For editors interested in getting freelance work from book publishers and packagers, a crucial resource is your colleagues. I don’t mean you should pester random acquaintances to ask their publisher clients to hire you. I do mean you should: Ask what they did to land their first publisher/packager client. While a freelance editor is probably…
Editors marketing their services often hear a lot of guidance about getting clients, some of it . . . well, let’s call it naïve. Just the other day I came across a LinkedIn post on how your first year in business you should give everything away for free and only after that should you start…
We’ve been having some great (written) conversations during our monthly Q&A on the Club Ed Conversations forum (second Tuesday of each month from 10 a.m. to noon Pacific time) and I wanted to build on this energy by creating slightly more focused sessions. In order to provide an opportunity for Club Ed participants to hear…
Many freelance editors are interested in getting editorial work from book publishers and packagers, and often they’re so focused on landing the client that they don’t think about setting expectations for their work. Then the first project is assigned, and they have less time than they normally have with indie authors, they’re asked to sit…
Because writing a novel manuscript takes place over a long period of time, character inconsistencies can crop up. Maybe in Chapter 1 the author says that Joe has never been in trouble with the law but in Chapter 12 he has a history as a felon. As the editor it can sometimes seem puzzling to…
Getting work as a freelance editor is always a challenge, and my colleagues sometimes see an opportunity when a local business or other organization publishes a newsletter or blog post with errors. They ask me, “I’m thinking about pointing out the errors and offering my editorial services for pay. What do you think?” I think…
To get better at developmental editing you have to do developmental editing! But it’s not always easy to figure out how to go about that. Previously I’ve talked about being a beta reader as a way to gain practice as a DE. And, the self-paced Naked Editing class allows you to follow along as an…
People with a growth-oriented mindset are happier and more successful than people with a fixed mindset (see Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset, among others). Growth versus Fixed Mindset People with a growth mindset are those who think they can learn and grow through hard work, persistence, and thoughtful feedback. A fixed mindset assumes that people are…
A while back I took a class on the algebra of symmetries and it turned out to be taught by a philosopher masquerading as a mathematics professor. Algebra, he told us, comes from the word al-jabr, which means restoration by balancing. “Restoring the unknown,” the teacher said. He went on to talk about how having…
Many self-publishing authors look for beta readers to give them perspective on their novels before they go to a professional editor for further help. An author doesn’t need a developmental editor to say the whole storyline is implausible and they yawned from beginning to end. Any reader of fiction can probably relay that information. Doing…