Category: Freelancing

Editors’ show and tell: time-saving tips and tricks

We kicked off the 2013–2014 EAC-BC meeting season last evening with a packed house and an editors’ show and tell of some of our favourite time-savers. Here’s a summary*:

Fact checking

  • Frances Peck showed us CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute database, which is handy if you need to work with a document that has legal citations or references to acts and regulations. The searchable database covers both federal and provincial case law and has up-to-date wording of legislation. The University of Victoria Libraries vouch for the database’s reliability.
  • I mentioned the Library of Congress Authorities as a reliable place to check names.
  • Lana Okerlund told us about GeoBC for fact checking B.C. place names.
  • Naomi Pauls and Jennifer Getsinger both mentioned the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base for place names within Canada.
  • I also told the crowd about SearchOpener, which I’d mentioned in a previous post. The tool lets you perform multiple Google searches at once—a boon for checking fact-heavy texts.

Notes and bibliography

  • Stef Alexandru told us about RefWorks and Zotero, which are bibliographic management programs. The former costs $100 (USD), whereas the latter is free. In both of these programs, you can enter all of your bibliographic information, and it produces a bibliography in the style (e.g., Chicago) that you want.
  • Microsoft Word’s bibliography tool does the same thing (under “Manage Sources”)

The trick to all of these programs, though, is that you would have had to work with your client or author early enough in the writing process for them to have used them from the outset. Nobody knew of any specific tricks for streamlining the editing of notes and bibliographies, although Margaret Shaw later mentioned a guest article on Louise Harnby’s blog by the developer of EditTools, Richard Adin, in which he writes:

The books I work on often have reference lists of several hundred entries. Using the Journals macro, I can check and correct most of the entries in the list automatically. I once timed it and found that I can check about 600 references in approximately 15 minutes; it used to take me hours, especially if I had to look up obscure and rarely cited journal names. Now I look them up once, enter them in the dataset, and move on.

  • For fact checking bibliographical information, one suggestion was to use WorldCat.

Document cleanup

  • Jack Lyon’s Editorium has a FileCleaner Word add-on that helps with a lot of common search-and-replace cleanup steps. NoteStripper may also help you prepare a file for design if the designer doesn’t want embedded footnotes or endnotes.
  • Grace Yaginuma told us how to strip all hyperlinks from your file by selecting all (Ctrl + A) and then using Ctrl + Shift + F9.
  • To remove formatting from text on the clipboard, suggested apps include Plain Clip and Format Match.

Ensuring consistency

  • Nobody in the room had tried PerfectIt, but there seemed to be positive views of it on EAC’s listserv. It catches consistency errors that Word’s spelling and grammar checkers miss, including hyphenation, capitalization, and treatment of numbers. You can also attach specific dictionaries or style sheets to it.

Author correspondence and queries

  • Theresa Best keeps a series of boilerplate emails in her Drafts folder; another suggestion was to have boilerplate email text as signature files.
  • For queries that you use again and again, consider adding it as an AutoCorrect entry, a trick I use all the time and saves me countless keystrokes. Store longer pieces of boilerplate text as AutoText.

Proofreading

  • Naomi Pauls and Theresa Best talked about the utility of checklists. I concur!

Structural editing

  • A few people in the audience mentioned that a surprising number of editors don’t know about using Outline View or Navigation Pane in Microsoft Word to do outlining and structural editing.
  • One person said Scrivener is a fantastic tool for easily moving large chunks of text around and other aspects of structural editing.

Business administration

  • Janet Love Morrison uses Billings for time tracking and invoicing, and she highly recommends it. Other options recommended include iBiz and FreshBooks. (Someone also mentioned Goggle as a time tracker, but I can’t find anything about it. Can anyone help?)
  • Theresa Best has just begun using Tom’s Planner, which she described as a free and intuitive project-management program.
  • Peter Moskos mentioned that years ago, his firm had invested in FastTrack Schedule, which cost a few hundred dollars but, he said, was worth every penny, especially for creating schedules for proposals.
  • One recommended scheduling app for arranging meetings is Doodle.com.

Editors’ wish list

  • Naomi Pauls said that she’d like to see a style sheet app that lets you choose style options easily rather than having to key them in. (Being able to have your word process0r reference it while checking the document would be a plus.)
  • Someone else proposed a resource that would be a kind of cheat sheet to summarize the main differences between the major style guides, to make it easier to jump from one to another when working on different projects.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the meeting and especially those who shared their tips and tricks!

*Although I knew some names at the meeting, I didn’t catch all of the names of the contributors (or I’d forgotten who’d said what). If you see an entry here and thought, “Hey—that’s me!” please send me a note, and I’ll be happy to add your name.

Gael Spivak and Lisa Goodlet—Volunteering as professional development (EAC conference 2013)

Gael Spivak and Lisa Goodlet are both seasoned volunteers, for EAC and beyond. They shared some of their insights on the benefits of volunteering and tips to get the most out of your volunteering experiences.

Volunteering, said Spivak, is a good way to get training. She quoted the 70/20/10 formula for learning:

  • 70% comes from real-life and on-the-job experiences, tasks, and problem solving
  • 20% comes from feedback and from working with role models
  • 10% comes from formal training.

Getting professional development from volunteering is like getting it from a course, only you’re paying with your time rather than with your money.

Volunteering lets you try something new without having to worry about getting fired. Goodlet told us that one of her first introductions to editing was when she volunteered as a proofreader for Project Gutenberg. You can also use volunteering to test whether you’d be a good fit for a particular type of job or career. Both Spivak and Goodlet emphasized the importance of asking for feedback on your work, even when you’re volunteering.

If you work alone, volunteering can give you team experience and let you meet valuable contacts. If you work in an office and aren’t in a management position, volunteering can offer you the opportunity to gain experience that you can’t get at work (strategic planning, project management, etc.). You can branch out beyond your usual skill set and develop negotiating skills and flexibility (since volunteer-run groups can sometimes move slowly and have different or evolving hierarchies and reporting systems). Goodlet quoted an HR consultant in suggesting that you shouldn’t separate your paid work from your volunteer work on your CV—experience is experience.

