Business of Editing: Getting Ready for the New Year

In a matter of hours, the new year will arrive. Are you prepared?

Preparation for the new year involves mundane tasks like getting your “books” (accounts receivable and payable) ready for the new fiscal year and esoteric tasks, such as analyzing the past year’s business and trying to predict (and prepare for) the trends of the new year.

Getting my fiscal books in order is pretty easy. I use QuickBooks Pro because of all the analytical tools it offers. Using QuickBooks means that I have nothing to do to prepare for the new year, at least as far as that program is concerned. An advantage to QuickBooks is that it is easy to compare time periods. Knowing how the ending fiscal year stacked up against the prior year gives me an idea of how accurate my predictions for the now-ending year were and how successful my efforts at self-promotion were.

I also use Excel. I have found Excel to be the best (for me) method of tracking project information that QuickBooks doesn’t in the absence of expensive customization, such as the number of hours a project took and the pages-per-hour rate. (QuickBooks will let me input the information, but there isn’t a built-in analytical tool that will make use of the information or make it readily accessible.) For me, this information is very valuable because it allows me to track my actual performance against my required Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) and my desired EHR.

Excel also lets me see at a glance the projects and the rates I have received from clients. Because Excel is intended for customization, I have been able to create data sheets that provide me with valuable business information. And because I created a master version of the forms, it is easy to set up the spreadsheets for the new year.

Those are the mundane tasks; they require little creativity or speculation to set up each year. Most of my time, however, is devoted to the esoteric tasks — trying to determine trends for the upcoming year and how I can improve my business.

The esoteric begins with an analysis of the closing year. For example, was my business up or down or neutral? Did I generate, more, less, or the same revenue as the prior fiscal year from more, fewer, or the same number of projects as the prior year? The answer to this latter question is particularly important in my year-ending analysis. What I do not want to discover is that I generated the same income but from more projects; what I do want to discover is that I generated more income from fewer projects.

I also want to know whether clients have changed over the year. I also want to know if the types of projects changed. And I want to know whether any (and how many) projects were unique and unlikely to be replicated in the new year. By this, I do not mean subject matter or title; rather, I mean, for example, was a project’s size unique and not likely to be replicated or were a larger number of projects on shorter schedules, which results in a higher fee, than usual.

With your sharp editorial eye, you will have noticed that I am a great believer in data and the data-driven business, and the planning that the data lets me do. Planning is important for lots of reasons, not least of which are taxes and investment. I have learned over my now 31 years in the business that I can fairly closely predict what my business will be like in the new year if I follow a plan. I have also learned the importance of creating a plan for the new year.

When I analyze the data of the ending fiscal year and the data of past years, I can see what steps I took that brought me new and “improved” business and what steps did nothing and what steps cost me time, money, and effort for no reward and perhaps even a loss. No plan is perfect and no plan is guaranteed to succeed, but having a plan is like having a compass in the woods.

Consider just one element: advertising. At the end of the fiscal year I carefully analyze what I spent advertising, how I spent it, and on whom I spent it. I compare that information to the same information from past years. What I learn is that dollars spent on method x generated little to no business, whereas dollars spent on y generated a significant increase in business. But I also learn whether the dollar amount spent on y is excessive for the amount of business generated — it makes little sense in my business plan to spend $1,000 to generate $1,200 worth of business: the ratio is wrong. However, it does make sense to spend $250 to generate $1,200 in business: the ratio is right.

And because I track my time carefully, I can also discover whether the time required by a particular advertising campaign is worth spending: sometimes one is better off spending the time “regenerating” oneself by reading a book than spending it on promotion efforts that bring little reward.

This analysis is particularly important when much of the “advertising” that is done to day amounts to participation on social media. Does the time spent on LinkedIn, for example, bring in sufficient business to justify the spending of the time? A common mistake that is made in making such a determination is not assigning the time spent a dollar equivalent; that is, each hour spent on social media should be “charged” at least at your required EHR (and better yet, at your desired EHR). If you spent 100 hours on social media in 2014 and your required EHR is $50, then the time should be valued at $5,000. If, as a result of your spent time you brought in $2,000 in revenue you would not otherwise have had, then social media is a losing proposition. (The value of social media is not just in new revenue, and those other values should be factored in if important to you. For some people, those other factors are more important than revenue; for others, only revenue matters.)

However, as part of that analysis, you also need to analyze the $2,000 in revenue. Was the work you did to earn that amount at, above, or below your required EHR?

The point is that with the change of years, it is time to prepare for the new year and make a plan to tackle the challenges you can expect. If your business was not where you wanted it to be in the ending fiscal year, then it is time to set it on the correct course. Analyzing the ending fiscal year and past fiscal years is the start, but it is not the end. You also need to try to analyze and predict industry trends. (See Are Boom Times Coming? for an example of trying to trend spot.) If you can identify a trend for your niche, you can try to exploit it in the upcoming year.

Get prepared for the new year now!

Richard Adin, An American Editor

Lyonizing Word: Finding and Replacing Upper- and Lowercase

Finding and Replacing Upper- and Lowercase

by Jack Lyon

Rich Adin, the proprietor of this blog, recently sent me an interesting question. He wrote:

I need a wildcard find and replace, assuming it can be done by wildcards, that searches for the following

Abrams: alpha
booby: alarm

and replaces it with

Abrams: Alpha
booby: Alarm

That is, the first letter after the colon and space is changed from lowercase to uppercase. I know I can do this by macro, and I have one that will do it, but I would like to do it by wildcard so I can make it part of a script I run.

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to do that. Using a wildcard search, we can find any lowercase letter (preceded by a colon and space) by using the following string in the Find What box:

: [a-z]

But in the Replace With box, we should use—what? We can’t use the following string because it doesn’t specify what the replacement letter should be:

: [A-Z]

In fact, if we try that, Word will simply replace what was found with the string itself, giving us this:

Abrams: [A-Z]lpha
booby: [A-Z]larm

There is, however, a rather sneaky (but ultimately unsatisfactory) workaround. We can replace the lowercase letter with itself formatted as uppercase. Here’s how:

1. Press CTRL + H to bring up Word’s Replace dialog.
2. If the More button is available, click it.
3. Put a check in the box labeled “Use Wildcards.”
4. In the Find What box, enter this:

: [a-z]

5. In the Replace With box, enter this

^&

That’s the magic code that tells Word to replace what was found with what was found. In other words, if Word finds “: a” it should replace it with “: a” (the same thing it was searching for). You’ll see why in just a minute.

