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What Makes This Medical Editor Tick

2012-01-26T16:29:00.002-05:00

I'm honored to be featured on the blog of Copyediting newsletter today. The blog post is accessible even if you don't subscribe to the newsletter. If you do subscribe, though, you can follow the link within the post to a longer profile that talks about how I got into medical editing and mentoring freelance editorial professionals.

freelancing finding work mentoring medical copyeditor medical editor editing publishing EditorMom

Sprints: Freelancing with a Baby or Toddler Around

2012-01-12T10:07:00.001-05:00

Have you ever wondered what it takes to juggle self-employment as an editorial professional with parenting of a baby or toddler? In this guest post on the blog of freelancer—and mother-to-be—Andrea Altenburg, I tell you how I did it.

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You Just Never Know

2012-01-09T11:18:00.002-05:00

Now, this is seriously cool.

On every public holiday in their respective countries and at the end of each year, I e-mail my 60-plus biomedical-journal authors who are non-native speakers of English, even the ones I've worked with only once, to wish them a good holiday and thank them for choosing me as their editor. And for the new year, I usually snail-mail greeting cards to them. They all like this.

Well, okay, now that the expository paragraph is out of the way, here's the cool part:

In March 2010, I e-mailed all of my authors in Japan to ask whether they were okay after the earthquake and tsunami. One of the authors who didn't reply is one for whom I last edited a manuscript in 2005. I was left wondering whether he was hurt or dead or instead was just too busy to answer my message. But late last night, he e-mailed me; the subject line reads "Long time no see." He used my 2010 message as a starting point to contact me to ask me to edit his latest manuscript.

This little adventure illustrates my belief that self-employed editorial professionals should never give up on hearing from past clients, because some of them may save our e-mails, waiting till they need our services to reply. Just keep on contacting them.

Updated at 11:4 a.m., January 10, 2012: My long-lost author has agreed to my project fee and a February editing start date. Hurray!

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The Editor's Stress-Reliever

2011-12-30T19:19:00.000-05:00

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The Copyeditors' Knowledge Base Has Moved

2011-09-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

Editorial professionals, this post is for you.

As part of the conversion of my business web site from HTML to PHP, the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base has moved. After you update your bookmarks, you'll want to check out all of the helpful sections within it:

The Basics

Education and Certification

Business Tools

Social-Media Resources

Editing Tools

Tea Vendors and Communities

Networking

Finding Work

Profession-Related Reading

If you know of any items that should be added to the knowledge base, please e-mail me with links to information about them.

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How to Find Medical Editing Freelance Work

2011-09-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

As a self-employed medical editor, I'm often asked how freelancers can find medical editing work. This topic came up recently on the Freelance e-mail list (also called the Publishing Industry Freelancers list) and in a discussion within the Freelance Editing Network, a LinkedIn group. Today I'm sharing with you both my response in those discussions and the response of my colleague Susan London.

My Advice
First, see the Toolkit for New Medical Writers; it applies to medical editors too.

To develop a clientele in medical editing, you may want to contact the managing editors of various medical journals to pitch your services to them. There are plenty of places online where you can find lists of medical journals so that you can then hunt down their web sites to find contact info, including these:

Biological Journals and Abbreviations

Directory of Open Access Journals

Instructions to authors for more than 6,000 peer-reviewed journals in the health and life sciences (from the Mulford Health Science Library of the University of Toledo)

NLM Catalog: Journals Referenced in the NCBI Databases

PubMed and NCBI Molecular Biology Database journals (download text-only files listing information about biomedical journals indexed in PubMed and the NCBI Molecular Biology Database, to search them for journal-name abbreviations; NCBI is the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the U.S. National Library of Medicine)

I also suggest that you consider joining the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA); it counts medical editors among its members, including me. The AMWA web site has lots of excellent resources for both medical editors and medical writers. Its private e-mail lists are great for networking and learning from colleagues, and members who are freelancers can purchase an entry in the web site's freelance directory. You can also follow AMWA on Twitter. And once you are a confirmed member of AMWA, you can join the AMWA LinkedIn group.

There is a large market, for those who are persistent, in doing medical editing for researcher-authors who are non-native speakers of English and need their journal-article manuscripts polished before submission to U.S. and UK journals. See the article "Building Good Relationships with ESL Authors" (PDF) from Science Journal, the publication of the Council of Science Editors (CSE).

Susan's Advice
In response to my post to the Freelance e-mail list, Susan posted some additional helpful information, and she gave me her permission to share it with others as long as I credited her. So here's what she posted to that list:

What Katharine said! All great advice. I'd add just a few things.

The Council of Science Editors also has a Job Bank open to all.

The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) has many medical writers and editors among its ranks, a great freelance discussion list open to all, and job postings for members.

The Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS) also occasionally posts job opportunities for members.

Katharine interrupting here: And, I add, BELS offers certification of applicants' skills as editors in the life sciences through a rigorous 3-hour examination. I have this certification, and it has made my services more desirable to some clients.

A wonderful medical writer, Emma Hitt, sends out a list of medical writing and editing jobs weekly (the HittList), although it goes out to hundreds (maybe thousands now) of subscribers, so standing out is hard.

[If you are] interested in a certain genre of medical writing or editing, [you] might want to look into organizations specific to that area, such as the Association of Health Care Journalists, mainly for reporters and feature writers.

I'm still a big fan of cold calling, as hard as it can be. Just prepare a brief pitch, research some companies, and give them a call and be sure to get to a top person in publications. The worst that happens is they decline. In that case, always ask (1) if they know of someone else who might be looking for a medical writer or editor and (2) if you could send along a résumé for them to keep on file should their needs change.

As with all types of freelance writing and editing, you have to get a foot in the door, [and] then things get easier.

Your Advice?
If you're a medical editor, what advice would you add?

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Do Freelance Editorial Professionals Keep 9-to-5 Schedules?

2011-08-12T17:09:00.001-04:00

One of the big attractions of self-employment is the ability to set your own work hours. The variety of schedules that freelance editorial pros keep is quite large, as shown by a discussion this week on the Copyediting-L e-mail list. What freelancers' schedules look like depends on their workload; their clients' needs; their circadian rhythms; whether they must accommodate the needs of life partners, children, aging parents, and/or pets; and the activities they're involved in outside of work.

I'm sharing my general schedule here in hopes of helping other freelancers see the possibilities and inspiring them to share their schedules in the comments section.

Several factors affect my schedule because they require my attention:

I'm married.

I have a 9-year-old son and a 16-year-old son.

I have an adult daughter who visits us, with her husband and my 4-year-old granddaughter, on some weekends.

My husband, a cabinetmaker, is self-employed like me. Periodically, I take time away from my work to help him with his project estimates, because I'm better at estimating time than he is, and to write up his estimates and help him with customer e-mails, because effective writing is one of my skills rather than one of his.

My in-laws live in the downstairs apartment within my home.

There are 2 dogs and 1 cat in my home.

So here's my approximate weekday schedule:

~7:30–10 a.m.: Eat breakfast in my office, while I alternate between helping my husband get the boys out the front door (if it's during the school year) and doing workday-startup tasks:

Read and respond to e-mails.

Do my Facebook rounds for the following people or groups: the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences ([BELS] I'm one of the page administrators), the Council of Science Editors ([CSE] I'm one of the admins), members of my extended family, me, and friends and colleagues.

Do my Twitter rounds for accounts held by the following: BELS (I'm on its Twitter team), CSE (I'm on its Twitter team), KOK Edit.

