On the Basics: When aspiring authors have no money for editorial services

© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

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How do we respond to authors who want editing or proofreading, but say they have no money for our services?

I’m still trying to figure out why someone responded with an “Angry” emoji to my recent response to a Facebook request for advice to give someone writing a book who doesn’t have any money to pay an editor and thought they had to pay for FB ads, but here’s what I posted:

“First and foremost, aspiring authors should start saving for a professional, skilled editor, or at least a proofreader, as soon as (or even before) they start writing. Even well-published, polished, experienced authors need editors and proofreaders, and novice authors especially so. Doing without leads to being embarrassed by negative reader comments and lack of sales.

“Neither Grammarly nor Word are fully reliable as editing tools. It still takes a human being with training and experience to do a real edit and proof of a manuscript.

“That said, [the author] should take a writing class either locally or online to learn the basics of constructing a strong story. Making an outline of her book might help her make sure it’s organized logically and clearly, which would reduce the level of editing she needs. She should look for a critique or writers’ group for help with fine-tuning her work — local libraries, bookstores and professional organizations often host those, and they’re often free to join. And she can use social media without paying for ads — Facebook is free, as is access to groups like this one.

“Some genuine editors will donate their services or offer lower rates to authors who are low on funds. There are websites where authors can find inexpensive editors, but buyer beware — those are often untrained, inexperienced, unskilled people.”

Maybe the “Angry” person uses one of those low-ball sites that connect authors with editors or proofreaders and resented the implication that they might not be or have used professionals (and yes, some real editors do use those platforms to get started or fill in income gaps in desperate times). Maybe they were expressing anger at authors who ask for free editing.

Who knows.  I think my advice still stands, and wish there were a way of relaying it to every aspiring author out there.

My guess is that some new authors think they shouldn’t pay for our services because they aren’t getting paid for their writing (even if they hope/expect to make money from their work once it’s published). Some genuinely don’t have much money and aren’t planning to go the traditional publishing route where the publisher takes care of editing and proofreading (although even those authors probably should invest in professional editing or proofreading before trying to land an agent or publisher). But we aren’t in a position to assess the financial status of potential clients.

Skilled editors and proofreaders who donate their services or reduce their rates/fees to accommodate authors with limited budgets are admirable, but those of us who are making our living from our editing and proofreading skills expect and deserve to be paid, and paid fairly, even by someone whose writing work has not yet been seen in public and sold a single copy.

Let’s discuss

What would you tell an author who says they don’t have any money to pay for professional editing/proofreading services? How would you help get the message out to authors that they should squirrel away money so they can pay for those services once their book is done? Have you provided free editing or proofreading services, and what was (a) your rationale and (b) your experience?

If you or someone you know provides free or low-cost services to authors with minimal or no budgets, please let us know. It would be good to have resources to share with such authors.

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning provider of editorial and publishing services for publications, independent authors, publishers, associations, nonprofits and companies worldwide, and the editor-in-chief and owner of An American Editor. She created the annual Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer^® conference for colleagues (www.communication-central.com), now co-hosted with the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (www.naiwe.com) and sponsored by An American Editor. She also owns A Flair for Writing (www.aflairforwriting.com), which helps independent authors produce and publish their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.

Thinking Fiction: The Indie Editor/Author Equation, Part 2

Carolyn Haley

For Part 1 of this essay, go to https://americaneditor.wordpress.com/2020/11/27/thinking-fiction-the-indie-editor-author-equation-part-1/.

Almost every time an indie editor and indie author first connect, they are likely to have different understandings of what “editing” means, so the editor’s first and most-important task is to decide what services to offer, by name and itemized description, with a value assigned to each, and to provide that information to the author.

Since editorial vocabulary varies, the same service might have different task specifics or names among individuals and groups. Editors must make sure they and their prospects are talking about the same thing, or else a world of misunderstanding can ensue.

Both parties need to ask and answer questions until mutually satisfied. Authors need to know what they’re getting, for how much, and when; editors need to know what an author has written — genre/type of novel, state of its development, plans (or dreams) for it, and any writing/publishing experience they already have. This information gives the editor an idea of the service to propose and what to charge.

Regardless, an agreement should be done in writing. As most adults know, verbal deals have a way of drifting off course despite both parties’ best intentions, so it’s valuable to have a document that defines the deal, especially since some editing jobs can extend for months, and memories can get hazy.

An agreement can be as informal as an email exchange stating terms, conditions, schedule of payments, and delivery or a formal contract to be signed. Either way, best practice is to lock the agreement into both electronic and printed pages for file and storage in a safe backup location.

I prefer a contract for a first job with a new client, and will accept an email agreement for later jobs with the same person if our initial experience is successful. My contract is a combination of templates made available by colleagues that I tweaked to make relevant to my business, and update as times change.

Learning from other editors’ advice and some bruising experience, my basic agreement is now a 50% deposit to reserve calendar time, and payment of the balance upon completion of the work but before I deliver the files. I take a check or PayPal, and don’t start work until the deposit payment has cleared and I’ve received the signature page of the contract for my files.

This combo has worked well, but there are other ways to do any step of it. What matters is to define a basic deal package that works for you, but is not so rigid that you can’t tailor it to individual circumstances.

You can be certain that those individual circumstances will be a big factor in editing indie fiction. Storytellers’ imaginations are limitless, and their business, publishing, and financial knowledge fall across the board.

Defining services

An indie editor’s service definition includes the categories of novel you are willing and able to edit. You don’t have to be an expert in any genre; the craft of storytelling is universal, and it’s only when trying to hone a manuscript toward a specific audience that genre expertise becomes important. Focusing on a particular genre(s), though, can help in marketing your business.

Knowing your genres not only helps every project but also helps avoid getting work you don’t want. I turn down horror, erotica, and children’s fiction. Many novels cross genres, so it’s smart to ask the author to provide a short synopsis of the story and a sample from it before taking time and energy to explore the job further. For example, I love mystery and adventure, but can’t handle extreme violence or cruelty in gory details. A sample and summary usually give enough clue to whether a manuscript will be something I can handle — or not.

How much of a sample is required to make a judgment? Some editors want to see the entire manuscript. I’m unwilling to give away that time on spec, so I ask for opening pages or perhaps first chapter, just like agents and acquisition editors do. How an author launches a novel can give a good feel for their skill level and the story’s promise, and whether you want to spend weeks/months with it.

When in doubt, an alternative approach is to offer a non-editing manuscript evaluation. That way, the author gets helpful feedback and you get a paycheck for reading the book, without either of you having to invest more than might work out well in an editorial partnership.

About those sample edits

When you’re still in the wooing stage, you need to decide whether to offer a sample edit. I go on and off with that, depending on circumstance. Some prospects require it so they can compare editors’ approaches — a wise thing to do from the author’s point of view; not every author-editor combo is a good team, even if you feel compatible. That’s why the more you discuss up front, the better the chances you’ll make the right choices on your own and each other’s behalf.

Once the project is under way, you have to decide what style guides to apply to it and include this information on your style sheet (creating a style sheet is an invaluable aid in ensuring consistency and accuracy throughout a manuscript). Most novelists don’t care, but some care a lot and will give explicit instructions. Pre-contract conversations and sample edits help suss that out.

Before quoting for an editing job, determine whether it will include the extra time and labor of a style sheet. I always create one for myself, to keep track of details throughout the manuscript, but presenting it organized and useful for the client’s (and future editor’s or proofreader’s) use adds value that should be covered. Some levels of edit — such as copyediting — need this clarified more than others — such as developmental editing.

Occasionally, when I really want a line editing or copyediting project but the client’s budget won’t stretch far enough to cover my full rate, I’ll offer the edit sans style sheet and give them a discount. But I’d rather not.

Tools and techniques

Well before accepting client jobs, you need to commit to your hardware and software tools. It used to be that Microsoft Word was the universal program for writing and editing, PC or Mac, but as times change, more clients are writing in off-brand applications that might not work gracefully with Word’s track changes feature, nor some macros designed to make editing faster and more accurate. Examples are Pages for Mac, OpenOffice or LibreOffice, Scrivener, and GoogleDocs.

I’ve had trouble with all of these and reached the point where I won’t take them anymore, even if they are “compatible” with Word and come in .doc or .docx file formats. I’ve added a clause to my contract that incoming files must be native Word only (at which point, I learned how often clients don’t read every line in a contract!).

If you have the tools, skills, and knowledge to handle mixed packages, use that as an added value in your business marketing. It will become more important in the future, as will having the ability to help clients turn their manuscripts into ebooks and other forms of reading media. If going that direction doesn’t suit you, then start building a referral list of reliable and reputable colleagues who specialize in your areas of weakness.

Editor and writer?

