How to Get Experience in Order to Freelance Edit for Publishers

I’ll get to the sad truth right away: to be considered for freelance editing work for traditional publishing companies and related organizations (hybrid publishers, book packagers), you need to have experience. And so the age-old conundrum rears its head: how do you get experience if you need experience to get experience?

Three things can help you get started if you don’t have much experience.

First, get some training. If you have a copyediting certificate from a well-known program, you’re more likely to be invited to take a test (often an important step toward getting editing work) than if you have no such credentials.

Second, focus on your most relevant qualifications. Where do you have special expertise or related experience? If you retired from an IT job, then it’s fairly straightforward to convince a publisher of computer titles to hire you as a technical editor. From there you can branch into other kinds of nonfiction and other kinds of editing.

Third, look for opportunities that can lead to bigger things. For example, hybrid publishers often need someone who can do manuscript assessment so that they have a clear idea of what editing is needed to make the book publishable. But manuscript assessment isn’t a profit center, so they typically don’t have big budgets for this. That’s an opportunity for you. Once you’ve done a few of these assessments (these are also called evaluations) you can see about moving into other kinds of editing for that company or use your experience as a credential to get work from other publishing companies.