6. Make sure your cursor is in the Replace With box.
7. Click the Format button at the bottom left of the Replace dialog.
8. Click Font.
9. Put a check in the box labeled “All caps.”
10. Click OK.
11. Click “Replace All.”

That should do the trick; all of our lowercase letters following a colon and space are now formatted as “All caps.” The reason I said earlier that this is “ultimately unsatisfactory” is that those letters are not actually uppercase; they merely look as if they’re uppercase because of their formatting.

In some situations, that may be good enough. But if your document is destined to be published in a format other than Microsoft Word, it may not be good enough, as formatting may change and, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, our “uppercase” letters may revert to their true lowercase selves. (How often do we get to use a fairytale allusion in technical writing?)

The only real solution is to use a macro, like this one:

Sub ReplaceLowercaseWithCaps()
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory ‘Position cursor at top of document
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting ‘Clear any
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find

.Text = “: [a-z]” ‘Search for colon and space followed by lowercase letter
.Replacement.Text = “” ‘Leave empty–the macro will replace the text later
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True ‘Specify a wildcard search

End With
Selection.Find.Execute ‘Execute the search
While Selection.Find.Found ‘While the search is successful

Selection = UCase(Selection) ‘Uppercase what was found
Selection.MoveRight ‘Move out of the selection
Selection.Find.Execute ‘Try, try again

Wend ‘End the “While” loop
End Sub

I’ve added comments to explain what’s going on, but the really pertinent line is this one:

Selection = UCase(Selection) ‘Uppercase what was found

When Word finds a colon and space followed by a lowercase letter, it selects the colon, space, and letter (naturally, because it found them), so those are the “Selection.” The macro then converts those characters to uppercase using the “UCase” function; it sets the Selection as the uppercased version of the Selection, if you see what I mean.

After that, the macro moves to the right so the text is no longer selected. Then it again executes the Find in an effort to locate the next instance of colon, space, and lowercase letter, if one exists.

And yes, for the sake of simplicity, the colon and space are uppercased here as well as the letter. What’s an uppercased colon? A colon. What’s an uppercased space? A space. If we wanted to, we could modify the macro to handle each of those separately, but why bother when the result is the same? Virtue in simplicity.

Note that we could do the inverse of this, if we needed to, finding any uppercase letter and lowercasing it. To do so, we’d use “: [A-Z]” for the search string, and we’d modify Selection with the LCase function rather than UCase.

I wish that Microsoft had included a better way to handle this. Even though Microsoft didn’t, we now have a way to accomplish what we need to do.

Jack Lyon (editor@editorium.com) owns and operates the Editorium, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals and of Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.

________

How to Add Macro to Word & to the QAT

Here’s how to put this macro (or any other) into Microsoft Word so it will be available when you need it:

1. Copy the text of the macro, starting with the first “Sub” and ending with the last “Sub.”
2. Click the “View” tab on Microsoft Word’s ribbon.
3. Click the “Macros” button.
4. Type a name for the macro in the “Macro name” box — probably the name used after the first “Sub.” For this macro, that’s “ReplaceLowercaseWithCaps.”
5. Click the “Create” button.
6. Delete the “Sub [macro name]” and “End Sub” lines that Word created in the macro window. The macro window should now be completely empty (unless you already have other macros in there).
7. Paste the macro text at the current insertion point.
8. Click “File,” then “Close and Return to Microsoft Word.”

To actually use the macro:

1. Place your cursor at the beginning of your document.
2. Click the “View” tab on Microsoft Word’s ribbon.
3. Click the “Macros” button.
4. Click the name of your macro to select it.
5. Click the “Run” button. (If you wanted to delete the macro, you could press the “Delete” button instead.)

Here’s how to put the macro on Word’s QAT (Quick Access Toolbar):

1. Locate the QAT (it’s probably on the top left of your screen either above or below Word’s Ribbon interface).
2. Right-click the QAT.
3. Click “Customize Quick Access Toolbar.”
4. Under “Choose commands from:” click the dropdown list and select “Macros.”
5. Find and select your macro in the list on the left.
6. Click the “Add” button to add it to the QAT.
7. Click the “OK” button to finish.

Happy Holidays!

At An American Editor, we are taking some time off to celebrate the holidays. We will be back on Monday, December 29.

From Western University (Canada):

From the Minions:

Let us not forget Hanukkah, even though it is soon over:

Let’s end with a “tribute” to modern holiday celebrations. If you watch nothing else, give this one a try:

Best wishes for a happy holiday from all of us
at An American Editor to all of you!

Rich Adin, An American Editor

Louise Harnby

Ruth Thaler-Carter

Erin Brenner

Jack Lyon

Amy Schneider

Thinking Fiction: Tech Talk — The Joy (and Efficiency) of Multiple Monitors

Tech Talk — The Joy (and Efficiency)
of Multiple Monitors

by Amy J. Schneider

I’d like to digress from the topic of copyediting fiction and expand on something I mentioned briefly last month: multiple monitors and why you should consider adding them to your desktop. This discussion focuses on a PC running Windows 7, because, well, that’s what I have!

A few months ago, my 24-inch Flatron LCD monitor suddenly went dead. Black. Gone. I had a full docket of work, but no matter; I still had three other screens to work with. This is one of the joys of having multiple monitors.

I’ve always been like a gas: I expand to occupy all available space. When I started freelancing (working on hard copy), my husband built me a marvelous U-shaped desk system, including a rolling cart for my books and a slanted rack for reference documents, for maximum desktop real estate. But when my workload shifted toward onscreen editing, I began to feel cramped now that the monitor rather than the physical desk was my workspace. And I began to lust after multiple monitors.