To be an effective indie fiction editor, it’s a great asset to be a fiction writer, too. Better yet, a published one. That gives you insight into what your clients are experiencing or need to prepare for down the road, and sharpens your understanding of craft. It’s hard to transfer from nonfiction to fiction editing without a solid base in storytelling and story structure, with “story” being the key word. The bottom-line difference between nonfiction and fiction is: Nonfiction provides information, and fiction tells a story.

If you don’t write stories, then read-read-read-read-read them. Study the many “how-to” books available. I have a list of preferred guides I hand out to almost every prospect and client. These help a lot during long lead times between scheduling a job and doing it, because the author has a chance to learn more and recast their manuscript into a stronger story, which makes the editing go more smoothly.

Another important area indie editors have to understand about themselves is mental and emotional flexibility. How much can you stand when dealing with different or difficult personality types? There’s no project manager as a buffer between you and the author, who might be pouring their guts out in their novels to a point that makes you embarrassed or ill. As well, an author might be unreliable in answering emails or making payments. They might have sexist or other “-ist” characters or viewpoints in themselves or their work that offend your values. They might be dreadful writers who are only paying you for a copyedit or a proofread when what they really need is a ruthless developmental edit. You know they’re going to get bad reviews, or have their dreams shattered by trying to interest an agent or traditional publisher in a novel with maybe one chance in ten million to sell. (Lotto-type wins do happen, though, so you can never assume there’s no chance.)

In sum, know your tolerance levels and have prevention practices in place and escape clauses in your contract.

Establishing transparency

The simplest way to tame the Wild West factor of indie editing with indie authors is to be transparent. Talk as much as you can before committing to a job. Get a feel for the author and the story. Tell them directly what services you provide for what costs. Answer all of their questions. Don’t let anyone snooker you.

Most of all, take authors seriously about their art and craft. Even the most masterful and successful novelists started somewhere, and as an indie dealing with indies, you’ll find that a lot of authors are going to start with you, and rely on you to direct them. You can have a meaningful influence on their confidence and careers.

Remember, too, that many creative writers have tendencies often considered clichéd but remain generally true despite that slur. Novelists are mainly artists, not technicians or businesspeople. An editor’s job is to help the author channel their vision into a product for other people to read and enjoy.

Without the resources and support system built into a traditional publishing house, indie editors working from home offices are mainly online with invisible clients and must figure out how to manage people of hugely diverse types who consider them experts in publishing — without fully understanding how many stages and people and skills and dollars are involved. That disconnect introduces a big “bumble fumble” factor, and it’s on the editor’s head to direct discordance into partnership and manage it throughout a project.

Resources

Because indie editors work alone, they gather in online groups to help each other. Here are some resources I have drawn on or know about that colleagues might find helpful.

Copyediting-L (email discussion list)

Facebook: Fiction Editors of Earth, Editors Association of Earth, EAE Backroom

Organizations: Editorial Freelancers Association, www.the-efa.org; National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, www.naiwe.com

AbsoluteWrite

SheWrites

An American Editor: https://americaneditor.wordpress.com (my essays on AAE: https://americaneditor.wordpress.com/tag/carolyn-haley/

Blogs with helpful newsletters for both editors and authors:

The Book Designer, www.thebookdesigner.com

Alliance of Independent Authors, www.allianceindependentauthors.org

The Passive Voice, www.thepassivevoice.com

Jane Friedman, www.janeFriedman.com

Writer Beware, www.victoriastrauss.com/writer-beware/

Funds for Writers

Home

Ivan Hoffman (legal), https://ivanhoffman.com/

Janet Reid, https://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/

Kristine Kathryn Rush, Business Musings

Carolyn Haley, an award-winning novelist, lives and breathes novels. Although specializing in fiction, she edits across the publishing spectrum — fiction and nonfiction, corporate and indie —  and is the author of three novels and a nonfiction book. She has been editing professionally since 1977, and has had her own editorial services company, DocuMania, since 2005. She can be reached at dcma@vermontel.netor through her websites, DocuMania and Borealis Books. Carolyn also reviews for the New York Journal of Books, and has presented on editing fiction at Communication Central‘s Be a Better Freelancer^® conferences.

Thinking Fiction: Indie-Editor House Style, Part Two — The Author Factor

Carolyn Haley

Part One of this essay discusses the baseline of establishing an indie editor’s house style. Part Two expands to discuss examples of why, when, and how to apply house style vis-à-vis author variables.

In the main, my choice to allow, disallow, or discuss a given point is driven by the author’s attitude and writing technique. The majority of my clients care more about their story content than the nuts and bolts of their sentences; they want their manuscripts “cleaned up” in a generic way, and leave it to me to decide what that means.

A handful of my clients, however, care ferociously about the small stuff, and this group divides into two. The first group wants me to follow all the “rules” precisely (without specifying which authority to follow), and the second wants me to follow their rules precisely. The latter are the trickiest authors to work with.

In a recent episode of working with a technically focused author, my sample edit saved us both a lot of trouble. The author’s response to my sample edit made it obvious that our “rules” differed, but, since we liked each other’s personality and attitudes, we had many lively conversations defining scope of work before starting, and I extra-customized his contract to reflect our joint decisions.

My standard procedure, when it comes to spelling, is to follow Merrian-Webster (MW) online unabridged and correct an author’s variant spellings to MW’s main listing of a word. The author I was working with, however, used more variant than standard spellings, so we agreed that as long as MW allowed his spellings at any level of preference, they would stay in his book. This gave him his preferred axe instead of MW’s preferred ax, and the like.

Our agreement also allowed him odd spellings for lingo in his characters’ dialogue, particularly two he was adamant about: looki and pardn’r (as in “Looki here” and “Howdy, pardn’r”). To my surprise, MW contained both these terms, but included no variants matching the author’s spellings. MW had lookee with looky as an option, and allowed pardner as an alternate to partner. Had MW not included these terms, I would have had to spend quite a bit of time searching them out elsewhere to validate (or not) the author’s use, which I didn’t care to do because we were on a tight deadline with a lean budget. Since the author’s meaning was clear with his own spellings, and he was self-publishing his book, I felt no need to challenge him. What mattered to both of us was that his historical facts were accurate, he got to keep the tenor of his story intact, and I was able to provide a clean, consistent manuscript that aligned with generally accepted authorities.

We also had to negotiate some punctuation details. My house style generally follows Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), which treats the possessive for singular words ending in s the same way it does singular words ending with any other letter; thus, James’s horse instead of James’ horse. The author, however, flip-flopped between styles, so we discussed this, and he accepted my house preference. That worked fine until we came to Four Feathers’s shirt. I was all set to accommodate the author and drop the second s on this one, creating a single style inconsistency in the book with Four Feathers’ shirt, or else to suggest recasting the sentence to avoid the construction, but then he solved the problem himself by changing the character’s name to Knife Blade.

How Authoritative Are Authorities?

Sometimes my house style disagrees on points where the authorities I consult agree with one another, and I don’t happen to like their choice for fiction. An example is capitalizing God in the exclamation “Oh God!” In most instances, this is an emotional outburst that has nothing to do with deities, and to me, spelling it with a lowercase g is appropriate in the same way terms like godforsaken and goddamn have become accepted in lowercase.

Other times, when I can’t find a majority agreement among the authorities I consult, or the authorities don’t take a stand on a particular subject, I apply my house style. Common examples occur in dialogue, such as all right versus alright, and okay versus OK, ok, O.K., o.k. I prefer all right and okay and correct all manuscripts to those spellings. To date, no client has objected. Similarly, when authorities disagree on abbreviations, such as Ph.D. versus PhD, or U.S. versus US, I go with my preference, which is the version with periods.

Sometimes my core references don’t take a stand on a point, leaving me to choose. This occurred when I searched for a guideline on whether to capitalize endearments and pet names like sweetie, honey, darling, and sugar, which crop up frequently in dialogue. I couldn’t find a guideline on this in half-a-dozen reference works, or in online searches using half-a-dozen search keywords, until I consulted the FAQ section of the online CMoS, which declares: “Chicago’s preferred style has always been to lowercase pet names, but you can’t go wrong unless you’re inconsistent, since the issue is guided by preference rather than rule. Please see section 8.39 of the 15th edition. (The issue is not addressed in the 16th.)” There is nothing further in the current edition — the 17th — either.

Ah. That explained why I couldn’t find an answer in one of my core references. At the time, I was using the print copy of CMoS 16 and never thought to go to an older edition. The exercise showed the value of keeping old editions as well as having both the online and print versions of a resource. I wasted time I didn’t need to waste, but did finally get the information I was seeking. It helped me decide that lowercase would be the DocuMania house style for endearments.

Then there are occasions when no reference resource can answer the question. This occurs often in science fiction and fantasy (SF/F), where authors make up their own vocabulary. For example, a recent manuscript contained a special author-invented metal, which he spelled xenite, zenite, and xynite on different pages. There was no contextual difference to warrant variations, so all I could do was query which spelling he preferred, then make sure it was used throughout the story. (In case you’re wondering, it was xynite.)