Create proposals and invoices for projects as necessary.

Review my calendar items for the day.

~10 a.m.: Shower.

~11 a.m.: Start editing the first project of the day.

~12:30 p.m.: Eat lunch.

~1 p.m.: Get back to work.

~7 p.m.: Knock off work and eat dinner, unless I'm facing a dire deadline. If it's a deadline night, stop for dinner and then go back to work till ~10:30 p.m.

~Throughout the day:

Answer client e-mails and e-mails from colleagues and mentees; spot-check profession-related e-mail lists; spot-check Facebook walls for BELS, CSE, and me; spot-check Twitter for BELS, CSE, and KOK Edit.

Write up project estimates for my husband's cabinetmaking business when necessary and edit his e-mails to clients.

Brew multiple cups of tea.

Pet and/or play with my dog.

Take breaks with my husband and my kids or go flop on the hammock under the giant old maple tree in my backyard (in warm weather).

Make sure that my sons are on track for chores, for music practice (for the one who plays the cello), and for homework if it's during the school year.

I often do some work on weekends, but I don't get up for the day until about 9 or 10 a.m. I don't usually post anything to Facebook or Twitter on weekends, and I much do more hanging out with family members than on weekdays.

Even with a work schedule that spreads widely across the day, I answer e-mails and phone calls from U.S. clients only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, to help me separate my work life from my home life. But I do make some exceptions for my authors in other nations; I sometimes answer their e-mails in the evening or early morning because of the time-zone difference.

So, colleagues, what's your schedule like, given your lifestyle and personal and work needs?

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Building Lasting Relationships with Authors Who Are Nonnative English Speakers

2011-07-11T09:00:00.009-04:00

There is now a huge and lucrative market for medical copyeditors like me who can polish the language of researchers who are nonnative English speakers and who must get their reports published in US and UK English-language peer-reviewed journals.

It takes constant work to build up and maintain a clientele in that arena. But it's worth doing, and not just for the income that we editors can earn but also for the sake of getting important research findings out there that might not become widely known without our assistance. I share my techniques for doing so in "Building Good Relationships with ESL Authors," my article in the April–June 2011 issue [2011;34(2):57–58] of Science Editor, the journal of the Council of Science Editors, of which I am a member.

After you've read my article, please come back to the comments section of this post and share additional techniques for working with ESL authors. Let's work together to further international cooperation in the science community.

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All About Medical Copyediting

2011-07-02T10:36:00.001-04:00

I'm pleased to be featured in a blog post on the field of medical copyediting, "A Primer on Medical Copyediting." The blog (Angilee Shah's Career GPS) on which the post appears is part of ReportingOnHealth.org, a project of the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

If you're thinking of moving into medical editing, the post will fill you in on what to expect.

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Etiquette and Social Media

2011-05-11T08:59:00.000-04:00

Social-media platforms may be somewhat new communication tools—Facebook was opened up to use by the general public in 2006, Twitter was launched in 2006, and LinkedIn was launched in 2003—but the age-old rules of etiquette still apply when you use them. Sure, be yourself, but also be kind and be polite, because (1) if you put something on the Internet, it'll be out there forever for everyone to see, and (2) your online reputation is built on the totality of what you say online. That general advice aside, here are some specific etiquette rules that I find important to follow:

On Facebook

When you send a friend request to someone, personalize your request, unless you are a member of the person's immediate family or best friend, by adding a sentence or two to explain how you know them. With the wide networks we're all developing online now, sometimes people don't immediately recognize the name behind a friend request. You could find yourself locked out of connecting with an acquaintance or colleague simply because that person didn't recognize your name in your friend request.

Give credit where it's due. When you see something on someone else's wall and want to repost it yourself, note who made you aware of the item. Intellectual honesty is always appreciated, and it makes you look really good too.

Think before you comment on someone's wall post. If their post invites debate, then fine—debate all you like, as long as you're civil and don't take potshots at the original poster. If, however, the post expresses happiness because of some event, some thing, or some person, don't start debating the merits of what or who brings that person happiness. For that second type of wall post, comments should be appropriate to the post's tone and intent and should add something to it, not detract from it or dismay the original poster. After all, you "friended" the person because you admire them, not because you want to annoy, offend, or hurt them.

On Twitter

Include enough information so that it's clear what you're responding to when you send an @ message (a message addressed to one person but viewable by everyone else) or a direct message (a private message addressed to one person). Not everyone sees responses to their tweets immediately after they're sent, and most people interact with more than a few people on Twitter and thus may read lots of other tweets before seeing your response, so it's not helpful to send cryptic replies.

If you have multiple tweets to make in a day, spread them out. Don't overwhelm your followers by flooding their Twitter timeline with loads of tweets. You can use a feed reader with scheduling capabilities (such as TweetDeck) to space your clumps of tweets into individual tweets appearing at different times of day.

Don't tweet others' material without credit. When someone tweets something interesting that you'd like to share with your followers, put it out there via a retweet, so that you give credit to the original poster. Nobody likes people who pretend to be the first to spot something.

On LinkedIn

When you send someone an invitation to connect, include information about how you know them, even if you think they'll recognize your name. Some people have lots of colleagues and online friends and acquaintances, so if you use LinkedIn's unedited basic invitation, "I use LinkedIn to keep track of my professional network, and would like to add you," your would-be connection may not realize who you are and may ignore your request to connect. When I get an invitation that gives me no clues about how I know the person, I have to take the time to reply to the invitation to ask how that person and I know each other, which I find annoying.

When someone in one of your LinkedIn discussion groups provides terrific advice, thank them in a private message. A heartfelt thank-you goes a long way. The recipient will feel rewarded for their efforts and will be more likely to be helpful again, and they will think even better of you than they did before.

Be willing to trade favors. If one of your connections asks you to put them in contact with another of your connections, do so. Favors beget favors.

I'm not the first person to write on social-media etiquette; I wrote this post to emphasize some etiquette points that matter most to me. Here is some additional reading on the subject:

The 11 Rules of Social Media Etiquette

An Insider's Guide to Social Media Etiquette

What are some of etiquette points that you wish people would follow on social-media platforms?

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Editor's Choice: Dandelion Tea

2011-05-03T09:00:00.001-04:00

If you've followed my blog or Twitter stream for even just a few months, you know that I adore tea—whole-leaf or whole-flower teas, not overprocessed and chopped tea leaves in tea bags. Usually I drink Japanese, Chinese, Nepalese, or Indian teas—white, green, black, oolong, and darjeeling—but one of my seasonal favorites is dandelion tea.

Dandelion tea has a light vegetal taste. To make it, I collect two handfuls of flowers, rinse them in cold water to make sure that they're free of miniature guests such as ants, then pour boiling water over them into my steeping pot and let everything steep for 2 minutes. (Some people like to steep the flowers for less time, maybe 1 to 1.5 minutes.) Then I decant the tea into a cup for drinking. My steeping pot produces a little more than two 6-ounce cups of tea. You can sweeten the tea with a little honey; I drink mine plain.

Some people prefer to use the dandelion leaves instead of the flowers for making tea. If you use the greens, then you'll have some tasty steamed greens to eat afterward; they taste sort of like chicory or escarole. You can also eat the greens raw as part of a mixed-greens salad. I do that all the time because one of my favorite dishes is a salad with as many different kinds of greens in it as I can find. If you do use the greens for tea and/or eating, pick young greens. The older and larger the leaves get, the more bitter their taste.