Spivak told us that, as conference co-chair in 2012, she learned about marketing and communications; in her many other EAC volunteer positions (director of volunteer relations for EAC, EAC governance task force member, National Capital Region branch membership chair), she has gained experience that she couldn’t get at her job and at her current level, including coordination, strategic planning, and policy development, which are promising to open up new opportunities and roles for her at work. Beyond her volunteer work with EAC, Spivak also writes, edits, and serves as webmaster for Not Just Tourists—Ottawa.

Goodlet said that she got her first office experience through volunteering, which allowed her to get higher-paying summer jobs than she would have gotten otherwise. As NCR branch membership chair and 2012 conference speaker coordinator, she made a lot of valuable contacts and gained project management experience. By volunteering, Goodlet also learned about herself: she’s discovered that she’s better suited to in-house positions rather than freelancing. She also volunteers as a Girl Guide leader and Humane Society foster parent.

If you decide to volunteer, said Spivak and Goodlet,

approach it strategically

  • Do you want to get better at something you know how to do or learn something different? Understand your goals before you plan how to achieve them.
  • Do you want to gain or improve a specific skill (e.g., indexing, medical editing)? Look for organizations that deal with these areas and see if they have volunteer opportunities.
  • Do you want to do something at the branch level or nationally? You can have input on how an organization is run by volunteering at the national level.

approach it consciously

  • How much time do you want to spend? Don’t overcommit yourself.
  • Do you want to volunteer long term or for a one-off project or event?
  • Are you interested in the opportunity? Just because the opportunity is there doesn’t mean you have to take it.

Approach it creatively

  • What are the secondary benefits of the volunteering opportunity? Making contacts, helping others, or simply getting out of the house are all good reasons to volunteer.
  • Do you want to use your editing skills or branch out into other areas? Some people don’t want to do for a hobby what they do for a job.

Spivak added that EAC is developing a new volunteer directory that will connect people to volunteer opportunities at the branch and national levels. People can register in the directory and specify what kinds of opportunities (short- versus long-term, branch versus national) they might be interested in, and this information will be shared with committee chairs who are looking for help.

***

(A reminder that volunteering for EAC in an editorial capacity can earn you credential maintenance points for certification, precisely because volunteering can be enormously instructive professional development and make you a better editor.)

Marjorie Simmins—The editor and the memoirist: creating your best working relationship (EAC conference 2013)

“Between every line of a memoir is a pounding heart,” said Marjorie Simmins. In her presentation at the EAC conference in Halifax, Simmins, an award-winning writer who makes her living as a journalist, editor, and instructor, shared some of her wisdom about how an editor can make the most out of the sometimes intimate, sometimes delicate, and often rewarding relationship with a memoirist.

“Memoir is impossible to define,” said Simmins. “It’s a bit like a pool of mercury.” Memoirs can be poetry; they can be prose; they can be hybrid of genres. They can be illustrated; they can be literary. They can be about a regular person, a celebrity, or even a family. “Memoir,” Simmins explained, “is a chapter in someone’s life,” in contrast to an autobiography, which is a look at the whole life. “Memoir is supposed to be a piece of time, and it often relates to a particular event.”

Simmins brought along a selection of her favourite memoirs, from Linden MacIntyre’s Causeway to Laura Beatrice Berton’s I Married the Klondike to Joanna Claire Wong’s Wong Family Feast, to show us the vast range that memoirs can cover. Common to all good memoirs, however, is an affecting story, said Simmins, and it takes a skilled writer to achieve just the right balance of sentiment.

Editors can make a meaningful difference in the life of a memoirist, Simmins explained, but not every memoirist–editor pair will work. Luck, and chemistry, also factor into the relationship. “Trust your first impressions,” she advised, when considering whether to take on a project, and define the limits of the relationship through clear communication. “I try to avoid the phone,” she told us, “because people don’t think it takes you any time.” When she agrees to work on a memoir, Simmins first evaluates the manuscript, offering the author a candid overview of her response to the writing and detailing the sections that work well and those that don’t. Candour doesn’t mean insensitivity, of course, especially since memoirists often find it hard to separate themselves from the text and may take umbrage at what they perceive as criticism. After her evaluation, she performs careful line and copy editing to polish the text.

She’ll do her best to fact check, confirming names, dates, and historical references. Some manuscripts require a lot of fact checking, said Simmins, and you’ll generally know how intensive it will be from the first page. Some facts simply can’t be checked, however, and although truth and accuracy are important, so is imagination, Simmins emphasized: “No one can truly remember being three years old,” and even real people, when they are characters in a memoir, still need to be engaging and believable.

Making sure someone gets published, she said, is not her job. Having a work published may not even be a priority for some memoirists, who might write simply to unburden their souls. Memoirs are “truly written in heart’s blood,” said Simmins, and a memoirist might produce only one work in a lifetime, and so it’s particularly important for an editor to be diplomatic and open minded. She warned us that, especially for editors who work as writers, the work lines can get blurred. Occasionally she’ll catch herself thinking, “Oh, I can fix this!” but before she does, she has to remind herself to pull back and instead offer the author guidance and suggestions on what could improve the text.

Memoirists can take things very personally, and Simmins suggested that editors “learn to fend off bullies. They’re out there. Some people just want to criticize everything you do. But you know when you’ve done a good job, and you can beg to differ in a polite way.” She advocated keeping a professional distance from the work. If you get too invested, “you’ll be eaten alive.”

Not every editor is suited to working with memoirists. Some editors, for example, prefer not to work with people and might be better off quietly editing government documents. For Simmins, however, editing memoirs is enormously rewarding, as she knows that her contribution can bring a stranger “great psychic happiness.” She closed her talk with some terrific perspective, courtesy of Plato: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

***

Marjorie Simmins’s own memoir, Coastal Lives, about her embracing the identify of Maritimer after moving to Nova Scotia from the West Coast, will be published by Pottersfield Press in 2014.

Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders—the new site for Government of Canada contracting opportunities

On June 1, 2013, all Government of Canada tenders will move from MERX.com to Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders. Today I attended a webinar, hosted by Rene Latraverse of the digital engagement team at Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), about this transition.

Background

PWGSC consulted suppliers and government buyers about what they want to see in a procurement system; the clear response was that they’d like a single-access site to complete procurement information. The new Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site leverages technology (in particular searching and database technology) to benefit both suppliers and government buyers. The initiative is aligned with the Canadian Action Plan on Open Government, whose there pillars are open information, open data, and open dialogue. The hope is that the site’s increased transparency will help suppliers answer two main questions:

  • What can I sell?
  • How can I sell?

Benefits

  • Access to the new site is free, and there is no need to register. 
  • You can search for opportunities using plain language—you don’t need to know Goods and Services Identification Numbers (GSINs) for your good or service or be familiar with procurement language to search for available tenders that match what you would like to supply. 
  • You can narrow down search results by region.
  • Opportunities have a unique URL, which you can bookmark. The link gives you the current view of the opportunity. Opportunities are therefore easy to share via email or social media. You can also subscribe to the opportunity using RSS to get alerts about amendments or changes.
  • You can view contract history and find partnering opportunities.
  • You can easily customize your searches and then bookmark those searchers or subscribe to them via RSS for notices about new opportunities.
  • You can download search results as a spreadsheet.

Transition

The Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site launched on April 11 and has up until now primarily been a communication vehicle to provide general information about what will happen on June 1. As of June 1, 2013, Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders will be the official site for government tenders. Up until May 31, the official site is still MERX. If you follow any opportunities on MERX right now, the Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site has information about how you can continue to follow those through the transition to the new site.

Questions from webinar attendees

Will you be offering printing services?

The opportunities will be all electronic, so PWGSC is not offering any printing services. Opportunities are easy to download for printing if needed.

Should suppliers stay registered with MERX?

This decision is left to individual suppliers. The new Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site will list Government of Canada opportunities but will not list provincial or territorial opportunities. (There will be no overlap between the two services.)

Will contracting authorities be able to see who has downloaded opportunities?

No. Since no registration is required, nobody will be able to see who has downloaded what opportunities. However, PWGSC encourages suppliers to communicate with and ask questions to the contracting authority.

Will downloading opportunities be free?

Yes.

Will there be integration with or cross-referencing to the ProServices database?

Not at this time. However, opportunities for professional services will be listed.

Will Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders list all Government of Canada opportunities, regardless of dollar value?

Those contracts subject to the dollar value threshold for trade agreements must appear on the site. Low-dollar buys may appear but are not mandatory.

For more information

PWGSC encourages anyone with questions about Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders to contact them. Until June 1 they will be adding information to the site based on questions and feedback.

The good, the bad, and the “that could have gone better” about subcontracting

Patricia Anderson, PhD, runs an editing and literary and literary consulting business, Helping You Get Published, and has hired several editorial subcontractors over her company’s fourteen-year history. Amelia Gilliland holds an editing certificate from SFU and has worked in-house at Arsenal Pulp Press and Douglas & McIntyre; today she’s a freelance editor who occasionally subcontracts for the West Coast Editorial Associates. Eve Rickert is a Certified Professional Editor and founder of Talk Science to Me Communications Inc., which provides services including writing, editing, indexing, and design through a team of subcontractors. Anderson, Gilliland, and Rickert made up the panel on subcontracting at last week’s EAC-BC monthly meeting, moderated by Frances Peck. Peck asked the panellists questions to get the discussion going and also encouraged questions from audience members.

How did you get into subcontracting?

Rickert said that she started collaborating with others early on, mainly on big writing projects. When she took her first in-house position, she wanted to hang on to clients and began subcontracting to trusted associates. At a second in-house job, her responsibilities included a lot of project management, which she enjoyed. She integrated that element into her business when she struck out on her own to offer science communication services, and today she subcontracts to writers, editors, and designers.

Gilliland brought the perspective of someone who takes on subcontracting opportunities rather than offering them. She began subcontracting while she was still in school, working toward an editing certificate at Simon Fraser University. She asked Ruth Wilson, who was one of her instructors, to mentor her, and she began subcontracting for WCEA. “It was a great way to start,” she said. “When you’re that new to it, you don’t really know how to get into it.” She added that subcontracting gives you an opportunity to work on great projects if you’re working for people who’ve been in the business a long time and are trusted in the industry.

Anderson, who admits that she very much enjoys working on her own and always goes back to it, began subcontracting a year into taking her business online. “These were the early days of the Internet,” she said, “and after three weeks of being online I was so swamped my life was turned upside down.” She cobbled together a group of five subcontractors; the first subcontracting model she tried was to have a group of experts, each taking on one part of the business: marketing, proposals, literary consulting, etc. She said that the model worked, but because it was early in her business, she didn’t realize where the bulk of the business would be. As a result, she and her editor were overwhelmed with work.

The next model she tried was to have a combination of expert editors and some more junior subcontractors. The problem she encountered with that arrangement was that her subcontractors would regard her as an employer and would constantly expect her to give them more work. Anderson wasn’t fond of the pressure that expectation put on her and told us that if she tries other subcontracting models, she’ll emphasize that she’s offering freelance opportunities, not employment, and she’ll actively seek out entrepreneurial, proactive contractors.

Rickert hasn’t found the same kinds of expectations from her subcontractors; if anything, her problem has been the opposite, in that she’s lost a few freelancers who’ve sought out other opportunities.

Trust is a big issue in subcontracting. Those of us who are freelancers are used to doing our own work and answering for ourselves. With subcontracting you’re trusting someone else to work with your client. Did you have any initial fears about getting into subcontracting?

Gilliland responded, “I was terrified. I was new to the industry. I was terrified I was going to do something unbelievably stupid and scared that I wouldn’t represent [WCEA] well. That fear—that I wouldn’t do a good enough job—came with being new; I didn’t have the confidence. It’s different now. There’s always a bit of apprehension, but there’s less about my not representing well.”