Hardware Considerations

I lived with a single monitor for years. My last CRT was a monster 21-inch refurb that weighed a ton. My husband had to build a special stand so my desk would support it. Today’s thin, lightweight LCDs are a welcome change. And as the prices drop, it’s easy to afford more than one. My first LCD, a 19-inch ViewSonic, cost nearly $900! But the 27-inch Acer I bought to replace the dead monitor a few months ago was $199 on sale.

But I digress in my digression. When it was time for a new computer in 2006, I had my trusty local computer whiz build me a tower with two dual video cards, so I could add monitors as the budget and desk space allowed. (As I mentioned last month, I named the new computer HARV, after the Harvard Mark I and also as a nod to my computer guy, whose name is Mark.)

At first I had just one widescreen monitor while I acquainted myself with HARV. With one monitor, I typically had my manuscript and style sheet open side by side, with browser and e-mail hidden underneath. If I wanted to look something up online or send an e-mail, I’d have to switch to Firefox or Thunderbird and temporarily say good-bye to my Word windows. If I needed to copy something from one window to another, that was more window-flipping. Then came the second widescreen. Huzzah! Now I could view three or four docs at once, without having to switch constantly between them. But a full page was still too small to work with on a widescreen monitor. When onscreen proofreading work started to arrive, I added a third monitor and rotated it to portrait mode so I could view a full page, nice and big. Soon after that, I added the fourth and final monitor, also in portrait mode. Now I can view manuscript and proofs side by side. Luxury!

The Setup

Below is a photo of HARV as he appears today. The leftmost monitor, the 27-inch Acer, is my primary monitor. When you set up multiple monitors, Windows will ask you to designate a primary. This is where your Windows taskbar goes, and it’s also where your computer boots before activating the other monitors.

In the middle are monitors 2 and 3, both 24-inch LGs rotated into portrait mode. You’ll need to buy a rotating monitor to use portrait mode, of course; Windows enables you to designate a monitor as portrait, which rotates the display 90 degrees.

Finally, at far right is the 24-inch Dell. I have dedicated this screen to the Internet: Firefox, Thunderbird, Hootsuite, et cetera. Having it at far right makes it easy to ignore while I’m working, yet I can easily hop over to answer client e-mail or research something.

There’s one bit of third-party software I couldn’t live without: DisplayFusion Pro by Binary Fortress. They offer a free version, but the functions I use most are in the Pro version, so I found it worthwhile to buy. I have a taskbar on each monitor, so the taskbar button for each open window can appear on its corresponding monitor instead of having them all piled up on the primary. For me, this alone is worth the price of admission. You can also set up hotkeys for moving windows from screen to screen, maximizing/minimizing, and other window actions, as well as for performing a host of other functions. (Usual disclaimer applies: I gain nothing from mentioning this software other than a warm feeling; I’m just a satisfied customer.)

Other Arrangements

Some people use a laptop with a second, external display, or a laptop as an auxiliary to a desktop, or a tablet as an auxiliary to a laptop or desktop. These are other useful ways to maximize your screen real estate. Last December when HARV’s motherboard died (eep!), I survived on my laptop and an external monitor while HARV was in the shop. But I felt cramped with “only” two screens, and one of them a laptop at that.

The thing I like about having four monitors for one computer is the ability to easily copy and paste text and to rearrange screens to my heart’s content. That’s a little harder to do when your screens are on different machines. And occasionally when I’ve had my laptop running off to the side, I’ve been frustrated by not being able to move my mouse pointer from HARV’s screens to the laptop…until the neurons finally kick in.

How Do I Use All That Space?

In “The Commandments: Thou Shall Be Efficient”, Rich Adin reports, “Using two monitors increases efficiency by 50%; add a third and gain another 25%; add a fourth and gain another 5%.” So the fourth monitor doesn’t gain me much percentage-wise, but it sure is nice to spread out! It’s very handy to be able to see several documents at once, at a readable size, especially when copying and pasting between them.

When I’m copyediting fiction, I keep three documents on the leftmost widescreen monitor (see photo below): the manuscript at left, and my characters and places style sheets atop one another at right. The new big Acer gives me plenty of room to have the Document Map and the styles pane open in the manuscript and still have the style sheets at a readable size. Most of the time when I’m working with the characters and places style sheets, I simply run a quick Find to get to the section I need to see. Having both manuscript and three of my four style sheets visible makes it easy to compare manuscript against the style sheet to check a style point, or to copy text from one to the other.

On the leftmost portrait monitor (see photo below) I keep my general style sheet, because it’s nice to have as much of it visible as possible.

The rightmost portrait monitor (see photo below) holds my timeline, which is a Word table that simulates a monthly calendar page. It can get long for novels that have a long time frame (especially historical novels that stretch over years or decades).

Finally, as mentioned earlier, the rightmost widescreen monitor is reserved for the Internet, so I can easily pop over and check a URL or look something up while keeping my work documents visible.

Occasionally I have other documents such as a PDF of a previous book in the series. Usually those go on one of the portrait monitors. (Frankly, if I could have a single portrait monitor for each document, I would.) In my nonfiction work, the portrait monitors are also handy for viewing long tables or design samples and for quickly scrolling through a document a screen at a time, especially if you can zoom it down a little while you do so.

Navigation

As you might imagine, it’s easy to get “lost” among so many monitors and windows. But there are a few tools that can help.

The mouse pointer can be hard to locate across several monitors no matter how much you wiggle it around. Fortunately, Windows has a solution. In Control Panel under the Mouse Properties dialog, go to the Pointer Options tab and check the box for “Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key.” Now, when you press Ctrl, an animated “target” of concentric circles will zoom in on your pointer. Very handy!

To move among the manuscript and style sheets efficiently, I use a numbered naming scheme along with the Word shortcut for navigating windows: Alt+W, W, [number]. The general style sheet’s file name begins with the number 1; characters, 2; places, 3; and timeline, 4. This forces the files to always appear in the same order in the Switch Windows menu, and also forces the manuscript to appear as number 5. The keyboard shortcut quickly becomes second nature for switching focus without mousing.

I’ve read that it takes about two minutes after acquiring a second monitor to wonder why you didn’t get one sooner. I have certainly found that to be true! And If you decide to explore the world of multiple monitors, I hope you, too, find it to be true.