A common occurrence in SF/F where I choose my own solution is when leapt, dreamt, and burnt arise. These -t constructions of past tense, instead of the conventional -ed version, are deemed archaic or obsolete in American English according to my core references, and thus should be corrected. Their persistent appearance in client material, however, gives me pause. Do those authors use -t spellings because their SF/F novels are set in environments, cultures, or worlds modeled after ancient Europe or America (a common scenario in the genre)? Or because the authors were influenced by other novels in the genre that were published in different eras or countries? Or is it merely a coincidence that a batch of SF/F authors who happen to be my clients use different dictionaries than mine, or their word processors’ spellcheckers are set to a different version of English?

It only matters because I edit to first-preference standard, so I have to choose whether to impose my standard on the clients or accommodate their style(s). My choice usually depends on the author and the book. As an example, one of my prolific clients, who is several volumes into both a science fiction and a fantasy series, uses leapt, dreamt, and burnt in all of them. He does so intentionally to achieve a certain tone. Once I understood this, I made sure that all his manuscripts use these spellings. Conversely, he doesn’t give a hoot about hyphenation or commas or other mechanical minutiae, so I correct to my first-preference standard at will for everything else.

(Interesting aside: The same authors who use the -t constructions of past tense usually reverse style when it comes to the past tense of kneel. With that word, first-preference spelling is knelt and second is kneeled, yet the authors prefer kneeled. Go figure.)

Defaults

As an American editor who works predominantly with American authors, I default to American language preferences as expressed by my core reference resources, unless it’s clear from the project that other versions of English (British, Canadian, Australian) are at play. Thus, in American manuscripts, I change grey to gray, colour to color, whilst to while, travelling to traveling, cheque to check, and so forth. I also remove the terminal s on words such as towards, backwards, and upwards, and remove the hyphen on prefixes, such as non-profit, re-engineer, counter-measure, and multi-colored, making them all solid. I call out any exceptions out on the style sheet.

With punctuation, I use the American system of double quotation marks around dialogue instead of single quotation marks (ditto when words appear in scare quotes; for some reason, many of my American clients put dialogue in double quotes, but use single quotation marks when calling out words in scare quotes). I also put commas and periods inside close quotes of either type, and employ the serial comma in series ending with “and” (e.g., red, white, and blue vs. red, white and blue). I feel strongly about these practices and only deviate from them if the author expresses a strong preference to the contrary.

When it comes to spellings in transition (words that are still spelled one way in my core references but are transforming through common usage), I let context be my guide. Examples of transition words are electronics-related terminology such as those mentioned in Part One (e-mail to email, Internet to internet, cell phone to cellphone) and the vocabulary of modern institutions (health care to healthcare), along with words like duffel bag (which I’m betting will become duffle bag first-preference spelling in MW within a few years) and Dumpster (a trademark succumbing to genericization like xerox, google, and photoshop).

(Another interesting aside: Genericize hasn’t made it into MW online unabridged yet, but I can find it all over the Internet and hear it in conversation. If I adhere too closely to my core references, then I can claim a word doesn’t exist!)

Mechanical Minutiae

House-style decisions involving italics, dialogue, dashes, and ellipses come up so often that I’ve standardized my practices and keep a checklist on my style sheet template to remind me to address them every time.

Italics

I follow CMoS for italics use in general, which in fiction occurs commonly in media titles of complete works, ship and aircraft names, foreign languages, words as words, letters as letters, sounds, and emphasis. What I encounter most often, though, is silent speech: thoughts, remembered or nonverbalized remarks, dreams, and telepathy, all of which are conventionally italicized. It only gets problematic when telepathic communication goes on for paragraphs or pages. That much italic text is tough on a reader’s eyes, yet nonverbal communication must be set off from the main narrative by some system or other for the reader’s comprehension.

Before desktop word processing, authors only had underscore and all-caps available, later bolding, to indicate what would end up as italics when the book was typeset. Nowadays, if they use those styles for emphasis, they announce themselves to readers as amateurs whose work is not yet ready for submission or publication. I therefore ensure those styles get stripped from the manuscript and replaced with italics, or otherwise set off for clarity.

Direct thoughts can be handled in different ways, such as:

What’s that all about? (no tag; speaker identified by context)

What’s that all about? he wondered.

What’s that all about, he wondered.

What’s that all about? he wondered.

“What’s that all about?” he wondered.

I favor using italics and dropping the tag where possible. The important thing about thoughts is that they must be in first-person voice, regardless of whether the voice of the narrative is in first or third person. If not, then they are considered indirect thoughts and kept in roman (e.g., What was that all about? he wondered).

A recent project challenged my standard italics practice. The main character had long psychic dialogues with an alien entity on another planet light-years away, and we needed a way to make it clear who was “talking.” In these dialogues, the characters were disembodied, so the usual gestures, actions, and expressions that make speakers obvious weren’t available to use. The option of inserting “he said” at changes got intrusive.

After experimenting with different combinations of italics and quotation marks, none of which worked gracefully, I recalled a trick I’d seen in a short story I’d edited the year before, where the author distinguished between an individual character’s thoughts and his psychic dialogue with another character by using European-style quotation marks, guillemets (« »). I ended up putting these around the alien’s communication. They instantly and obviously distinguished his words from the human character’s words, providing a visual break in block italic text while enabling readers to follow the story.

Part Three continues with examples of when and when not to apply house style, and a summary of the benefits of having a house style.

Carolyn Haley, an award-winning novelist, lives and breathes novels. Although specializing in fiction, she edits across the publishing spectrum — fiction and nonfiction, corporate and indie — and is the author of two novels and a nonfiction book. She has been editing professionally since 1977, and has had her own editorial services company, DocuMania, since 2005. She can be reached at dcma@vermontel.com or through her websites, DocuMania and New Ways to See the World. Carolyn also blogs at Adventures in Zone 3 and reviews at New York Journal of Books, and has presented on editing fiction at the Communication Central conference.

When Authors Look for Editors

I am certain that hundreds, if not thousands, of articles, books, and blog essays have been written to advise authors how to find the perfect editor. Even so, authors continue to ask about finding a good editor, especially if they have already had a bad experience, which tells me that the question of how to find the right editor remains unanswered.

The Plain-English List

There are several recurring problems. The first is that the searching author rarely knows what she wants or needs from an editor and so uses terms like “proofing,” “proofreading,” “light editing,” and “copyediting” with the expectation that the editor’s understanding will equate with the author’s meaning. The two rarely meet.

Rather than using terms like those, it would serve the author better to make a plain-English list of exactly what she wants an editor to do with her manuscript. As detailed a list as possible serves best. When the author gives that list to the editor, they can have a meaningful conversation.

The Editorial Budget

The second problem is deciding how much to pay for editing. Before searching for an editor, the author should decide on a budget. The budget should not be based on going rates or what the author thinks the editor’s services should be worth. The budget should be the maximum amount that the author is willing to spend on editorial help — a number calculated in the same manner the author would calculate the maximum amount she is willing to spend to buy a house or a car before actually shopping for the house or car. This number should be a gross amount; for example, it should be $5,000 and not $50 per hour.

The reason for the gross budget amount is that too often authors decide not to hire an editor they otherwise think is a good fit because they “feel” the cost is too high. An editor will quote a price of $50 an hour and immediately the author’s hackles rise, thinking that $50 is too much because she had budgeted for $20. Sometimes it is better to pay more per hour for fewer hours of work than to pay less per hour for more hours of work. Better editors, as with many things in life, also tend to be more experienced and efficient; thus the higher per-hour fee and the fewer hours needed. Having set a gross budget limit moves the focus of the discussion from the per-hour rate to whether what is wanted can be done within the budget.

The Evaluation Criteria

A third problem is that authors tend to use the wrong criteria to evaluate an editor. It is true that an author should carefully evaluate an editor, but not by applying criteria that do little to answer the questions of competence and fit.

Great editors do not have to be authors themselves, by which I mean writers of books or published in magazines or journals. But in today’s competitive internet world, the editor should be a blogger and a participant in public editorial forums.

If I were looking for an editor, I would begin my search at a place like LinkedIn. Not because LinkedIn is such a great website, but because it provides an opportunity to get a first look at a pool of editors — those who participate in the various editing and writing groups. The first information I would be looking for is the kinds of questions they ask and answers they give in editorial/writing-oriented groups. Editors whose contributions to LinkedIn conversations consist of “Joe is right,” or whose responses tend not to address where the conversation is currently, or whose answers are often not answers, just a lot of smoke, are editors I would avoid. I also would avoid those who need help with fundamentals such as the reasonableness of some request made by a client or what to charge (or what others are charging; while I would avoid someone who asks what is the going rate, I would consider someone who doesn’t want to know what others are charging but how to calculate what she should be charging). I would not want my book to be an editor’s learning experience at my expense.

