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Something different today!

Because I do a lot of permissions editing, I sometimes get questions about whether and when permission must be requested and/or sources must be credited.

Today’s emailed question (anonymized and used with permission):

Why is it now necessary to indicate where photos came from in a short video like this. Is this new, or maybe I have never known about the requirement?

This question comes up a lot among new editors (freelance or in-house) as well as writers and self-publishing indie authors, so I thought I’d share my response with you in this blog post.

My Answer

I wrote a shorter reply to the correspondent, but I’m using it as the basis for this longer blog post.

First, photos taken by others almost always need photo credits (and have always needed them). Not everyone bothers, but it's a moral obligation (acknowledging the intellectual property, or IP, of others) as well as a legal one (the images are copyrighted).

Second, I say “almost” because free services like Unsplash and Pexels do not require you to use captions (and indeed, I generally don’t use them alongside Unsplash stock photos). But the photographers who upload their work to those services know they are granting permission for free and likely uncredited use (often in exchange for “exposure,” that nebulous concept that may or may not pay off for a freelance artist, writer, or editor). That said, from this day on, I’m going to be adding credit lines to the Unsplash photos I use, because it’s only fair to the photographer who makes them available.

Third, Creative Commons-licensed images (and material) can generally be used subject to whatever license the creator has assigned to them. Rather than try to explain these licensing types, I’ll just refer you over to the Creative Commons website.

But the use of photos in your own publications or videos doesn’t stop with IP concerns.

Wire/News Service Photos

Photos taken from wire services (Reuters, AP, and such) usually have usage restrictions—especially (but not only) if they're being reused for commercial purposes. “Commercial” simply means you’re using the material in something you intend to sell. Even if you’re planning to charge just what you need to cover costs, that’s considered “commercial use,” and any image license or restrictions would need to permit it.

Note that journalism is an exception. If there’s a major disaster, chances are that news outlets and wire services will have photographers taking photos to run with the news stories. (That said, even wire services have run into trouble when they poach a copyrighted photo from an independent photographer without notice, permission, or credit.)

News photos are not stock photography in general. Sometimes you can license a journalistic photo for commercial use, but sometimes you can’t, for reasons beyond copyright reasons — such as permission to use photos of people who might not want to be featured.

Photos of People

Using photos of people for any non-journalistic purposes typically requires a “model release” from the people featured in the photos. A model release is simply written permission from the subject(s) indicating that they know they’re featured in the photo and consent to its use. If it’s a stock photo, the model release should specify that the image may be used in contexts outside the subject’s control—sometimes with unintended implications.

Example: You find a stock photo closeup of hands holding on to vertical metal bars. You use that photo as part of a blog post, brochure, or TikTok video about incarceration and prison reform. A casual viewer might reasonably assume that the hands belong to someone who is actually incarcerated. Strangely enough, some photo subjects might find that very troubling and unexpected.

Alternately, what if the photo’s subject doesn’t even know about the photo? I know of one publisher who printed books with a cover featuring a woman who was not even aware that the photo was taken. She certainly hadn’t given permission for it to be published, much less as a cover image. The publisher had to pay to obtain her permission after printing — or face pulping the first print run — because she discovered the photo and was not pleased about it.

If you use stock photos (free or paid), usually the photographer (and copyright holder) has already obtained the model releases and can confirm that the subjects of the photo have consented to use of the stock photo.

Video Clips & Stills

Publishing a clip or screenshot from a video is a bit iffy if permission has not been obtained. Producers and studios behind movies, TV shows, and original YouTube content can and do send cease/desist letters or submit DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices all the time when they become aware of infringement. Lots of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram influencers have experienced having their videos/reels removed because a snippet of someone's movie or song played inadvertently in the background of a video. Fair use claims are often not recognized (or you have to spend time and money fighting that fight).

Photos of Artwork

In the United States, if the artwork in question is itself under copyright (created on or after January 1929, at this writing), you can’t just publish your own photo of it and claim that the photo falls under your copyright. The photo acts as a sort of “pass-through window” that inherits the copyright status of the artist’s work, and permission from the artist is required. After all, you’re not really publishing your own photo, in this case — you’re publishing the work of the artist. Case law suggests you don’t really even own copyright in the photo, if you haven’t added anything creative to it yourself.

This gets into larger questions about two-dimensional vs. three-dimensional art, as well as derivative art you might create by taking or editing a photo in a way (framing, lighting, special effects) that adds a new creative dimension to the original artwork. But the above explanation is a good general rule to keep in mind.

Because a straight-up (non-artsy, non-creative) photo of artwork inherits the copyright status of the artwork, that does mean you can use a photo of art whose copyright has expired. Similarly, Wikipedia recognizes such photos as public domain if they are posted to its website. If you want to pull a photo of the Mona Lisa from Wikipedia, you can do that.

Takeaways

• If you print or post photos or images for non-journalistic purposes, you do need permission from the copyright holder (assuming it’s not you).

• Unless the copyright holder explicitly allows use without acknowledgment, assume that you should put a credit line.

• Free stock photography websites like Unsplash and Pexels have already obtained permission from the uploading photographers for visitors to use images without credit.

• Photos of people carry an extra moral and legal burden of ensuring that the subjects have knowingly consented to be featured in a photo used for publication.

• Publishing photos from movies, TV, or other videos is especially iffy. I just would avoid these altogether.

• Photos of artwork inherit the copyright status of the original artwork.

Did you pick up any new ideas here? Want to add your own insights? Respond in the comments! ↓

If you found this especially useful, won’t you buy me a coffee?

Want to talk to me about your project? Head over to my Contact page and tell me what you’re working on!

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Recently, a prospective client contacted me with a request. They were publishing their dissertation as a monograph, and the publisher asked them to reduce it from 150,000 words to 130,000 words—or about 13% of the text.

Dear Reader, we did it—and I’m here now to tell you how you can do it, too. (Fear not: I’ve anonymized the details here to protect the client’s confidentiality, but these strategies work for most projects where a manuscript needs to be shortened.)

When you have this much to trim, you have to look at both the big picture and the details. These tips will point you in useful directions, whether you’re trimming your own work or someone else’s.

Big-Picture (Macro) Approach to Cutting Text

The big-picture approach is fundamentally a development editing approach: namely, start by outlining the project.

Fire up a blank Word or Excel file alongside the manuscript, or go old-school with a legal pad and your favorite pen. Outline in detail—paragraph by paragraph if it helps—making sure you capture every change of subject, every topic with its supporting arguments, and especially any text that seems redundant, circular, or digressive. (For a really deep exploration of this method, check chapter 2 of Scott Norton’s Developmental Editing, now in its second edition.)

When writing, we commonly add what I call “scaffolds.” When a house is built, the general contractor erects scaffolds to support the workers while they make the building as strong as can be. Just so, we writers often add extra frameworks, explanations, and signposts as we construct our arguments. These scaffolds purport to tell readers what we’re going to say, what we’re saying now, and what we just said (like that 5-paragraph essay format we learned in school). Sometimes the scaffolds go into deep background on a subject to ensure readers have enough context to understand the point.

But when we stand back and look at the finished product, we begin to see that the scaffolds, so necessary during construction, can now come down.

So outline the project. Then look for those bits of scaffold that helped the writing stay on track at some earlier point. Are they still necessary? Would the argument be stronger if they come out? Does some tangent that seemed essential at the time now serve only to distract? Does the text make the same point over and over, in a mediocre way, when it could instead make the point once, powerfully, at just the right moment?

Use the outlining insights to prune the text. Take down that scaffolding! This isn’t the time (yet) for a line edit. That comes next. For now, you’re making the content lean and strong.

Line Editing (Micro) Approach to Eliminating Wordiness: 11 Tips

Say you’ve eliminated all redundant text—or you’ve outlined the draft, and the content seems pretty tight. But you still need to cut length.

That’s when a line editor’s mindset can help you go word by word, phrase by phrase, to make the writing more succinct. The work can be painstaking, but little by little you shave words—and by the end of the project, you might find that you’ve shaved as much as 10%. (If you’re like me, you might keep a running tally of original word count versus the new word count. Watching the word count drop is pretty gratifying.)

Here are 11 hidden opportunities to tighten language—and often make it more active and vibrant in the process. Winning!

1. Eliminate “It is,” “There are,” “There is,” and “There are” constructions.

2. Change passive voice to active voice.

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is the object receiving the action. Usually the actor, or agent, is buried in a prepositional phrase (“by X” being most common) or is entirely omitted. In active voice, by contrast, the subject of the sentence is generally the one performing the action described by the verb.

When I taught freshman composition, this was my favorite passive voice example:

“My friend was scammed out of $1 million.”

You feel bad for my friend, right? Now consider:

“My friend was scammed out of $1 million by me.”

You still feel bad for my friend—but now you have a pretty dim view of me, don’t you?

Passive voice can be useful. Sometimes the text obscures the actor on purpose, as in a thriller novel (the text isn’t ready to reveal who killed Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick) or a lab report (the person who filled the beaker with 100ml of hydrochloric acid isn’t relevant).

But sometimes passive voice is just plain ... passive. It’s dull. It obscures meaning and makes text a snoozefest. It also happens to be more wordy than active voice.

3. Use possessives and adjectives in place of certain prepositional phrases.

4. Turn certain linking verbs with adjectives into active verbs.

5. Remove “throat clearing,” disclaimers, and hedging language (very common in academic writing).

6. Remove lurking redundancies.

7. Turn progressive verbs into simple verbs.

8. Remove “woulds.”

9. This tip comes from Thomas Jefferson, who reportedly celebrated “the most valuable of all talents”: namely, “never using two words where one will do.”

10. Rhetorical questions can often be deleted.

Sometimes the answer appears in the very next sentence, which can stand on its own; and sometimes the question can be rephrased as a declarative sentence.

11. Turn Latinate noun and prepositional phrases into verbs.

Disclaimers & Takeaways

Should you plunk yourself down to apply these tips religiously the next time you need to tighten text and cut length? Of course not.

Rules are made to be broken, and suggestions are just that. Sometimes passive voice is warranted. Sometimes phrasing and rhythm sounds better with “in spite of” instead of “despite.” Sometimes the voice of the text requires keeping at least some of these expressions and phrases to sound individual and warm-blooded, not generic and corporate.

But when you need to slash a large percentage of text, as I did in the project I mentioned, sometimes you have to “kill your darlings,” as the saying goes. Sometimes the task calls for a ruthless approach to accomplish a larger end: meeting a target word count for a publisher, for example, or simply eliminating beloved word salads so the text becomes more lively and attention-grabbing for the reader.

In those cases, I hope you find these suggestions helpful. Have others? Drop them in the comments!

Did you pick up any new ideas here? Want to add your own insights? Respond in the comments! ↓

If you found this especially useful, won’t you buy me a coffee?

Want to talk to me about your project? Head over to my Contact page and tell me what you’re working on!

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This week I conducted my second annual solo business retreat and came up with all kinds of cool plans for 2024! I got the idea from a 2022 episode of Melanie Padgett Powers’s Deliberate Freelancer podcast, so my thanks to MelEdits for introducing this amazing business development idea to me.

In January 2023 I first discovered how rejuvenating and inspiring a solo business retreat can be. Businesses with employees lead strategic planning retreats all the time—so what makes the sole proprietor, freelancer, and gig worker any different? We need to plan and reconnect with our inspirations too!

Now, one thing about me is that I love data. I love metrics and spreadsheets and processes and pivot tables and pie charts. So while my retreat approach serves to reinspire and reinvigorate me, my agenda is data-driven, because my brain needs data to inform my motivation.

Thus, my approach might not work for everyone. You might prefer a more spirit-centric approach or need to focus on rejuvenation and downtime. But even if my style is not quite your speed, take the ideas here that resonate and build the retreat agenda that works for you.

Preparation

Scheduling

• Timing. I schedule mine at (or near) the start of the year. This year I had some 2023 projects to wrap up first, so I penciled “Business Retreat Morning” into my calendar for my first free day. Getting the lingering deadlines off my plate put me in a great mood to start thinking about 2024 in earnest. Melanie says she conducts her retreats at least every 6 months and sometimes has a mini retreat every quarter, so that’s an option if your work lends itself to quarterly reviews.

