The Concierge (Blog)

Editors marketing their services often hear a lot of guidance about getting clients, some of it . . . well, let’s call it naïve. Just the other day I came across a LinkedIn post on how your first year in business you should give everything away for free and only after that should you start…

To get better at developmental editing you have to do developmental editing! But it’s not always easy to figure out how to go about that. Previously I’ve talked about being a beta reader as a way to gain practice as a DE. And, the self-paced Naked Editing class allows you to follow along as an…

People with a growth-oriented mindset are happier and more successful than people with a fixed mindset (see Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset, among others). Growth versus Fixed Mindset People with a growth mindset are those who think they can learn and grow through hard work, persistence, and thoughtful feedback. A fixed mindset assumes that people are…

A while back I took a class on the algebra of symmetries and it turned out to be taught by a philosopher masquerading as a mathematics professor. Algebra, he told us, comes from the word al-jabr, which means restoration by balancing. “Restoring the unknown,” the teacher said. He went on to talk about how having…

Many self-publishing authors look for beta readers to give them perspective on their novels before they go to a professional editor for further help. An author doesn’t need a developmental editor to say the whole storyline is implausible and they yawned from beginning to end. Any reader of fiction can probably relay that information. Doing…

You probably landed here because you like books. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be an editor or maybe you think it would be a good side gig to get into. But you don’t know exactly what being a good editor means or how one would go about acquiring the necessary skills to do it well….

One of the most common questions I’m asked is how to get clients, so what follows is my basic theory of how not to starve to death as a freelancer. If you have little or no actual developmental editing experience, then doing a few projects in exchange for something like a testimonial or whatever might…

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve broken my list of red flags into two. Here’s the second list: The Disappearing or Disorganized Client Clients who wander off during the early stages of discussing their project are likely to wander off during the part of the project where they’re supposed to do some work…

Since we want to weed out potentially troublesome clients before they make our lives miserable, it’s a good idea to have some weed-killing processes in place. For example, requiring a nonrefundable deposit means that a client is more committed to the edit (and paying the final invoice) than if you don’t require any upfront investment….