Will I succeed as a freelance editor?

Developmental editing is sometimes called content editing, substantive editing, or story editing. The focus is on the big picture, not on sentence-level concerns although we may make sentence-level edits to address the big-picture concerns. For fiction, a developmental editor looks for problems in plot, including implausible plot events and timeline errors; character development, including the…

NEW! Starts January 4, 2021 $50  4 weeks (through January 31), instructor-led This class is intended for editors, new and experienced, who are interested in following along as an experienced editor performs a developmental edit on a complete fiction manuscript. It is a reading-intensive class and the more you participate in the online discussions, the…

It happened again this week: a writer got in touch with me, told me some information about their book, and asked for some guidance about next steps. This is a very common ask, and I have a boilerplate email I use in response. If I got more of these types of emails I might have…

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…

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…

The other day I came across a social media post from an email marketer who said you would outwork 90 percent of your competition just by showing up every day! I nearly sprained my eyeballs from rolling them so hard. If you can outwork your competition just by showing up, you are dealing with very…