• Duration. I allow a half day for my annual business retreat. Any shorter, and it’s too hard to get through my full agenda. Any longer, and I run out of steam (and blood sugar). Personally, I like to schedule it for a morning, so I come to it fresh, instead of trying to switch gears after several hours of work. You know your rhythms and schedule best—you do you.

• Venue. Think about where you want to have your retreat. If possible, try to get offsite or go somewhere unusual—perhaps a tiny bit decadent, but above all with minimal distractions. An overnight stay in a delightful hotel is too extravagant for my business budget. But I like spending the morning at a more upscale coffee shop with café music, free Wi-Fi, power outlets, and espresso drinks. Usually I’m surrounded by other people studying, working, and even having quiet business meetings. It’s a conducive environment for me. Figure out yours!

Gathering Materials

These materials can take time to assemble or develop. Last year I made the mistake of trying to build them on the fly during my retreat, which bogged down the whole process. So I recommend starting to gather these materials at least a week in advance.

• Financials. Create 4 reports for the previous year—ideally as separate worksheets (tabs) in a single Excel file or Google Sheet. My data-driven approach works best if you have at least a basic comfort with spreadsheets. You want to be able to sort them, calculate totals and percentages, and even create graphs.

  • Profit & Loss—This statement summarizes your gross revenue, net operating expenses, and net revenue (income minus expenses).

  • Expenses—Mine tracks every expenditure with columns for date, vendor, expense category, and amount. Then I classify every expense with one of 3 standard labels: “one-time,” “ongoing-cancel,” and “ongoing-keep.”

  • Income Summary by Client—Give each client their own line, with columns for each client’s name, overall revenue (all invoices), total number of projects, and average time to payment.

  • Invoices by Service—List each invoice with columns for date, invoice number, client name, amount, and service type.

NOTE: If you don’t already do rock-solid bookkeeping all year long, take this as my friendly nudge to get a system. I use Zoho Books (click the button to visit my affiliate link at no cost to you)—but any Excel or Google Sheet beats a shoebox of invoices and receipts. Most bookkeeping systems allow you to run these reports and output them as Excel or CSV files, so you can analyze the data in a spreadsheet.

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• Other Metrics. Depending on your business and your focus, you can create reports analyzing all kinds of things. Consider these examples: billable vs. nonbillable time percentages for the year; time percentages broken down by your services; how time for each project goes to onboarding vs. the contracted work; your effective hourly rates (EHR) for each service; and so much more.

• Previous Goals. If you previously set any goals, even informal ones, put those in a list that you can mark up and evaluate.

• Office Supplies. I prefer to do everything digitally, so I just type notes as I go, and I have a tablet app that allows me to brainstorm with a stylus. If you’re more visual or kinesthetic, consider what office supplies get your creative juices flowing (as appropriate for your venue). Whiteboard? Large notebook with bright flags and sticky notes? A fresh bullet journal with colorful markers? Go for it!

A Sample Annual Retreat Agenda

Many solopreneurs suggest planning a solo retreat like any business planning retreat. You can think of the items as “departments,” with you wearing the different hats: CEO, CFO, CAO, HR, R&D, and anything else that deserves special attention.

This sample outline is based on the one I have developed. Adapt it further as needed, especially if you’re reviewing a different time frame or you need to build in more time for inspiration and warm fuzzies.

1. Opening Reflection and Intention

Whether you’re spiritual, religious, or neither, take a few moments to clear your mind and set an intention for this retreat. My agenda relies on metrics and analyses, so it’s easy to lose sight of the larger retreat goal: strategy, motivation, inspiration, and reconnecting with your why.

So order and sip your beverage of choice (I hope you got something delicious). Take some deep breaths. If you pray, then give thanks and pray for guidance during this time. If you don’t, consider meditating on your gratitude for taking this time to reconnect with your business. Then get started!

2. The Fives

This is not my original idea, but I can’t remember where I got it from now. (If you’re reading this, and it sounds like you, message me and I’ll update this to give you full credit.) Basically, this builds on your retreat intention by starting to get more granular.

• List 5 things you loved about last year, or your 5 wins.

• List 5 things you didn’t love so much about last year.

3. Finance & Accounting

• Review your Profit & Loss report.

  • What surprises you?

  • What’s the dollar difference between your gross and net income? Are you happy with that? Why or why not?

• Review your Expenses report. If you made a budget for last year, compare budgeted amounts to actual amounts.

  • Sort the statement by the expense category column. Look at the items in each category. Are those expenses justified, in retrospect?

  • Sort the report by the classification column. Do you still agree with the classifications you originally assigned? For example, can you perhaps cancel any “ongoing-keep” expenses after all? Are any one-time expenses likely to become annual expenses?

• Draft a budget for this fiscal year.

  • Use the same standard expense categories. For the “ongoing-keep” expenses, you know roughly how much to budget. But don’t overlook “one-time” expenses—office supplies are office supplies, even if you buy pens this year and notebooks next year.

  • Consider a tentative income goal that will allow you to cover expenses and ideally profit.

4. Evaluation of Prior Year’s Goals

Even if you didn’t write down your goals, you probably had some at the back of your mind. Write those down so you can look at them.

When we look at prior goals, we learn as much from the ones we met as we do from the ones we didn’t meet. An unmet goal is not a failure—it’s a lens for you to look at what you really enjoy and want to focus on.

You do this step after the Finance & Accounting agenda item, so you’ll know whether you met your income goals.

• Which goals did you meet? How do you feel about those?

• Which goals fell by the wayside, and why? Are there any you want to recommit to this year? Which ones will you just let go, and why?

5. Human Resources—You!

You are a valued employee. Your business literally doesn’t exist without you. How many W-2 jobs can you say that about?

So now that you’ve done a financial overview and evaluated prior year’s goals, consider your own level of job satisfaction, mental and physical well-being, and self-care. Take notes as you reflect on these questions, and use them as a lens to view the analyses to follow.

• What is your current work schedule? Does it work for you, or would you be more productive at a different time of day, or in different time blocks? When do you do your best detail work, and when are you usually ready for some basic administrivia?

• How is your health? Are you building in breaks to get up and move? (Stetwalk, anyone?) Are you making time for medical checkups? Are you making healthy eating choices, or are you burning the midnight oil fueled by Grubhub a lot of the time? (I’m just asking; it’s not like I ever do that, sheesh.)

• Look back at the Fives you started with. What’s your current level of job satisfaction? What makes you excited to start work every day? What fills you with dread—and does it need to, or can you pivot from that?

6. Client Evaluations

• Brainstorm 5-7 key intangible qualities that you value in clients. Here are mine (shamelessly borrowed from Melanie): potential or actual repeat client, pays well, pays fast, nice/fun to work with, sends work I enjoy, want to work with them again. (I find that my Fives affect my ratings here.)

• Open the Income Summary by Client report. In the heading row, to the right of your current headings, add a column for each intangible quality you just came up with. Then rank each client on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “oof!” and 5 being “love!”

  • Add two more columns to calculate average and total scores for each client. (If you’re comfortable with formulas, create formulas for each. Otherwise, calculate manually.)

  • Sort your clients primarily by total and/or average scores, and secondarily by income. Now look at the results. Who bobs up to the top like a cork? Who is ranked higher or lower than you expected? Who are your anchor clients?

• Now look again at just your anchor clients. Which ones fill you with happiness? Which ones fill you with ennui? Can you afford to part ways with the clients who don’t spark joy? Can you upsell your high-ranking clients on your other services—or pivot to add services that would interest them?

7. Service Evaluations

• Open your Invoices by Service report. If you didn’t already classify each invoice according to the type of service you provided, do that now.

• Sort the list by service type. Either manually or using formulas, calculate (1) the income totals for each service type and then (2) the percentage of income each service type brings you.

  • What are your top 3 services by income? Which 3 do you enjoy the most? Where do these overlap, or not?

  • Similarly, what are the bottom 3 services by income and enjoyment, and where do they overlap?

  • Are you struggling with any of these services? Where could you find additional training to grow?

• What insights can you derive about what you want to keep doing? What service types do you want to grow, so you can do more of them? What services would you like to leave behind?

8. Operations Audit

• Which of your business processes are running well? Where are your pain points?

• Do you need to change, expand, or try out new processes this year to grow your business?

• Did your review of expenses reveal any redundancies or remind you of services that you pay for but don’t use? Can you cancel them, or can you make better use of them?

As an example, last year I realized how much I loathe the multi-day emailed back-and-forth of setting up a simple 30-minute discovery call. So I decided to find an online meeting scheduler that syncs with my calendars and can be embedded on my website. I have saved so much time and hassle this year as a result.

Don’t do the research at this point. Just identify the needs so you can set related goals later.

9. New Initiatives

• What would you love to be doing a year from now?

• What new services are your clients asking for, or outsourcing to other contractors? What abilities do you have that you could convert to a service?

• What continuing education or new training do you want to pursue this year, and how will this improve your business or your job satisfaction?

10. Final Goal Setting

1. Set one big business intention or vision for the year. Think really big-picture here. This goal should be your guiding light for the next year—make your decisions with this goal in mind, or have a good reason for making a decision that doesn’t perfectly align with the goal. What will make you look back on this year with satisfaction?

2. Set gross and net revenue goals for the year. Then finalize your draft budget file and save a shortcut on your desktop, so you can check it periodically.

3. Set client goals, such as how many clients to retain from last year, how many new clients to land, or one new service or product you want to start upselling.

4. Set service goals. Do you want to add a passive income stream? Do you want to get training to add a service? Do you want to add or subtract any of your services? Add these here.

5. Set personal work-life balance goals to promote your happiness and well-being. (This year I’m drinking more water and starting the day with a dance party with OfficeDog Zuzu.)

6. Ensure your goals are measurable. Instead of “find new clients,” for example, try “find 3 new medical journal clients.” That way next year, you can tell how well you did in meeting those goals.

7. Brainstorm 3-5 next steps toward those measurable goals—just enough to keep the momentum going with concrete plans once you finish this retreat.

8. Think about ways to hold yourself accountable. Do you have colleagues you can check in with (and hold accountable in turn)? Would you stay on track if you post your goals on social media?

9. But leave room for pleasant surprises! I never got around to two of my 2023 goals because I had two new amazing anchor clients fall into my lap. Those goals are still on my radar, but they’re more of a 5-year target now.

11. Final Reflection

Take 5 minutes again just to clear your mind. Find your gratitude for the year you just completed, and reconnect with your excitement and motivation for the new year to come. And then take that gratitude and motivation out with you as you conclude this retreat.

After the Retreat

Decide on a way to creatively post your big business goal, your smaller annual goals, and your next steps where you can see them. For example, use Canva to turn them into colorful signs you can post around your workspace, so they are beautiful and visible.

Additional Resources

When I planned my first retreat last year, I scoured colleagues’ advice. So here is a link roundup to keep inspiring you!

• “How You Can Create Your Own Solo Business Retreat” (blog post) and “Host a Solo Business Retreat” (podcast episode) both by Melanie Padgett Powers, my inspiration

• “Finishing Up Your Business Plan,” by Virginia Sole-Smith (blog post)—Melanie credits this post for the Client Evaluations idea

• “Business Retreat Tips for Solopreneurs,” by Sagan Morrow (blog post)

• “How to Take a Solo Business Retreat,” by 100 Degrees Consulting (blog post)

The Takeaway

An annual solo business retreat is a great chance for you to regroup from the previous year, shake the dust off your boots, and reengage with your business in a fresh way for the new year. If you try it, let me know how it goes for you! Just drop a comment or hit me up on social media!

Did you pick up any new ideas here? Want to add your own insights? Respond in the comments! ↓

If you found this especially useful, won’t you buy me a coffee?

Want to talk to me about your project? Head over to my Contact page and tell me what you’re working on!

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When my kid was in second grade, she was diagnosed with high-functioning autism. Needless to say, her homeroom teacher, IEP* case manager, and I emailed a lot that first year of her diagnosis. At the time, all teachers were so overwhelmed with pandemic complications and expectations that some left teaching entirely to find peace.

I never wanted to burden my kid’s teachers, but we had a lot to coordinate with my daughter’s IEP. So I was so grateful for how her teachers concluded every email reply: “Thank you for the good communication!”