The editors I would want to consider ask and discuss more “advanced” things, such as questions of ethics, grammar, underlying principles of editing, both as a business and as a craft, and the like. I want an editor who sees more than the surface of my manuscript. Every competent editor can find and correct misspellings or can understand what an orange is, but not every editor can grasp that a word has been deliberately misspelled or that what you really mean, based on the context, is not orange but tangelo. Editors give clues about themselves in the questions they ask and in the responses they write. One can determine with some accuracy an editor’s experience with certain areas of subject matter through their questions and answers.

Equally as revealing are an editor’s blog articles. Blogs are generally intended to sell the editors (bloggers) to their audience. When you look at editors’ blogs, who is the audience they are trying to sell to? What are they trying to sell that audience? If they address an issue, do they do so cursorily or in depth? Does their writing evoke a sense of editorial competence, or is it so casual that it is bothersome? Are there mistakes in their writing? (But be sure to consider “mistakes” in light of blogs’ tendency to be more casual, and remember that few people write perfectly.)

Questions, answers, and blog essays give an insight into an editor’s approach to business — and editing is a business. Note that I haven’t mentioned scrutinizing the editor’s website. The problem with using a website to form an opinion about an editor is that it is difficult to know who is responsible for the website’s content and design. I understand that the editor is ultimately responsible, but authors looking for an editor are looking for editorial skills, not for design skills, which is what the focus on a website is — design, not editing. One of the best editors I know has one of the worst websites to be found short of what pops up with a Not Found error from your ISP.

The Reliance on Recommendations

A fourth problem is that authors too often rely on recommendations — positive or negative —from fellow authors. The smart author avoids hiring or not hiring an editor solely because someone she knows recommended or dissed the editor. If the editor was recommended, the editor should be put on the author’s list of editors to check out. If the editor was dissed, the author needs to ask questions designed to elicit more in-depth detail about why the editor was dissed. It makes a difference, for example, if the dissing is the result of such things as these: editor incompetence; unreasonable author expectations that the editor did not, perhaps could not, fulfill; or a personality conflict between author and editor. Depending on the reason (e.g., personality conflict), the author might add the editor to her list. After all, each author is an individual and has different needs. Different authors have different personalities — some are easier to work with and some harder. Every author needs to find the editor with whom she can work successfully — even if that editor was fired by another author.

The Key to Finding the Right-Fit Editor

The key, I think, to an author’s finding the right-fit high-quality editor lies with the first-mentioned items: seeing the questions and answers the editor posts on editorial/writing forums and reading the editor’s blog. It is the culling done with the help of these items that will leave standing those editors the author should further interview using the first two items discussed in this essay — a description of what the author is looking for the editor to do and keeping within a preestablished budget. Once the author enters into a dialogue with the editor, the author can learn more about the editor’s skills and background in an attempt to find the perfect editor for the manuscript at hand.

Yet I offer one word of caution to authors: your budget can be a very limiting factor. Experienced, high-quality editors are in demand and rarely work on the cheap. Editing is their business, the source of their income, and thus the editor has to and does charge accordingly. If you are unrealistic in your budget, you will cripple your search for your perfect-fit high-quality editor by narrowing the pool of editors from which you can choose. This is why the discussion of money should not occur until you think you have found the editor you want.

Choosing editing for editing’s sake, by which I mean hiring an editor simply so you can say your book was edited, is not a worthwhile goal. Editing by a professional, highly skilled editor will enhance your manuscript and improve its likelihood for success. In contrast, hiring an editor largely because the editor fits within your budget is unlikely to advance your goals. Budgets do not have to be unlimited but they do have to be reasonable in relation to the work required from the editor.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

The Business of Editing: Macros for Editors and Authors

Times are getting tougher for the editing community. As has been discussed in earlier articles, pressure is being exerted by the publishing community to lower fees and what should be a natural market for editors — the indie author market in this age of ebooks — has not really developed as expected. Too many indie authors are unable or unwilling to spend the money for a professional editor, and too many of those who are willing to spend the money, don’t know enough about finding and evaluating an editor, and so are dissatisfied with multiple aspects of the author-editor relationship and help fuel the do-it-yourself school.

In light of these tougher times, the professional editor has to look at what investments he or she can make that will ultimately generate profitability, even if fees are lowered or remain stagnant. As I have mentioned in past articles, a major contributor to profitability is the purchase and use of software like EditTools, Editor’s Toolkit Plus, and PerfectIt. (For general overviews of these programs and their respective roles in the editing process, see The 3 Stages of Copyediting: I — The Processing Stage, The 3 Stages of Copyediting: II — The Copyediting Stage, and The 3 Stages of Copyediting: III — The Proofing Stage. In The Professional Editor: Working Effectively Online II — The Macros, I discussed macros more specifically.) Yet in recent months, I have received inquiries from fellow editors asking about increasing productivity using macros in a more detailed manner. So, perhaps the time is ripe to address some of the EditTools macros in detail.

When I edit, always in the forefront of my thinking is this question: What can I do to further automate and streamline the editing process? What I want to do is spend less time addressing routine editing issues and more time addressing those issues that require the exercise of editorial judgement and discretion. I want to undertake the routine endeavors as efficiently and profitably as I can; I do not, however, want to sacrifice editorial quality for editorial speed. (Because I often work on a per-page basis, speed is a key factor in determining profitability. However, even when working on an hourly basis, speed is important; because few clients have unlimited budgets for editing, it is important to maintain a steady rate of pages per hour.)

The editing process is additionally hampered by the growth of the style guides. With each new edition, the manuals get larger, not more compact, and there are numerous additional variations that have to be learned and considered. (How helpful and/or useful these guides are is a discussion for a later day.) I have discovered that no matter how well I have mastered a particular style guide, the inhouse editor knows the one rule that has slipped by me and wants to question why I am not following it, no matter how arcane, nonsensical, or irrelevant the rule is.

It is because of the increasing difficulty in adhering to all the rules of a particular style guide — especially when the style guide is supplemented with a lengthy house style manual that has hundreds of exceptions to the style guide’s rules, as well as hundreds of errata released by the style guide publisher, which are not readily accessible — that I increasingly rely on macros to apply preferred choices.

A key to using macros, however, is that they are used with tracking on, but only when appropriate (an example of inappropriate is changing a page range such as 767-69 to 767-769 in a reference cite or changing two spaces to one space between words; an example of appropriate is changing 130 cc to 130 mL or changing which to that). Tracking acts as a signal to me that I have made a change and lets me rethink and undo a change. Consequently, most macros in EditTools, by default, work with tracking on.

(One caution when using tracking and macros: Some macros do not work correctly when tracking is on. That is because the “deleted” or original is not really deleted as far as the computer is concerned in many page views. Basic Find & Replace works well with tracking on, but the more sophisticated the Find & Replace algorithm and the more that a macro is asked to do, the less well tracking works. Consequently, I make it a habit, particularly when using wildcard find and replace macros, to run the macros with tracking off.)

I know that I am focusing on increasing an editor’s profitability, but many of the macros in EditTools are usable by authors who are reviewing their manuscript before sending it to a professional editor for editing. What helps make a good editing job also can help make a good writing job! The two processes, although different, are not so distinct that they diverge like a fork in the road. Being sure that “Gwun” is always “Gwun” and not sometimes “Gwin” is important to both the author and the editor.

Unfortunately, both authors and editors tend to think in a singular way; that is, if they are uncomfortable writing and creating macros, they simply forget about them. Authors and editors seek their comfort zone when it comes to production methods because they do not see the production methods as enhancing their ultimate output. This is wrong thinking.

Let’s assume that an author has decided to name a character Gwynthum. The way I work is to enter the name Gwynthum in my Never Spell Word macro’s database for this book (along with other entries such as [perhaps] changing towards to toward, foreword to forward, fourth to forth, other character names, place names, and the like) and I then run the macro before I begin editing. An author would make these entries before doing the first review of the manuscript. Running the macro before I begin alerts me to some problems and fixes others.

Every time the macro comes across Gwynthum in the manuscript, it highlights it in green. Should I then, as I am editing, come across Gwythum or Gwynthim or some other variation, it would stand out because it is not highlighted in green. Similarly, the macro would change every instance of fourth to forth, but do so with tracking on and by highlighting the change with a different highlight color. This would bring the change to my attention and let me undo the change if appropriate.

(In the case of homonyms like fourth and forth, foreword and forward, and their and there, I make use of EditTools’ Homonym macro and database and do not include the words in the Never Spell Word macro. Rather than changing fourth to forth, the macro highlights the word in red, which tells me that I need to check that the word is correct in context. The homonym macro is a separate macro and has its own database, one that you create. So if you know that you have problems with where and were but not with their and there, you can put the former in your database and omit the latter.)