Anderson joked that she was fearless because the business was so new she didn’t know what she was getting into. Rickert said that she started off the same way but, “I certainly have a lot of fears now. With a new subcontractor, there’s always wondering if their work is up to standard. And the relationship with clients—do I manage the relationship, or do I have subcontractors work with them directly?” She said that she eases into that arrangement with a new subcontractor; after she’s confident the subcontractor’s work is up to standard, she has them work directly with the client and keep her posted on milestones. She says she’s clear about accountability and who is responsible for what: “Subcontractors are working for me, not for my client. If my client has issues with performance, those can come to me.” Getting the right distance between the person requiring the work and the person doing the work is the balance she strives to achieve.

Both Rickert and Anderson mentioned that their business models involve a markup. Rickert described her work as trying to maintain a sweet spot—a balance between what subcontractors are paid and what clients are charged. At first she was reluctant to charge a markup, but she came to realize that she puts a lot of time into finding good people, managing projects, training, and building a brand. The subcontractor also gets value from being part of a managed project.

How much do you check up on their work? Do you rely on their background?

Rickert replied that it depends how well she knows their work. For newer subcontractors, she’ll usually work behind them and check their work, giving them feedback on areas for improvement. For more established editors, she may not have to do this.

Anderson added, “I analyze the project, decide what the major issues are and  what the best strategies are, and I convey this to the editor. I make myself available non-stop. I go through the project line by line.” It’s an intensive commitment, Anderson said, but she was quick to add, “There are junior editors who do certain things better than people with more experience,” suggesting we should play to people’s strengths and worry less about whether they are junior or senior.

Gilliland explained that when she first started out, she did have her work checked and asked for feedback, especially if she was in a situation where the editor hiring her was trying to maintain a client and just couldn’t take on a specific task. Today, most of the subcontracting work she does is when an editor isn’t interested in a project or doesn’t have time to take on the work and asks her if she wants it—in which case it’s more a referral and less a subcontract.

What is the difference between a subcontract and a referral?

Peck said, “We pride ourselves on being a collegial bunch of people; it’s not a cutthroat business and we’re often quite happy to hand off work. In a much earlier life, I was a real estate agent. In that world, you always received a referral fee that was 25 per cent of the commission. Should there be a fee for a referrals?”

“That’s a tough one,” said Gilliland. “It depends where it comes from.” She explained that the West Coast Editorial Associations, for instance, were sought out by clients and contacted because of the reputation they had built; she could understand paying a fee for projects they referred.

Rickert tries not to give referrals; she has a big enough team of subcontractors that she can usually keep projects in house. However, she does offer clients a referral bonus: if they refer new clients to her, she’ll offer a discount on the next project.

Anderson said, “I have strong feelings on this. I work hard on my websites. I put in hours and hours. If a potential new client comes to me, it’s still time invested. I’ve laid the groundwork, counselled the editor about a reasonable fee, and set the client up. I want 15 per cent. People say, ‘Why should I give you 15 per cent when I do all the work?’ Well, editing is work, but it’s not all the work in a business.”

Anderson told us that she was looking online to see who else had a referral model and discovered a site that purported to be a database of editors. In order to be listed in this database, you first have to pass an editing test—which you have to pay for. Once you’re in, the owner of the site charges you a monthly fee to remain listed. If you get work (which, according to some posted reviews of the site, may never happen), you pay 30 to 40 per cent of what you earn. We wondered whether any editing was actually going on, but the owner of the site claims to have some high-powered clients.

The last story raises a point about ethics. Have you ever encountered any concerns from the client’s point of view or concerns about ethics?

Gilliland said that she had a client who initially wasn’t comfortable with the idea that his project was being handed off to her from the editor he’d approached.  “I think his attitude was, ‘Well, why doesn’t she want to work with me?'” In the end, Gilliland met with him and gained his trust. The fact that the other editor expressed confidence in her work catalyzed that process.

Rickert said that she’s never had ethical issues because she is always responsible for the final quality of the work; she never takes herself out of the project.

Anderson takes a similar approach: “I come in at the beginning, so the client knows the work comes from me, with input and assistance from another editor.” She said she’d never pass off someone else’s work as her own.

A growing concern for Anderson is that she has so many return clients that she can barely handle them. “How do you hand off a loyal client?” she asked.

How do you decide on your markup?

Rickert explained that with established associates, her markup is 100 per cent, which is standard for the industry. For senior editors she brings in on occasional projects, the markups are lower, but they’re never less than 30 per cent.

Do you have formal contracts with subcontractors that specify editorial credit, and payment—or that stops subcontractors from absconding with your clients?

Rickert is adamant about having contracts with her subcontractors and contracts with her clients. She does have a non-soliciation clause that prevents her subcontractors from working independently with her clients for a certain period.

Anderson admitted to being a bit lax about contracts. She does have house rules and a general expectation of the level of work and editing, but she doesn’t have formal contracts.

Gilliland said that she usually has a contract directly with the client or author and has a separate contract with the editor who subcontracted the work.

What are the top one or two lessons you’ve learned through your subcontracting experiences?

Anderson said (only somewhat jokingly), “Consider not subcontracting. There’s a lot to be said for the one-person business. If you’ve got solid clients, you’re enjoying your work, and you’re able to handle it efficiently, why torture yourself?” A second lesson is that if you have to subcontract, make a plan. Decide on the kind of model that will work best for your business and the kinds of editors that will be the best fit. A last piece of advice for editors looking to subcontract is to think of themselves as independent professionals. “This is not being an employee. This is being a proactive professional fulfilling a freelance opportunity.”

Gilliland advised, “Only work for top-drawer people. Work with the best people you can, especially if you’re just starting out. They’ll be good examples, teach you, and offer you better work.”

Rickert’s advice: have a contract—with both client and subcontractor. Get a line of credit. She added, “Be clear that you’re still responsible for the work. You’re responsible to everyone: client and subcontractors. Don’t think you’re getting out of anything by subcontracting.”