It’s a startling thing to say, isn’t it? Said the wrong way, at the wrong time, by a snarkier person, it almost sounds passive-aggressive. But in fact they were appreciative of my open communication with them, and they reciprocated with good communication to keep me in the loop about something as important as my daughter’s development.

These exchanges got me thinking. How can we freelancers make “good communication” more intentional? On social media, we encounter writers complaining that they’ve been ghosted by their editor. Conversely, sometimes editors grouse when a client seems to need extra reassurance, even though the project might well be the client’s baby.

As freelancers well versed in the arcane details of our craft, we forget sometimes that clients, especially indie authors, might not know how to navigate the editorial and production workflow. And even those who do know it well, like publishers, don’t necessarily know the specifics of our own business workflows.

Saying that the anxieties of both clients and editors can be assuaged by, yes, good communication seems self-evident. But so many breakdowns in client/freelancer communications can be traced to (a) not communicating (b) the right information (c) frequently enough.

So here I offer five crucial communication strategies to boost how (and how often) we freelancers communicate with our clients. Full disclosure: I’m still working on these myself!

Strategy 1: Answer all business emails within 2 business days.

Strategy 2: Check in with your client soon after starting the project.

Strategy 3: Check in with your client on a regular schedule (hint: put it on your calendar).

Strategy 4: Use boilerplate, especially when you deliver the project.

Strategy 5: Follow up 1-2 weeks after file delivery or the project conclusion.

Strategy 1: Answer all business emails within 2 business days.

You know the feeling: You find someone to make a custom cake for your special event. They ask you to send them an email, or fill out their contact form. And … crickets. For days. Did they get the email? Does the contact form vanish into a black hole when you click “submit”? Do you need to call them back? Would it be better to put that effort into contacting the next prospect?

That’s why my standard policy is to answer all business emails within 2 business days max. (I always say “2 business days” instead of “48 hours” to set the expectation immediately that weekends are for family and self-care, not business.)

My regular clients get so used to my responsiveness that if I don’t respond to them in that time frame, they realize. there’s a good chance their email went into the spam folder and I didn’t see it. So they know to check in, and they know I’ll be grateful they did.

What if you don’t have an answer for someone in that time frame? Still send the email! Ensure they feel seen and heard! Use this swipe copy if you like:

I’m replying to acknowledge your email. I don’t have an answer for you yet because [I need to research it / I’m on a tight deadline; my whole family has COVID-19 / whatever the reason is]. But I didn’t want to leave you hanging, so expect to hear back from me within [state a time frame you can confidently commit to—and then try to get back to them sooner].

And just for good measure, consider adding: Thanks for the good communication!

Strategy 2: Check in with your client soon after starting the project.

Whether you’re editing a 5-hour job or a 5-week (or 5-month) job, check in with your client early in the project.

Case in point: When I’m copyediting a book, I try to send the client a file of their first few pages (or a full section or even a chapter), fully edited, with my editorial style sheet recording decisions. I aim to complete this within the first week of starting the work, if it’s a multi-week edit. This practice has a few benefits:

• I can gather and ask initial, clarifying questions to determine how I edit the rest of the manuscript.

• The client gets to review my initial editorial approach. They can let me know if they like what I see, if they want me to change something I’m doing, or if they need to clarify some error on my part.

• The client and I can check our expectations and alignment before I get too far into the project—and avoid wasting time and effort by going down some rabbit hole.

• The client appreciates my transparency and is relieved to see that work is underway. Anxieties can be settled, and rapport is built.

Variations

• Short turnaround projects: Check in within a couple hours of starting work. A short time frame is all the more reason to check whether you’re giving the client what they expect, so you don’t waste limited time and give them something they can’t use.

• Delayed project start: Say you’ve booked a 4-week edit that has to start 3 weeks from now because of your current backlog. Make sure your client knows when you expect to start the project—name a date if possible, and write it into your contract if you can. (You have a contract—right?) Tell them you plan to send them this initial editing sample soon after you start work. Then follow through!

Strategy 3: Check in with your client on a regular schedule.

Imagine you’re a client, and your baby—the book into which you’ve poured sweat and tears and love and time—is with your editor and out of your hands for the moment. Whether you’ve worked with this editor before or you’re new to one another, you have anxiety. How’s it going? How far has the editor gotten with it? What does the editor think so far? Is it on schedule?

On social media, many writers lament how hard it is for their books to be out of their control during the editing phase. (This anxiety is one reason Google Docs has become popular, I believe. Writers hope to see their editors working in real-time in the Google ecosystem, even though Docs lacks the robust editing tools available to us editors in Microsoft Word.)

This anxiety is reasonable, and it’s exacerbated when the client gets only radio silence from their editor.

So freelancers: don’t leave your clients hanging! Make it part of your workflow to email the clients of your current projects on Monday mornings with a quick update. (Or Wednesdays, or Fridays—the point is to pick a specific set weekday and make it part of your routine.)

It doesn’t have to be detailed or time-consuming. Just cover three basic points:

• Describe in general terms how the work is going. (Smoothly, one hopes—but be transparent if you’ve hit an obstacle, and explain why and how you’re leaping over it.)

• Quantify your progress. You’re on chapter 3, or you’ve finished checking all the citations, or you’ve done a first full pass and now you’re working through your list of final checks.

• Ask any questions that came up during the preceding week’s work. (Does the client prefer the English or German spelling of Handel’s name? Are we capitalizing or lowercasing “confirmation” as the name of a sacrament? Which year was that “recent” development they keep mentioning?) Better yet, share your current editorial style sheet and ask your client to offer any feedback. This detail will allow your final pass to be on target with the client’s style preferences.

Variations

• Short turnaround projects: Email the client at the approximate mid-point of either the project or the turnaround time. Cover the same three points.

• Delayed project start: Remember that 4-week edit scheduled to start 3 weeks from now? Email the client on Mondays even if you haven’t started work, just to reassure them that their project is still on your radar and that your schedule is still on track. If it’s not, again, tell them that and explain how you’ll make up for it.

Strategy 4: Use boilerplate, especially when you deliver the project.

One reason that we don’t communicate as often as we could is that we’re juggling a lot of teacups. One way to reduce our workload and communicate better at the same time is to create a boilerplate library. (This is one of my 2023 business goals, in fact!)

For the uninitiated, “boilerplate” is a colloquial term describing standard text that you write and polish once—and then use everywhere you need it. Contracts are often boilerplate text, for example: they don’t get rewritten anew every time a new contract is called for. Often they’re a template that gets reused and tweaked as needed.

Boilerplate email templates allow me to communicate essential information to each client without having to reinvent the wheel every time. (You could create boilerplate for that weekly check-in email in strategy 3, and just fill in the details for each client each week.)

So, for example, I now have a boilerplate email for a crucial event in the life of a project: sending an edited file back to the client to review. My boilerplate indicates that I have locked Track Changes on, instructs the client how to work within Track Changes and answer queries, and reminds them not to use older versions of their file.

Automating business tasks is one of my hobbies (no, really), and creating a boilerplate library is already paying dividends in streamlining my client relations and workflow.

Strategy 5: Follow up 1-2 weeks after file delivery or the project conclusion.

After you deliver an edited project and send the invoice, do you need to continue communicating? Absolutely!

When you deliver an edited file (whether that’s the end of a phase or of the whole project),  check in with your client 1-2 weeks later.

• Ask whether the work met their needs and expectations.

• Offer to answer any questions or clarify proposed edits.

• If they’re reviewing a file they need to return to you, ask when they plan to return their feedback for the next phase or cleanup edit.

• If you’re emailing after the project is done, ask them for feedback for next time (converting a new client to a regular client is the best), and perhaps ask for a testimonial you can include in your marketing outreach.

By inviting feedback a couple weeks after a phase or project concludes, you again demonstrate transparency and build rapport. (And yes, you can write boilerplate for this check-in email too. That way you just have to remember to tweak and send it, without worrying about carving out time to draft it fresh.)

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The TL;DR

Follow these five strategies, and hopefully your clients will be saying to you: “Thanks for the good communication!”

Did you pick up any new ideas here? Want to share your own strategies? Respond in the comments! ↓

If you found this especially useful, won’t you buy me a coffee?

* An IEP is an individualized education program crafted to ensure that a child with disabilities receives the services necessary to provide them with the free appropriate public education (FAPE) to which they are entitled by law. Learn more about parenting an autistic child at HelpGuide.org.

Want to talk to me about your project? Head over to my Contact page and tell me what you’re working on!

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If you’re an indie author writing a book or other resource for Catholics, then you have already discerned that God has put a book in your heart. Through the Holy Spirit, he is calling you to write something that only you can write, to bring the faithful closer to him.

As a unique child of God, you bring your own qualifications to your project. Maybe you have an advanced theology or ministry degree. Or you’ve been an active member of your Church’s Bible study for years. Perhaps you, like my dear departed grandfather, are such a faithful fixture at Eucharistic Adoration that you have keys to the chapel. Perhaps you appreciate sacred art, and you want to make it more accessible to the faithful.

So you write and revise your book, making it the best it can be. You run it past people you trust. Then you revise some more.

At some point, you’ll probably hear about the imprimatur (and its cousins, the nihil obstat and the imprimi potest). You might be told that you need an imprimatur, or you’ll spy an imprimatur on the copyright pages of Catholic books you admire and wonder whether and how to get it.

This blog post answers a lot of the questions you might have about the imprimatur:

• What is the imprimatur—and who grants it

• Which books need an imprimatur vs. which books don’t (but might benefit)

• What you need to know about getting the imprimatur as an indie author with plans to self-publish

• How one archdiocese is working with indie authors seeking the imprimatur

• One alternative for books that aren’t eligible for the imprimatur

What Is an Imprimatur, and Why Is It Important?

Title IV of the Code of Canon Law, titled “Instruments of Social Communication and Books in Particular,” kicks us off: “The pastors of the Church, using a right proper to the Church in fulfilling their function, are to endeavor to make use of the instruments of social communication” (c. 822 §1).

The term imprimatur doesn’t appear directly in canon law. It is part of the process developed to support this section of canon law. (Full disclosure: I am not a canonist, but these canons are right there for anyone to read for themselves.)

So let’s define our terms.

Imprimatur

The Latin word imprimatur literally means “let it be printed.” An imprimatur is granted by the local ordinary, or bishop. (Here, “pastors of the Church” refers to the bishops and the Pope.)

Why is this necessary in church law? Canon 823 §1 explains it beautifully:

• Each bishop has a duty “to preserve the integrity of the truths of faith and morals.”

• Each bishop has “the duty and right to be watchful so that no harm is done to the faith or morals of the Christian faithful through writings.”

So what is the exact nature of the bishop’s duty? Again from canon 823 §1:

• Each bishop has a responsibility “to demand that writings to be published by the Christian faithful which touch upon faith or morals be submitted to their judgment” (emphasis mine).

• Likewise, each bishop must “condemn writings which harm correct faith or good morals.”

To summarize: Because of his role as shepherd, a bishop has the responsibility to protect the faith and morals of his flock. One way he does so is by ensuring that written materials claiming to be Catholic—that is, they’re intended for the use of Catholics—are consistent with Scripture and Tradition.

Note that this imprimatur doesn’t mean a book is well-written, nor does it signify that the Church endorses all of the ideas in it. It mainly means that the book doesn’t contradict church teaching. The bishop has determined it will not harm the faith and morals of Catholics who read it.

Nihil Obstat

Now, you might wonder: Aren’t bishops busy? How do they have time to review manuscripts?

That’s where the nihil obstat comes in.

Nihil obstat is Latin for “nothing is standing in the way.” In many (even most) books with an imprimatur, you’ll see it’s accompanied by a nihil obstat from someone called a censor librorum. How do all these terms connect?

Bishops are busy. So although a bishop has the right to review all written materials himself—and some bishops enjoy doing so—many bishops delegate the initial vetting to their Office of Canonical Affairs. Then the following process ensues:

1. Canonical Affairs designates a censor librorum to review the book to ensure that it conforms to church teaching and has nothing that contradicts it. Commonly called “the censor,” this expert can be staff or else an outside expert who has agreed to conduct these reviews for the diocese. (ETA that the diocese pays the censor—I’ve heard rates of $4 per 1,000 words—and the author or publisher reimburses the diocese. In other words, indie authors should be prepared to compensate the censor for their work.)