Amy J. Schneider (amy@featherschneider.com), owner of Featherschneider Editorial Services, has been a freelance copyeditor and proofreader of fiction and nonfiction books since 1995. She has shared her insights on copyediting fiction as a speaker at the Communication Central conferences, in writing for the Copyediting newsletter, and in an audioconference for Copyediting.com. Amy can be reached at LinkedIn, via Twitter, and on Facebook.

The Practical Editor: Triaging Your Time and Editing

Triaging Your Time and Editing

by Erin Brenner

Editing at the end of the year can be challenging. We struggle to motivate ourselves. The days are shorter and colder (for some of us, anyway), encouraging us to stay in bed for just five more minutes.

We struggle, too, to fit the work into our available time. There are holiday activities crowding our schedules, and we want to go have fun. As freelancers we’re more tempted to do so. After all, the boss won’t mind, right?

Then there are the year-end activities associated with running our own businesses. Understanding how well we did this year and planning for next year take time, but the health of our business depends on them.

Our needs aside, though, there’s another problem. Many of our clients are in a mad rush to finish everything by December 31. What is it about the end of the year that makes us want to tidy everything up and be finished? Even clients we don’t work with regularly might pop up because another editor they depend on is on vacation.

Suddenly we have more work than we can reasonably edit in the usual timeframe, never mind the client’s shortened deadline. It’s time to triage, both our schedules and the client’s work, the latter with the client’s consent, of course.

Triage Your Schedule

There’s no getting around the fact that there are more demands on our time come November and December. When practical, the best course is to plan ahead of time how many hours you can reasonably work in the last two months of the year. What kind of time off do you need or want to take care of year-end business tasks and your personal life?

To maintain your sanity, build downtime into your schedule. Do something you enjoy. If decorating a tree gives you life, prioritize it. Schedule it if you have to, and don’t let it be taken from you. Even if it’s just one special activity, do it. It will make the busyness easier to handle.

Which leads us to the flip side: Do you need that extra work coming your way? Expenses rise at this time of year, and January can be a slow month. Review your expenses and make a conscious decision about how much extra work you need to reach your financial goal. This will make it easier to tell some clients no later.

Also consider whether you need to take the extra work or not. Will the client make that last-minute work a nightmare? Will they appreciate your efforts later? Sure, the extra money is nice, but if the wolf isn’t at the door, are you just teaching bad clients to disrespect your time? Or do you need to do the work because the client will walk away if you don’t, and you need that client?

Everyone has different needs. Take a moment to define yours and how you can best balance those.

Triage the Editing

Before you jump into a manuscript, determined to edit it as fast as you can, make a plan. Triaging is about consciously deciding what you will edit and what you won’t in order to meet a looming deadline.

Discuss with your client first how you will triage. If this is an ongoing client, you can generalize the triage list enough so you can use it whenever the situation calls for it. Always discuss your list with the client beforehand, however. The client has a right to know what kind of edit they’re paying for.

Your client may need educating, as well, on why some edits are more important than others. Clarity outweighs style every time, at least for the reader. Be willing to negotiate, too. Sometimes whether you cap an industry term is all a client’s boss cares about. Your client should know the politics of their situation and what needs to be done to keep everyone happy.

When triaging, try to take at least a few minutes to skim the document. Does anything jump out at you as a particular problem? Anything you can safely ignore? For example, perhaps you can meet the deadline if the author checks their own math. While you’re skimming, ensure sentences start with a capital letter and end with the appropriate punctuation.

Use your time-saving tools to the max. Run those macros, use shortcuts, and apply anything else that saves time. Don’t forget to spell-check; let the software catch as many spelling mistakes for you as it can.

Once you’re ready to edit, keep your prioritized list at the front of your mind. Accuracy and clarity go to the top of the list. A missing serial comma will be the least of your worries if the author has a giant hole in the argument.

If you’re responsible for legal concerns, such as trademark use, plagiarism, and libel, keep those high on your list as well.

Fix awkward constructions and duplicate words. If there is easy-to-spot, easy-to-fix wordiness, fix it. If you start to get bogged, though, and the meaning is clear, leave the wordiness.

Correct egregious errors in word choice, but leave the debatable ones alone.

Check names and headlines. Both of these things will jump out at skimmers, and there’s never a good time to misspell someone’s name.

Fix anything that will jump out at readers.

If you distinguish between a light, medium, and heavy copyedit, you can triage at those different levels, as well. Go through your usual edit list and prioritize those items that affect accuracy, clarity, readability, and legal concerns.

Remember the purpose of triaging: doing the best edit you can in too-short of a time. Prioritize your time and your editing, and you’ll preserve your sanity for another day.

Erin Brenner is the editor of the Copyediting newsletter and the owner of Right Touch Editing. You can follow her on Twitter. Erin is also a guest presenter at various conferences on topics of interest to freelancers.

The Business of Editing: Playing It Safe

Some time ago I wrote about my experience with ransomware (see Business of Editing: URLs, Authors, & Viruses, The Business of Editing: Backing Up Is Easy to Do, and Articles Worth Reading: More on Ransomware). As I made clear in the first essay, I attacked the problem aggressively and prepared for disaster.

Sandboxie

Recently I took yet another step. This step is ideal for those of you unable or unwilling to invest in the type of computer setup I did, which I admit is not cheap. But this step is very inexpensive — it cost me $20.50 (the price was €15 and this was the conversion price). More important than the price is the protection I gained.

Sandboxie is a great way to access the Internet in protected mode. Sandboxie is for more than accessing the Internet, but that is all I use it for. Sandboxie opens programs and browsers in a “sandbox,” which means that anything that gets downloaded doesn’t get downloaded to your computer where it can do harm; it gets downloaded into a sandbox.

I use Internet Explorer as my web browser. I have now set it so that when I open IE, it opens in a sandbox. When I download, for example, client files from an FTP site, Sandboxie asks me whether I want to first open the files in a protected sandbox or save them to my hard drive. Basically, what Sandboxie is doing is setting off space on my hard drive as protected space that prevents malware from accessing my real files. Should it turn out that I have downloaded malware, I can instruct Sandboxie to delete it, knowing that the malware never got the chance to compromise my hard drive.