Other people use dandelion roots for brewing tea. Here are instructions for doing so.

Dandelions have plenty of vitamin A (more than in carrots!), vitamin C, vitamin K, magnesium, calcium, iron, and other nutrients. Dandelions are good for promoting liver health, as a digestive aid, as an antioxidant, for reducing high cholesterol levels (a reason I drink it), for reducing blood-glucose spikes (a reason I drink it), reducing blood pressure (a reason I drink it), reducing arthritis pain, and for other things. You'll want to be aware that dandelion tea is a diuretic; in other words, it'll make you pee.

Online and in health-food stores, you can buy dried dandelion flowers, leaves, and roots for tea, which is handy in fall and winter when dandelions aren't growing, but I like to use the free supply in my yard when it's available. I've never tried drying the overabundance of dandelions from my yard for use in fall or winter, but here are some instructions for doing so.

Do not eat or drink dandelions in any form if you pick them from a location where chemical grass treatments and weed killers might have been used, because the dandelions will absorb these toxins: know your source. I'm comfortable harvesting dandelions from my suburban lawn because I don't use any chemical fertilizers or herbicides on it. Also, be sure to tell your health-care provider that you drink dandelion tea and how often you do so, both because of its diuretic effects and because it may change how your body handles medications that you take.

What are your favorite medicinal herbal teas? Please tell us about them in the comments and provide links to stores that offer them.

____________________
Information resources consulted for this post:

"Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: Dandelion"

"University of Maryland Medical Center: Dandelion"

"Facts: Dandelion Tea Benefits"

"Dandelion Root and Tea Medicinal Uses"

"Health Benefits of Dandelions"

"Dandelion Tea Benefits"

"Top 10 Dandelion Tea Benefits"

"Dandelion Root Tea Health Benefits"

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The Value of Joining Multiple Professional Associations and Subscribing to Multiple Professional E-mail Lists

2011-04-28T11:32:00.000-04:00

If you're an editorial professional, it's a mistake to limit your memberships to only one or two profession-related groups and to severely limit how many profession-related e-mail lists you subscribe to. And to get any benefits from joining and subscribing, you must actively participate.

Placing too many limits on your memberships, subscriptions, and participation level doesn't help you get exposed to the bigger professional picture. In addition, you won't get exposed to as many professionals who might need your business services or who can refer you to others who do. I started out years ago as a generalist copyeditor. At this point in my career, I focus mostly on medical editing, but I'm not about to give up contact with and exposure to generalist editors and generalists in other editorial professions, because I can learn from them all and can get referrals from them all. I pay membership dues to

The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA)

The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA)

The Council of Science Editors (CSE)

The Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS)

I subscribe to the following e-mail lists:

The members-only list of the EFA

Two AMWA members-only lists

The members-only list of BELS

Copyediting-L ([aka CE-L] and its all-topics-allowed spinoff, Copyediting-off-list-L [aka CEL-O], for camaraderie)

Freelance, aka Publishing Industry Freelancers

Medical_Writing: (disclosure: I'm also the list owner)

Publish-L

I appear in the online professional directories maintained by the following groups and e-mail lists:

The EFA

AMWA

The CSE

BELS

CE-L

I do volunteer work for the following groups:

The EFA

AMWA

CE-L

BELS

Why do I do all of that, in addition to being visible on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter? To learn, to grow professionally, to help others ... but most of all, to avoid the dreaded freelancer feast-or-famine work cycle.

I don't have any more time available in the day than anyone else does: I have a husband, three children, one grandchild, another grandchild on the way, in-laws (one of whom has Alzheimer disease) who live in my home, a dog, friends, and non-work-related interests. I'm also an officer in my husband's small company. I need to sleep, take time away from work, have a life. But I'm out there networking as much as I can, to keep my name and business image in front of as many eyes as possible. I haven't had to hunt for new clients in quite a long time (but I do so when I want to) because I'm always in lots of virtual places where people who hand out work can find me, learn about my skills and experience, and get a glimpse of my business personality and ethics.

I didn't join any profession-related associations with the expectation that benefits from being a member would just start flowing my way. Doing that would be as foolish as trying to get years of good mileage and trouble-free transportation from my car without ever putting gas in the tank, changing its oil, checking the wear and tear on the tires, or doing other maintenance tasks. I joined those associations because I know that you get something out of an organization only when you put something into it. Just paying membership dues or just subscribing to an e-mail list does not give you much of value. But getting involved in organizations and e-mail lists gives back a world of benefits, including the chance to make new business contacts, to impress potential clients and subcontracting-minded colleagues with the skills you display in communicating and doing volunteer work, and to build a reputation as a seasoned pro.

Want more choices for networking? Follow the links here for profession-related associations, e-mail discussion lists, and professional groups on LinkedIn and on Twitter. If you're a member of any editorial-related associations or e-mail lists not shown there, please tell everyone about them in the comments, and be sure to include links.

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Why I Went From Employee to Self-Employed Editor

2011-04-14T09:03:00.001-04:00

Everyone who ends up an editorial freelancer comes to self-employment from a unique path. Lots of us on the Copyediting-L e-mail list told our own tales yesterday, which inspired me to share mine here.

I had been working for book publishers as a production editor or the equivalent since 1984. Though I loved what I was doing, I hated the office politics. And by 1994, I had spent 7 years commuting by car, train, and subway for a total of 3 hours each weekday, having to drop my daughter off with a babysitter before school at 6:30 a.m. and then to retrieve her at 7:30 p.m. after the train ride home from work. It hit me that I just could not stand the thought of doing that to my second child, who was then on the way.

So without the cushion of savings that everyone tells would-be freelancers to have available when starting up their business, I began freelancing full time 2 weeks (yes, you read that right) after the birth of my first son in December 1994. With no savings cushion, my husband and I couldn't afford for me not to start working that soon.

At first, my clients were all former employers. When individual contacts at those several companies later moved on to jobs with other publishers, they "took me with them," and I then had freelance projects both from former employers and from the companies those contacts moved on to. Over the years, I got comfortable contacting new-to-me publishers for projects, and then after I was well enough established, new-to-me publishers contacted me to offer projects. I also developed a reputation for being skilled at ESL (English as a second language) medical editing. (My final former employer was a medical publisher, and I honed that skill while working for that company.) I didn't actively seek out such authors; publishers and satisfied ESL authors referred more such authors to me. Now, loads of them track me down.

Just over 16 years after that son was born, I'm doing quite well as a full-time freelance editor, and I'd never go back to employment willingly. I went on to have one more child after that one, in September 2001, and just as happened with his older brother, I was working on freelance projects full time just a couple of weeks after he was born.

If you subscribe to Copyediting-L, watch for (or search the archives for) the subject line BIZ: Freelancing... what made you "go" there? to read other freelancers' stories. And if you're so inclined, please tell your story here, in the comments. We can all learn from one another, and it's enjoyable, reassuring, and inspiring to hear others' stories.

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What's in a Contract?

2011-03-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

Contracts—some freelance editorial pros swear by them, and others would rather use the proverbial handshake. And because freelancers are individuals, the contracts created by those who use them can take many different forms.

All of my editing projects are with individual authors, medical-specialty societies that produce journals, and book publishers. No multiyear projects with fees in the 6- or 7-digit range. Freelancers who work on the latter type of projects will want what one of my colleagues has described as "a multipart, multipage, multilawyer agreement signed in triplicate, notarized under the full moon." But those who work on much smaller projects may handle contracts in a way similar to how I do them.