2. Once the censor completes their work, assuming they find that the material is consistent with church teaching and contains nothing problematic, they issue the nihil obstat.

3. Once the nihil obstat is granted, then the bishop may accept the censor’s finding and grant the imprimatur to the book. (Note that the nihil obstat is not a guarantee; a bishop may still decline an imprimatur for any number of reasons, and he has final say under canon law.)

Naturally, the process can become complicated, depending on the project and diocesan policies—but this three-step explanation gives you the general idea.

Bonus Round: Imprimi Potest

Imprimi potest means “it can be printed.” You don’t see as many of these in books published today, for the simple reason that it is issued by the religious superior of a writer who is a member of a religious order.

Which Catholic Books Must Have an Imprimatur?

What kinds of books must be approved by the bishop?

Canon 824 §2 offers a pretty broad answer: “Those things established regarding books [intended for the faithful] . . . must be applied to any writings whatsoever which are destined for public distribution” (emphasis mine).

Subsequent canons single out a few specific genres and materials for special consideration. The following bullets are relevant especially to Catholic indie authors:

• Prayer books (including scriptural meditations, novenas, devotionals)—Canon 826 §3 requires that prayer books be approved by the bishop before publication for use by the faithful, whether they’re intended for public or private use.

• Catechetical and Catechism-adjacent books—These also require the approval of the bishop for use and/or publication in his diocese. Furthermore:

  • Student textbooks on “sacred scripture, theology, canon law, ecclesiastical history, and religious or moral disciplines” cannot be used for any kind or level of Catholic education (from parish RE to grade school to high school on up) “unless they have been published with the approval of competent ecclesiastical authority or have been approved by it subsequently” (c. 827 §2).

  • In the United States, the “approval of competent ecclesiastical authority” commonly entails a conformity review by the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the Catechism.

  • US dioceses often (but not always) require their Catholic schools to use curriculum materials from the subcommittee’s “Conformity List,” unless materials for a specific course or subject are exempt from that review.

• Books on Scripture, canon law, church history, Catholic doctrine, and other Catholic topics in faith and morality—Canon 827 §3 says that “it is recommended” that these also be submitted for approval by the bishop. Note: The bishop’s approval might not be required for publication or sale in general, but a bishop must approve any materials intended for sale or distribution on church properties.

In summary: Your scriptural rosary, meditation on Catholic family life, or booklet explaining the Crusades that you want to make available in the back of your parish sanctuary? It needs a bishop’s imprimatur before you can sell or distribute it on church property.

A Note About Fiction

Did you notice that fiction is missing from the list? In general, fiction books tend not to be eligible for the imprimatur, presumably because the nature of fiction makes it difficult to review for full adherence to Church doctrine. I’ve seen exceptions, such as for children’s picture books, but my understanding is that those are eligible under the “catechetical materials” umbrella.

So How Does an Indie Author Obtain the Imprimatur?

It really depends on your diocese and the policies set forth by your bishop and his Canonical Affairs staff.

Per canon 824 §1, the local ordinary who can grant an imprimatur must be either the author’s bishop or the publisher’s bishop. So if you’re an indie author publishing your own book, your own diocesan bishop checks both “local ordinary” boxes.

That’s where things get sticky. Some dioceses have a blanket policy of not considering self-published books for the imprimatur. Why?

Why Some Dioceses Won’t Consider Self-Published Books

Although the imprimatur signifies that nothing in the book contradicts Catholic teaching, additional considerations come into play when a book has an indie author:

• What if the book is ridded with typos? What if the organization is jumbled? At what point might editorial issues harm the faith and morals of Catholic readers, simply because they create the potential for misunderstanding?

• What if the book infringes on someone’s copyright, intentionally or unintentionally? Take that further—what if the infringed copyright is held by the Holy See or the US Conference of Catholic Bishops? And then what if the bishop or his censor doesn’t catch it, and someone else calls it out? An imprimatur could wind up embarrassing the bishop in this situation.

• What if the book doesn’t use approved Bible translations, magisterial texts, or conciliar documents? What if that Mother Teresa quotation is taken out of context, because the author found it on WikiQuote but didn’t read the source text?

Diocesan staff know that Catholic publishing professionals spend years learning the unique aspects of doing development editing, copyediting, and permissions editing for Catholic materials. So when a Catholic publisher approaches a diocese to obtain an imprimatur, Canonical Affairs knows that the project has already been through professional development before it hits their inbox.

But Canonical Affairs staff cannot assume that an indie author’s book is production-ready and professional, and they don’t always have the time to do this due diligence themselves. And given the potential for the bishop to wind up looking bad? Many Canonical Affairs staff simply won’t consider an indie book for the imprimatur.

Why Some Dioceses Are Starting to Consider Self-Pubbed Books

As a devoted Catholic who has read this far, you know and accept that church law governs how a book can get out to the masses (and the Masses). Historically, manuscripts get recognized as “legitimate” because a traditional publisher acquires them.

Unfortunately, not every qualified, Spirit-filled manuscript finds a traditional publisher. That’s one reason vanity presses have for centuries preyed on people with something to say, but nowhere to say it.

But lo, there is good news! Today, affordable print-on-demand and digital distribution empower anyone with something to say to actually say it—and publish it, and distribute it. As an indie author, you may or may not have publishing experience—but it is easier than ever to line up the professional services you need to help you polish your book and send it into the world.

Accordingly, some dioceses are recognizing that a blanket policy excluding all self-published books might exclude some really valuable resources. Yet canon law recommends (and in some cases requires) that they be reviewed and approved by the bishop.

So what are your options, O Indie Author? The next two sections lay out a case study for a diocesan pilot project I helped develop, followed by the only viable alternative I’m aware of.

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A Case Study: How One Diocese Is Handling Self-Published Books

For a couple years, I’ve been doing a pilot project with a US diocese (that I’m not at liberty to name). The diocese recognized that good projects—manuscripts with real merit, with something to offer the Catholic faithful—were being self-published. A former client gave my name to the vice chancellor for Canonical Affairs, who called me.

How It Started

“I have a couple of folks who are looking to do some things probably in the self-publishing realm,” he said in his voicemail, going on to describe two manuscripts in his inbox. “They’re works that might not even need the imprimatur, but we're considering granting it, if they’re books that will be sold.”

“Both authors want to go through this imprimatur process as a sort of marketing tool,” he continued. “I think they also are of good faith and want their work to be recognized in the ecclesiastical world, and they want it to be right.”

Over a few phone calls (and more emails), the vice chancellor and I developed a pilot project. He could refer indie Catholic authors to me for professional editing and permissions work, and then I could send him a clean manuscript file—along with a letter describing the services I performed and affirming that I consider it ready for consideration by the censor.

He said he only gets four to six of these requests each year from indie authors, so it’s a very modest pilot project—but it has created an opening for indie authors in his diocese to receive the imprimatur from their bishop.

The arrangement is mutually nonexclusive, for reasons of convenience as well as to avoid any conflicts of interest. The vice chancellor gives indie authors my contact info as someone he can recommend because of my work experience. But he explains that they are free to pursue their own editing and permissions work, if their freelance editor can certify the work to the diocese. And I’m not always able to help every author he refers to me (for reasons of schedule, budget, or expertise—for example, I’m not a memoir editor)—so again, I can’t be the only game in town.

How It’s Going

Since this pilot program began in spring 2021, I’ve helped Catholic indie authors get the bishop’s imprimatur for three manuscripts—two children’s picture books and one book on family ministry. I provided professional editing services, guidance on Bible and conciliar editions, and help securing permissions to quote from others’ work. At the conclusion of each project, I sent the completed manuscript plus my PDF form to the vice chancellor, and the project then went to the censor and subsequently received the imprimatur.

Through this project, I also provided gratis assistance to two more authors who ultimately couldn’t pursue the imprimatur because of copyright issues. In one case, I contacted someone through back-channels to find out whether hypothetical permission could even be granted. (It was a complicated situation, so the hypothetical answer was “probably not.”) By addressing these issues up front, we saved the clients hassle and money, while also safeguarding the bishop’s imprimatur—exactly as the project intended to do.

So if our pilot program is any indication, dioceses might be getting interested in finding ways to consider self-published works for the imprimatur.

Wondering how much you can expect to pay for professional assistance? Check out my page just for indie authors!

How do copyeditors charge? Check out my blog post about per-word copyediting rates.

One Alternative to the Imprimatur

What about books that aren’t eligible, for whatever reason? The primary alternative I know of is the Seal of Approval (SoA) granted to certain books by the Catholic Writers Guild (CWG). You do not have to be a CWG member to have a book considered for the SoA, but the application fee is waived for CWG members.

Like the pilot program I helped develop, the CWG requires that a book be professionally edited and “publication-ready” before it can be considered for the SoA. Indie Catholic authors must provide proof that they’ve worked with a professional to bring their projects to that stage.

The CWG explains the Seal on its website:

The purpose of the Seal of Approval is to help Catholic bookstores and venues in their determination of the Catholicity of a work. This reassurance from a professional organization can assist authors in marketing and promoting their works. Books are also judged by their editorial integrity as well.

Authors looking to reach a Catholic audience, but whose books do not qualify for an imprimatur (like fiction), or authors who do not have access to the process to get an Imprimatur, can submit their book for the SoA. It provides a tangible reassurance to readers and bookstore owners that the book does support Catholic beliefs and values.

In the quarterly SoA evaluation process, candidate books are blind-reviewed by at least two evaluators, who must be CWG members involved in writing, editing, or publishing. Prospective evaluators complete a training program and pass a final test before being accepted as SoA evaluators. A candidate book’s evaluators don’t know one another, and the book’s author doesn’t know who they are. The evaluators complete their work and send a report to the CWG coordinator describing their findings and making a recommendation.

Not all books receive the SoA, but the authors do receive anonymous feedback from the evaluators and can revise their books. Revised books may be submitted one time for reconsideration.

Recall that canonically, a book must still receive an imprimatur to be sold or distributed on church property. But the SoA signals Catholic bookstores that trained evaluators have found a book to be consistent with Catholic beliefs and values.

CWG’s Seal of Approval is a real option for vetting an otherwise ineligible book for magisterial integrity and suitability for faithful Catholic reading. If you’re aware of others, let me know in the comments!

The TL;DR: Takeaways for Indie Catholic Authors

More than a mere marketing tool—although it’s that, too—the imprimatur allows you, as a faithful Catholic author, to ensure that the book you are inspired to write is found consistent with Catholic teaching and can be sold and/or distributed to the People of God.

1. If you have written a prayer book or a book on theology, morality, church history, Scripture, or some other Catholic topic, canon law strongly recommends that you seek the imprimatur of your bishop or archbishop.

2. If you plan to sell your book or distribute it in church settings, you are required to get this approval.

3. Some dioceses won’t consider books for the imprimatur that have been written by Catholic indie authors who intend to self-publish.

4. More dioceses might consider such books if you, the author, arrange for professional editing and permissions work to make your project production-ready. This effort can minimize the concerns expressed by Canonical Affairs staff about considering self-published projects. (I’d be happy to discuss possibilities with your diocese, if you’d like to introduce us.)

5. An alternative is the Seal of Approval awarded by the Catholic Writers Guild. More information can be found on the CWG website.

If you find this blog post useful, let me know in the post comments ↓ or tell me on social media! I’m planning more blog posts tailored to Catholic writers and indie Catholic authors.

If you have a specific Catholic writing/editing question you’d like me to answer, let me know that too.

If you found this especially useful, won’t you buy me a coffee?

Want to talk to me about your project? Head over to my Contact page and tell me what you’re working on!

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In the previous blog post, I introduced the “triple-constraint triangle” that describes the competing priorities of every project: budget, schedule, and scope. Whether you’re a managing editor or a freelance copyeditor, chances are that you have to juggle these priorities with every project.

First, many thanks to readers who mentioned that they learned the three constraints of budget, schedule, and quality. I agree with the readers who surmised that quality is a subset of scope, alongside other less tangible factors like politics and the author’s or client’s tolerance for being edited.

Now let’s return to the scenarios I described in the first post, and consider how the triple-constraint triangle can help you make your strongest case for expanding the scope of work if a project needs it.

(Check out the downloadable infographic from the previous post for a refresher on the triple-constraint triangle.)

