The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap XII

In the previous 11 essays in The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap series, I discussed how I approach a manuscript for editing. If you have read the series, you will have noted the common denominator of the macros I use in my approach to editing: they increase efficiency and accuracy, and thus increase my profitability, which is the subject of this final essay in the series.

We live and work in an increasingly competitive editorial world. Editors who began their careers in one specialty are expanding into other fields. Nonfiction editors are willing to take on fiction and vice versa. There are multiple reasons for that expansion, not least of which is that there are more people calling themselves editors and who are willing to work for a low price. The problem experienced professional editors face is that clients become used to paying a low rate for editorial work and expect all editors, regardless of expertise or experience, to work for that same low rate that unprofessional, inexperienced editors are willing to work.

Some editors are in a position to turn away work that is priced lower than they want to accept, but most editors are not. Faced with work that pays less than desired, editors need to figure out how to edit more quickly — that is, to be more efficient, more accurate, and more profitable. There are only so many options available. There are, for example, limits to the amount of time that can be spent editing each day without sacrificing accuracy. Besides, increasing the number of hours we work each day or the number of days we work in a week does not increase efficiency, accuracy, or profitability — it simply means that more work gets done because more time is devoted to working. What we really want is to get more work done in less work time.

Macros like those in EditTools do enhance efficiency, accuracy, and profitability because they make repeating tasks that take time to perform and accomplish the task in less time and with greater accuracy. If the editor charges by the project or the page, that saved time and greater accuracy leads to increased profitability.

Editors evaluate editorial aids by a variety of standards but the one “failing” that many editors have in their evaluation process is that they refuse to buy an aid that has many tools only one of which the editor thinks she will use. Consider, for example, Jack Lyon’s Editor’s Toolkit Plus 2014. This collection of macros includes macros that many editors do not use, such as QuarkConverter. I have had editors tell me that they haven’t bought Toolkit Plus because there are so many macros in the collection for which they have no need. When asked whether there are macros included that they think they would use regularly, most editors say yes and point especially to FileCleaner. Yet these same editors do not consider regular use of FileCleaner as sufficient to justify buying Toolkit Plus. (For what it’s worth, my favorite macros in the Toolkit Plus collection are ListFixer and NoteStripper; I almost never use any of the other macros, but I use these two frequently.)

To me, this is faulty thinking: If I think I would use FileCleaner regularly, and if using it would make me more efficient, accurate, and profitable, then I need to buy and use Toolkit Plus. It doesn’t matter how many of the included macros I will never use; all that matters is that there is one macro I will use repeatedly and that that macro will increase my efficiency, accuracy, and profitability.

The key for successful editing in a competitive climate is that editors take steps to be more profitable. In making a buying decision regarding a collection of macros, there are two items to consider: (1) that at least one macro in the collection has “super” value for the editor because it solves a specific problem that would require a lot of time and effort to resolve without the macro, and (2) that the editor can expect to face this type of problem more than once in the editor’s career. For example, for me, ListFixer and NoteStripper are invaluable; I cannot imagine not having these two macros available. I often get manuscripts in which the author has used Word’s autonumbering for a list. When I move the manuscript into the client’s template, the numbering often disappears, which means I now need to compare the original manuscript to the templated version to see what paragraphs should be numbered. That takes time. If I use ListFixer, I can convert the autonumbered lists to fixed-number lists in seconds. The cost of Toolkit Plus is quickly recovered and I have a tool that increases efficiency, accuracy, and profitability — even if I never use any other macro in Toolkit Plus.

The same kind of reasoning applies to EditTools. Although I use most of the macros in EditTools regularly, the most valuable macros in the EditTools collection for my editing are these: Toggle (see The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap VIII), the complementary pair Insert Query (see The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap X) and Comment Editor (see The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap XI and The Business of Editing: Managing Comments with Comment Editor), and Enhanced Search, Count, and Replace (see The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap IX). These four macros address the core of editing and each is designed to increase efficiency, accuracy, and profitability. Having spoken with other EditTools users, I know that other editors find other macros in the collection to be more valuable in their practice.

The point is that in today’s competitive editorial world, every second counts and editors need to figure out what repetitive tasks they perform while editing that can be made more efficient, accurate, and profitable by using a tool that is available in the marketplace. As I have noted in other essays, editors need to reuse the wheel, not reinvent it each time they face a problem.

With globalization and increased competition, editors need to do what is necessary to increase efficiency, accuracy, and profitability. Editors need to overcome the reluctance to invest in a macro collection that can make their editing more profitable because the collection only has one tool the editors think can help them. As several editors have expressed to me, they bought a collection of macros for a specific macro but once they started experimenting with the macros in the collection, they discovered additional macros that helped increase their efficiency, accuracy, and profitability.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

(Disclosures: (1) I am the creator of EditTools and have a financial interest in wordsnSync’s EditTools. (2) I have no connection with and no financial interest in The Editorium’s Editor’s Toolkit Plus 2014 except as a purchaser and user of the product.)