PubPro 2013 recap

Managing editors and publication production managers from across BC gathered at SFU Harbour Centre on Saturday for the first ever PubPro unconference. We had representatives from educational publishers, trade book publishers, self-publishers, magazine publishers, journal publishers, technical publishers, course developers, communications departments, and more.

The day kicked off with session pitches: participants interested in presenting had a minute to pitch their topics to the crowd. Then, based on audience interest, our volunteers assigned each talk to one of our rooms. Yvonne Van Ruskenveld (West Coast Editorial Associates), Rob Clements (Ingram Content Group), Anne Brennan (Allegro Communications and EAC’s Certification Steering Committee), John Maxwell (SFU), and Jennifer Lyons (Influence Publishing) offered to present, and I  pitched my talk about the editorial wiki I built as an in-house editor.

After the presentations were added to the schedule, we still had several slots to fill, so I proposed four discussion topics and asked members of the audience to volunteer to lead them. Eve Rickert stepped up to lead the discussion about managing a team of editors and working with freelancers; Jesse Marchand led a discussion about digital workflow; Brian Scrivener chaired the roundtable on project management and workflow; and Lara Smith took on the managing editors’ wish list for production management software.

We planted a volunteer in each of our rooms to help the presenters set up and to keep the day on track. To make sure we captured the day’s main takeaways, we also had a volunteer in each room taking notes. I spent my day in the main event room helping the presenters there, so I didn’t get a chance to partake in what I’ve heard were lively and engaging discussions.  I look forward to reading our volunteers’ notes and catching up on what I missed; they will be compiling a full recap of the day for West Coast Editor, EAC-BC’s online newsletter, and I’ll post an update when the article appears.

Here’s a summary of what I did see:

Yvonne Van Ruskenveld—Interactive Editing: Big Project, Big Team, Tight Deadlines

West Coast Editorial Associates’ Yvonne Van Ruskenveld shared with us some of her wisdom gained from her experiences working in educational publishing, which can be vastly more complex than trade publishing owing to the sheer number of people involved. A project manager has to oversee the work of several writers, editors, artists, designers, picture researchers, and layout technicians, and when one phase of a project slips, the problem can cascade and put the entire project in jeopardy. In the planning phase, Van Ruskenveld said, it’s important to map out the whole project and consider issues such as how non-editors might be used to support substantive or developmental editors. Team members should receive an outline of the editorial process, a schedule, and a style sheet, as well what Van Ruskenveld calls a “project profile”—an annotated sample of a unit or chapter showing exactly what elements it has to contain.

A theme that ran throughout Van Ruskenveld’s talk was the importance of considering the social aspect of your team: a team functions more smoothly if members are encouraged to interact with one another and communicate freely. The project manager should set the tone for the group dynamics by being open, acknowledging receipt of messages, and responding promptly to team members. Most importantly, the project manager should be able to troubleshoot quickly and without pointing fingers. Once the project has wrapped up, the project manager should be sure to congratulate the team members and celebrate their contributions.

That said, Van Ruskenveld—and a few audience members—did acknowledge that some editors are just not suited to this kind of a project. Again, because educational publishing is so demanding, editors who can’t deliver on deadline should probably not be assigned to such a project, nor should editors who can’t work without a lot of guidance.

Rob Clements—Print on Demand for Editors

Rob Clements, now a sales manager at Ingram Content Group, began his publishing career at Regent College Publishing, where he eventually became the managing editor. There he helped revive out-of-print titles of Christian academic literature that had a small but enthusiastic readership by acquiring the rights to those books and printing small quantities. After hearing about Ingram’s Lightning Source print-on-demand service, he quickly became a big fan of the platform but expressed to Ingram his frustrations relating to the importation process of the print-on-demand copies. Ingram responded by offering him a job: Clements would be responsible for resolving some of the problems specific to Canadians who wanted to use Ingram’s services.

Lightning Source was founded in 1997 as a division of Ingram Content Group, and it provides digital and offset print services that help publishers sidestep the traditional supply chain, which is full of risk—risk that stock won’t arrive to a retailer in time to meet demand, risk that sell-in will be poor and that copies will sit in a warehouse, risk that sell-through will be poor and returns will have to be remaindered or pulped. Print-on-demand offers just-in-time delivery that not only eliminates this risk but also allows publishers to print in any market. Print-on-demand technology is well suited to Canadian publishing, which by definition is small-market publishing.

For editors, Clements said, opportunities lie in publishers’ and self-published authors’ desires to make reprint changes to their books. Since tweaks and adjustments are now so easy to implement—you need only wait until the next copy to be printed to see your changes made—editors will be called upon to manage and execute this process.

Anne Brennan—EAC Certification

Certification Steering Committee co-chair Anne Brennan spoke to the group about EAC’s certification program. The program was developed over the last two decades, Brennan explained, and is based on EAC’s Professional Editorial Standards. Candidates can write exams to become certified in proofreading, copy editing, stylistic editing, or structural editing—and if they pass all four, they earn the title of Certified Professional Editor. Brennan was quick to point out that not passing the certification tests doesn’t mean that you’re not a good editor, but becoming certified means that you’ve achieved the gold standard in editing.

The program’s advantages for freelancers are often touted: certification demonstrates an editor’s excellence to existing and potential clients, thus allowing that editor to gain confidence, bypass some requirements for certain contracts (e.g., some provincial government contracts allow certified editors to bid without submitting a portfolio), and maybe even raise his or her rates. But why should organizations and in-house editors care about certification? In-house editors who achieve certification are in a better position to ask for a raise or a promotion, Brennan noted, and if you’re looking for an editor, hiring someone who’s certified basically eliminates the need to test them. Opting for someone in the roster of certified editors means you’re hiring a professional who has proven that he or she can deliver excellent work. Organizations that encourage their employees to pursue certification are essentially publicly declaring their commitment to high editorial standards and clear, effective communication.

I added that I pursued certification while I was in house because I was responsible for giving editorial feedback to freelance and junior editors. Being certified gave me the confidence to go into those conversations confident and informed.

