On the Basics: Preparing for the new year

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

It’s the first day of the new year (thank goodness!), and that means it’s time to put together a plan for the new year if you haven’t already done so. With New Year’s Day falling on a Friday, we have a whole weekend to use for launching the new year on a positive note. Here are a few suggestions for projects to consider.

• Review, refresh and expand your website (or create one!). Look for ways to make the text more active and interesting; add information about recent achievements, such as new clients/projects, awards, etc.; replace long-used images with new ones; add new pages if appropriate, etc. Consider asking a colleague to assess the site to make sure it’s helping your visibility through accurate language and effective search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords; it might be worth paying a professional for an SEO assessment.

• Review and update your résumé. You might not always need it, but it’s worth having a current version on hand in case you do. You don’t want to throw something together in a rush to respond to a request; that’s a guarantee of making embarrassing mistakes. Again, this is where swapping services with a colleague might be a good idea. For the aspiring and current freelancers among us, it also might be worth consulting the new (2020) edition of the Editorial Freelancers Association booklet, “Resumés for Freelancers: Make Your Resumé an Effective Marketing Tool … and More!” (Disclaimer: I’m the co-author — but I don’t profit from sales.)

• Set goals for the new year. These can be basic: Earn more money, find new clients, join new organizations or take on new roles in ones you already belong to, create new promotional/marketing material, expand visibility in social media, be more organized, stay ahead of filing and record-keeping, etc. (Once you’ve thought about them, these goals can be the basis of a formal business plan; especially useful for those thinking about launching a freelance business.)

• Review what you’ve gained from and contributed to professional memberships. There might be organizations that are a better fit for where you are in your current job or freelance business, and ones you belong to that haven’t been as useful as you had hoped. Be patient, because some memberships take awhile to generate income, but make sure that your investment in professional associations is paying off. Ask colleagues which associations have been the most-useful and -profitable for them, and why or how.

• Think about ways to be more visible. Consider writing a book or booklet, especially if you do speaking engagements (even online ones; having a publication to sell or promote at such events can be very profitable); look for ways to become a presenter or trainer (again, even in virtual environments); find new places to contribute comments and guest posts; update your LinkedIn profile; start your own blog; use visual media such as podcasting and videos; partner with a colleague to swap referrals or work on bigger (or new types of) projects together than either of you can handle alone; be more active in associations of colleagues — and potential clients. The more you show up, the stronger your professional image and credibility, and the easier it will be for prospective employers or clients to find, and hire, you.

• If you’re freelancing, increase your rates! Let current clients know that will happen in January and stick to it. If a valued client objects, you can always “grandfather in” existing ones at their current rates — as long as you feel they’re worth it.

Whatever you choose to do in this important new year, here’s to success and fulfillment for all of us. Feel free to share your plans, goals and questions for the year. 

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), which helps independent authors produce and publisher their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.

The Business of Editing: Credibility

For businesses, whether large or small, solopreneur or with employees, a key to success is credibility, and a cause of failure is a lack of credibility.

In the olden days of editing, credibility meant proven knowledge of subject matter and proven grasp of the fundamentals of language and language usage. I recall being both interviewed and tested before being hired as a freelance editor for a publisher. I also recall how difficult it was to get added to a publisher’s list of approved freelancers.

Over the ensuing years, I have noted a change. The staffs at publishers have diminished in numbers yet workload has increased. An early casualty of this numbers change was the interview. Increasingly, publishers relied on the resume and the test. With the rise of the Internet, some publishers added to the mix a quick look at the freelancer’s website. (Of course, it didn’t help that the people responsible for hiring freelancers had tenuous editing and interviewing skills themselves.)

Today, credibility seems to mean something different than what it meant in my early freelancing days. Today, credibility’s meaning seems to change like a chameleon. Credibility appears to mean different things at different times and for different reasons. I find that some clients are only interested in what books I have edited; others have scrutinized my website or read my LinkedIn profile or even the An American Editor blog; others want a test completed. These people, if they have not worked with me before, are contacting me based on my reputation, not on my credibility.

Credibility and reputation, although similar, differ in their audience. Reputation is addressed to the broader audience, which can include clients and prospective clients; credibility is what is built up with individual clients. Each includes the other, but which is in the dominant position depends on the audience. Prospective clients who are searching for editors search based on reputation; they lack the direct experience with an editor to test the editor’s credibility. Clients who have worked with particular editors before offer work to an editor among that group based on the editor’s credibility.

