Clients – EAT SLEEP EDIT REPEAT

Making peace with uncertainty

I've reached the conclusion that a sustainable freelance editorial career is less about 'being a good editor' than it is about mental resilience and the ability to cope with –…

Reassuring your editorial clients

Knowing enough about what you're doing but always being willing to learn more is essential for editors. Yes, there are some general rules of good editorial practice to learn, but…

Stealth marketing

Most editorial business owners need to do some sort of marketing to keep things going. Even those who claim mainly to rely on word of mouth to bring work in…

Back to school

Anyone else got that back to school feeling? Yesterday I drove home from my last mini camping trip of the summer holidays against the alarming backdrop of leaves beginning to…

Managing time – your own and other people’s

Working successfully as a freelance editor involves knowing (or learning) how to do several things very well. Obviously we need the technical chops to be able to do our job…

Crunching the numbers

13 Jan 201713 Jan 2017

I'll start this post with a confession. I've been freelancing almost exactly nine years, and I've sort of been making it up as I go along. It all began when I…

Bang for a limited buck

As freelance editors we’ve all been there: a prospective client has a list of things they would like you to do, and they also have a budget, and the two don’t…

Pricing editorial work – SfEP conference session preview

8 Jul 20163 Aug 2016

I’ve been invited to present in a ‘Speed start-up: what newbies need to know’ session at the SfEP conference in September on the subject of pricing work, alongside Sue Littleford…

Editing presentation materials

It's the London Book Fair next week, and one thing I have been doing recently is editing presentation materials. But what exactly are they, and what are they for? And what do…

Clients I like to keep

4 Mar 20164 Mar 2016

In the last couple of weeks I have had several experiences that have made me think about what I value most in my clients. Focusing on the positives, here's a quick…