From Contact to Contract: How Editors Get Clients to Work With Them

By Editors' Association of Canada

Editors Canada launches a new series with From Contact to Contract: How Editors Get Clients to Work With Them. The handbook offers pearls of wisdom from a group of respected editors who have over two centuries of experience between them. Whether you're new to the editing business or have a solid client base, finding and contrac

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editors' Association of Canada
• Release date: Mar 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781987998139

Book preview

Introduction

If you are reading this book, you are a professional editor with education, training, and experience, and you want to know how to improve your ability to get business. The purpose of this book is to serve as a primer for freelance editors who want to do a better job responding to queries and either getting the client or figuring out as soon as possible that the client isn’t a good fit. This book also contains some examples of how things might go wrong between the editor and the client. As a friend of mine says—and he is a salesman—Sometimes the best deals are the deals you don’t make.

The contributors here are all professional editors with years of experience. One thing that may strike you as you read is that they have different approaches to certain issues, so you may be curious about which ones are right. For example, not everyone will do an editing sample. Some people recommend cold calls and other people believe they don’t work. But the truth is that you have to pick the approach that’s right for you.

Evaluating the Client

by Jake Poinier

Jake Poinier is the owner of editorial services firm Boomvang Creative Group and author of The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid. He blogs regularly under the pseudonym Dr. Freelance at doctorfreelance.com, where he dispenses excellent advice about the business side of freelancing.

I have a confession to make: Much of the time—perhaps most of it—I get a bigger thrill from the business of editing than the act of editing itself.

Oh, sure, I get a minor charge out of fixing structure, tweaking prose, and catching mistakes that would make an author look incompetent or silly. There’s no hidden trick to such things: That’s the way my brain got wired, and I was blessed with great teachers and mentors along the way.

At the most basic level, there’s no secret magic to closing deals, either. Any editor can get an agreement based on a ridiculously low price, insanely fast pace, or with promises of a bestseller. The key is to close deals that are honest and mutually beneficial to you and the author.

I’ve been a freelance editor and writer for long enough that the vast majority of my projects come from referrals. At this point, I consider an author’s own business acumen as a major factor in whether I want to work with them. A random assortment of recent examples:

Book #1: Successful financial adviser with a completed manuscript on money management. He has a decent blog mailing list and primarily wants to use the books as giveaways to existing and prospective clients. Having done his research, he has a budget and knows the approximate market rates.

Verdict: Ideal