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…
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…
One of the challenges older workers face when shifting into a second act career is time pressure. People in their forties, fifties, and sixties can have children or grandchildren at home, parents or other loved ones who need help, a regular full-time job, and multiple obligations, including doing the laundry at least now and then….
When I teach developmental editing classes, I get a lot of students transitioning from other careers. They’re often lawyers, social workers, and teachers – though I’ve also taught actors, accountants, and engineers, among others. What they have in common is that they love stories and want to explore whether book editing (story editing/developmental editing) is…