How important is this? The impetus for my looking for a program like Sandboxie was news reports about Cryptolocker. Cryptolocker is ransomware of the most vicious type. It attacks your data files and encrypts them. You either pay the ransom or never get access to your data files. Apparently even the data recovery companies, which charge several thousand dollars to recover data, are unable to break the encryption or if they can, not for a reasonable price and not for anything close to the price of Sandboxie.

In speaking with my computer technician about Cryptolocker, he said I had two choices should I get infected: pay the ransom or completely reformat my hard drive and reinstall all files (assuming I have backups of all of the data files). Both are expensive alternatives to Sandboxie.

Paying the ransom is problematic. They do send you the decryption key but they also leave on your computer the means to reencrypt. I have heard of instances where several months later that is what happened — renecryption with a new ransom demand.

Reformatting the hard drive is also problematic because it takes quite a bit of time and it assumes that (a) your backups are current and so you do not lose any information, (b) that your backups aren’t of encrypted files, and (c) that the backup doesn’t include Cryptolocker or similar ransomware malware.

This video from Sandboxie explains how it works:

It is pretty hard to go wrong for €15. The only thing I do not like is that the license is for one computer and for one year. I mind the one year less than the one computer limitation, but the bottom line is that this is very inexpensive protection from a very serious — and potentially very costly — problem. Sandboxie does offer a 30-day trial period; I tried it for 5 minutes and bought it.

Startpage

The other thing that I dislike about the Internet is that whenever I look for something online, I am leaving a trail for spammers; there is a lack of privacy. So I have started using Startpage, for my searches.

Startpage is free. Basically it is an overlay to Google. Instead of directly running a search through Google, you run it from Startpage. Information about Startpage is available here.

All searches and website accesses done via Startpage are done from Startpage’s servers, so it is Startpage’s IP address that is seen, not yours. And cookies are downloaded to Startpage’s proxy servers, not to your computer.

There are limitations. For example, it doesn’t support JavaScript, which means some features on some websites are not usable. But Startpage gives you an option to connect direct rather than via its proxy servers. (For a video on Startpage Proxy Servers, click here.)

This is an excellent free service. Check it out.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

The Proofreader’s Corner: Giving Your Business Promotion the Personal Touch

Giving Your Business Promotion the Personal Touch

by Louise Harnby

The holidays are round the corner. We freelancers, and our clients, are working flat out to finalize current projects (or to find a comfortable pause point) before we take a short break for the end-of-year festivities. In the Harnby household we celebrate Christmas, so my mind’s on the tree we’re getting this weekend and the couple of hours we’ll spend decorating it with some of the beautiful baubles I’ve collected over the years. I’ll turn 48 next March but looking at that tree will give me the same warm, fuzzy feeling it did 4 decades ago!

I love this time of year — the lights, the gift wrapping, the tree, the decorations, the frost on the holly bush in our garden. Here’s the thing, though — it’s also a really good time to do some targeted and personal business promotion to past and present clients.

I could have sent an email to my customers, wishing them well and telling them I’m looking forward to working with them in 2015, even if I haven’t heard from them in a while. I could have gone a little further and sent them a holiday card from that rather nice selection box I picked up a few weeks ago.

Both of those are fine — that’s what most people do. Each of my customers can add his or her card to the pile of other cards from other freelancers. If I’m lucky, he or she will hang it up on their pin board. But that’s about as much impact as it will make. It will be appreciated for what it is — one not-so-interesting example among many. Still, my clients are nice people and they’ll appreciate the thought.

Getting the Client Talking

What if I can do better than just “fine”? What if I want more than a quick nod of appreciation? What if I could garner more than an appreciative smile? What if I got them talking? What if I could make the following happen?

Kim:  “Hey, Joe, look at what’s just arrived from Louise Harnby!”
Joe:  “Who’s Louise Harnby?!”
Kim:  “One of the proofreaders I use.”
Joe:  “She any good?”
Kim:  “Yeah, she’s top notch. But look at this fabulous custom card she just sent me. Isn’t it brilliant?”
Joe:  [Looks at my card] “Ha! That’s great. I want one of those! It’s got her website info on it, too. I’ll take a look — I need a good proofreader for that crime novel I’ve got coming up in two months. Mind if I give her a call to check her schedule?”
Jane:  “What’s all the noise about, guys? Oh, Kim, that card is funny! Who gave you that?”
Kim:  “It’s from one of my proofreaders, Louise Harnby. She’s great. You should try her out.”

In the above scenario, my holiday card has turned into a talking point. It’s no longer one client smiling appreciatively at a card; instead, three people are talking about my business. And that’s the point, as Rich Adin reminds us: “You must not forget the primary reason for sending a gift, which is to promote you. Consequently, whatever you send should be something that can be (is likely to be) shared among office colleagues or shown around” (“The Business of Editing: Thinking Holidays,” 2014). I’d recommend reading Adin’s article in full, not least because it offers useful advice on timing.

Certainly, many of us have clients who work alone, so sending a customized card won’t always generate a conversation. But at the very least it will get you noticed by those whose radars you’ve slipped off, perhaps because you haven’t worked for them recently. If like me, however, you work for larger corporations such as publishers, and have one managing editor working within a larger team, this scenario could very well lead to your client discussing you and your work with colleagues.

Customize It!

This year I decided to make my own holiday cards. I say “make my own” — I drew the pictures and wrote the words, but I let a professional take care of the printing. The thing is, you don’t have to be a gifted artist — I’m not. All you have to do is stand out, thereby giving the client a reason keep the card, place it in a prominent position, and talk about it. If it’s in front of them, and it’s branded with your logo and your web address, it becomes more than a holiday card — it’s also a huge business card. It keeps you (or puts you back) on your client’s radar; what’s more, you might well end up on your client’s colleagues’ radars too.