As noted earlier, the same tools that benefit editors can benefit authors who are preparing their manuscripts for submission to an editor, or even thinking about self-editing their manuscript. Thinking a little outside one’s comfort zone and making the best use of editing and writing tools can improve a manuscript tremendously, and for authors, can help reduce the cost of professional editing.

In later articles in this series, I will go into detail about how to use some of the macros that make up the EditTools collection. However, it must be remembered that macros are mechanical, unthinking tools. No editor or writer should think of macros as a substitute for using independent judgement; rather, macros should be looked on as being an aid to creating a more perfect manuscript.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

The eBook Wars: The Price Battle (III) — One Author’s View

Back and forth the discussions go about pricing. eBookers think ebooks are overpriced if they are priced above the Amazon-imposed $9.99 ceiling, and even at that price point the price is much too high. Publishers cringe at the $9.99 and lower pricing. eBookers say prove that the costs justify the high pricing. Neither side listens much to the other; ebookers give no credence to any publisher claims and publishers dismiss ebookers as being uninformed. On different forums battle lines are drawn between those who see some merit in publisher claims and some value in what publishers do and those who give publishers very short shrift on all counts.

But recently an independent author, Randolph Lalonde, a sci fi/fantasy author who self publishes his work in ebook form, and who has successfully built a following that allows him to devote full-time to his writing and earn a living at it, has chimed in on the debate via his blog with an article about the cost of ebook production. With his permission, his article is reprinted here.

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Understanding the Cost of eBooks

by Randolph Lalonde

Recently I had more than one spirited conversation on a popular eBook forum about the value of an eBook. A vocal number of posters stated that it was a digital file, and, like the air we breathe, it should be free and available to all. Others stated that people work hard to produce an enjoyable eBook, so it was only fair that they be compensated. Since I make a living from my eBook sales, rarely sell in print, and believe that I should be paid like anyone else who works for a living, you can easily imagine which side I was on. I’m not going to extend that debate here. I’d rather state the facts of the matter and let anyone speak their minds in the comments section. I’m here to write about what goes into creating an eBook file. For the most part, it’s much like any conventional book.

Writing
The writer puts the most time into the work, any where from a few months to a few years. Finding and agent or submitting the book to publishers costs money, and there’s no reason why a conventionally published author shouldn’t be compensated for that as well. When the book is accepted, a publisher may issue an advance against royalties, which can be anywhere from $1.00 to $100,000.00 or more. What’s important to remember is that the author won’t receive any royalty payments until that advance is “earned out.” So, if the author received a $1,000.00 royalty, then the book has to earn $1,000.00 in royalties to cover the advance, THEN the author starts seeing royalty checks with their quarterly statements. Royalties are one of the continual costs to an eBook. They never go away and they’re due every time an eBook sells. Most Authors receive between 15% – 25% of the eBook’s suggested retail price as of this writing. That MAY increase, but there’s no guarantee. (Note: Most authors only receive 6-9% of the suggested retail price of their printed books. eBooks have the potential to increase the incomes of many writers who cannot currently afford to write full time).

When you pay for an eBook more of your money goes into the author’s pocket. He/she has to cover their living expenses while they churn out their next masterpiece. Most authors also have to pay an agent with their creative earnings, and some have other people on their payrolls like an assistant or publicist.

Editing
Quality editing costs a great deal of money, but every publishing house or indie author should have access to a good editor’s services. The typical best seller has passed through the hands of one or more editors and several paid proof readers who pass notes on plot, character, setting, and other details back to the author, while they smooth out any grammatical bumps. Most of the typos and such are also caught. There’s a whole staff just in that stage of development, and most Indie Presses treat books the same way with more than two or three sets of eyes on a single work. All these people have to be paid. This isn’t a continual cost, but a high initial investment in any book.

Licensing
Another step involved in getting a book ready involves acquiring the rights to any songs or copyrighted quotes that may be contained within. Some licensing agreements are satisfied with a one time fee, but others require continual royalties to be paid for several years. I’m not a licensing expert, so I don’t know how often either method of payment is employed, but I’ve seen examples of both. That can be another continual expense to publishing an eBook, especially if said book is part of a larger franchise, such as Star Wars or Star Trek.

Design
Cover creation and design costs large publishers thousands of dollars per book on average. It’s true that they’ve found many short cuts and some have staff artists who come at a lower price per cover, but it’s a consideration whether they paid $1,000.00 or $5,000.00. Some publishers buy limited license rights to an image, costing just a few dollars at first and requiring an extra license fee as the book sells more than 500,000 copies. (I entered several agreements like this for some of the more recent Spinward Fringe covers). This can be very cost effective, but most publishers still have to pay an in-house designer even if they do get a steal of a deal on their cover art.

Publisher’s Expenses
They have to keep their doors open if they want to continue providing the books they publish to the public. That means a portion of every sale goes towards just keeping the publisher in business. Publishing is very expensive, a lot of Indie pubs don’t make it through their first year and many others close before their third anniversary. Even Indie eBook companies. If the doors close and the publisher still has the rights to all those books, they will disappear. That’s right. All the books they provide would be pulled from the digital shelves and could simply live out the rest of their contracted rights in the dark, where you can’t get to them. Under ideal conditions another publishing house will swoop in and buy the rights for a bargain price, but the chances are that those books will disappear for several months or years while the new owner accounts for the property, ensures it’s up to their standards and sets it up with their distributors properly.

Advertising
Do I really have to go into detail here? It costs a ton of cash for a conventional publisher and includes advance review copies, magazine, newspaper space etc… Publicists also fall into this category as far as I’m concerned, even though there has been one who disagrees with me on this point. She saw herself as more of an event manager, and hype builder. Maybe she is, who am I to disagree? Still, I’m sticking publicists here because I don’t know where else to put them.

Formatting and Quality Assurance
Finally, we’ve come to one of the last steps. Formatting. A few publishers already outsource this step to cubicle farms in India and other parts of the world, but even then it costs quite a bit of cash to format a single eBook. Most of the pubs, big and small, have designers or outsource to formatting companies that cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars per title. At this point it’s almost a continual cost. As new readers and formats come out some publishers format their entire catalog to fit. I’m assuming this won’t be a continual cost, since we’ve (Apple) pretty much agreed that ePub is an acceptable standard.

Customer Support
This is rarely a large part of a publisher’s infrastructure, but since the arrival of eBooks support staff has increased exponentially for some. Most of the new support teams are dedicated solely to eBooks. For most publishers this growing support staff generally speaks only to retailers who forward problems their users have had with the files they provided.

Distribution and Sales
The biggest continual cost to an individual eBook is distribution and retail sale. Based on the new model introduced by Apple and partially adopted by Amazon in June, 2010, the retailer will be taking 30% of the retail price. Until recently, 65% was standard. Regardless of the size, the vendor wants their cut, and part of what you pay for an eBook keeps their doors open as well. We like to think that “there will always be book stores,” but the closure of many brick and mortar stores has orphaned entire communities who have to order online now. Those stores employed people who are now out of work.
Online retailers who sell eBooks aren’t invincible either. They employ people, sometimes just a hard working few, other times there are dozens or hundreds people who ensure your books are available when you want them, how you want them.
These retailers often provide the customer support services that the publisher doesn’t. Indie Authors, Indie Publishers and large Publishers as well as customers all benefit from a good retailer, and maintaining a quality sales site costs a great deal of money from the development to delivery stages.

A Note On The Indie Author
Hi. I’m an Indie, in case you didn’t already know. In fact, I’m a full time Indie, which is rare! Every morning I remind myself of how fortunate I am that I have readers who pay for my work and that there are enough of them enjoying what I do so I can keep at it full time. I do the writing, publicity, rights acquisition, legal work, digital formatting, accounting, publicity, artwork purchasing, and customer support solo. I don’t have any help on that stuff, but it’s fantastic that readers pay for the time I put in and I enjoy most of it, believe it or not. I get help with editing (which I will be paying for later this year), and my beta readers are intelligent, kind volunteers who took over a year to find. It would be nice to some day provide printed copies of the books they helped with or maybe even something like a poster, or T-Shirt, or a arty! For now they just enjoy reading, thank God, because I can’t afford any other reward.

I don’t pay for advertising since I can’t afford to, and that’s fine, but there are a lot of peripheral things that cost cash, and they often have to be put off to the side until I receive a larger royalty check (it’s happened once so far! It could happen again, right?), or have a personal windfall. Since I don’t have an advertising budget, I have to invest time, and I’m not complaining since I get to meet other authors and many readers that way.

The downside to being an Indie writer is that there’s a common perception that I “sit around and make stuff up all day.” I wish! Most days I only get to work creatively for 2-6 hours, while the rest of the day is spent on administration, direction, peripheral content creation, design, and many, many necessary evils and joys online. In the last week the evils outweighed the joys, however, and resulted in the issuance of legal notices to sites that were hosting pirated copies of my work. Thankfully, both sites removed the pirated copies.