John Maxwell—Beyond Microsoft Word

Are we forever trapped in the clutches of Microsoft Word? John Maxwell explored some alternatives to the program in his talk, in which he argued that Word was really made for another time and isn’t well suited to the interactive editor–author relationship we can accommodate and have come to expect today. What are some of the other options out there?

Maxwell said right off the bat that he wouldn’t be talking about OpenOffice, which basically replicates the functionality of Microsoft Office and so isn’t an alternative to it at all. One class of true alternatives are word processors in the cloud, such as Google Docs or the ubiquitous Wysiwyg online editor on platforms like WordPress, although Maxwell did say that the next-generation HTML5 editors would likely overtake the latter very soon. Google Docs allows for collaborative authoring and editing—two people can simultaneously work on a document as long as they’re not making changes to the same paragraph—and you can see the revision history of a document, but it doesn’t really track the changes in a way that editors might want.

Another class of options includes simplified writing tools that allow you to focus on the words and not have to worry about document formatting; these include Scrivener and Editorially (in development). Part of this “back to the simple text editor” movement is the concept of markdown, a very lightweight markup language: gone are the intimidating tags that you see in XML; instead you use underscores to format text into italics, asterisks for boldface, etc.

For versioning and editorial workflow, Maxwell mentioned Git, a software tool that programmers use. It allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time and will flag editing conflicts when they arise. Although there’s a possibility it will creep into the mainstream, Maxwell thinks it will likely remain primarily a tool for the software development community. Other tools that allow versioning are wikis, which allow you to see a page’s revision history, and annotation tools that are used for peer review in scholarly publishing.

Finally, Maxwell gave us a demo of Poetica, which is being developed by a programmer and poet pair. Writers can upload or input plain text and ask for editorial input; an editor can then make suggestions, which appear as overlain editorial markup. The impressive demonstration elicited some oohs and aahs from the audience; as Maxwell later remarked to me, “You could feel the air pressure drop when everyone gasped.” He fielded several questions about what the software could and couldn’t do, and he suggested that people contact the developers for a chance play with it and send them comments about what kinds of features they’d like to see.

Iva Cheung—The Editorial Wiki: An indispensable communication and training tool

I’m glad I got to talk to the PubPro group about the remarkable usefulness of the editorial wiki that I built while I was editorial coordinator at D&M. I’ve covered all of the points in my talk in a previous post, so I won’t repeat them here, but I was so encouraged by the responsiveness of audience members to the idea. I hope some of them will decide to implement a wiki—or something like it—for their own organization, and I’m always available to consult on such a project if they go forward.

The sessions, each only forty minutes long, prompted incredibly interesting discussions that continued through the lunch break and at the afternoon’s networking tea, a completely unstructured session in which participants could grab a tea or coffee and keep the conversation going. We also invited pre-registered freelancers to join us for the tea, because we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put editors and indexers in the same room as those who might be interested in hiring them.

We wrapped up the day with a brief closing session, where we gave away two books, Adrian Bullock’s Book Production, which went to Lara Smith, and International Paper’s Pocket Pal, which went to Anne Brennan.

All in all, PubPro was an eye-opening, inspiring day. (Check out the Storify that EAC-BC compiled.) A million thanks to our amazing crew of volunteers, without whom the day would not have gone nearly as smoothly: Maria Jose Balbontin, Megan Brand, Lara Kordic, Jesse Marchand, Dee Noble, Claire Preston, Michelle van der Merwe, and Grace Yaginuma. Thanks also to EAC-BC (especially professional development co-chairs Tina Robinson and Eva van Emden) and the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing (particularly Rowly Lorimer, Suzanne Norman, and John Maxwell), as well as our event sponsors—Friesens, Hemlock, Ingram, and West Coast Editorial Associates. I’m elated by the positive feedback I’ve received so far from participants. We may have to do something like this again!

Freelance Camp 2012—recap

This past Saturday, I attended Freelance Camp 2012, hosted by The Network Hub. The event was run in an unconference style rather than with a set program: those who wanted to present pitched their talks first thing, attendees voted on what they most wanted to see, and the schedule was defined from there. Topics included overcoming a fear of public speaking, accounting, mobile web design, intellectual property, video marketing, and Google Adwords, among others, and industries from publishing and graphic design to software development and business coaching were represented. Here are some highlights from the talks that I attended:

IP 4 you: Develop an Intellectual Property Portfolio

Chang Han, Canada’s Pay Per Click Experts (@changchatter on Twitter)

Chang Han introduced us to various forms of intellectual property and showed us how they can mean real value for your business. Ideas themselves, he noted, have zero commercial value. To harness the value derived from an original creative idea, you have to protect it with trademarks, brands, and other forms of intellectual property.

Intellectual property can be registered (e.g., registered trademarks, patents, copyright, etc.) or unregistered (e.g., passing off, trade secrets, etc.). Han introduced the idea of trade dress, which encapsulates a product’s or business’s distinctive physical appearance and packaging—including its colour palette, typographic treatment, ambiance, and so on—and allows that to be protected. Han suggests that in addition to copyright protection, trade dress may be a way that web designers can protect their or their clients’ websites.

Copyright comes into effect as soon as a work is created, but, Han, said, when push comes to shove, you still have to prove you created it first. “Poor man’s copyright”—where you’d write something you want to protect, stick it in an envelope and mail it to yourself, keeping it unopened until you had to offer proof in court—used to be a not uncommon practice but is not very effective in the digital age. Today, a better approach is to put the material online and archive screen shots. Han also notes that not only are your words and images protected under copyright, but so are any works derived from them.

A registered trademark (®) is stronger than an unregistered trademark (™), although the process of registering the trademark through a government office may demand a lot of your time, if you wish to do it yourself, or perhaps $5,000 to $10,000, if you pay someone to do it for you. The key advantage is that with a registered trademark, you don’t have to prove damages.