I have a formal signed-in-triplicate contract only with very large publishing houses whose lawyers require them and with individual book authors whom I'm working with for the first time.

With my ESL (English as a second language) authors who make arrangements for me to do an English-language edit of their medical-journal articles, our e-mails back and forth constitute a contract. I lay everything out in my first response to an author's inquiry. I've been doing this for so long that I have standardized text ready to place in an e-mail; I tweak it here and there for each particular author. Then when he or she sends me all manuscript materials so that I can provide a fee estimate, I write the author back requesting that he or she agree to my fee and editing schedule by return e-mail. Ta-da—contract! I don't repeat that initial boilerplate for returning authors, though, unless it's been a couple of years since I last worked with them. I just write a short e-mail specifying fees and due dates because I figure that we have an understanding that is based on our initial contract; in this situation too, I ask the author to e-mail me back to agree to my fees and schedule.

With repeat-client publishers and book authors, I don't create a new signed-in-triplicate contract for each new project. I do summarize in an e-mail what the project parameters are, including number of rounds of revisions, project delivery date(s), the down payment I require, my fee, due dates for the down payment and fee, acceptable forms of payment (i.e., wire transfers, direct deposit, corporate checks, bank cashier's checks—no personal checks), what happens if either I or the client decides to end the working relationship before the end of the project, and so on.

Having a contract in place, in whatever form you use, doesn't erode trust. I believe that it fosters trust, because both parties know how the collaboration process will proceed. They both can stop worrying about outcome and start focusing on process.

Do you use contracts? If so, what forms do they take?

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The Name Game

2011-02-24T09:35:00.000-05:00

How do you address potential clients when they contact you by e-mail?

E-mail is such an immediate medium—well, okay, less immediate than instant messaging or Twitter—that it can be easy to assume that your correspondents won't mind being addressed by their given name. I'm not a formal person, so I like being addressed by my given name, but not everyone from every culture will feel the same way. And an important part of good client care is putting the client at ease.

Regardless of what nation my potential clients reside in, I address them however they present themselves in our initial contact, until they ask me to use a more familiar form of their name. Of course, if a potential client signs her first e-mail to me with her given name, like this

With all good wishes,
Marguerite

Marguerite Girard, MD, PhD, PsyD, JD, MPH
Chief Intelligent Person in Europe
Extremely Prestigious Academic Institution

then I'll address her as Marguerite in my reply, rather than as Dr. Girard or as Chief Intelligent Person Girard. And I'll sign my reply like this

Best wishes,
Katharine

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS
KOK Edit: Your favorite copyeditor since 1984^sm
editor@kokedit.com
http://www.kokedit.com
http://twitter.com/KOKEdit

to signal that I too can be addressed by my given name.

But because most of my international ESL (English as a second language) authors sign their initial e-mails to me like this

With all good wishes,
Marguerite Girard, MD, PhD, JD, MPS, PsyD
Chief Intelligent Person in the Western Hemisphere
Extremely Prestigious Academic Institution

I address them formally in my reply. Why? I like to meet my clients where they are, rather than where I might want to put them. Showing respect for your clients' personal comfort goes a long way toward establishing goodwill, something that's vital when it comes time to get those clients to accept your editing of their manuscripts.

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Editing Hacks, or How to Edit

2011-02-22T10:27:00.000-05:00

Editorial professionals usually put together web sites that focus on getting clients to use their services—to buy editing—so it's a pleasure when one of my kind does something different.

My colleague Shane Arthur has put together Editing Hacks, a site that focuses on how to edit. I think that's pretty cool. He shows viewers the processes that an editor goes through on the job. Read the text tutorials and watch the video tutorials there and you'll learn exactly what we editors do to help make our clients' copy be its best self.

Another facet of Shane's site that I enjoy is its editor interviews. In the four that he's posted so far, he talks with each editor about how she got into editing, why she loves doing it, and skills and traits an editor needs, and what editing tools each editor likes. I'm pleased to have been his first interviewee.

Thanks, Shane, for lifting the curtain on the mysteries of editing.

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When an Author Goes Ballistic

2011-02-18T10:12:00.005-05:00

I am pleased to present this blog's first-ever guest post. It was written by my colleague Carolyn Haley, a talented editor and author. She has some excellent advice for those rare occasions when we editors encounter authors who not only don't want to be edited but also are unprofessional in how they express their dislike of editing.

What do you do when an author goes ballistic over your edits and returns the manuscript loaded with vicious insults and rejecting all changes?

If that author is your private client, then you can respond as you see fit.

If you're employed by the author's publisher, then there's probably a code of conduct mapped out for you, or a manager who can advise you on the proper response.

If you're a freelancer hired by the publisher for this particular project, however, things aren't so simple. You've been made to look bad by people who could damage your reputation. Your weeks of careful and respectful work have been trashed, and your integrity, skill, and professionalism have been impugned. Like most folks, you'll want to storm away from the job or throttle the author!

Instead, you must freeze in place and let the anger wash through. Vent to your friends, family, colleagues—any place safe—so that you get it out of your system before reacting.

Next, be grateful that you're not the project coordinator, who has to deal directly with raging authors while handling irate contractors and stressed-out coworkers, under the eye of an employer who holds your livelihood in its hands. Yes, the situation could be worse!

To chart your way out of it, just remember that your obligation is to the hiring party—the publisher—as one business to another. The publisher's business is to produce the author's book; the editor's business is to apply a toolkit of skills that will polish the book to the publisher's standards.

Except in rare cases, the author has nothing to do with this relationship. The author, in fact, is out of the picture during the editing phase, until the manuscript is returned to him or her. At that point, the author's job is to accept or reject the changes, leaving you out of the picture until cleanup (if that's part of your job agreement). Either way, the author is not your responsibility.

So counterattacking would be foolish and would gain nothing beyond a short sense of relief. That relief might well be paid for down the road by losing the publisher client because you went around the coordinator to make a personal stab at the author, by inflaming the author into retaliation that escalates the affair into lunacy, or simply by harming your own energy because you've sustained a negativity loop that should have been cut and cauterized by moving on.

The coordinator is the only person you need interact with. Of course, you're probably mad at the coordinator too for passing along the author's venom without intervention. Such excuses as "Sorry, the author is a [bleep], but your work was OK, we still like you" don't cut it. The coordinator should share your offense and explain his or her position, saying something like "Yikes, this author is over the top! We think your edits are fine, but because of [ABC political or financial reason], we need you to stet as many changes as possible and only question the XYZ items so we don't all get fired or blow the publication schedule."

That's all it takes to defuse the outrage and reaffirm that you're a team. Some generous coordinators will go a step further, vetting the changes, striking out derogatory language, having a private word with the author, and sending you the manuscript with clear instructions. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen often.

In the absence of such support, you must initiate a boundary-defining chat with the coordinator. This chat has a two-part theme. On the professional side, convey that your priority is to serve the publisher's interests, which you believe are being compromised by the author's choices and downgrading the quality of the work to the point that it may cause embarrassment. Ask the coordinator for explicit directions on how to handle the author's responses because you find them so confusing and contradictory that you can't exercise your normal judgment. (Key concept here: Ask for help versus complaining.)

On the personal side, state that although the barrage of insults is unacceptable, you will happily be a good sport, because you love working with the organization, and who knew such a tirade was coming? We're all in this together, etc. But if anything like it happens again, you will return the manuscript and bill them for work completed to that minute. For this job, request that your name be mentioned nowhere in the final product. Then focus on getting instructions from the coordinator. Don't consider bailing out unless the coordinator turns hostile too.