Arguing for an Expanded Scope of Work: One Approach

So you have a project that desperately needs a developmental edit for organization, or a line edit to smooth out the voice — but your remit is a light copyedit.

Realistically, most of the time we’re dealing with a project that needs an expanded scope — that is, a heavier edit — but the budget or schedule (or both) don’t permit it. So let’s examine that scenario.

Now, here’s a “corporate maturity” tip: Managerial types (including clients) prefer that we come to them with solutions, not problems. In other words, don’t go to your client or author, tell them generally that the manuscript is a mess, and recommend a heavier edit. Clients and managers want to know specifics: what you’re seeing, what solution you’re proposing, and how it will affect the schedule and budget.

But you can have the conversation. Here’s how you can navigate a project where you’re tasked with a narrow scope because of budget and schedule.

1. Choose your moment.

   • For freelancers: You really need to have this discussion while you’re still negotiating the terms, not after you’ve accepted the project constraints as the client has presented them. That means you need to (ideally) see the entire manuscript before you commit to anything. You can revisit the conversation after you’ve gotten into the project, but the client might reasonably see it as a bait-and-switch tactic. That just gets awkward for everyone, and you risk losing the client.

   • For in-house editors: If you know the internal stakeholders —whether that’s your manager or some internal client — you’ll have a good idea of whether they’re even open to a conversation. If you’re unsure, then follow this process I’m suggesting. But if they have a reputation for shutting down such requests, then consider your political capital. “Political capital” just means how much influence you have with the interested parties, and whether this is the right context to try to wield it. If you’re unsuccessful in making your case, is there any downside for you politically?

2. Gather your data. Before you make any case for doing a heavier edit, get all your ducks in a row. Work from scope backwards to schedule and then budget.

   • Scope: What do you think the scope of work should be, vs. what you’ve been asked to do? Do a sample edit on a few passages to have a concrete proposal to share. (Note: Be prepared with options to adjust what you’re proposing. For example, propose spot-checking every fifth quote or citation to gather more data to justify checking everything. Or propose doing a heavier edit of just some of the text, or be willing to provide a reorganized outline that the client or author can implement themselves for less money than having you overhaul the manuscript yourself.)

   • Schedule: How much longer (in hours, days, weeks) would you need to carry out the scope of work you recommend?

   • Budget: How much would that scope of work cost? (If you’re a freelancer, are you charging for each extra hour? Or what would your proposed scope of work cost? If you’re in-house, however, don’t think budget is irrelevant. An hour of your staff time might have a price tag that you’re not even aware of — but your manager will be, and that cost affects someone’s bottom line.)

3. Identify the decision maker. If you’re working in-house, does your own manager have final say on expanding scope, or does that decision belong to an internal client? If you’re freelancing, is your client the author, or are you working with an author on behalf of the client (such as a publisher)? Put another way, who ultimately approves the edited file? Who ultimately approves changes to schedule and budget?

4. Communicate — humbly. Approach the decision maker with your data lined up — but always in a spirit of inquiry. You might say something like, “You asked me to do a light copyedit. I’m seeing things that warrant a heavier edit. Are you interested in a heavier edit? Is there room in the schedule or budget to consider that? Can I show you some examples of what I’d propose?” Then you go through your case, point by point — first the scope (by showing examples), then the schedule and budget.

And then?

Drumroll, Please

If the client or your manager says, “Wow, we didn’t even realize that was an issue. Yes, please fix it, and we’ll pay for it” — three cheers! Even better if you can do it in the allotted time, or the client can extend the deadline! Be sure to include this revised understanding in any contract or letter of agreement to avoid surprises later. If you’re in-house, document this in an email to all the parties involved.

But if the client says they can’t afford it, or there isn’t enough time? Then yeah — you have to grit your teeth and do the light copyedit. This takes experience, finesse, and humility. Still be sure to document the conversation, so the client doesn’t ask you later why you never brought it up.

Sometimes — as one former colleague is fond of saying — we’re just cogs in the wheel. Always be ready to find out that there are other factors in play. Sometimes the decision maker will even agree with you, but their hands are tied — and therefore, so are yours.

Conclusion

Sometimes what we’re asked to do is not what the project appears to need, in a perfect world where money and time are no object.

That’s fine. Sometimes our job is not to do an ideal edit. Sometimes, instead, our job is to be a team player helping to get the project out to the people who needed the information yesterday, on or under a tight budget.

Our job is more than the actual editing, often.

You can always bring well-informed, well-considered advice back to the client, make your case, and inquire whether they are interested in the heavier edit (or sensitivity read or whatever) that you think it needs. But in the end, it’s the client’s call.

A previous boss was fond of saying that “everything is always about something else.” Sometimes we’re not privy to the “something else” — but chances are, it falls somewhere in the triple-constraint triangle:

• Maybe the client’s budget can’t cover a heavier edit.

• Maybe the schedule doesn’t have time for the sensitivity read.

• Maybe the scope simply can’t expand to include a developmental edit, for reasons that have nothing to do with you — and sometimes are confidential.

That’s when we remember that we’re just part of a bigger picture — just a cog in the wheel.

We do the job we’re asked to do and remind ourselves: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

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Copyeditors — whether we’re in-house or freelance — often encounter projects that warrant a heavier or more intensive edit than we’re asked to do. (If you’re in-house, think of the internal office or department as your client, for the purpose of this discussion.)

Welcome to the “triple-constraint triangle” that governs every project: namely, budget, schedule, and scope. Whether you’re in charge of the entire project or you’re asked to be the copyeditor for just one phase of it, these constraints govern your work.

Consider these examples:

1. You’re given a very jumbled white paper that needs a developmental edit to make sense, but the client can only afford a bare-minimum light copyedit. This is an example of the budget constraint.

2. You’re hired to “proofread” a corporate report written by five people. It really needs a heavy line edit to sound like one corporate voice — but it’s already three weeks behind. This is an example of the schedule constraint.

3. A nonprofit contacts you to copyedit a booklet that has already been through six revisions by an important committee, perhaps with input from other stakeholders. It needs a thorough copyedit with fact checking — but the committee wants you to do just a light copyedit and not open any new cans of worms. This is an example of the scope constraint — in this case, constrained by internal politics.

Check out this infographic, and then read on for my explanation of what's happening behind the scenes.

Behind the Scenes?

Allow me to don my managing editor hat for a moment.

As a managing editor in charge of hiring freelancers, I crafted a standard four-page copyediting test with explicit instructions to do a light copyedit. Yet time after time, prospective copyeditors (including some with many years of experience) rolled up their sleeves and dove in for a heavy/line edit — completely ignoring the test’s instructions.

Here’s what I wish I could have told them: There are specific reasons why the test asked for a light copyedit.

• Sometimes we had a tight budget because we didn’t expect to make much money from selling the product. My department measured COGS — cost of goods sold — which simply meant that we did a cost-benefit analysis for each project to determine what we could charge for it, how many copies we were likely to sell, and therefore what our budget to produce it was. This budget analysis told us exactly how much we could spend on production editing, design, proofreading, and print production. Constraint: If I’m a client asking for a light copyedit, I might not have the budget to pay for a heavy copyedit (even if the project needs it).

• Perhaps the most common reason I needed a light copyedit was schedule. Production editors (including copyeditors) often get a manuscript from the client or author super late — and we’re often asked (or just expected) to make up the time to get it back on schedule. Constraint: If I’m hiring a freelancer for that project, I need the freelancer to be part of my team in getting the late project back on schedule by doing a light copyedit — not someone who is going to throw a whole new wrench in the gears by doing a long, heavy copyedit.

• The scope constraint can be the most nebulous. New copyeditors especially think “scope” means “make it perfect and clean and inoffensive and a ray of sunshine.” And in a perfect world, that would be a nice goal (albeit still a subjective one). But scope has landmines. Here are two behind-the-scenes examples that freelancers — especially if you’ve never been in-house — might not realize:

  • Diplomacy Vs. Egos: Maybe some of the project authors are Very Big Deals who bristle at being edited. Maybe it’s not worth fighting with them about their love of dangling modifiers. Constraint: If I’m hiring the freelancer in this scenario, I want the freelancer to steer clear of all toes, focus on objective errors, and let some things go.

  • Internal Politics: Maybe (as in scenario 3, above) the project has been through several rounds of revision by disparate stakeholders. A lot of compromising has produced the draft now being handed off (with great sighs of relief) to the copyeditor. Constraint: As a project manager, I don’t need a freelance copyeditor opening entire new cans of worms. In this instance, I need a freelancer who can balance the need to correct real errors with the need to preserve the heavily negotiated status quo.

Conclusion

Sometimes what we’re asked to do as copyeditors is not what the project needs, in our professional opinion.

A previous boss was fond of saying that “everything is always [about] something else.” Sometimes we’re not privy to the “something else” — but chances are, it falls somewhere in the triple-constraint triangle:

• Maybe the client’s budget can’t cover a heavier edit.

• Maybe the schedule doesn’t have time for the sensitivity read.

• Maybe the scope simply can’t expand, for reasons that have nothing to do with you — and sometimes are confidential.

In general, you have to be prepared to grit your teeth and do the light copyedit — and to have a solid understanding of what light vs. heavy means.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t raise the issue …

Come back in two weeks for Part 2: What are your options when this happens?

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Frequently in editors’ groups on Facebook and elsewhere, new(ish) editors stop by to ask variations on these questions:

• What is our role as editors? Isn’t our role to do XYZ?

• What if I disagree with something I’m editing? Don’t I have an obligation to protect the reader, or inform the author, or both?

As someone who sometimes edits content that causes me to raise one or both eyebrows, I respectfully disagree with the premise that our purpose is to protect the reader and do the critical thinking for them. It isn’t.

My editorial philosophy, honed over <mumblety> decades in this job, is that our purpose is to make the content crystal-clear so that the author accomplishes their own purpose—and so the reader can understand it and draw their own conclusions.

We might not agree with the author’s purpose, but that’s not our job as editors. We can go off and be authors with our own purposes. (Oh look! I have a blog.)

Rather, our job as editors is to be the go-between making sure what the author wants to say is what the reader will take away.

When I was taking writing pedagogy courses, we talked about “writer-based writing” and “reader-based writing.”

• Writer-based writing is writing that is still in the writer’s head. It might feel a bit stream-of-consciousness-y. Sometimes the organization is a jumble, or the transitions don’t flow well. Sometimes the writer is clearly assuming knowledge on the part of the reader, or hoping that the reader will fill in the blanbks and make the leaps for themselves. Some writers do this as a sort of avant-garde experiment (looking at you, William Faulkner). But most of the time, this is the hallmark of a writer who is perhaps a novice in general, or perhaps is still figuring out what they want to say.

• Reader-based writing is writing that takes the reader along for the ride, step by step. Ideas are connected. Gaps are filled in with information the reader needs. Points are made in a logical order, and the reader is given what they need to know first in order to understand the second point, and then the third, and so on. (In instructional design, we call this “scaffolding.”) Transitions take the reader by the hand. The writing uses plain language techniques to be clear to a majority of readers.

My editorial philosophy — aside from “first do no harm” to the text — is that I’m there to help the writer communicate clearly to the reader. That’s it.

So in cases where the writer has unthinkingly put forth something false or misleading, then yes, by all means: query it, respectfully and with sound reasoning.

But when a writer makes a blatantly political, misleading, and/or perhaps simplistic argument? If you’re the editor, assume they don’t live under a rock. They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it on purpose. In such cases, especially if your remit is a light copyedit (or a proofread), then my advice to you is to stet.

Do the job you’re asked to do. Have a conversation if you feel strongly that a written piece needs a different approach—but be prepared to do the job you were hired to do.

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It’s been a wild and crazy few years for everyone, and I’m no exception. The year 2019 brought medical crises, family changes, a relocation to Philadelphia, and a new in-house job—and then we all know how 2020 and 2021 turned out.

FastEditing™ has quietly chugged along the entire time, with

• New clients (hello, Our Sunday Visitor and Presbyterian Outlook)

• New projects for the USCCB and other Catholic publishers

• New services (check out JFRedmond Studio, and also ask me about my imprimatur services)

• A new business model (welcome to the LLC)

• And now a new website built on Squarespace 7.1

But the quality I provide remains the same: indispensable, versatile, knowledgeable, experienced, collegial, service-oriented, efficient—and yes, FAST.

