Excuse-Busting Marketing
My excuse-busting marketing method has been highly successful in helping potential author clients decide whether to get their books edited and published.
Excuse-Busting Marketing: How to Help Authors Get Ready for Editing
If you’ve hung around here for a while, you know that I’m a big fan of finding clients who already know they want to work with an editor but just aren’t sure which one. This makes turning them into clients so much easier! All you have to do is show why you’re the one.
If a writer is convinced they can go on to fame and fortune without hiring a developmental editor, I won’t waste my precious life trying to convince them otherwise. Maybe they will go on to fame and fortune without me. How do I know?
But I do sometimes get clients who are on the fence, just by busting their excuses. Or, in sales-speak, “overcoming objections.” But unlike a used car salesman, I’m looking for objections that are not about the service I’m offering (a common objection in this vein is, “I can’t afford it”).
Instead, I’m talking about addressing the challenges authors routinely have in their writing lives. I bust their excuses (so to speak) by showing how I can help them solve those problems.
You can also use excuse-busting to get more clients.
Here’s an example: “I don’t have time to write.”
It’s a very common frustration among writers. But instead of nodding and saying, “Yeah, too bad. Let me know when you do find time to finish that draft, and I’ll edit it for you,” you could help them solve this problem.
- You could say, “I’ll write it for you.”
- You could say, “I’ll be your accountability partner.”
- You could say, “I’ll coach you in using your time more effectively.”
These aren’t, strictly speaking, editing jobs, but they are jobs that many editors can do well. Once you’ve helped the author bust their excuses (and – this is key – have gotten paid for it!), you might also be able to do an edit on their project since your efforts have now helped them finish it.
Even if not, you’ve at least earned some bucks and sharpened your skills.
Tips for Editors & Writers
Focus on a limited number of problems in story development
Typically in a manuscript evaluation or developmental edit, I focus on what I perceive to be the three-to-five most important concerns I’ve noticed in the ms. This is the approach I teach my editing students. Editing too many problems at once overburdens the author In any given ms, there may be ten or fifteen developmental problems…
Clients who want services you don’t offer
Newer freelancers sometimes come to me in a panic because a client has approached them to do work that’s outside their typical scope. Commonly this is something like the freelancer offers copyediting and developmental editing but the client wants coaching. What should they do? They don’t know how to coach, they don’t offer coaching services,…
Expand into Book Doctoring and Ghostwriting
If you’ve been a developmental editor for any length of time, you’ve likely encountered an author who just wants you to write the book for them. Or, you’ve encountered a manuscript that was in such disrepair that it required a herculean effort to fix it, dropping your hourly rate down to pocket change. As a…