Underneath it all, this is merely an exaggerated version of a common editing dilemma: being required to use house style that contradicts the Chicago Manual of Style or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association or other authority on what constitutes good writing and clear language. In those cases, regardless of what you think and feel, the publisher’s preference rules. The same applies here.

So if the coordinator says, "Stet everything," then swallow your bile and stet it. If the coordinator directs otherwise, do that instead—even if asked to waste your time justifying every change to the author. Your goal is no longer to do the best job possible but to get this job off your desk ASAP and be paid for every bit of it, without closing the door to future work.

An author tantrum is a good opportunity to prove to the publisher that you are reliable and honest and professional and flexible, all of which might bump you up a rung on their contractor list and earn you more projects. It's an opportunity to honor old words of wisdom and make lemonade out of a lemon!

____________________

Carolyn Haley operates DocuMania, a freelance editing and writing service based in rural Vermont. She works with a diverse mix of commercial, environmental, and academic clients on their books and articles for publication, as well as teaches novice authors and editors.

Where to find Carolyn: business ▪ LinkedIn profile ▪ books ▪ blog ▪ book reviews

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How to Keep Your Introversion from Getting in Your Way Professionally

2011-02-16T08:56:00.003-05:00

The only way to bring in enough money when you're self-employed is to constantly market your services. If you're an introvert, you may find your introversion getting in the way of putting yourself out there.

You may not believe me when I say that I'm an introvert, especially because you can find me all over the Internet—here on my blog, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and on profession-related e-mail lists. But I am indeed introverted, and I've found several ways to work with my introversion rather than against it to keep it from hampering my success as a self-employed editor:

Rather than using the phone, I correspond with colleagues and clients by e-mail (or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn) whenever possible. This allows me time to think through what I want to communicate and usually decreases the likelihood that I'll communicate in a foolish manner. When I'm on the phone with someone, I worry about whether I sound goofy, whether I'm remembering to say all of the things that I wanted to communicate, and whether I'm boring the other person. Baseless fears, maybe, but there they are.

I do work that doesn't require lots of face time. Rather than being someone who covers science meetings (like many of my medical-writer colleagues) and who therefore has to go around interviewing people in person, I'm someone who edits documents that come out of science meetings. Believe it or not, I started my career as a newspaper journalist. Despite being an excellent writer who garnered many front-page stories, I lasted only 2 years. It was emotionally exhausting!

I use social-media platforms to appear as the extrovert that I am not.

I team up with extroverts when I need to appear in public, such as at meetings of professional associations (or at parties at the homes of friends). I let them be the conversation-starters and thus take the pressure off myself to perform.

I don't schedule public appearances on the fly. I schedule them well in advance so that I have time to get ready mentally. It's not that we introverts hate being around people; it's just that spending extended time with others tends to tire us mentally and emotionally, so we need time to prepare ahead of time and then time to recuperate afterward.

I've stopped mentally bashing myself for being an introvert. I used to think that society devalued introversion in favor of extroversion. Extroverts may get a lot of attention from others, but that's because they command it, not because their way of being is better than introverts' way of being. Both extroverts and introverts are valuable parts of the human mix.

If you're an introvert, what things do you do to help yourself?

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Sources of Tea, the Editing Fuel

2011-02-14T08:30:00.006-05:00

All good editing, in my opinion, is fueled by tea. (Don't believe me? Read this.) And to me, all good tea is brewed from whole tea leaves and is enjoyed without any sugar or honey. Of course, you may disagree with those points, but you'll have to agree that this is a good starter list of tea vendors. If you have favorites that aren't listed there, please provide links in the comments here, and I'll consider adding them to my list.

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How Much Does Editing Cost?

2011-02-10T10:39:00.002-05:00

I occasionally get inquiries from authors new to editing—or new to paying for it themselves—who want to know how much it would cost to edit their book or medical-journal article. They assume that the cost is the same for all books or for all journal articles.

But that's like asking a mechanic how much it will cost to repair your car without letting the mechanic look at the car and figure out how much work the repair will entail and what replacement parts must be ordered. That's why I don't post rates on my business web site and don't quote fees without having a chance to assess the full manuscript. Here's how I explain it on my web site:

Why does KOK Edit not post a fee schedule here? Every manuscript, just like every client, is different. The level of editing needed, and thus the amount of time spent editing, varies with each project. Some clients prefer to pay page rates or project fees instead of hourly rates. Therefore, fees are negotiated for each project, depending on level of editing, project parameters, and project time frame. (However, you can get an idea of the range of fees charged for editing in the publishing industry by following many of the links on this page. Also, see this blog post for a discussion of several methods for structuring editing fees.) In all fee negotiations, 1 manuscript page is defined as 250 words; physical pagination is irrelevant.

KOK Edit's Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS, cannot determine the cost of editing for a project without having the opportunity to assess the manuscript regarding subject matter, quality of writing, complexity, length, and the level of editing needed versus the level of editing desired by the client. She will also need to know how many rounds of editing are desired, what the project deadlines are, and what the manuscript’s target audience is.

For large projects, KOK Edit may require periodic partial fee payments to be made during the editing process. Many times, a down payment of one third to one half of large project fees is required. Rush projects are accepted when possible, but they incur higher fees than nonrush jobs do.

All fee quotes are valid for 30 days; KOK Edit reserves the right to revise a quote if you take more than 30 days to decide to go ahead with the project. If the size, scope, or nature of the project changes after a quote has been accepted, a revised fee may be negotiated.

If you're an editorial professional, how do you handle this issue with potential clients?

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Thank-Yous Are Good Business

2011-02-07T11:23:00.004-05:00

My husband, a cabinetmaker, just finished a small project to help a colleague out; he did it as a subcontractor to the colleague. A few days later, he received a check in the mail in payment for his work, and it was tucked inside a thank-you card. How cool is it to get both money and thanks at the end of a project?

I don't subcontract out work to colleagues; instead I refer clients to them when my workload is too heavy to allow me to take on more work. So I can't use the thank-you-card idea in exactly the same way, but I'm going to find a way to work it into my business practice somehow, because I know how much those two little words, thank you, can mean to people.

I already do the following:

Thank both potential and existing clients by e-mail when they ask me to bid on a project

Send new clients thank-you e-mails after a project is complete

Send new clients a KOK Edit tea/coffee mug after we've worked on our first project together, so that they'll have something tactile to remember me by

Send all of my clients "Happy New Year" greeting cards with several of my business cards enclosed

Send my international clients e-mails wishing them a happy holiday—or whatever other sentiment is appropriate—on holidays that are important in their respective cultures and thanking them for their continued trust in my skills

Send thank-you cards—and sometimes small thank-you gifts—to colleagues who refer me to clients for whom I go on to do several projects

Send thank-you e-mails—and sometimes small thank-you gifts—to colleagues who go out of their way to help me

What other techniques do you use to thank clients and colleagues?

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Prejudice Against Editorial Professionals from India

2011-02-03T08:15:00.004-05:00

I'm angry.

I'm more than tired of hearing U.S. editorial professionals put down editorial pros from other nations—I'm appalled. Currently, most of this broad-brush denigration is directed at editorial pros who live in India.

I understand feeling financially desperate because your best publishing clients have begun offshoring work to nations with poor economies, taking financial advantage of workers there to cut business expenses. But those workers are not at fault for taking on paying work. You want to get angry? Get angry at U.S. publishers and book packagers who engage in economic exploitation in other nations. And get angry at the publishers who are cheaping out here in the United States by refusing to pay decent rates.