I’m relaunching this blog as part of my LLC relaunch, so expect to see new stuff here every few weeks as I share information to help new editors, established colleagues, Catholic clients, and more. Expect to see some freebies from time to time as well.

Welcome to 2022 at FastEditing™!

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When I last posted, I had grand plans to post new content every week. But life had other plans. My family of three (two adults and a preschooler) grew to a family of four when a teenage relative came to live with us and finish high school. Becoming bonus family to a teenager has been a big adjustment for everyone—a joyful, enriching, wouldn’t-change-a-thing adjustment, but an adjustment all the same.

Big adjustments require more intentional self-care. To be a good steward of my energy, I needed to scale back my business to focus only on paying work, letting the blog go for a while. As Robert Burns famously said in his poem “To a Mouse,” “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.”

But now I’m back with occasional (read: not scheduled) posts on aspects of the freelance communicator’s life. So for my first post in (mumblety) months, I decided to look at ways we freelancers can grapple with family needs and unexpected developments. This post serves up a flight of links on various aspects of managing a freelance business and life events at the same time. Some tips are more relevant if you have more flexibility in your business—but primary/sole breadwinners will also find wisdom in these areas:

• Self-Care

• Triage

• Client Relations & Etiquette

• Freelancing While Parenting

Self-Care

Experts tell us that self-care, especially during upheaval, includes eating healthy food, exercising, and getting plenty of rest. My own self-care skews more toward stress-eating Oreos, sleeping a lot, and blowing off steam with a video game. So clearly I have room to improve. Here are healthier suggestions from fellow freelancers:

• Freelancers Union (Kate Hamill)— “3 Tips for Freelancing Through a Crisis” : “You are a human being, not a Freelance Work Robot. Try your best to treat yourself as you would your best, best friend who was going through this crisis.”

• iThemes (Kevin D. Hendricks)— “Freelancer Self Care: Why It Matters and How to Do It” : “All the freedom of freelancing means you can abuse that freedom. You can work long hours and never take breaks—and you won’t last long. It’s crucial that you understand the importance of taking care of yourself.”

Triage

If you are a medical editor, know health care professionals, or just watch ER reruns, you know that to triage means to allocate your energy based on (1) what most needs your attention, in order, and (2) what will derive the most benefit from your attention. Triaging is the best tool in my coping toolbox. Check out these articles on triaging—including one that points out that all life is change that we must learn to manage.

• Copyediting (Erin Brenner)— “Personal Crises: The Freelancer’s Strategy” : “[After a death in the family] I didn’t have the energy or focus to do full days, and some days I couldn’t write or edit. I did what I could, even if it was just filing some papers, to get back into the work mindset.” (Original source no longer exists.)

• Freelance Writing Gigs (Jodee Redmond—no relation!)— “Having a Personal Crisis? How to Deal and Keep Your Freelance Writing Clients” : “Take some time to allow yourself to be human … Once you understand the situation, you can start making plans to deal with the situation.”

• Zen Habits (Leo Babauta)— “Herding Cats: A Simple Method for Working with the Disorder of Our Lives” : “When things are up in the air, it can feel like we’re in transition … But here’s the truth: our lives are always in transition.”

Client Relations & Etiquette

For freelancers, the stress of life upheaval can be compounded by the dilemma of how to handle clients: whether to tell them, how to tell them, and what to divulge. This issue especially comes up when we need flexibility with an existing deadline. Here are two perspectives on managing clients during difficult personal times:

• Clear Voice (Lena Katz)— “Freelancer Etiquette for Working During a Personal Emergency (You Don’t Need to Be a Superhero)” : “As a freelancer or contractor, you can lose perspective on your professional parameters. Freelancers and remote workers often exist in a bubble outside of 9-to-5 norms.”

• Contently (Susan Johnston Taylor)— “5 Tips for Freelancing Through Personal Chaos” : “[Clients] who know your work well are often more forgiving about personal crises or extended leaves than new ones, so focusing on existing relationships … can help until you get your mojo back.”

Freelancing While Parenting

Any freelancer can experience a crisis at any time. Freelancers with families simply have extra opportunities for crises to pop up, and sometimes the crisis is minor in the general scheme of things. A spill on a favorite shirt can wreck your three-year-old’s entire day, which in turn wrecks your own work day—ask me how I know! Here are four links of, by, and for freelancing parents.

• EditorMom (Katharine O’Moore-Klopf)—“Surviving Self-Employment When You're a Parent”: “I know just how challenging it is to juggle parenting and freelancing, just as it is to juggle parenting and in-house employment.” (Lots of links here!)

• Freelancers Union (Kate Hamill)—“5 Ways to Juggle Freelancing and Parenting—Without Losing Your Mind”: “Don’t try to be perfect; that’s the path to burnout. It’s okay for the kids to chow down on takeout sometimes, and it’s okay to quote clients a slightly longer turnaround time in order to cover any ‘surprises’.”

• Writer Access (Alicia P)—“How I Freelance as a Parent with Small Children”: “Being at home can make your attention divided, but having clear deadlines and knowing when you need to complete them will make you feel more organized and in control.”

• The Write Life (Leigh Shulman)—“Freelancing with a Family: How to Balance Your Work and Your Kids”: “Freelancing with a family definitely requires an additional set of rules and skills.”

A Final Thought

Personal and family leave practices vary from employer to employer, and from country to country (and are not great here in the United States). But freelancers everywhere face extra challenges when a personal or family crisis pops up. And our stress can be further magnified by the relative isolation of our work.

So my final thought is this: Connect with trusted colleagues.

• Join online groups and local meetups to network.

• Forge relationships with colleagues whose work, compassion, and good will you trust.

• Reach out when you’re in crisis.

As fellow freelancers, we have weathered our own crises. We can provide a shoulder to cry on, a sounding-board to help strategize, and even an extra pair of hands and eyes to help with that deadline that just won’t budge. I have benefited from supportive colleagues, and I’m happy to pay it forward.

If you’re dealing with a big change or crisis, reach out to someone. As solitary as our work can be, you never have to go it alone.

Read all the posts in the series!

• Pricing Models I; or Why I Don’t Charge by the Hour for Copyediting

• Pricing Models II; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Freelance Copyeditors

• Pricing Models III; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

• Pricing Models IV; or Why Copyeditors Should Pitch a Flat Fee (and Why Clients Should Accept)

• Pricing Models V; in Which I Answer Frequently Asked Questions

A number of questions have come up during the course of this series of blog posts. So with this final post in the series, I look at the most common questions and try to answer them.

But first I want to emphasize two approaches that govern a lot of my business philosophy:

1. It depends.

2. Whatever works.

You might be reading this series, thinking, “Yeah, but ...” That’s fine. What works for one freelancer doesn’t have to work for another. If you read the entire series and say, “Yeah, but I have good reasons to charge an hourly rate,” then go for it! Your hourly rate will be all the stronger because you’ve given some thought to how and why your business is structured. That’s a win for you—and really for everyone in our industry.

1. Do most editors have a set price per word? Or do you calculate a special per-word or flat fee for each project?

It varies from editor to editor, from niche to niche, from client to client. Some editors have a set rate and post that rate on their websites. Others base the per-word rate on the needs of a specific project, the client’s budget, the schedule, and other intangibles.

I’m in the second camp. Usually I have a minimum effective hourly rate (EHR) in mind—sometimes a target per-word rate as well. I look at the entire manuscript, spend an hour doing a thorough sample edit (including making a style sheet, editing the citations, and running macros), and then figure out how many words I edited in that hour. I use the EHR and my pace to come up with a word rate and then a project rate. I use the project rate to pitch a flat fee, most of the time.

There’s a lot to be said for having a set per-word rate, though. It lets you publicize your rates, which discourages the tire kickers. And it puts the freelance copyeditor on the same footing as many professionals who just state what their charge is. As an earlier post mentioned, my freelance translators always just told me their per-word rate, and I could take it or leave it. It’s a refreshing approach.

2. If you charge a per-word rate, don’t you cheat yourself if the project is a mess?

If you have a set per-word rate for copyediting, you do run the risk of shortchanging yourself on a single messy project. Many copyeditors who charge a per-word rate report that it works out over time for them, much as I have found that project rates work out over the long haul for me.

That said, the variable messiness of projects (and other unpredictable factors like schedules and budgets) is why I prefer to evaluate each project and customize a per-word rate and then a flat fee that gets me to my target EHR. I might have a target per-word rate in mind as well, but the sweet spot and the long view are the two aims in my bids.

3. When you charge by the word, how do you count the words? Original word count, edited word count, or something else?

Always use the word count of the original document. (You can add word counts for any new, additional text the client might send later.) This is for a few reasons:

• The original word count is the only variable you and the client can agree on. Use Word’s built-in word counter (be sure to have it count notes and text boxes as well—see the image in this question). If you have a lot of files for a project, use the great WordCounter add-on from the Editorium to quickly obtain and add word counts for the entire project.

• The client benefits from knowing up front, based on the original word count, what the copyediting project will cost. Neither you nor the client can know what the final word count will be.

• Charging by the original word count eliminates an unconscious editing bias that might cause you to add text as you edit. Without meaning to, you might expand wordiness to drive up the final word count—when in fact our job is usually to reduce wordiness.

4. What about charging by the page?

This question often comes up in response to job postings in which prospective clients offer a fee per page.

If you’ve been editing long—or if you ever taught high school or college composition—you know writers can mess around with how many (or few) words fit on a single “page” by changing the margins, the typeface, the font size, and so on. A page rate puts us in the position of educating clients on the idea that the editorial standard for a “page” is 250 words.

So I never agree to a per-page rate dictated by the client. What I do instead sometimes is charge per 1,000 words—or 4 standard pages. Clients more easily understand the 1,000-word block than the 250-word standard page.

5. What is included in the EHR? What about emails, phone calls, style sheets, templates, hand holding, etc.?

I track all of that as part of my EHR. That’s what makes it an effective (or actual) hourly rate—it accounts for the word count as well as less tangible tasks like emails and style sheets.

In a later blog post I’ll get more into the nitty-gritty of time tracking. But here are my general rules:

• When I estimate the job, I pad my timed sample by 10% to allow for admin. Then I use that padded figure to calculate a per-word rate and then a project rate.

• At the end of the job, I look back at the project to see what EHR I achieved. I have tracked all time for the project in an Excel template—editing time as well as admin time—and my spreadsheet rolls that all into the total time spent. Then it calculates things like EHR, my effective pace of words per hour, standard pages per hour, and so on.

• I use the metrics as learnings for the next job, so I can get better at estimating.

6. How do I convert a client from an hourly charge to a per-word charge or a flat fee?

Please check out my post that addresses the client-side benefits of a per-word charge. At the end you’ll find talking points to sell your next client on a per-word rate. You can also adapt those to pitch a project rate!

7. What about cleanup editing, development editing, line editing, substantive editing, or ghostwriting/ghost editing?

Those are all topics for other blog posts down the road. But in general, the closer a heavy editing job veers toward rewriting or text development, the more likely I am to switch to an hourly rate. It’s too difficult to estimate a realistic per-word rate for such work.

Cleanup editing is more specific to copyediting, but I also typically charge by the hour for cleanup editing. I can't estimate a per-word charge for cleanup without knowing how well the client (or author) will answer queries, whether I’ll get reams of entirely new text to insert and edit, and how much tweaking I’ll need to do across the manuscript based on feedback.

Let’s Review

That brings us to the end of this series on models for pricing copyediting. I’ll be taking a week off to recharge my blogging battery. In the meantime, let me know if you have specific questions you’d like to me to address in the areas of the business of freelancing or editing. See you next time!

Read all the posts in the series!

• Pricing Models I; or Why I Don’t Charge by the Hour for Copyediting

• Pricing Models II; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Freelance Copyeditors

• Pricing Models III; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

• Pricing Models IV; or Why Copyeditors Should Pitch a Flat Fee (and Why Clients Should Accept)

• Pricing Models V; in Which I Answer Frequently Asked Questions

Over a few weeks I’ve looked at hourly rates vs. word rates for copyediting. I’ve explained why I prefer a per-word as both a freelancer and a client—at least to start.

