Book Review: Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business

Written by Amy Haagsma; copy edited by Meagan Kus

Review of “Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business” by Louise Harnby, in association with The Publishing Training Centre.

Louise Harnby Marketing

Last week we reviewed Louise Harnby’s book Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers, a how-to guide for preparing a business plan. Harnby included a lot of great information on marketing, but she has also covered the topic in more detail in her more recent book, Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.

Harnby touts this as “a book for editorial business owners, by an editorial business owner.” She promises that it is not a marketing textbook and that she’s done her best to avoid using jargon; rather, she’s tried to give editorial professionals real advice in the same manner she would in a face-to-face conversation.

Even the introduction is packed full of useful information, and the first item Harnby tackles is dispelling the notion that editors and proofreaders are not marketers. Everyone, she says, is a marketer, and having a marketing strategy is essential. After you’ve invested time and money in setting up your business, marketing is the next step to help you find clients and sell your services. Being good at what you do is not enough; you need to be found in order to be successful. Once you have built up your client base, regular marketing helps you stay in the minds of your clients.

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Rows of desks face a projection screen in a classroom-like environment.
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February 21, 2015: Eight-Step Editing with Jim Taylor

What: EAC-BC professional development seminar
When: Saturday, February 21, 2015, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Where: Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel, 1133 W Hastings Street | map

Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned editor, a would-be writer or a supervisor of others’ writing, this course will help you make your words work better.

Using a step-by-step process, the program identifies the most common factors that become obstacles for readers. It not only helps recognize the problems, it shows quick and simple techniques for fixing them. Professional editors tend to make these corrections intuitively. Eight-Step Editing helps them ensure they haven’t overlooked some crucial readability factor in their zeal to track down spelling or punctuation inconsistencies. Novice editors often suffer from paralysis. Eight-Step Editing gives them a starting point that doesn’t depend on subjective assessments of a manuscript’s worth. Freelance writers can use the Eight-Step process to improve their own materials before submission, enhancing their chances of acceptance. Business writers, trapped in traditional formulas from the filing cabinet, will benefit from a fresh vision for writing prose that can persuade and motivate. At the same time, supervisors and administrators who approve letters and reports will understand better what to look for.

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April 25, 2015: PubPro 2015

What: PubPro 2015—Third Annual Unconference for Managing Editors and Publication Production Specialists
When: Saturday, April 25, 2015, 9:30 am–4:30 pm
Where: SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver | map
Co-hosts: EAC-BC, SFU Publishing Workshops of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing

Whether you’re called managing editor, production editor, editorial coordinator, publications director, project manager, editor-in-chief, or any number of titles, you do any or all of the following:

  • Work in-house for an organization that creates publications
  • Manage an editorial and production team of in-house staff and freelancers
  • Hire freelancers, including editors, writers, designers, and indexers
  • Develop project schedules
  • Create or work to project budgets
  • Shepherd projects through the production process

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Book Review: Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers

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Written by Amy Haagsma; copy edited by Michael Ferreira

Review of “Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers” by Louise Harnby, in association with The Publishing Training Centre.

Louise Harnby Business Planning…As a new editor, I have set out to learn as much as I can about editing, both the business and the craft. Among the many fantastic resources I’ve discovered are Louise Harnby’s blog, The Proofreader’s Parlour, and books, Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers and Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business.

Harnby is a UK-based proofreader and an advanced member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. She has more than 20 years’ experience in publishing and started her own business in 2005.

Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers is written with the complete beginner in mind and assumes no prior editorial experience. It aims to cover everything a new editorial freelancer would need to know, from education and training to finding clients and growing your business.

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Event Review: Beyond Track Changes

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Written by Amy Haagsma; copy edited by Meagan Kus

Review of seminar Beyond Track Changes with Iva Cheung, Grace Yaginuma, and Ann-Marie Metten (offered by EAC-BC on November 29, 2014).

For most editors, the majority of our onscreen editing is done using Microsoft Word. For many of us, it’s a love–hate relationship: we’ve learned to live with (or work around) the “features” we dislike.

EAC-BC’s November seminar, Beyond Track Changes, promised to help us get the most out of Word, tame its most irritating features, and work more efficiently, as well as to demystify advanced features like wildcard searches and macros. Naturally, the seminar sold out quickly!

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An Interview with Roma Ilnyckyj, EAC-BC’s Programs Chair

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Written by Frances Peck; copy edited by Meagan Kus

Roma Ilnyckyj WCERoma Ilnyckyj is an editor at Vancouver-based Talk Science to Me. She sits on the EAC-BC executive as programs chair, which involves organizing the monthly meetings and social events.

Here, she tells EAC-BC member Frances Peck about the twisty road that led her to editing (a road that passed, interestingly, through China). She also talks about her book, her volunteer work, and her favourite editing habits and moments.

Tell us a bit about the editing you do. What sorts of projects do you work on?

I work for a science communications company, and I do mostly copy editing and proofreading. I work on research reports, some books, and also websites. Lately I’ve been working a lot on blogs—editing blog posts but also doing search engine optimization and helping out with social media. Continue reading →

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Event Review: Access to Information: The Role of Editors

Written by Stephanie Warner; copy edited by Meagan Kus

Recap of EAC-BC’s branch meeting on November 19, 2014

How can we, as editors and writers, make information accessible for a diverse range of readers?

The learning topic of EAC-BC’s November monthly meeting was Access to information: The role of editors. The lively and engaging panel discussion—moderated by Shana Johnstone, principal of Uncover Editorial + Design—focused on how communicators deal with their audiences’ particular challenges.

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Rows of desks face a projection screen in a classroom-like environment.
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January 24, 2015: Building a Successful Editing Business with Peter Moskos

What: EAC-BC professional development seminar
When: Saturday, January 24, 2015, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Where: Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel, 1133 W Hastings Street | map

For many editors, working as an individual freelancer or in-house editor is just the ticket. For others, the idea of growing an editing business holds strong appeal. Using a series of discussion scenarios, we’ll start the workshop by looking at how you run and handle work overload in a single-person business. We’ll then explore possible expansions from a simple partnership to an incorporated company with employees. As part of our journey, we’ll stop to learn how to estimate costs for an editing project and how to prepare a proposal for editing work. These are abilities every freelance editor needs. We’ll also consider what’s wrong when you are doing more work but taking home less money. Whatever your business goal, you’ll find strategies for making your editing business succeed and molding it to a lifestyle that suits you.

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