This year, my seasonal greetings come in the form of large postcards (see below), with my business name and website address on the front, and a picture of a snowy scene that I drew in Microsoft Publisher, using nothing more than the Shapes tool. I differentiated my cards by incorporating the UK proof-correction symbols in the design — the snowflakes are made from while delete symbols; the tree is decorated with insert carats, transposition instructions, space markers, and so on; and “Christmas” is spelled incorrectly (I used the relevant symbols to mark the error). Then I added my business name and website address. The reverse was left blank so that I could write a personal message to each recipient.

I uploaded a PDF of the final design to a UK high-street printer’s website (Vistaprint). Printing costs worked out at less than a pound per card (including envelopes). The stock is 350g, so it’s sturdy, and the cards have a gloss finish that looks great but still allows me to write on the reverse using a standard pen.

I’m thrilled with the results. Each of my clients will get a custom card that I hope will make them smile — and make them talk. I’m wishing them a Happy Christams [sic], but I’m marketing my business too.

Appreciating Others’ Beliefs

I chose to send Christmas cards this year. What if my clients have different beliefs? Will I offend them? The clients I’m sending these cards to are those whom I’ve worked with for years. They send me Christmas cards, too, so I’m not going to be offending them by reciprocating.

As our relationships with particular clients grow, we learn more about them and their preferences. As time passes, we can be more personal. But as a business trying to accomplish multiple tasks with a single stroke of the pen, we do need to tread cautiously and use common sense.

I’ve worked in publishing, particularly academic publishing, for over two decades. I’ve found this industry to be one that is particularly open, tolerant, and celebratory of difference. I suspect that most recipients of cards with messages that don’t match their own belief systems will accept them with good grace, rather than taking offence. Still, if you are worried that you might offend even one of the clients you are gifting, make your season messages neutral. “Seasonal greetings,” “Happy holidays,” and “Peace and good health” are sentiments shared the world over.

Other Ideas?

You don’t have to do it my way, of course. Your budget will determine what’s feasible; your creativity will do the rest. If your clients celebrate different holidays because of different belief systems, your choice of how to communicate will be influenced by this.

Other ideas could include mugs, fridge magnets, pens, Post-It notes, baubles, other small decorations, perhaps even food, all with a holiday theme and branded with your logo and website address.

The holidays are a time for giving. Telling our clients that we wish them well, value their custom, have enjoyed working with them in the past, and look forward to doing so in the future, is common sense. To differentiate ourselves while we’re doing it is good business practice.

Happy holidays to all of you who’ve read my column on Rich’s blog in 2014. I wish you all peace and good health for the rest of the year and beyond. See you in the New Year!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader’s Parlour. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, follow her on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or find her on LinkedIn. She is the author of Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers and Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.

The Business of Editing: The Art of the Query

Over the years (31 years in another month), I have had the privilege of working with a lot of colleagues and being on the receiving end of a lot of job applications. That has given me an insight into how editors view aspects of their job and how they go about applying for work.

In a previous essay, Business of Editing: Losing the Chance, in “Error 6” I discussed the copyediting test and how it is possible to tell whether an applicant passed or failed the test within one minute. One way to tell is to look at any queries. (Of course, the lack of any queries can also be very revealing.)

Most editors do not understand the variety of roles that queries fulfill. If you want to kill future prospects, a quick way to do so is with poor, no, or little (when more than a little is expected) querying. Queries should be viewed as playing these roles, at minimum:

• to ask the author a question
• to demonstrate to the author and to the client (assuming your client is not the author) that you are knowledgeable
• to explain
• to market your skills
• to make the author and client comfortable with you
• to demonstrate why you are the editor that the author and client should always seek out

Each of these roles is linked to your success as a professional editor.

To Ask a Question

Editors get tired of writing the same query repeatedly, chapter after chapter, even project after project. Repetition is deadly but let’s face it, many of the queries we need to ask remain the same author to author, client to client, and project to project. After a while, there is a tendency to scale back on the query because it is tedious to retype. This is where a tool like EditTool’s Insert Query macro is a solution to a problem.

What I have seen is repeat queries being truncated. The first time, maybe the second time, the editor will write:

AQ: There is no section by this title in this chapter. Is this the correct section title? Please either provide the correct section title or modify the incorrect section title.

But it isn’t long before that query becomes “AQ: Please provide the correct section title,” which shortly thereafter becomes “AQ: Need correct section title,” which soon becomes “AQ: Section title?” — or, which also often happens, the query starts and finishes as “AQ: Section title?”

The first query identifies the problem, asks the question, and offers alternative solutions — it shows that you are a professional editor. But the pared down versions show laziness and a lack of understanding of how to communicate with an author. More importantly, the message you are sending your client — whether the client is the author or the publisher — is that you are not a professional.

The pared down versions also suffer from being incomplete. How do you expect the author to understand what the problem is and the solutions are from a cryptic message? (The worst queries I have ever seen were “AQ: ?” How can one form a response? My initial reaction was to reply “ED: !!!”)

To Demonstrate Knowledge and Explain

We all have lots of competition. One way we convince clients to hire us again or to recommend us to colleagues is by demonstrating our knowledge, whether it be of the subject matter or of something else appropriate.

For example, it is common in books that I edit for authors to confuse “recur” and “reoccur.” Consequently, where I think they may have confused the terms, I ask:

AQ: Recur/recurrence mean to happen again repeatedly; reoccur/reoccurrence mean to happen again but only once. Which do you mean here?

This query demonstrates my knowledge of language and raises an important point, because it does matter greatly whether something happens repeatedly or just once again. (And I make my life easy by having this as a standard query in my EditTools Insert Query dataset so I only need to select it and insert it, not type each time I want to use it.)

Two additional examples of queries that I routinely use in my editing work are:

AQ: Should “/day” be changed to “/dose” or should “divided” be added before “bid”? As written it appears that the daily dose is to be given multiple times a day. Please make clear the frequency.

and

AQ: Do you mean “e.g.” rather than “i.e.”? When the items are only examples and the list is not all inclusive, “e.g.” is used. If the listed items are all the possibilities, then “i.e.” is used. If “i.e.” is correct, consider moving the material from the parens and making it a proper part of the sentence.