The Paper  vs. eBook Argument
I’ll touch on this briefly. All of the above time and money expenses apply to eBooks and paper or just eBooks. eBooks are less expensive to produce, but they do carry continual costs (such as writer royalties – we’ve gotta eat too!) and startup costs.

The Pricing of an eBook
I’m not going to go into what an eBook SHOULD cost, as the readers will have very little to do with the price they pay for eBooks. That’s difficult to hear, I realize, but in the end the big six publishers and their equally large distributors will determine the cost of non-independent works regardless of what readers and indie authors say or do. Recently, MacMillan Publishing (one of the big six, and owner of TOR), forced Amazon to allow them to sell their new releases at $14.99. There’s lot to this story, which is explored very well here.

Another example: Amazon.com is forcing Indies into repricing their books in June. If I price my book at $0.99-$2.98 I’ll receive a 35% royalty, but if my book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99 my royalty will be 70%. This will lead to the near disappearance of the $0.99 eBook. I’m assuming that the main reason behind this is because big publishers can’t keep their doors open while selling their eBooks at a big loss, and they’re angry at the Independents who leap up the top 100 charts with a book priced at $0.99. There could be other reasons, and keep in mind that no one at Amazon or a major publishing house has made a statement verifying my previous assumption, but the fact remains: In June, few Indies will offer their books at $0.99 on Amazon.com. It’s good for authors, who will be encouraged to get a fairer payment for their work, but readers, who didn’t have a say in the decision, won’t be happy.

I hope this has been informative, and that some of you feel better when you’re paying for a digital file in the future, whether the cost is $0.99 or $9.99. I don’t have a huge book budget myself, and I look for bargains. I don’t regret paying for a book I’ve sampled, however, since I know the money I sent out keeps the books coming.

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Perhaps there is more truth than fiction in publisher laments about pricing, but just as Randy Lalonde has taken the time to explain costs in detail, so should publishers. Publishers need to address their consumers — the ultimate ebook-buying ebookers — directly and forthrightly or the war will rage on and ultimately it will be the publishers who suffer most because they take the gamble that someone is interested in their product without truly knowing in advance if book buyers will respond positively.

Business of Editing: Editing in Isolation

I am constantly perplexed at how people who want to be acclaimed as editors or writers can pass on material to readers that is less than clear. In the editors’ case, I hope it is because the author ignored queries or left queries unresolved — but I cannot be certain of that except in my own work.

I suspect that the problem is that the self-editing author, as well as the “professional” editor, is “editing” in isolation. What I mean is that the author is looking at each sentence in isolation rather than looking at each sentence as part of the global mix.

What brought this to mind was a sentence I recently read: “I prefer epics.”

By itself, the sentence is complete and clearly understandable by me, the reader. But placed in context, I wondered whether the author meant “epics” or “e-pics.” The problem was that the article was talking about both books and pictures, thus both or either could have been meant. This was a case of the editor and/or the author not looking beyond the sentence — any editing that was done was done in isolation.

Isolation editing is a clear sign of nonprofessional editing. Professional editors know that no sentence stands alone; every sentence must be considered in context and as part of the more global text, as well as being complete in and of itself. Increasingly, however, I read books that suffer from the narrow view. In its most blatant form, a character is 5-foot tall on page 10 and 6-foot tall on page 25; has brown eyes on page 11 and blue eyes on page 27; spells her name Marya on page 3 but Maria on page 50. We’ve all come across these types of gaffes, but they seem to be occurring with increasing frequency as traditional publishers and authors make price, rather than quality, the number one consideration.

There are many answers to the problem of changes in character descriptions, not the least of which is a comprehensive stylesheet. Yet that is another red flag as regards the quality of the editing: the skimpy, incomplete stylesheet.

I have been working on second and subsequent editions of books in the past few months. With two exceptions, none of the manuscripts were accompanied by a stylesheet that was created by the editor of the prior edition. One exception was the book that was a second edition of a book whose first edition I had edited. In this instance, the client didn’t send the stylesheet from the first edition, but I had a copy because I have stored online every stylesheet for every book my company has edited since at least 2006 and often earlier.

But it is the second exception that signaled a poor editing job was likely done by the original editor. In this instance, the client sent a copy of the stylesheet for the prior edition. However, the stylesheet was one page. I knew immediately that it was incomplete as the manuscript for the book ran more than 3,000 pages and was medical, with each chapter written by a different author or group of authors. It is not possible to do a comprehensive stylesheet of such a manuscript in one page.

As I edited the manuscript, my initial reaction was correct — the prior (existing) edition clearly had not been professionally edited (or proofread). There were numerous sentences that should have been flagged and/or corrected, sentences that were like “I prefer epics” and thus potentially misleading, in the manuscript. The more I progressed into the manuscript, the clearer it became that the editor edited in isolation: If a sentence was grammatically correct, it was accepted as is, even if a more global view would have raised queries or caused the editor to modify it.

I am sure that some of you are thinking, “but are we talking about developmental editing or copyediting?” I am talking about both. True, the primary function of the developmental editor, but not the copyeditor, is to think globally, but even the copyeditor has to think globally. We are not talking about reorganizing a manuscript, which is the realm of the developmental editor; we are talking about ensuring that the author’s message is clearly conveyed, without confusion or uncertainty, to the reader, which is the realm of both editors.

Professional copyeditors will not rewrite paragraphs, will not move paragraphs or sections of text (i.e., will not reorganize) except on rare occasion. Yet professional copyeditors do have a responsibility to at least query the author and ask whether “epics” or “e-pics” is meant, which cannot be done in the absence of a more global perspective. A sentence-centric perspective views sentences in isolation: the previous sentence could talk about women, while the current sentence talks about men. Whether that change in gender is correct depends on what was said in the prior sentence, what is said in the current sentence, and, perhaps, what will be said in the following sentence.

Isolated editing is a sign of the nonprofessional. Isolated editing is on the rise because of the rise of the nonprofessional editor, which is driven by making cost concerns and limitations, rather than quality, the primary decider of whether and whom to hire as an editor (see What is Editing Worth?). We have discussed this several times, and you know that I believe that quality should be the initial driver when hiring an editor, with cost taking a secondary role. I recognize, however, that because of publisher and author misperceptions about the value of editing, those roles are reversed and cost is the primary driver.

At one time I thought the way to combat this was to send the publisher or author a few corrected pages as examples, but I quickly learned that publishers ignore the corrected pages and authors too often reply with a “how dare you question my writing!” I also quickly learned that the problem rests mostly with professional editors who fail to educate publishers and authors on the value of editing. (The value of editing was discussed in greater depth in What is Editing Worth?)

Yet even those authors who do understand and appreciate the value of quality editing are often stymied by their budget. Authors are being asked to gamble money on a service that will have some, but not a compelling, impact on sales. Self-publishing is making it clear that even poorly edited books can sell a lot of copies and that well-edited books can sell few copies — there are just too many other variables in play, such as how the author markets the book, the quality of the story and the writing.

In the end, editors are between a rock and a hard place. Do they lower their fee to meet author budgets and to compete with nonprofessional editors? If they lower their fee, do they move closer to isolated editing? Or do they stick to their more reasonable fee schedule and the more global form of editing knowing that they will lose a significant number of clients by doing so? This is the dilemma of the professional editor. It is a dilemma that is not easily resolved because of market pressures and the ease of entry into the profession of editing.

On the Basics: Self-editing your writing

© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

© An American Editor. Content may not be recirculated, republished or otherwise used without both the prior permission of the publisher and full credit to the author of a given post and the An American Editor blog, including a live link to the post being referenced. Thank you for respecting our rights to and ownership of our work.

I love to write, and I love to talk with sources and do background research for my journalistic writing. That’s why I often end up with the potential for more words than an assignment requires — sometimes because sources have such good material to include and sometimes because my voice might be more detailed and “wordy” than needed; sometimes because I just start writing and don’t stop until I have nothing more to say. Cutting an article down to size, so to speak, is a challenge when it feels as if every word is worth keeping. Here’s how I (usually) manage self-editing to cut an assignment down to a required word-count limit.

Ask for more space!

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Before doing any substantive cutting and self-editing to a story that I’ve realized is likely to run long, I contact my assignment editor and say something like, “I’ve gathered some great quotes and insights, but including all of the sources and their information would require more words than assigned. Please let me know if there’s space for any additional material, and what the absolute maximum word count might be.”

Another option is to ask whether my article could run in two consecutive issues, or even as a longer series.

Heading off the problem

The best way to prevent having to self-edit for length or beg for more words and space is to improve how we plan and organize what we write. That can involve a couple of approaches.