These days, however, I often convert my word rate to a project rate so I can pitch a flat fee to my clients.

So let’s look at project rates, or flat fees: what they are, why to pitch them, when to pitch them, and how to calculate them.

What Is a Project Rate?

A project rate is exactly what it sounds like: a flat fee to copyedit the project. On the surface, it dispenses with copyediting price calculations—except all that calculating goes on before the contract is signed.

Last spring my house needed a new roof. I got three estimates, like you do, and settled on the roofer with the best combination of price and reputation.

But what struck me most was my roofer’s attitude when I asked him how firm his quote was.

“That’s my fee. It’s firm,” he said.

“What about unexpected stuff?” I asked. “What if you find rotting plywood or something?”

He clarified. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and my estimates are usually right on target. But if I look at the job and miss something, and the job turns out to be bigger? That’s on me.”

I have adopted this attitude when pitching project fees. It’s my responsibility to evaluate the entire job when calculating a firm bid.

I’ll get into calculations later, but first let’s talk about the advantages project fees offer freelancers and clients alike.

Why to Pitch a Flat Fee for a Project

A project rate has the same advantages that a word rate does, for both freelancers and clients. So let’s review those:

Advantages for Freelance Copyeditors

• Fairly compensates the experienced, efficient editor by tying payment to expertise, not time.

• Potentially pays a higher EHR (effective hourly rate) than the editor could bill per hour.

• Makes it possible to make more money in less time.

Advantages for Clients

• Allows the client to budget at the beginning for copyediting.

• Allows a client to reward a fast turnaround—because the faster the editor works, the higher his or her EHR will be.

• Builds accountability and transparency into the client/editor relationship, because the client doesn’t have to worry about how the editor is tracking time.

When to Pitch a Flat Fee

I recommend pitching a flat fee, carefully calculated, whenever possible. There’s just very little downside for the freelancer or for the client.

Calculating that fee does require specific conditions. I’m talking to freelancers specifically here, but clients should also pay heed.

1. You need to see and assess the entire project up front. Without a word count and a timed edit, you will have a hard time calculating a confident estimate. Don’t just accept the client’s reported word count. You need to see the file, check the word count yourself (including notes), and then do a sample edit that you time.

You and the client might disagree on how much work the project needs. That’s a separate negotiation. But without the entire manuscript, you can’t even have that discussion.

Quoting a project fee without seeing the project is asking for trouble. It increases the likelihood of underestimating a project, which can create ill will on all sides.

2. You need to collect data across multiple projects to estimate with confidence. I use Excel to record my time for each project. My template calculates my EHR and other metrics. As a result, I know roughly how many standard pages per hour I can crank through for a light copyedit on an average manuscript for a scholarly press. From there I know my target EHR and per-word rates as starting points.

Regular Projects

Specific situations especially benefit from a flat fee. Here are some examples of special flat-fee contracts I’ve negotiated, and why they were advantageous to me and my clients.

Newsletters and Reports

Last year two clients asked how much I would charge to copyedit their newsletters and corporate reports. After evaluating sample manuscripts, I calculated and pitched a flat fee that would be fair to me and my clients over time. We signed contracts to cover all the newsletters or reports for 2018, specifying flat rates for each publication type.

How could I do that without seeing each new manuscript? These publications have standard word counts and space limitations, and they’re written by the same people every time. So sample manuscripts from past issues allowed me to assess lengths and editorial needs.

Doesn’t the work still vary? Sure. But when one newsletter takes a little longer (reducing my target EHR), the next one goes quickly. It all comes out in the wash.

And my clients are happy because not only are they paying a fair market price, but they can budget their publication editing costs for the entire year. What happens when clients are happy? Sing it with me: “They come back.”

Fundraising Campaigns

One client develops several fundraising campaigns every year. The word counts range from 2,000 to more than 5,000 words for each campaign. So how did we negotiate a single contract with a flat fee covering all the campaigns for 2019?

After I reviewed last year’s sample materials, I adapted the flat rate approach by suggesting a tier of flat rates:

• up to 3K words = Flat Fee 1

• 3-4K words = Flat Fee 2

• 4-5K words = Flat Fee 3

• more than 5,000 words = Flat Fee 3 + $.0X/word in excess of 5K

Some of the campaigns clocked in at 3,900 words and were billed at the Flat Fee 2 level. But one clocked in at 2,000 words—and I got to charge the entire Flat Fee 1, which I had calculated to be reasonable up to 3,000 words.

Once again, the variation works out to be fair for me and the client over time.

And once again, my client can budget for the entire year. That’s huge—for nonprofit clients especially.

How to Calculate a Flat Fee or Project Rate

You can calculate a flat fee two ways: (1) by the word and (2) by your target EHR. I recommend calculating it both ways to see where you wind up.

Remember Rosita the copyeditor? Let’s go back to that 100,000-word scholarly book that a university press asks Rosita to copyedit. It is average in every way. The press suggests a low hourly rate. But Rosita wants to pitch them a project rate, after looking at the entire file. Based on her own records of time and income from previous copyediting projects like this one, she has a target word rate and EHR in mind.

First, Rosita double-checks the word count and calculates the job based on her target per-word rate of $.03 per word:

Potential Fee 1: 100,000 words × $.03/word = $3,000

Second, Rosita does a sample edit of 8 pages (including her usual tools and macros) and tracks her time. She determines she can edit the book at a pace of 2,500 words per hour (or 10 standard pages). Her target EHR is $40 per hour for routine copyediting:

100,000 words ÷ 2,500 words/hour = 40 hours
Potential Fee 2: $40/hour × 40 hours = $1,600

Calculating both ways—using target rates developed over years of collecting data—allows Rosita to weigh two estimates that are $1,400 apart. Now, how does she decide what to pitch?

Rosita knows that her client, a university press, has a smaller budget for copyediting books. So she has a few options. For example:

1. She can pitch the lowest rate, $1,600, for the first round of copyediting, and risk walking away with money still on the table.

2. She can split the difference and propose a flat fee of $2,300 for the first round of copyediting. She knows the press can always counter lower, so she leaves herself wiggle room.

3. She can suggest $3,000 for the entire job, throwing in one round of cleanup editing as a perk (perhaps accepting the risk based on previous experience with the press or author).

Whatever Rosita decides, the crucial thing is to pitch the flat fee as a proposed rate. Couching it as a proposal allows her to ask the client how the fee fits the project’s budget. If the client counters with a slightly lower rate, then Rosita can review her numbers to see if the counteroffer is close enough for her to take the job.

Let’s Review

A project fee offers all the advantages of a per-word rate. Variations from project to project can and do even out over time. This benefits the freelancer and the client alike, if they work together over the course of several projects.

A flat fee doesn’t eliminate the need to track time. Metrics allow you to get better and better at estimating future jobs. But when your metrics are proprietary, and you track data over the long term, you can focus on becoming more efficient and effective as a copyeditor—and work toward the fast turnarounds that make clients happy and net you a higher EHR.

So when quoting a flat fee or project rate, you have to take the long view. So does the client. But over time a flat fee benefits both parties.

Next week I’ll cover FAQs that have popped up during this series on pricing models. See you then!

Read all the posts in the series!

• Pricing Models I; or Why I Don’t Charge by the Hour for Copyediting

• Pricing Models II; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Freelance Copyeditors

• Pricing Models III; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

• Pricing Models IV; or Why Copyeditors Should Pitch a Flat Fee (and Why Clients Should Accept)

• Pricing Models V; in Which I Answer Frequently Asked Questions

My “Pricing Models II” post last week looked at why a per-word rate benefits freelance copyeditors. A robust discussion ensued in one Facebook editing group, with a frequent question being this:

“That’s great, but how do I convince clients to pay by the word?”

To be effective at the business side of freelancing, we must work to understand our clients’ needs. My freelance business benefits from my experience as an in-house managing editor who spent 11 years hiring and managing freelance editors and translators.

As a client, I paid my editors by the hour. But my translators insisted on being paid by the word.

Guess what? As a client, I discovered that paying by the word benefits me enormously.

In this post, I put my client hat back on to examine why a per-word rate is good for clients. Read to the end for talking points you can use to convert your own clients to a per-word rate.

Revisiting Ted and Rosita

Recall Ted and Rosita from my previous post (read the whole thing for the full scoop). In these scenarios, the hypothetical publisher client is paying $.02 per word for copyediting, no matter how long it takes Ted or Rosita.

• Ted and Rosita agree to edit the same 100,000-word book for $.02 per word—for a total of $2,000.

• Ted edits at a pace of 1,000 words per hour. It takes him 100 hours to edit the book. His effective hourly rate (EHR) is $20/hour.

• Rosita edits at a pace of 2,500 words per hour. It takes her 40 hours to edit the book. Her EHR is $50/hour.

Good luck getting a publisher client to pay $50 an hour! But if you can persuade the client to pay between $.02 and $.04 per word, you can make more per hour than some clients would pay outright.

A Process Note for Freelancers

Whether your client dictates a per-word rate or asks you to suggest one, you do want to see the full manuscript up front—or as much of it as the client can send you. This allows you to evaluate the job by doing a sample edit (for yourself, tracking your time), skimming the rest, and then crunching numbers to arrive at a per-word rate that should get you to your desired EHR.

But if I’m your client, do I need to know your target EHR? Not at all.

Should you tell me how long it took you to edit my project? Nope.

These figures are none of my business. From now on, you have a new policy: “Information about time tracking is proprietary.”

How a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

Understanding the client’s needs can help you convert clients from a per-hour to a per-word pricing structure for copyediting.

It helps to realize, first, that clients have no particularly strong basis for paying by the hour. A client might suggest an hourly rate for a few reasons:

• The client feels like it’s only natural to pay an editor like a plumber or lawyer—that is, by the hour.

• The client hears that other clients pay by the hour. The idea becomes self-perpetuating.

• The client isn’t sure how a per-word rate works. Does it apply to the original word count or the edited word count? (Hint: The original word count!)

• The price-shopping client hopes to pay less by offering an hourly rate to an experienced editor who works efficiently.

Everyone has a budget. Everyone has a schedule. Budget and schedule are good entry points to persuade a client to pay by the word.

That brings us to four key ways a per-word rate benefits clients.

1. A per-word rate means that the same manuscript costs the client the same amount for the same editing quality—no matter who edits it. A per-word rate uses the word count of the original file, not the edited file. So as the client, I’m enticed by a per-word rate. I don’t risk paying a less efficient editor more money to take more hours to edit my project. (Remember your new policy: “Information about time tracking is proprietary.”)

2. A per-word rate allows the client to budget up front for copyediting. As a client, I hate surprises on invoices. I hate paying more for lower quality, too many hours, or longer turnarounds. I might even be reprimanded if my freelancers consistently, unexpectedly go over budget.

So as a client, I like knowing what a project will cost me before it begins.

If I know the per-word rate and the original word count, I know how much to budget. And as long as you, my editor, deliver quickly with high quality, I don’t care how many (or few) hours you spent on my project. (Again: “Information about time tracking is proprietary.”)

3. A per-word rate allows a client to reward a freelance editor for a fast turnaround—because the faster the editor works, the higher his or her EHR will be. If I’m a client with a tight deadline, I appreciate fast turnarounds from high-quality freelancers. A good per-word rate lets me reward a fast turnaround.

Let’s go back to Ted and Rosita. Rosita takes less than half the time (40 hours) Ted needs (100 hours) to edit the same project to the same standard. If Rosita and Ted both put in 40 hours of editorial time each week, Rosita will deliver the edited project at the end of week 1. Ted won’t deliver that project until the middle of week 3.

Why does it matter? Look at this from the perspective of the publisher client. Production teams often must make up time from delays during the writing, acquisitions, and development stages. Rosita’s efficiency and experience make her indispensable to the managing editor tasked with getting a project back on track and on schedule.

When a busy client finds you indispensable as a freelancer, they begin to come straight to you instead of shopping around for the lowest rate.

4. A per-word rate builds accountability and transparency into the client/editor relationship. As a client paying by the hour, I never really knew whether a freelance editor’s billed hours included Facebook and coffee breaks. I had to trust that my editor wasn’t padding the hours total.