Those who work internationally must be aware that in some jurisdictions, such as Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, intellectual property is assigned to whoever created it first (common law); in others, such as most of Europe, China, and most of South America, it is assigned to whoever registered it first (civil law).

So how does a business build an intellectual property portfolio? For starters, the business plan is protected under copyright. If you can show that part of your business involves an innovative process, that process can be patented. Your customer list can be considered intellectual property if it’s part of your confidential trade secrets. If you’re ever in a business relationship with other entities, you can lay out the terms for protecting that information in a confidentiality agreement. Han warns that if you don’t protect your intellectual property, your partners, subcontractors, or even your clients may later take your ideas and become your competitors.

For anyone looking for a good primer on intellectual property, Han recommends Intellectual Property, Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright in a Nutshell.

My two cents: An interesting primer. Intellectual property is such a huge topic that a forty-five-minute talk can only barely scratch the surface. Since a lot of the audience members worked in the creative industries, I would have liked to hear a bit more of a discussion about the distinction between copyright and moral rights (i.e., how do you protect your moral rights if you’ve transferred the copyright to your work to someone else?). What are the effects, if any, of Bill C-11 on this issue? In the book Effective Onscreen Editing, author Geoff Hart says that until you get paid and transfer the copyright to your client, the copyright of the words that you have written as an editor belong to you, and you can use that as a tool to make sure you are paid—an interesting tip that would have fit well with this talk’s topic.

Contracts for people who hate contracts

Martin Ertl, Contractually

Martin Ertl, a lawyer, founded Contractually, which offers web software that allows you to fill in contracts, share them with clients, and get them signed. He noted that a lot of people don’t use written contracts, and in his talk he demystified what contracts are what they should include.

Everyone uses contracts, sometimes without realizing it; even verbal agreements can be legally binding contracts. However, a written contract is a more effective tool for communicating with your clients to make sure that you’re on the same page.

A contract can define, among other issues

  • the scope of your work
  • a timeline for your work, with major milestones
  • who owns the product of your work, in terms of intellectual property
  • what the client needs to provide you, and when, perhaps outlining a review process for your work
  • how much and how you will be paid
  • who can terminate the contract, when the contract can be terminated, and what happens if the contract is terminated
  • non-disclosure and confidentiality

Contracts, Ertl emphasized, are not about legal jargon—they’re about clear communication with your clients so that you can develop a solid working relationship. Some people are afraid to use written contracts because they’re concerned they might scare off clients; in fact, a good contract makes you appear more professional and inspires confidence in clients. If you encounter a potential client who’s turned off by the idea of a contract, that’s a red flag.

Ertl said to use plain English in your contracts; this is better than using legal-sounding language, which may not say what you intended. If something changes, make sure to spell out as early as possible what the changes are and how they affect payment and scheduling, and be sure the client indicates agreement. This can be done via email or, more formally, through a change order form.

Contractually is offering Freelance Camp attendees a discount on its services. Get more information here.

My two cents: This talk gave an excellent overview of the function of a contract and the importance of having one. Editors can start with the Editors’ Association of Canada’s Standard Freelance Editorial Agreement and modify it to suit their clients and projects.

Learn your client development priorities

Francis Waller, Steady Contractor

Francis Waller, a specialist in business marketing and communications, led us through a self-assessment checklist to determine our client development priorities. A lot of people talk about branding for small businesses, he said, but the focus should be different for service versus product marketing. When you are the product, it’s trust, not brand, that you must build. Once you’ve established trust, pricing becomes less of an issue for clients.

He divided his checklist into ten modules and asked us three questions per module. He told us to score ourselves based on our answers to those questions and determine which areas were our weaknesses. The modules were as follows (with one sample question from each):

  • Core message/value proposition: Can you describe the results of your offerings in simple, memorable, and conversational terms?
  • Target markets: Can you describe the ideal customers for each segment, using factors like location, age, business size, business type, needs, or other criteria?
  • Library of documents: Does your website clearly communicate to each target market?
  • Referral sources: Do you have a plan to train potential referral sources over time about your business?
  • Contact management: Do you have a way to organize all of your potential clients, past clients, suppliers, and referral sources, with a calendar of whom to contact and when?
  • Graphics/logo: Are your logo and graphic standards quickly recognizable and memorable?
  • Active selling: Can you list at least three ways you contact people or business in your target market who are not aware of you?
  • Networking: Do you record your networking interactions with people, so that you can prioritize them?
  • Buying cycle and information needs: Do you understand what customers do or discuss before contacting you?
  • Scoring and sorting: Do you have ways of prioritizing each potential client or referral source based on objective measurements?

The entire checklist is too long to reproduce here, but Waller did generously send it out to his talk’s audience members, for many of whom the exercise was clearly eye-opening. He polled the audience and discovered that, as a group, our weakest areas were in contact management, active selling, library of documents, and scoring and sorting.

For contact management, he suggests establishing some sort of a system—it could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet—to track conversations and their dates, as well as the date of the next contact or next action. Create templates that can merge with your contact management system.

As for active selling, Waller suggests defining your probable buying cycle and to name two or three ways that you can approach new relationships and build them over time. Describe the different decision makers among your potential clients and how you will answer their needs.

Regarding the library of documents, he suggests using template documents for each step in the buying cycle and to learn your clients’ language and jargon. Because of your expertise, you are a teacher to your clients. If you have a set of business documents that you can readily pull out (and repurpose as needed), you’ll look organized and will be able to build trust.

Finally, for scoring and sorting, Waller suggests choosing two or three metrics for each target market; these can be objective (e.g., how much they’re willing to pay) or subjective (e.g., how you feel about them). Periodically sort your contacts to fine-tune your near-term priorities, and manage similar contacts together for more efficiency.

My two cents: Again, it’s too bad we had only forty-five minutes to go through this exercise, and I’m grateful to have a copy of the handout to repeat it at my own pace. Waller called his talk “Learn your client development priorities,” but to me, this process is so much broader than that. I’ve evangelized before that having well-thought-out systems, including templates, checklists, and records of recurring communications, allows you to streamline your work so that you can focus on what you do best. One question that particularly struck a chord was, under “active selling,” “Do you have an agenda and objective for each meeting or conversation?” Although the term “agenda” may sound formal, it drives home the point that you should go into every conversation with a goal and come out of it having accomplished something specific that will help move you forward. (Incidentally, my weakest area? Networking. Somehow, I came away from this event having given out exactly zero business cards.)