• Make an outline. Structuring the story before you start writing helps tighten it up and saves you from wasting time on unnecessary elements. I learned the value of outlines many moons ago in high school, when our “Critical Reading and Writer” teacher would give us a literary passage or poem, a few questions, and the 45-minute class period to craft a coherent essay incorporating answers to the questions.

• Ask fewer questions. I’m sometimes guilty of coming up with more questions for sources than an article really needs. If I’m dealing with a tight limit on word count, I go over my planned questions and drop anything that could be overkill. (I usually save the ones that might be unnecessary, in case I need more information after all or can use those for a longer assignment in the future.)

Now that I think of it, fewer questions also helped keep junior-high history essays under control. We didn’t have a word count to meet or beat, but our teacher gave us three or four questions every week and as many sources for answering them in, again, a coherent essay. Limiting the number of questions and sources helped organize both the research and the writing process. (That didn’t stop my dad from saying “I have a book!” and finding several additional books in his library for me to reference.)

• Do fewer interviews. There is such a thing as too many sources. When you have a word limit to meet, only contact absolutely necessary sources. That can be confusing when the client provides a list of sources whom you think should all be included. I still remember my first assignment for what became my longest-running client: a 1,500-word article for an association magazine for which my editor provided 15 members to interview. When I said it seemed impossible to reach them all or include substantive quotes from all of them without going well over the word count, he responded with, “Oh, that’s just in case you can’t reach some of them. We only need to reach four or five.” I was so glad I asked!

Working through the pain

Both writers and editors know that cutting good material from an article can be a painful process, especially for the creator of the work. We do tend to get married to our words, especially given the amount of work involved in creating or crafting them in the first place. It’s easier for editors, who don’t have the same investment of time and effort in the piece and are better able to view it objectively.

First and foremost, skim the draft to find and delete repeated words or ones included by mistake. I just cut a 2,500-word article down to the maximum limit of 2,000 by, in part, finding a few extraneous words that snuck in while I was writing and revising.  

The classic self-editing technique to trim word count is eliminating adjectives. Whether that works depends on the project. It’s generally a useful technique, but some adjectives are important, even essential, for clarity, voice or interest level. Like so many other things in life, a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all approach can result in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Oh, and ditch the clichés! Relying on clichés can block creativity as well as add words. Try to swap out clichés with your own language; your voice is often shorter and tighter.

Simplify: “had been expecting” could become “expected.” “had to” could work as “was.” Look for unnecessarily complicated phrasing, compounds and similar excesses, and prune them back to essentials.

Another technique that I often use is to look at every instance of “and” or “or,” and choose one piece of each of those lists, groups or collections to represent the whole.

Certain words can almost always be deleted without damaging meaning or clarity. “location” is one — you can often change “Such-and-such an event is located at …” to “Such-and-such an event is at …,” or even put an address in parentheses, without confusing your readers. Most of us know when “that” can be dropped as well.

Turn narratives into bulleted lists in phrases rather than complete sentences. Just be sure to pay attention to parallelism from one item to the next.

The beauty of blogging

For those of us who tend to write long, blogging is a bonus: We can usually write as much as we please, especially if it’s for our own outlet. There’s a concomitant danger, though: No restrictions on story length removes the need to do our own quality control through self-editing. Blogging can be the equivalent of babbling. Readers notice when a piece of writing hasn’t been edited, no matter by whom.

Payment ethics

Coming up with more words than required poses an issue both practical and ethical: Should the writer who goes over the assigned word count be paid more than an agreed-upon fee? I see producing more words and needing more space than assigned as something I’m responsible for, so I’ve usually offered to accept an original payment, whether it’s by the word or a flat fee, if I end up going over the word count and the client agrees to give me free rein. Some have upped the rate while agreeing to increase the word count; others have accepted my offer to stay within the original budget. Either way, as mentioned, check with the client before going over the assigned word count.

Do colleagues have any ways of keeping word count under control when an assigned topic begs for more words than assigned?

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning provider of editorial and publishing services for publications, independent authors, publishers, associations, nonprofits and companies worldwide, and the editor-in-chief and owner of An American Editor. She created the annual Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer^® conference for colleagues (www.communication-central.com), now co-hosted with the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (www.naiwe.com) and sponsored by An American Editor. She also owns A Flair for Writing (www.aflairforwriting.com), which helps independent authors produce and publish their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.

On the Basics — Thinking about retirement readiness way beforehand

© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

© An American Editor. Content may not be recirculated, republished or otherwise used without both the prior permission of the publisher and full credit to the author of a given post and the An American Editor blog, including a live link to the post being referenced. Thank you for respecting our rights to and ownership of our work.

A colleague in one of my many professional groups asked fellow communications consultants to respond to a survey about whether we have “unique financial and retirement readiness challenges.” After my first reaction of “Duh, of course we do,” I thought about it a little more and decided this was worth writing about.

Whether we think of ourselves as consultants, freelancers, contractors, businessowners, independents makes no never mind, as the saying goes. As I responded to that post,  “Consultants have similar challenges for financial and retirement readiness as for everything involved with being on our own: We have to do it all. We have to develop the discipline to save and invest toward the future, just as we have to manage income, expenses, record-keeping and taxes, not to mention meeting deadlines, marketing our businesses and handling the various day-to-day aspects of finding and doing our work. No one is doing it for us. It isn’t happening automatically. And if we don’t think about and handle it from the beginning, our businesses won’t do as well as they/we could — and our retirements will be dire.”

Even in-house communications/editorial pros have to give conscious thought to retirement planning, at least once past that first job or two and especially with any family members to consider. You’ve all probably seen the scary reports from various organizations about the high percentage of Americans who are one $400 emergency away from financial chaos and crisis because they lack savings. That statistic has been around for quite awhile but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Regardless of our employment status or style, how do we prepare for retirement? Or maybe, how do we plan finances to protect against a crisis and be prepared to retire comfortably? It seems obvious: Plan and save money.

Managing to save

It can be hard to save money when it has to be a conscious process, especially when we’re young and healthy (or even older and healthy), thriving in a career that we love, and decades away from retirement. People with “regular” jobs have the advantage of their employers doing some of that for us — they handle deducting from paychecks for Social Security, health insurance, savings accounts and related benefits. Academics have resources like TIAA-CREF that their institutions can help them create and use.

But keep in mind that for many, if not most, people, Social Security alone will not be enough to maintain a level of comfort in life when you retire. And independents, again, have to set up and manage all of this ourselves.

Even if you’re in a regular job with generous benefits that include retirement savings opportunities, the smart cookie actively manages, or at least pays attention to, their finances at some level.

Steps to take now

Whether you’re in-house or freelance, consider trying to take these steps:

• Put 10 to 25 percent of every paycheck or client payment in a savings account where you can’t get to it easily and spend it on non-essentials. If the money isn’t in your checking account or wallet, it’s easier not to use it.

• Look for a trustworthy (ask friends and family for referrals) investment advisor and open an appropriate account — a 401(k); traditional or Roth IRA; SEP-IRA, etc. — NerdWallet.com has good information about types of accounts (and banks).

• If you have kids, open 529 savings accounts for their college expenses.

• If time and energy allow, as well as employer guidelines, have a side gig of some sort, whether it’s selling crafts, having an AirBnB, doing freelance editorial work, etc. Put all the income from that into the savings or investment account so it accumulates for your future.

• Have a separate account for fun stuff — birthday and holiday gifts, vacations, etc.

• Put together a budget and do your best to stick to it, with the goal of something left over from that paycheck or those client payments every month that can be moved to the “future fund.”

• Assess expenses every year to see where you can save a few bucks without sacrificing quality of life.

• Make sure you have health insurance! One emergency room visit, even for something that turns out to be minor, can bankrupt you, or at best wipe out a savings cushion.

If you’re married or living with someone, try to have money conversations every once in awhile. Make sure you know about each other’s bank accounts, credit cards, loans/debts, etc. Any and all of these can affect retirement income and comfort. (Not to mention financial chaos if one partner has a health crisis or dies, and the other has no access to accounts or even account information.)

And if you are a full-time freelancer, think about whom to line up to take over your projects and clients when that moment arrives and you’re ready to hang up the ol’ shingle. Many of us simply cut back and do less editorial work, and some of switch from paid to volunteer projects if we can afford to do so. Either way, though, we need to have at least one skilled, trustworthy colleague, if not several, in mind so our clients aren’t left in the dust as we reposition our lives for retirement.

Personal plans

Beyond the financial and business aspect of planning for retirement, don’t forget the personal. Try to make time in your working days for a hobby, family and friends. Once you hit that retirement moment, there will be a lot of time to fill, and it will help to have ways to fill and enrich that time once work doesn’t take it up. (That hobby could become a source of income, as well as a way to fill and enjoy time.)