To be clear, I never assumed malice on the part of my freelancers. But I’m an editor myself. I know that even conscientious freelancers forget to turn off their timers, wind up in the weeds while checking facts, or wonder how to charge for hours spent learning the client’s style manual.

That said, if I pay a per-word rate based on the original word count—a number I already know, as the client—I don’t care how my editor spends his or her time. I do care that the edited work meets (or exceeds!) my expectations. I do care that it arrives on (or before!) schedule.

And if you’re my freelancer, and you make my life easier, I'm probably coming back to you with more work. And I’m likely to continue paying you a reasonable per-word rate, because it’s in my interests to keep you happy.

Let’s Review

Use these talking points the next time you want to pitch a per-word rate to a client!

• “I charge (or will accept) X cents per word. I use the word count of the original file you send me.”

• “A per-word rate benefits you, the client, because you know exactly how much the project will cost up front.”

• “You benefit because your cost doesn’t hinge on my editing pace. Whether I have a fast day or a slow day, you pay the same.”

• “You benefit because a per-word rate gives me an incentive to work efficiently, which means I can deliver sooner.”

• “A per-word rate builds accountability and transparency into our working relationship.”

Come back next week for the fourth post in the series, where we’ll get into advanced pricing: namely, project fees (or flat fees). We’ll look at how to calculate them and why they benefit both freelancers and clients.

Read all the posts in the series!

• Pricing Models I; or Why I Don’t Charge by the Hour for Copyediting

• Pricing Models II; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Freelance Copyeditors

• Pricing Models III; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

• Pricing Models IV; or Why Copyeditors Should Pitch a Flat Fee (and Why Clients Should Accept)

• Pricing Models V; in Which I Answer Frequently Asked Questions

The first post in this series considered the hourly pricing model for freelance copyediting. I examined why it seems fair at first, but why the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

In this second post I review a second common pricing model for copyediting— namely, the per-word copyediting rate—and why it’s better for freelance editors. Warning: Math ahead!

Charging by the Word

Recall the two questions I raised at the end of the “Pricing Models I” post:

1. Is experienced, efficient editing less valuable than inexperienced, inefficient editing that produces comparable quality?

2. What if you could get paid more in less time?

1. Is experienced, efficient editing less valuable than inexperienced, inefficient editing?

“A per-word rate for copyediting lets us separate money from time in our pricing models.”

That’s what an hourly rate says. Consider two editors who charge by the hour. For the sake of comparison, assume the same factors apply to both editors:

• No cap on the hours

• Same hourly charge: $30/hour (set by the client)

• Same 100,000-word book manuscript, with the same needs

• Same editorial output—that is, both editors produce an edited manuscript of comparable quality

Ted, the New Editor

Ted, a recent graduate, has just hung out his shingle. He is eager to learn and is working hard. But for now he takes a less experienced, less efficient route to achieve high quality.

• He is a basic user of Microsoft Word.

• He’s still learning the Chicago Manual of Style.

• He’s still learning how to query.

• He does one pass electronically and a second “due-diligence” pass on hard copy (entering changes in the file).

Ted agrees to copyedit the 100,000-word book for $30/hour. He edits at an effective pace of 1,000 words per hour. Ted needs a whopping 100 hours to edit the book. Let’s look at Ted’s invoice:

Ted: (100,000 words ÷ 1,000 words/hour) × $30 per hour = $3,000

Rosita, the Experienced Editor

Rosita has been editing for 10 years. She has developed efficient and experienced processes that result in high quality.

• She is an advanced Microsoft Word user. She uses wildcard searches and editorial macros to correct common issues so she can focus on the book.

• She has a finely tuned instinct for where errors tend to lurk, born of years of experience.

• She knows Chicago Manual of Style inside and out.

• She uses query shortcuts that save time.

• She only needs to do one word-for-word editorial pass—electronically.

Rosita agrees to edit that 100,000-word book for $30/hour. She can edit at an effective pace of 2,500 words per hour (or 10 standard pages). Rosita finishes the project in 40 hours. Now let’s look at Rosita’s invoice:

Rosita: (100,000 words ÷ 2,500 words/hour) × $30 per hour = $1,200

Question 1 Analysis

Ted takes 100 hours to edit the same manuscript—with the same level of quality—that Rosita only needs 40 hours to edit. But under the hourly pricing model, Ted gets paid $1,800 more than Rosita. His invoice is more than double Rosita’s invoice.

Hourly pricing models undervalue the experienced, efficient editor. Why should Rosita spend years honing her craft and developing efficient processes—only to be paid less than Ted, the new editor who takes longer and has a lot to learn?

Do you know any other industry that pays the efficient veteran less than the inefficient newcomer for the same quality of work?

“Rosita should charge more per hour,” you might say. And sure, that’s one solution. But show me the university press (for example) that knowingly agrees to pay $40-50/hour for experienced copyediting. That’s a tough sell, no matter how good you are.

That’s why we have to separate money from time in our pricing models.

2. What if you could get paid more and spend less time?

Ted and Rosita illustrate my second point: with an hourly rate, you will never get paid more to edit more in less time. But with a per-word rate, you can!

Look again at the editing paces of Ted and Rosita. This time both agree to a per-word rate of $.02/word. So both will be paid $2,000 to edit the same 100,000-word manuscript. That seems fair, right? The client expects the freelance editor to deliver a quality edit. The project is worth what the project is worth, regardless of time.

Now look at these editors’ effective hourly rates, or EHRs. The EHR is calculated as follows:

(# of words) × (per-word price) = fee
(# of words) ÷ (words/hour editing pace) = hours
fee ÷ hours = EHR

Ted, the New Editor

Recall that Ted, the new editor, needed 100 hours to edit the manuscript. So here’s how we calculate Ted’s EHR:

100,000 words × $.02/word = $2,000 fee
100,000 words ÷ 1,000 words/hour = 100 hours
$2,000 ÷ 100 hours = $20/hour EHR for Ted

Rosita, the Experienced Editor

But Rosita, the experienced and efficient editor, only needed 40 hours to finish the project. Here’s her EHR:

100,000 words × $.02/word = $2,000 fee
100,000 words ÷ 2,500 words/hour = 40 hours
$2,000 ÷ 40 hours = $50/hour EHR for Rosita

Question 2 Analysis

Now we can see how the word rate becomes a better business practice for a freelancer than a billable hourly rate. The job costs the client the same—but Rosita, the experienced editor, achieves an EHR that is 2.5 times the EHR Ted makes as a new editor.

Let’s Review

Charging a per-word copyediting rate offers at least three benefits for editors:

1. Rosita can work fewer hours than Ted and make the same money. Put another way, she can get paid the same amount to edit the same amount in less time. Then she can use the leftover time on hobbies, with family—or on more work!

2. In the same 100 hours, Rosita can make 2.5 times what Ted makes. Let’s break that down.

• Finishing the project in 40 hours—vs. Ted’s 100 hours—leaves Rosita with 60 hours to take on other projects at the same per-word rate.

• In 100 hours, Ted makes $2,000 at an EHR of $20/hour.

• In 100 hours, Rosita makes $5,000 because her EHR is $50/hour.

• Rosita’s $5,000 is 2.5 times Ted’s $2,000—earned in the same 100 hours.

3. Rosita makes an EHR worthy of her experience—and Ted has an incentive to find ways to increase his EHR. In charging by the word, we give ourselves an automatic pay raise with every new efficiency we discover, every new tool we invest in, every new style rule we memorize, and every project that expands our experience. And this automatic pay raise never requires us to pitch a fee increase to our regular clients. In the process, we also become better editors—how can we do otherwise?

If you edit faster, with higher quality, and deliver faster, you make yourself indispensable to the client. Shouldn’t you be compensated accordingly?

Come back next week for the third post in this series, which will examine the per-word rate from a different angle: how it benefits clients.

ICYMI! Check out the first post in this series, on hourly pricing models.

Read all the posts in the series!

• Pricing Models I; or Why I Don’t Charge by the Hour for Copyediting

• Pricing Models II; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Freelance Copyeditors

• Pricing Models III; or Why a Per-Word Rate Benefits Clients

• Pricing Models IV; or Why Copyeditors Should Pitch a Flat Fee (and Why Clients Should Accept)

• Pricing Models V; in Which I Answer Frequently Asked Questions

Aside from the serial comma and spaces after a period, one issue that divides freelance editors is how to charge for copyediting. By the hour? By the word? By the page? By the word for a first pass, and by the hour for a cleanup edit? Or just quote a flat fee and have done with it?

In this new series I look at a few pricing models, beginning with charging by the hour. (Spoiler: I don't quote an hourly charge for copyediting anymore.)

Charging by the Hour

An hourly rate seems at first to be the easiest and fairest way to bill. That's how lawyers and plumbers charge, right? That's what made sense to me when I started editing dissertations in 2001.

So let's say you're an hourly biller. You put a price tag on your copyediting time—perhaps $30/hour.

A 100,000-word book manuscript comes over the transom. You offer to copyedit it at $30/hour. Perhaps you do a sample edit to see how clean it is, and you agree to cap your hours at 70 max when the client says she only has a budget of $2,100. Everyone signs the contract, and you get started.

You go along merrily for a few days or even weeks, editing the file and tracking your time using whatever tool works for you. At the end you tally your hours and send an invoice for actual hours spent.

This pricing model is fair to both you and the client, right? If the manuscript starts off clean, you might edit at a pace of 2,500 words per hour (or 10 standard pages). It takes you 40 hours to finish the job, assuming a single editing pass. You spend less time, and your client pays less than she budgeted:

(100,000 words ÷ 2,500 words per hour) × $30 per hour = $1,200

If the manuscript is messy, though, maybe you only edit 1,250 words per hour (or 5 standard pages). It takes you twice as long to finish the job, again assuming a single editing pass. You spend more time, and your client pays more.

(100,000 words ÷ 1,250 words per hour) × $30 per hour = $2,400

But oops—you agreed to cap your hours at 70 maximum to meet the client's budget of $2,100. So you did $2,400 worth of work at $30/hour, but you can only invoice for the maximum of $2,100.

What if your process requires you to read the manuscript three times, word for word, to feel like you caught everything? If you didn't agree to 70 hours maximum, then you can invoice for that diligence. But if the price of that diligence is high because the hours were astronomical, be prepared for very serious sticker shock on your client's part—and perhaps some pushback on the price, after you've already done the work.

Let’s Review

First, a cap on the billable hours is common. Sometimes you can go back to the client to renegotiate, if you really underestimated the needs of the project. But clients remember when a freelancer doesn't stand by the estimate. And it's the rare client who will pay you for the time it takes to read a manuscript two or three (or more) times. Above all, clients have budgets and don't appreciate surprises.

Second, in this model—especially if you post your rate on your website and stick to it—your copyediting time is always worth $30/hour—less, if your hours exceed an agreed-upon maximum.

• It's worth $30/hour if it's a quick, light copyedit to catch typos.

• It's worth $30/hour if it's a slog that requires a steady hand and experienced eye.

• It's worth $30/hour even if you spend half the time another editor would take at the same hourly rate, because you work efficiently and know the style manual cold.

That leads us to two questions:

1. Is experienced, efficient editing less valuable than inexperienced, inefficient editing that produces comparable quality? That's what an hourly rate says.

2. What if you could get paid more and spend less time? You'll never get that with an hourly rate.

I'll cover the pricing-by-the-word model next week.

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Welcome to the FastEditing Eye. Grab a cuppa and grab a seat!

After 20 years as an in-house editor and a freelance editor, I'm brimming with enthusiasm, ideas, and tips to pass on to my colleagues—especially new editors, new freelancers, and people in the sweet spot between. I also enjoy sharing lessons I've learned from colleagues who have been in the trenches even longer.

In this new blog, I'll talk about the business of freelance editing and the business of in-house publishing (and why to understand both sides). I'll talk about why it's so important to make ourselves indispensable to our clients, whoever they are.

I'm a techie, so I have a lot to say about software, hardware, and mobileware for helping editors work more efficiently with higher quality.

I'm fascinated by anthologies, translation, and editions. I love authors.

I have an opinion on the Oxford comma (what editor doesn't). But more importantly, I am intrigued by rules, preferences, and language—and how it all evolves over time.

Above all, I love helping my industry and my colleagues. I firmly believe that when we lift one of us, we lift all of us.

So settle in. We have a lot to talk about.