But don't put down the skills of all editorial pros in India. Just as happens with any nation, including the United States, poor work, mediocre work, and excellent work come out of India. I have several editor colleagues in India who do excellent work, and I am editing the autobiography of an American author who emigrated from India years ago. These individuals' English is flawless. Also, numerous editors in India are board-certified as editors in the life sciences, as I am. Among approximately 900 certified life-science editors worldwide, 49 (more than 5%) are associated with the India-based editing company Editage and its related business unit, Cactus Medical.

Those of you who put down Indian editors and proofreaders are simply exhibiting prejudice. That's ugly. Just stop it.

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Choosing An Editor: What to Look for, What to Expect

2011-02-02T08:08:00.001-05:00

Over on Deliberate Ink, the blog of my colleague Shakirah Dawud, I've written a guest post on the subject of how to chose an editor and how to work with one.

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Find Your Editorial Niche

2011-02-01T09:28:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to tell you that an interview that I did as part of a series on finding your niche as an editorial professional is now up as a post on The Accidental Freelancer, the blog of my mentee Cassie Armstrong. If you enjoy that post, you'll want to read the first one in the series too, in which Cassie interviewed freelance editor Laura Poole. And watch Cassie's blog for the third part of the series, in which she interviews editor Allison Parker. I admire Laura and Allison a great deal, and I think we can all learn a lot from them. If you're new to freelancing, you can learn a lot from Cassie herself too.

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How Come You're Not Getting the Rates You Want as an Editorial Pro?

2011-01-31T08:44:00.000-05:00

At some point in your career as a self-employed editorial professional, you're going to compare your fees with those of your colleagues. And some of you are going to wonder why you earn so much less than they do. It just might be your clientele.

Unfortunately, the arena that may most interest some freelance editors but that consistently pays low rates and even angles for lower rates is academic publishing. University presses historically have had little funding and thus very small budgets, which means they pay very low rates to freelancers. If academic book and journal manuscripts are your focus, then, you're going to earn very little. As the saying goes, you can't get blood from a turnip.

There is no shame in pulling in low fees if you do it for love of the material you edit. But if money is a problem, you'll have to decide which is more important to you: working on materials that you love—but earning very little because that's what that kind of work pays—or being able to command higher fees, even if the topics that you edit aren't perhaps your first love. If you decide that you want to go where the money is, you can do either of two things:

Look for arenas that pay more and that don't require you to earn additional degrees or certifications, such as business-to-business materials, web-site copy, public-relations materials, books and articles published outside academia.

Do some research to find a potentially interesting and higher-paying niche that requires more training ... and then invest time and money in getting that training, additional degree(s), or certification.

It's like the situation my husband, a cabinetmaker, faces: He'd love to not have to travel much and work on cabinetry only for nearby folks, but if he did, he'd go out of business for lack of funds. Most of the local folks are members of the middle class and can't and won't pay much at all for his services. So he travels a bit more to go out to Long Island's Hamptons, home to many extremely wealthy people who want all sorts of unheard-of things done with cabinetry and will pay whatever they have to to get those things. He's chosen his market, and it's not the penny-pinching middle class.

Have you put thought into finding a higher-paying clientele?

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Sending Holiday Greeting Cards to Clients Gets Results

2011-01-28T15:22:00.005-05:00

Most years, I send out "Happy New Year" greeting cards by snail mail to every single one of my clients, even those I haven't edited a project for in several months. At the end of 2010, this amounted to 57 cards, enough to give my writing hand cramps. And I tucked 3 of my business cards into each envelope. In each card, I wished the recipient a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2011; thanked him or her for working with me in the past; and expressed the hope that we would have a chance to work together in 2011.

This marketing practice—one of many I engage in—always pays off.

Already this month, several clients I haven't heard from in a while, mostly international researcher-authors who need ESL (English as a second language) editing of their medical-journal manuscripts, have e-mailed me after getting a greeting card and asked me to edit a manuscript for them. One physician-researcher from China, whose surgical techniques and research appear to be impeccable, though her English definitely is not, e-mailed me yesterday:

Hi, Katharine.

Yesterday, I received your best wishes—a happy new year card. I am excited very much! I have received two gifts from you, a cup* and the card. The three [business] cards of you have been sended to my friends. I inform them to e-mail you if they have papers to edit. If I have paper to edit I will e-mail you too. You are my best partner. I am successful with your help in the past time.^† I also appreciate you very much.

Of course I e-mailed her right back:

What a delightful message! Thank you so much for giving my business cards to your friends. You have given me a great gift by recommending my editing to them.

I couldn't have wished for a better response to mailing out the cards than from that one author. From her alone, I got my business cards passed along in person to three other researcher-authors and I got three enthusiastic recommendations. Imagine how many potential clients could end up with my contact information if all 57 greeting-card recipients did the same: 171! Even if only some of them do so, that's wonderful.

_________________
*Another of my marketing practices is to send a KOK Edit coffee/tea mug to a new client.

^†After I conducted an ESL edit of the author's last research article, the journal she submitted it to accepted it for publication. That was the first time any of her research articles had been published in a U.S. medical journal, which was a prestigious accomplishment for her.

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Resources for Writing and Editing Grant Proposals

2011-01-26T13:35:00.005-05:00

I was recently privileged to edit sections of a physician-researcher's proposal for a grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund an experiment whose findings would benefit very ill children. Because this was my first foray into the world of grant proposals, I needed help from colleagues to get up to speed. I asked for links to information resources, and wow, were they helpful! I'm sharing these resources with you here so that maybe you'll be able to spend less time hunting for resources and more time working on grant proposals.

Books

The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing, 5th edition (Jane C. Geever, 2007)

Four Steps to Funding (Morgan Giddings)

Grant Seeking in an Electronic Age (Victoria Mikelonis, Signe T. Betsinger, and Constance E. Kampf, 2004)

Grant Writing: Strategies for Developing Winning Government Proposals, 3rd edition (Patrick W. Miller, 2002)

Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant (Otto O. Yang, 2005)

Research Proposals: A Guide to Success, 3rd edition (Thomas E. Ogden and Israel A. Goldberg, 2002)

Writing Successful Science Proposals, 2nd edition (Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt, 2009)

Writing the NIH Grant Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide (William Gerin, 2006)

Courses and Online Resources

"All About Grants" Tutorials, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

American Grant Writers' Association (see information about in-person grant-writing workshop and information about online courses)

Annotated Grant Proposal, AuthorAID (PDF)

Center for Scientific Review

Course schedule from Grant Writing USA

Foundation Center

Foundation Center, online training courses

"Glossary & Acronym List," Office of Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health

"Grant Proposal Writing Tips," Corporation for Public Broadcasting

"Grant Writing," Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center

GrantProposal.com

Grantsmanship Center (offers training programs on grant writing)

"Guidelines for Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE)" (PDF)

Morgan On Science

"NIH Forms & Applications," Office of Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health

"Non-Competing Continuation Progress Report: PHS 2590: Downloadable Instructions and Form Files," National Institutes of Health

Non-profit Guides: Grant-Writing Tools for Non-Profit Organizations

Office of Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health

"Proposal Writing Checklist," ProposalWriter.com

"Recruiting Human Subjects: Sample Guidelines for Practice," Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (PDF)

"Sample R01 Applications and Summary Statements," National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (samples of successful grant applications)

"Training & Communications Resources," Enhancing Peer Review at NIH, National Institutes of Health

"The Translational Research Program: Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs)," National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual

"Vanderbilt University Tools for Grant Writing," Office of Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

"What Grantmakers Want Applicants to Know," GuideStar

Most of the resources listed here were recommended to me by members of the private Editing-Writing e-mail list of the American Medical Writers Association, the private e-mail list of the Editorial Freelancers Association, and the public Copyediting-L e-mail list. A few of them are courtesy of this blog post from medical writer and editor Stacey C. Tobin.