If you have a partner or spouse, talk about that moment ahead of time to ensure that you’ll be on the same page (can’t help the editorial reference!) about what you might want to do and where.  Those preferences might well change with time, but talking about them will make it easier to implement or revise them when the day arrives to act on them.

Think about the couple in a current TV ad, who each make vacation plans without consulting the other — and have to revamp because neither one’s choice works for the other.

One of the classic memes, as we’d call it today, is the chaos that occurs when one half of a couple retires while the other is still working. I’m familiar with that scenario, although — luckily — not much of the chaos: My beloved Wayne-the-Wonderful retired well before I did or was even thinking about it (in fact, here I am, still working years after he not only retired but died, and no plans to stop; one of the great things about writing, editing, proofreading, etc.). It worked fine, but only after a few initial bumps and the need to clarify things that hadn’t been a factor when he was at work while I was working at home.

It wasn’t that he didn’t respect my freelance editorial work; he thought it was great. He just hadn’t seen me do the work. I had to explain that I couldn’t always drop everything to go out and play on a whim, and learn to let him know when I was on deadline or had scheduled an interview with a source or client. Freelancers can usually be more flexible than in-house staffers, but not always.

It might not be the same as financial planning, but communication about what life might look like at the retirement stage is key to the relationship surviving and life being enjoyable for both of the people in it, whether one or both is no longer in a formal job or business.

What’s your take?

How are you planning for the future, whether you’re thinking of retirement or some other financial goal, either short- or long-term? Let us know the approaches and resources you’ve found helpful.  

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning provider of editorial and publishing services for publications, independent authors, publishers, associations, nonprofits and companies worldwide, and the editor-in-chief and owner of An American Editor. She created the annual Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer^® conference for colleagues (www.communication-central.com), now co-hosted with the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (www.naiwe.com) and sponsored by An American Editor. She also owns A Flair for Writing (www.aflairforwriting.com), which helps independent authors produce and publish their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.

On the Basics: Putting it in writing

© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

© An American Editor. Content may not be recirculated, republished or otherwise used without both the prior permission of the publisher and full credit to the author of a given post and the An American Editor blog, including a live link to the post being referenced. Thank you for respecting our rights to and ownership of our work.

Note: The author is not an attorney and this article does not constitute legal advice.

It comes up so often in various places: Do editors (or any publishing pros) need contracts with clients? This is especially relevant for freelance editors and proofreaders who work directly with individual authors, whether academics seeking help with their dissertations or people writing books to be self-published, although some who aim for — or even have contracts for — traditional publishing might seek editors or proofreaders on their own.

There are two reasons for that: Aspiring authors are often savvy enough to get their manuscripts edited before submitting their work to agents or publishers, and, as most of us know, publishing houses are cutting back on in-house editors and putting the onus of that quality control step on authors. (Both of those instances create more opportunities for freelancers, but that’s another essay topic.)

As I said recently in an online conversation, it’s definitely smart to have a contract. I do know colleagues who have worked without one and never had a problem. That’s great, and I’m glad for them — but still no reason not to have a contract.

Some clients will already have a contract for you to sign; it’s when they don’t that we should all consider having our own, ready to use.

The purpose of a contract is to protect both parties, not just yourself. On your behalf, a contract spells out what you will do, when, for how much, etc. That protects you against any misunderstanding about your role or being asked to do work you weren’t expecting, or being paid, to do. For your client, a contract formalizes what they can expect from you and gives them a basis to trust that you will do what they expect and you promise. Keep that mutual benefit in mind if you venture into using a contract for the first time and/or encounter a new client at any point who resists the idea.

Contract elements

A contract of your own doesn’t have to be complicated, lengthy or packed with legalese. It doesn’t even have to involve an attorney.

I keep a list of items that are almost always, if not always, elements of a project. It’s easy to adapt the list to a new client or project as a contract.

Essentially, bullet out what you will do for an average project: type of work (level of edit, proofread, write, index, etc.; number of words for a writing assignment, items for an index, illustrations for book or other graphics project, etc.), schedule or timeframe and fee for each task, deadline(s), anticipated expenses for reimbursement (such as mileage cost — I charge either mileage or time traveling and meeting, not both — or supplies, software versions, etc.), number of passes for editing or revisions for writing and illustrations, language to protect against scope creep, copyright, phone call or e-mail message policy, median policy, etc.

When I was doing onsite conference reporting, I would ask that the client purchase the plane ticket and put hotel accommodations on their account, so I didn’t have to use my own money and wait to be reimbursed. That would be in our contract or agreement.

State when payment is due and; the standard is within 30 days of invoice date. Many clients will pay sooner than that, although some might pay later — you need to establish that so you can budget accordingly. I don’t like 45- or 60-day payment schedules, but I can handle them if I know that’s the client’s policy before I accept the project. Although my contracts say that payment is due upon receipt of invoice, and invoices say “Payable upon receipt,” I assume I won’t be paid until those 30 days elapse, so anything before that is a pleasant surprise.  

Include a late fee policy.

For large or ongoing projects, your contract can ask for an advance or retainer, if you think that will be acceptable to the client, and include an interim payment process: an advance or deposit, with payments at specific points (such as number of hours or pages), and whether payment will be made before you hand off the finished project. Be prepared for publishers, publications, organizations, business, etc., not to accept such arrangements, but individual authors are often, if not usually, amenable to doing so.

Your contract can state that copyright for the edited or proofed version of a client’s document remains with you until you’ve been paid in full. That’s most likely to be effective (and sometimes necessary) with independent authors, but Rich Adin, founder of the An American Editor blog, was able to use that policy with major publishers that were paying very, very slowly for his work.

In the light of legislation that is encouraging employers to force their freelancers into becoming employees, you also might want to include language in a contract about your status as a freelancer or contractor.

Your contract can state how you prefer to be paid (check, PayPal or banking apps like Zelle and Square, direct deposit to your bank account, etc.).

It’s quite possible that once you’ve created your checklist, projects will come along that require adding new items to it. The checklist is simply a template or starting point. You will probably have to tailor it to every client and project that comes along.

What not to include

I don’t charge for paper, ink, software or hardware, because those are my costs of doing business and my fees or rates should be enough to cover those expenses. However, colleagues who are expected to print manuscripts of a couple hundred pages, especially in color, might want to be reimbursed for the impact of that on printer toner or copier ink. I would definitely include reimbursement shipping/delivery for sending back a marked-up manuscript, or ask to use the client’s FedEx/UPS account.

You probably don’t have to include charges for long-distance phone calls, since so much of our work these days is via e-mail and other electronic mechanisms.

When to say no

Keep in mind that non-individuals such as publishing houses and businesses often have their own contracts that we have to accept if we want the work. Some are straightforward, some are complex, some are downright draconian, some are negotiable — you can delete, or ask to delete, clauses that don’t make sense.

One such item that comes up a lot these days involves insurance. If the client usually hires contractors with their own employees who work at the client’s jobsite or other location and operate vehicles or equipment on behalf of the client, they might have a standard contract that requires a level of liability insurance that isn’t essential or even appropriate for a freelance editor, proofreader, writer, designer, photographer, etc. That happens when it’s the first time the client has used a freelancer.

I once turned down a dream writing and editing project because the contract would have created an unreasonable onus of responsibility for things beyond my control: It called for my role to have legal liability for any and all errors in the published work — when others could make changes to what I submitted, without my knowledge. I’m fine with taking responsibility for the accuracy and quality of my work, but I can’t accept responsibility for what someone else does to it after it leaves my hands.

My approach to contracts

After establishing project details with the client, I “Save As” my checklist, rename and adjust it as needed, and send it back attached to an e-mail message with a cover note along the lines of “Per our discussion(s), the attached document will serve as our letter of agreement/contract.”

For the clients who pay me by the hour, I use a very basic Excel worksheet with a column for date, task, hourly rate and percentage of an hour/hours per task; Excel handles the percentages and adds up the hours/dollars for me. Each month, I do Save As to create a new log or tracking document for the new month for each client. (I’ve found that the key is to remember to enter every project for a given client as soon as I finish it, rather than wait until end of the month to enter anything, or I forget half of them.) That log goes with the invoice.

There are lots of contract and invoice templates all over the Internet, including in Word and from various professional associations. An excellent book about contracts is The Paper It’s Written On: Defining Your Relationship with an Editing Client by Karin Cather and Dick Margulis — they wrote it for editors, but most of it can be applied to almost anyone with an independent business.

When has a contract, or lack of one, become an issue for you? How did you handle it?

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning provider of editorial and publishing services for publications, independent authors, publishers, associations, nonprofits and companies worldwide, and the editor-in-chief and owner of An American Editor. She created the annual Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer^® conference for colleagues (www.communication-central.com), now co-hosted with the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (www.naiwe.com) and sponsored by An American Editor. She also owns A Flair for Writing (www.aflairforwriting.com), which helps independent authors produce and publish their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.