I have been contacted about editing because clients have looked at my website, especially the list of past projects, or read my LinkedIn profile, or this blog, which are advertisements for me, and decided that I would be a good fit for their needs. But what they do not do is interview me, and often do not test me. They are relying on my reputation without any sense of my credibility, except for that sense that can be garnered by looking at my past projects and equating the past projects with the notion that I must be credible.

With the rise of the Internet, substitutes for traditional methods of hiring have also risen. How well these substitutes work remains unresolved.

Years ago I hired freelancers based on their resumes and an interview. I rapidly discovered that not requiring a test, too, was a mistake. Today, whether I require a test depends on how well I know the freelancer and the freelancer’s work, which brings me back to the matters of reputation and credibility.

There are many types of freelance editors, but in broad terms, editors fall into two basic types: those who do everything that comes across the transom and those who “specialize,” focusing on narrower areas. Similarly, reputation and credibility come in multiple flavors, but in the broadest senses there are reputation as an editor and credibility in editing and credibility in subject-matter editing. My observation is that the greater opportunity to build credibility lies with the specialists who can build credibility in both editing in general and in subject-matter editing, but within a tighter knit community of clients and potential clients.

Credibility and reputation are important because of the strength they give me when I negotiate terms for a project. The stronger my credibility and reputation are in relation to the project under discussion and the client with whom I am negotiating, the greater the likelihood that my complaints, concerns, and objections will be considered seriously and dealt with in a manner satisfactory to me.

We all recognize the importance of reputation, but not necessarily the importance of credibility. How important is credibility? Credibility is the handmaiden of opportunity and reputation’s sidekick. As credibility increases, so does positive reputation. The greater one’s credibility and reputation as an editor, the more opportunities that will present to the editor, which means the greater the likelihood of meeting or exceeding one’s goals.

In addition, the greater one’s credibility, the less argument one gets about editing decisions. When I first started as a freelance editor, I had little credibility. As a result, many of my editorial decisions were questioned; I was asked to justify them, and my client would then decide whether my decision was “correct or incorrect.” As my credibility and reputation grew, such questioning decreased. Now I am rarely asked to justify a decision and am usually given broad instructions, with the application of those instructions left to my discretion.

In other words, I went from an editor whose work was to be watched and carefully reviewed to an editor who could be relied on to deliver high-quality work.

When I am asked if I am interested in undertaking a project, the client tells me what they are hoping for. When I review the project and say that, for example, the desired schedule cannot be met unless certain adjustments are made, my clients generally try to work with me rather than tell me that there is no latitude or that they will find someone else. This cooperation, which is good for both the client and me, is a direct result of my credibility with the client.

Reputation and credibility also serve as magnets to draw new business. As word spreads, the greater the likelihood that I will be on someone’s radar.

With every project that I undertake, my goal is twofold: to further reinforce my reputation as an outstanding editor and to build credibility with the particular client so that the client will turn to me first for all of its editorial needs. I know whether I have succeeded in attaining these goals by the quantity and quality of the requests I receive for my editing services and by how negotiations on new projects go.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

The Business of Editing: How NOT to Get Work

About a month ago, I wrote The Business of Editing: Pricing Yourself Out of the Market When Applying for Work. I thought that pricing mistakes were the leading cause of why one doesn’t get work. Now I’m not so sure.

I recently received a job application in which the applicant wrote:

Minimum Acceptable Freelance Pay Price (Copyeditor): $ 25, per page

Minimum Acceptable Freelance Pay Price (Proofreader): $ 15, per page

Comments: I have no available work to show. Just give me any bullshit assignment, and let my work speak for itself. you will not be sorry. I am college student, looking to get into freelance writing/reporting. My only goal is to have articles published with my name on them and get payed (no matter how miniscule) for my words.

Aside from the obvious that the applicant never bothered to check out my website to see what we do, the comments provided would not induce me to consider this applicant at all. Nothing is right about the attempt other than it catches my attention in a negative manner. How many employers want to be told that their work is “bullshit”? And for those of us whose livelihood is word based, does “payed” inspire confidence?

Although noting one’s goal is laudatory, I would think that goal should be aligned with the prospective employer’s goals.

Accepting at face value that the applicant really is a college student, I wonder what the applicant is being taught and what the applicant has been taught about how the job world works. Needless to say, this applicant won’t be working for me.