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A Mentee's Tale

2011-01-26T11:59:00.003-05:00

I'm so proud of self-employed proofreader and copyeditor Cassie Armstrong, one of my mentees! She's such a go-getter. Read her story here, at the blog of my colleague Shakirah Dawud. You can find Cassie on Twitter as @cassiemon.

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How to Charge: By the Project, by the Hour, or by the Word or Page?

2011-01-24T10:57:00.006-05:00

One of the many business decisions that self-employed copyeditors have to make is how to charge, and that may be more important than what they charge.

As a copyeditor, you can charge by the hour, by the word or page, or by the project, and there are good reasons for each of these methods. The density of the material you're editing, whether it is indeed ready for copyediting and should have first undergone more developmental editing, the speed at which you edit, limitations on the client's budget, and the type of material you edit can affect how much you effectively earn on each project, especially when you charge a project fee or per-word or per-page fee. Consider what four experienced copyeditors have to say about the various fee structures.

Editor Audrey Dorsch often quotes project fees to her clients:

Hourly rates tend to scare people who don't really understand that they are contracting with a business, not hiring an employee. If they see an hourly rate, they compare it to hourly rates they know of in various areas and may or may not like it. With a project fee, they evaluate whether the project is worth that much to them. They don't think about what the editor is making per hour (nor should they—it's none of their business).

Project fees, then, don't change: You quote a project fee before beginning work on the project, and that's the fee that you will bill the client for when you've finished the project. But editor Elaine Kehoe sometimes prefers to quote hourly rates, where the total amount that she will bill is not known until she is finished with the project:

[Audrey has] a valid point, but I remain unconvinced that a project fee is always better than an hourly rate. As a case in point, I'm now working on a huge textbook, for which I'm charging my usual hourly rate. But problems have been rampant with the project since the beginning, some of them developmental in nature. In short, the book should really not yet have been sent for copyediting, and I'm ending up cleaning up a lot of things that should've already been set, such as adding a new section to all chapters and making certain global changes. Development and marketing went over the sample chapter I edited and returned it to me to have the newly approved changes made. I've spent a lot of time on the phone with and e-mailing the production editor. The schedule is being revised. If I had done this at a project rate, I'd be losing money. With my hourly rate, I'm assured of getting paid for all the work I do.

In answer to Elaine's point about potentially losing money with a project rate, editor Amy J. Schneider says:

That's when you call the client and say that the project is now beyond the scope of what you originally agreed to, and you negotiate a new fee.

Editor Laurie Rendon, who edits journal articles, book chapters, and other academic materials, always charges by the 250-word page:

I charge a page rate, and I find it all comes out in the wash. I almost always make close to the same dollar amount per hour (except for small jobs, which always take longer per page). I charge a page rate because in my experience most things I edit end up taking the same amount of time per unit. If it isn't a problem with English, then it's a problem with repetition or omission, or a computer glitch, or something else.

I hope that these editors' wise words have given you the tools to decide how you'll charge your clients.

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Adversary or Client? Competitor or Colleague?

2011-01-21T11:52:00.002-05:00

I've noticed a troubling divide among self-employed editorial professionals in how they approach finding work with new clients and responding to requests to share knowledge with other editorial pros.

Those on the sad side of this divide won't reach out actively, through e-mails, phone calls, or tweets, to potential new clients, fearing that clients encountered this way are likely to be unsavory fly-by-nights who are trying to get work done for little to no pay. Instead, they complain on profession-related e-mail lists that they don't have enough work and ask where there are web sites that will dole out projects to them. I suppose that they also find the prospect of marketing their services and hunting down clients a bit overwhelming, so they want someone or something to feed them projects. I wonder how they can afford to remain self-employed.

Those on the sad side are also parsimonious with their colleagues. They won't give advice, in person or on e-mail lists, much less on LinkedIn, when asked for it, fearing that their colleagues are merely competitors and will use their advice to steal their clients. They're astounded that anyone would freely share advice, believing that the only way to be a productive editorial pro is to not "waste" time communicating with other pros.

I'm not saying to ignore your common sense and instincts when dealing with potential clients and with colleagues. And I'm not advocating giving away all of your trade secrets. I'm talking about having a little trust.

It comes down to worldview. Do we view humans as most often decent? Or do we view them as creatures to be wary of because they're more likely than not to do us harm? I hold the former view, and I'm most often rewarded for it. I've found that whenever I begin any interaction from a stance of wariness, without having any signals to base that wariness on, I have a poor experience. This holds true for me with both potential clients and newly met colleagues, however I've first come into contact with them.

Which side of the divide are you on, and why?

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Why You're Not Getting New Clients Through Social Media

2011-01-20T10:21:00.002-05:00

I know that some of you, seeing the title of this post, are rolling your eyes and thinking something like this: Good grief! There she goes again, yammering on about social media. But this post is for exactly you, to give you an idea or two about why I yammer on.

If you've only dipped a big toe into the pool of social media and are wondering why new clients haven't responded by showering you with project offers, this post from the blog Writing Thoughts explains why. What it says does not apply to writers alone; it's on target for editors and other editorial pros too.

If you think Twitter is only for self-centered people telling the world about what they ate for lunch or bought at the shopping mall, this blog post by effervescent Marian Schembari explains why it's for much more than that.

Lesson: Social-media platforms are just like profession-related associations and e-mail discussion lists—you have to build relationships. If you expect clients and projects to fall into your lap without your having built relationships, you'll be disappointed . . . and poor.

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How to Start Off Right with Authors

2011-01-18T09:18:00.007-05:00

For an author, being edited can feel intrusive. But you, as the editor, can take some preventive actions early on to build a trust-filled author–editor relationship. For 27 years now, I've worked both through publishers and directly with authors, and these practices have always worked for me. I list them here in no particular order:

Find something—anything legitimate—to praise in the manuscript. This could be a particularly wonderful sentence, a vivid depiction of a scene, or a piece of humor that the author handled well. This lets the author know that the editor is on his or her side.

Make sure that all queries are worded respectfully. Don't grovel or explain things to death, but don't write the equivalent of "Good grief! How can you not have seen that ridiculous dangling modifier?!"

Don't use editing jargon that the author may not be familiar with. Explain any terms, such as callout or extract or folio, that you'd normally use among other editors without explanation.

Include a cover note to the author when you return the edited manuscript to the publisher, explaining any overall issues. (If you are working directly with the author, then of course this cover note goes directly to the author.) Also describe the level of editing you did at the publisher's request; describe style manual use briefly.

Request that when it's time for the author to review edits, the publisher send the author a copy of the style sheet that you created, so that the author can have documentation of why you made the style choices you did. (Again, if you're working directly with the author, this document goes to the author. Take some time to explain the purpose of style sheets and how they work.)

Repeat the mantra "It's not my book. It's not my book. It's not my book." It's the author's book, so you have to get into the author's head so that your edits reflect not your voice but the author's. Do not trample the author's voice.