Notice the messages I am communicating. First, I identify the problem; the author does not have to guess. Second, I explain why it is a problem. Third, I provide solutions. Both the author and the client can see that I am carefully reading the manuscript, I am thinking about the manuscript (i.e., I am focused), I care about the manuscript and the author, and, above all, that I am knowledgeable about editing — that is, that the editor’s primary role is to help the author communicate clearly and that one tool in the editor’s toolbox for doing that is for the editor to communicate clearly with the author.

The point is that queries can serve multiple purposes and I want all of those purposes to reflect positively on me.

To Market and to Comfort

Every author is anxious about the editor. After all, the author has invested time and effort into the manuscript and wants it treated with respect. For those of us who work indirectly with authors, the author’s anxiety about us is even greater. And because we work for publishers or packagers, the publishers and packagers also experience anxiety albeit at a much lesser level than authors. Their concern often revolves around how the author will perceive and receive the editor.

You put everyone at ease when you demonstrate your skills and communicate effectively. Perhaps more importantly, if you view queries as your opportunity to establish your credentials with the author and client, you will be more cautious in how you write them, which means that you are less likely to antagonize either the client or the author.

I recall a book I was asked to review after it had been edited because the author was angry over the editing and had spent a considerable amount of time both berating the inhouse production staff for having hired the editor and in correcting what the author perceived as editor errors.

As I went through the editing it became pretty clear that the editing was well done; the problem was the queries. They were written in such a manner as to convey the editor’s contempt for the author. I admit the author was somewhat lazy and that had I been the editor, I, too, would have been cursing the author — but the difference is that I would not have let those feelings permeate the queries: neither the author nor the client should ever think that I have anything but admiration for the author’s work.

The editor hadn’t comforted the author or the client nor had the editor marketed herself well. The author’s anger might be ratcheted down a bit, but both the author and the client will hesitate to use the editor again, and the author will let fellow authors know as well.

To Demonstrate Why I am The Editor

Presumably we are all well-skilled, well-qualified professional editors. Put us in a bag, shake us up, and pull one of us out at random and you should get a good quality editing job. But that doesn’t bring me any business, and bringing in business is the name of the game. (If you haven’t read it, let me recommend my book, The Business of Editing. It is not enough to have editing skills, you must always be thinking and acting like a business.)

I always have the need to bring in future business in mind, so when I edit I look at the editing as a way to impress my client, and I look at queries as the way to both impress and communicate what makes me The Editor — the editor to hire for future projects and the editor to recommend to colleagues. Well-crafted, informative queries (just like emails and online posts) are like a billboard advertising my skills. Cryptic, curt queries undermine the image of professionalism that I want to project.

This does not mean that every query needs to be five sentences long or a dissertation on grammar. It does mean that every query must satisfy these criteria:

• be on point, not meandering
• identifies the problem and offers an appropriate solution
• reinforces my skills and expertise as an editor
• reinforces the correctness of the decision to hire me
• declares clearly my status as a professional editor

Every query that I write that fulfills those criteria sets me apart from my competition and says I am The Editor.

EditTools’ Insert Query Macro

Because writing queries can be time-consuming, it is a good idea to build query templates that require minor modification based on the circumstance and project. That is the premise behind EditTools’ Insert Query macro. I have numerous “standard” queries that are saved to a dataset and that I can call up and modify for a particular project. In addition, each project has its own custom queries. By using the Insert Query macro, I can minimize the time I need to spend inputting a query and the opportunity for inputting error. It also means that I can use more detailed queries because I do not have to retype the same query innumerable times.

Consider this query:

AQ: Using this type of time reference allows the time to shift. The shift occurs because the reference was made when you were writing the text but doesn’t allow for either editing and production time until publication or for the book’s expected several-year shelf-life or for the passage of time between the writing of the text and when it is read by a reader. It would be better to write, for example, “since 2000” (substitute the appropriate year), so that the time reference always remains static.

How long would it take you to type this query? How many times would you care to do so? With EditTools’ Insert Query macro, I typed it once into the dataset and now can either use it as is or modify it as needed, taking seconds rather than minutes and avoiding typing errors.

To get the most out of queries, think of queries as marketing tools.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On Today’s Bookshelf (XIX)

In only a few weeks, it will be gift-giving time again. High on my list of gifts to give and to receive are, of course, books. What I like about books is that they are educational (I always learn something) and long-lasting. When I give a book, I know that for as long as the recipient keeps the book, every time she looks at it, she will think of me.

If you are looking for ideas for books to give, the On Today’s Bookshelf series here at An American Editor can be a place to start. Besides buying books at Barnes & Noble, I also buy a lot of “remainders”, which are new books that are leftovers and overruns the publisher didn’t sell through normal retail channels and are now being sold as remainders, which translates to very steep discounts. My primary source for remainder books is Daedalus Books. The other source for books, particularly older books, are bookstores that sell used books. I generally only buy used books that are graded near fine, fine, or new; occasionally, I will buy one graded very good. As I have mentioned before, when it comes to print books, I only buy hardcovers.

As to what is on my bookshelf — and some gift ideas — here is a list of some of the hardcovers and ebooks that I am reading or acquired and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post:

Nonfiction –

• Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson
• Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan by David Cunningham
• The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson
• The Paper Trail: an Unexpected History of the World’s Greatest Invention by Alexander Monro
• The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image by Daniel Schwartz
• A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler
• Churchill’s Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made by Richard Toye
• Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War by Douglas R. Egerton
• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt
• Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 by Yang Jisheng
• Isaac’s Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland by Matthew Brzezinski
• The Wars of Watergate by Stanley Kutler
• Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
• Russian Roulette by Giles Milton
• Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
• The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen
• Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth
• Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
• The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy
• Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay
• The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace by Lucy Worsley
• Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Kieth Lowe
• Edith Cavell by Diana Souhami
• Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne

Fiction –

• The Thousand Names and The Shadow Throne by Django Wexler (2 books)
• Magician, Magician Kings, and The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman (trilogy)
• Personal by Lee Child
• The Tyrant’s Law and The Widow’s House by Daniel Abraham (2 books)
• Bye Bye Baby and Beautiful Death by Fiona McIntosh (2 books)
• The Necromancer’s Grimoire by Annmarie Banks
• To Kingdom Come and Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas (2 books)
• The Path of the Sword by Remi Michaud
• The Immortal Prince by Jennifer Fallon
• Eye of the Red Tsar and The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland (2 books)
• Traitor by Murray McDonald
• A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison

