footnotes (or endnotes) tend to be lengthy. Sometimes it can feel like there’s more text in the notes than in the main body of the book.
Should you?
Actually, none of the above issues is problematic as long as you have a good concentration span and you aren’t surrounded by distractions. Distractions and proofreading don’t tend to go well together at any time, but with legal proofreading you may end up gnawing off your own arm if you don’t have the space to do the work without interruption. Working with law books is not unlike working with any other specialism (social science, STM, fiction) in that you need to be able to work within a framework of industry-recognized citation conventions, house style guides, and author preferences, while all the time employing a good old-fashioned dose of common sense. Talking to your client so that you understand what’s expected is crucial whatever kind of work you’re doing because only in that way will you understand the implications of your mark-up. When I was first approached with an offer to work in this field, I accepted it with some trepidation. A few years on, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoy it. Proofreading law books can be a rewarding and highly informative experience. As the world changes, so does the law. Globalization, public health awareness, climate change, and the birth of the internet have given rise to new dimensions within the law and I rather like getting paid to read about them.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re building your editorial business, you can’t afford to sit back and hope the work will come to you – too many colleagues will be taking a more proactive approach.
So, this time around, I thought it would be fun to pretend to be someone else – someone with a different educational background and career history.
I’m going to pretend that I’m new to the field but that I have completed some sort of recognized training in proofreading/editing and have joined my national editorial society. My technical skills are there but I’ve got to work out how to get myself noticed, and how to make myself stand out. So who am I today? My name’s Basil Rhoueny [it’s the best anagram I could come up with – alternatives on a postcard].
So how am I going to create awareness of my new business? I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but I have a plan! That plan starts with providing clarity for myself about who I am and what I have to offer. At first glance, this is me:
My name is Basil Rhoueny, and I’m a fully trained copyeditor and a Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).
|
|
|
All
Around The World
Audio Books
Author Chat
Author Interviews
Author Platform
Author Resources
Blogging
Book Marketing
Books
Branding
Business Tips
Choosing An Editor
Client Talk
Conscious Language
Core Editorial Skills
Crime Writing
Design And Layout
Dialogue
Editing
Editorial Tips
Editorial Tools
Editors On The Blog
Erotica
Fiction
Fiction Editing
Freelancing
Free Stuff
Getting Noticed
Getting Work
Grammar Links
Guest Writers
Indexing
Indie Authors
Lean Writing
Line Craft
Link Of The Week
Macro Chat
Marketing Tips
Money Talk
Mood And Rhythm
More Macros And Add Ins
Networking
Online Courses
PDF Markup
Podcasting
POV
Proofreading
Proofreading Marks
Publishing
Punctuation
Q&A With Louise
Resources
Roundups
Self Editing
Self Publishing Authors
Sentence Editing
Showing And Telling
Software
Stamps
Starting Out
Story Craft
The Editing Podcast
Training
Types Of Editing
Using Word
Website Tips
Work Choices
Working Onscreen
Working Smart
Writer Resources
Writing
Writing Tips
Writing Tools
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
October 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
March 2014
January 2014
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
June 2013
February 2013
January 2013
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
|
|