Supply Chain/Value Chain: It’s Your Business

Anthony Taylor, SME Strategy

Anthony Taylor works with small businesses to refine their business practices. He wanted audience members to look at all aspects of their value offering, from the beginning to end, to better understand their businesses. He also encouraged us to understand our clients’ businesses, which will ultimately help us sell more.

The foundation for your freelancing business is your core competencies, he said. Understand what you do well. Next, identify your competitive advantage: what do you do better than all of your competitors, and how do you harness that to your advantage? If your offering is valuable, that in itself can get your business started, but you need more to maintain it. If your offering is valuable and rare, you may have a short-term advantage, but ultimately competitors would be able to learn it to compete with you. However, an offering that is valuable, rare, and hard to imitate will result in a long-term advantage. Anyone, Taylor noted, can compete on price alone.

The goal, Taylor said, is not to get more customers—it’s to make more money. To define or refine your business plan, he suggested starting with the business model canvas. It compartmentalizes your plan into important areas of consideration, including key partners, key activities, key resources, value propositions, customer relationships, channels (how people find out about you), and customer segments. Finally, it asks you to look at your cost structure and revenue streams. Taylor emphasized that your competitors can’t copy your relationships, so those can serve as a competitive advantage if you handle them well. Understanding your business’s cost structure is also extremely important—know where the money is coming out of your business, since reducing costs is as important as increasing revenue. Taylor also pointed out that revenue streams were key: revenue should be constantly flowing in, not coming in sporadically.

Taylor encouraged audience members to go through this business model canvas and write down their ideas: “It’s not a plan until it’s written down!” He closed by noting that something is valuable only if it’s value to your customer. When you’ve clearly defined your offering, make it as easy as possible for people to buy from you. A confusing website or hidden contact information are barriers that could hurt your business.

The slides from Taylor’s presentation can be found here.

My two cents: “Understand what costs you money.” That makes complete sense, of course. But hearing that made me realize that I need to do a better job of tracking my time. I’ve been rather lazy about doing that on jobs where I’m paid a project fee rather than an hourly rate, but it’s the only way I can see whether they’re genuinely worth my while.

Top five mistakes freelancers make

Felicia Lee, Candeo Business Coaching

Felicia Lee is a business coach who helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses in a predictable way to reach their sales and revenue goals. She identified the top mistakes that freelancers make, within the five stages of business.

1. Lack of visibility

If people don’t know who you are, they can’t buy from you, which is why marketing and networking are so vital. Aim to always build visibility, regardless of how busy you are; you can dial it down, but never discontinue your efforts, because the visibility you establish today translates into your future business.

2. Lack of credibility

Visibility alone won’t increase your business; “sales vomit”—indiscriminate pitches to an ill-defined audience—isn’t effective. People have to trust that you are good at what you do before they’ll buy from you. Leverage your past clients’ experiences with you to build credibility. At the end of a project, have a standard survey or feedback form that solicits testimonials. Make sure the testimonials are individually specific but collectively address many facets of your offering (e.g., the quality of your work, your collegiality, your ability to meet deadlines, etc.). You may find that writing testimonials on your clients’ behalf and asking them to approve it is an effective approach.

3. Lack of profitability

Implement a system in which you can measure exactly what your costs look like. Consider different models: can you bill by results rather than by the hour? How can you become more efficient and lower your costs? Start tracking your time and tasks to find the answers to these questions and to make sure you have a business, not just a hobby.

4. Lack of sustainability

Being a business owner, says Lee, is a marathon, not a sprint. Proactively plan for rest periods when you can recharge. Rather than trying to achieve that mystical work–life balance, try to find a sustainable rhythm—a cycle in which you can rest, gently ramp up your work, work intensively, then cool down to another period of rest. Working full-tilt and then crashing for a day is akin to sprinting hard and suddenly stopping: your mind and body don’t have the opportunity to slow down enough to regenerate.

5. Lack of scalability

Is your goal, through self-employment, to simply have a job or to build a business? Identify your strengths—what you’re good at should be what you should focus on. Build yourself a support structure to take care of the other aspects of running your business so that you can scale what you do.

To figure out what to focus on, assess your performance in each of these five areas. Every business, said Lee, must master visibility and credibility. Next, think about what your sales goal is, and figure out how much business you’d have to bring in to meet your goal. Track and measure your progress.

Lee left us with one last bit of wisdom: it’s not your responsibility to pre-emptively filter your clients; show people what you have to offer and let them decide whether to buy from you.

My two cents: A succinct presentation, packed with sound advice, and once again we heard about the importance of ongoing objective tracking and self-assessment. Lee’s take on sustainability was particularly interesting; we hear so much about the concept of work–life balance that to see the issue from a different perspective was refreshing.

***

The sessions have given me a lot to consider. As a freelance publishing specialist, I know that my professional development so far has been heavily skewed towards the publishing aspect of my work, so I appreciated the opportunity to brush up on the freelance bit. I was impressed with how organized the unconference format turned out to be, and I’m amazed tickets were only $15, with all proceeds going to charity. Kudos to the event organizers and volunteers.

Not-so-lazy summer days

I’ve been meaning to post a write-up of a recent event I attended, but I just haven’t had the time (hence my silence for almost two weeks). Seasoned freelancers will laugh at my naïveté, but having worked in house for the past several years, I was used to having my work get just a wee bit lighter at this time of year—and I wasn’t at all prepared for the deluge of projects from clients trying to cover for vacationing editors. But I guess I’ve just discovered another perk of the flexibility that comes from freelancing: if you’re willing to take your holidays off season, the summer is, apparently, rife with opportunities.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get caught up this weekend. Check back soon, and thanks for your patience!