Of course, if you are looking for books to give colleagues or would like someone to give you to help you with your freelancing business, you can’t do better than these books, which focus on the business aspects of the freelancing rather than on editorial skills:

• The Business of Editing: Effective and Efficient Ways to Think, Work, and Prosper by Richard H. Adin, An American Editor (for special holiday pricing click this link)
• Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers: A Guide for New Starters by Louise Harnby
• Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business by Louise Harnby

Are you planning to ask for or give books this holiday season? If yes, why not share with us what books you are giving or asking for. If no, tell us why not.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On the Basics: Making Good Use of Business Down Time

Making Good Use of Business Down Time

by Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

Here’s another topic that shows up often at LinkedIn, on the Copy Editing List, the Editorial Freelancers Association discussion list, and elsewhere: When you don’t get any editing work for a while, what do you do to keep your skills sharp?

Both the question and the answers apply to writing, editing, proofreading, indexing, graphic design — whatever your editorial freelancing niche might be. We all experience the occasional downtime, and we all could probably benefit from a fresh look at how to make the most of that time.

Doing

Simply continuing to do what you do professionally, even without pay, is one way to keep those skills up to par. My editorial eye never sleeps; I find typos and infelicities in everything I read or see. I clip and correct typos. I notice and mentally revise clunky writing. I like to think of that kind of activity as one way to keep my skills sharp. It might mean that even my reading for pleasure has a work-like edge, but that’s OK. I’d rather notice errors, inconsistencies, clunkiness, and other problems in the magazines, newspapers, and novels I read for fun than relax my guard enough that noticing those problems in work projects might suffer.

As for writing, there are always opportunities to exercise that skill if you don’t mind not getting paid for the effort. And November is National Novel Writing Month, so you could join that movement to keep the writing groove going if current assignments slow down.

Learning

There are plenty of more-structured ways to keep your skills strong, though, when there isn’t much work to do. You could:

• Take courses, either in person or online — on editing in general, on grammar, on using Word and other relevant tools of our trade, on macros, on working in a new genre, on self-publishing, on new tools or programs…. Maybe even take a noncredit university course on a totally new topic, so you can go after writing, editing, or proofreading work on that subject if an opportunity arises (or create such opportunities yourself).
• Look for a volunteer project to do — nonprofit organizations can always use help with writing, editing, and producing publications, both print and electronic. That can help build your skillset, your portfolio, and your network of contacts; it gets you out of the house and in touch with the real world; and it makes you feel good about contributing to a cause or organization you believe in.
• Spend some time at the library or a nearby bookstore to find books you can invest in to learn about new ways of working, new programs or applications to use, new techniques worth learning — or just new angles on the world at large. No matter how esoteric, the information will come in handy eventually.

Managing

More prosaically, downtime is good for catching up on filing and other bookkeeping headaches. Not only will you finally get those piles under control and battled down to nothing, you might uncover something that is just what you need to study or work on as a skill refresher. You might not learn anything earthshaking in terms of skills, but you’ll feel so much better about your workspace.

This is also an ideal time to figure out not only your business needs, but your required effective hourly rate (see the five-part essay on calculating fees that begins with Business of Editing: What to Charge (Part I)), and any other aspects of your freelance business that need work, and then create or modify your business plan accordingly.

Use this time to give yourself a treat — a day trip somewhere nearby but new, a couple hours at a local art gallery or museum, get-togethers with friends or colleagues, reading for pleasure. Fun and culture are good for the soul and can refresh the spirit, opening up channels to new ideas and different ways of doing things that could yield new projects or clients.

Marketing

It’s the exceedingly rare editorial freelancer who never has a gap in the work schedule or a dry spell when it seems as if that next project is never going to show up. While refreshing, strengthening, or adding to skills is always a good idea, what might make more sense when work slows down is to ramp up your marketing efforts. When immersed in a current project, especially a demanding one, it’s hard to think beyond getting through a given chapter (or page!) and meeting the deadline for that project, no matter how important it is to make marketing an ongoing, constant process. If you do your marketing right, you should reduce your downtime, but if downtime strikes regardless, focus on marketing to make it pay its way.

Use down time to:

• Build up a batch of posts for your own blog, if you have one, so you can drop them in as needed and don’t have to interrupt time on a paying project to put a new post together.
• Find blogs to contribute to whose audiences might become clients.
• Search Literary Market Place or Writer’s Market for potential new clients.
• Update your résumé.
• Join LinkedIn if you aren’t already there, expand or revamp your LinkedIn profile if you are, and look for LinkedIn groups to join and contribute to.
• Contribute to discussion lists.
• Contact former clients and long-lost colleagues to let them know you’re available for projects.
• Make the most of any professional memberships by refreshing or adding to your profile or listing in organization directories.
• Create or enhance your website.
• Look for new places to be visible in social media (see Erin Brenner’s The Practical Editor: 5 Social Media Sites You Should Be Using (Part I) and The Practical Editor: 5 Social Media Sites You Should Be Using (Part II) here for specifics).
• Let past and current clients know you’re available — call or write to them, even if just to chat or share an interesting resource.
• Hone your query letters and pitches to prospective clients.
• Look for colleagues who might use your help. This can be tricky — you don’t want to seem desperate, and you don’t want to violate the etiquette of discussion lists or online groups by asking people for work when you’ve never been active in the group before — but, if you’ve been visible and helpful, colleagues will be inclined to help in return.

In essence, whatever you can do to become more visible and look more valuable, do it! You can never do too much marketing. Get in the habit of marketing your skills and services, and those downtimes should become a thing of the past.

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter is an award-winning freelance writer, editor, proofreader, desktop publisher, and speaker whose motto is “I can write about anything!”® She is also the owner of Communication Central, author of the Freelance Basics blog for the Society for Technical Communication, and a regular contributor to An American Editor.