It happens to all of us from time to time: work slows down, and we need to generate quick income. Note that this is not a blog post about how to start your business as a freelance book editor tomorrow and make fifty grand by Friday. That’s not gonna happen. Tips for How to Make…
I’m often asked, “For beginning editors, do you recommend doing some edits for free to get a start?” To answer, I want to distinguish between a beginning editor who has no idea what they’re doing and needs to learn and a beginning editor who knows what they’re doing but doesn’t have a lot in the…
It’s important for editors to recognize that authors have different stages of ability: Most of our author clients are at Stage 1, 2, or 3, and how we shape the edit will depend on which it is. If we expect an author at Stage 1 to be able to spot their own errors, we aren’t…
A question I’m often asked is, “Authors can be confused by what kind of editing their manuscript needs. How do you handle that?” Pre-Editing Questions When an author reaches out to me for more information about my editing services, I ask them a bit about their past experience: have they published before, and if so,…
Editors who are just starting out or who are moving in new directions usually have an idea in mind of the work they want to do. Often this starts out as a very broad concept: they want to help novelists write better stories. Then they realize this is too broad – where do you find…
LinkedIn is the only social media I’m on these days because I enjoy the professional connections I make there and there’s far less drama than on other social media platforms. But because LI is about getting work (among other things), it’s very common to see freelancers posting that they’re looking for projects. And that’s fine;…
Where do freelance editors get work? Who is in the market for freelance editors? If you’re interested in freelance editing, these are probably the top questions on your mind. The Two Main Categories of Freelance Clients The answer is that freelance editors work (1) directly with authors (usually called indie authors if they’re self-publishing) and…
Several times recently, colleagues have asked what to do when a manuscript isn’t in shape for a developmental edit. Maybe there are obvious issues that the author needs to correct that the don’t require a full edit—a lighthearted romance that weighs in at 200,000 words, an unfinished draft, a first draft. Basically these editors want…
I’ve heard developmental editors talk about “sensing” that a story isn’t working, even going so far to say that “sensing” problems is their job. And sensing that something is going wrong is a useful skill for a developmental editor to have—all of us do, to one degree or another. But developmental editing isn’t about “sensing”…
As freelancers, we have a tendency to think that we’re in competition with all other editors and (especially if you’re active on social media and see how many other editors there are in the world) that can feel overwhelming. But we’re actually not in competition with everyone else who calls themselves an editor. Case in…