Follow the Copyeditor’s Golden Rule: Edit others as you would want to be edited.

Double-check unique spellings and unfamiliar terms, such as invented words used in fantasy fiction or terms of art in scholarly manuscripts, with the author or publisher.

Be clear in your queries. Word them in such a way to get your questions answered. In other words, don't query by writing, "author: Unclear. Please fix."

At the beginning of the manuscript—but after you've finished editing—insert a query that's really a note thanking the author for the privilege of reading his or her work. This is not fawning; it is showing respect.

If you communicate directly with the author, do not respond in kind to any temper tantrums. Let the author have his or her say, and then respond calmly, truthfully, and respectfully.

Have you found additional practices that enhance your relationships with authors? Please share them in the comments. You can learn more about working with authors here.

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Updating the Details

2011-01-10T19:44:00.015-05:00

Because it's the start of a new year, it's a good idea for self-employed editorial professionals to update their online details.

Make a list of all of the places online where you have a profession-related profile. For each one, check that your contact information, including these items, is current:

Your snail-mail address

Your phone and fax numbers

Your e-mail address

Your web site address

Any résumés that you have uploaded

It's easy to forget this chore, so I have an annual calendar entry that reminds me to update all such information about myself online, plus copyright dates for web sites that I own. That calendar entry lists all the places online where I must do updates: the member directory of the Editorial Freelancers Association, the directory of freelancers maintained by the e-mail list Copyediting-L, my ad on the web site of the Council of Science Editors, the freelancer directory of the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences, the freelancer directory of the American Medical Writers Association, this blog, my business web site, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on.

Here is a helpful article on how to update your profile on several social-media platforms. Not described there is how to back up your LinkedIn profile: just click the PDF icon on the upper right side of your profile.

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Tax Deductions That U.S. Freelancers Should Be Taking

2010-09-29T10:51:00.009-04:00

Right now, I'm busy with final preparations for a presentation on how freelancers can benefit from their online presence that I'll be making this weekend. Meanwhile, take a look at this piece from Grant Dobbins on income tax deductions that self-employed editorial freelancers should be taking. Check with your accountant for even more ideas on tax deductions.

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Medical Publishing and Full Disclosure of Editing Assistance

2010-09-17T11:06:00.005-04:00

In medical publishing, one of the hot issues now is transparency, or full disclosure, regarding any possible conflicts of interest. It's my stance that as part of transparency, researchers should always disclose to peer-reviewed medical journals that they have contracted with self-employed medical copyeditors to polish their manuscripts before submissions.

Journals are requiring authors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest, such as whether they received funds, equipment, or other assistance to conduct the research that they are reporting or whether they act as spokespersons for or have a financial stake in the manufacturers of any equipment or medication used in their research. This is because the results of a study on the effects of a particular drug, for example, could be viewed as biased (or, worst-case scenario, perhaps even manipulated) if the drug's manufacturer funded the study or assisted the authors in writing the study report. But if such assistance isn't disclosed, readers won't know that the study results might have been manipulated by researchers who are grateful to the manufacturer for the assistance.

Accordingly, many organizations related to science publishing recommend and many medical journals now require full disclosure regarding assistance of any kind that authors receive, include writing and editing assistance. For example, see this part of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, especially this statement:

Authors should identify individuals who provide writing or other assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

I and many other medical copyeditors interpret "other assistance" to mean editing assistance.
Therefore, when I edit journal manuscripts for authors—and I work with a lot of authors all over the world who need my assistant because they're non-native speakers of English—I let them know that I require that they include this statement in the acknowledgments section of their manuscript:

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS, of East Setauket, New York, provided English-language editing of this article.

Then the author's target journal can decide whether, according to its disclosure policies, that statement will appear in the published version of the article. And the journal can then also ask the authors how they paid for my services—out of their own pockets, from funds provided by their medical institution, from federal grants, etc. I won't work with any authors who won't agree to my requirement.

As one former editor of a prominent British medical journal wrote a few months ago on an e-mail list for journal editors, not acknowledging editorial assistance "misleads readers into thinking that the authors are skilled writers."

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Conference Presentation: Profiting from Your Online Presence

2010-09-15T10:05:00.002-04:00

If you're a self-employed editorial professional, you've found that résumés and business cards aren't enough anymore to keep your work schedule full. Want to know what tools work today and how to use them? Come talk with me, on Saturday, October 2, 2010, on day 2 of the fifth annual Communication Central Build Your Business conference, where I'll lead the session "Profiting from Your Online Presence." I'll teach you how to build your reputation and find clients by using social media, web sites, e-mail discussion lists, and more.

You can get more details here and register here.

My main topics will be

How to use Twitter to build relationships

How to use Facebook to establish community

How to use LinkedIn to showcase your talents

How to use e-mail discussion lists to build relationships and get referrals

How to make sure that your web site showcases your skills and professional personality

I've been in publishing for 26 years, the first 11 as a production editor for various publishers, and since then as a full-time freelance copyeditor. I am a medical editor with a specialty in editing manuscripts written by non-native speakers of English. My editing has helped researchers in 20-plus nations get their articles published in more than two dozen peer-reviewed journals. I am also the creator and curator of the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base. On Twitter, I am @KOKEdit.

Please join me and my colleagues at Communication Central's Build Your Business conference this year. The theme is Finding Your Niche/Expanding Your Horizons, and you'll find plenty to help your business grow.

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How to Avoid Getting Stiffed by Clients

2010-08-31T10:55:00.005-04:00

I was recently asked, on an e-mail list for editors, what my techniques are for avoiding getting stiffed by clients and what to do when a client tries to get out of paying me. I'm happy to share my advice here:

How to Avoid Getting Stiffed and Avoid Cash-Flow Problems

Check out new-to-you clients in as many venues as you can think of: profession-related e-mail lists, the client's web site, the Better Business Bureau (or an organization in your nation with a similar function), searches on the Internet. ... I've even asked a corporation unfamiliar to me (a printing press) to provide names and phone numbers for three businesses that I could contact to verify that the corporation made timely payments to its vendors. Don't be deterred by a potential client's disbelief that you want to check them out.

Get everything about the proposed project in writing before starting work. Include details such as how much you'll be paid, when you'll be paid, how you'll be paid, and how often you'll be paid during the project.

As part of the project agreement, require a down payment on your fee of anywhere from 33% to 100%. The size of your down payment will depend on your negotiating skills and the client's flexibility. Also, make sure that this down payment clears your bank account before you begin work.

Before you begin work, make sure that you have full contact details for the client: personal name, corporate name (if applicable), mailing address, at least one e-mail address, phone number, fax number, web-site address, Twitter handle, Facebook page address, etc. If I were to be working with a university student, I would want full contact info for the student's thesis supervisor, plus a letter on the supervisor's departmental letterhead stating that my working with the student is allowed under university rules. If I'm going to be working with a professor or staff member of a comparable institution, I ferret out contact details for that person's boss.

Don't work for only one or two clients. Always keep marketing your services, even when you think you have "enough" clients, so that you can keep clients coming in (old clients sometimes fold or disappear) and cash flowing. Take on both large and small projects to help balance cash flow.

How to Deal with a Slow Payer
This is good advice from my colleague Dick Margulis for dealing with slow-paying clients.

Payment-Collection Techniques of Last Resort
Use these techniques to get your money when you don't care if you lose the client:

Claim copyright interest in work you have done but have not been paid for, as explained on an editors' e-mail list by Rich Adin:

I write something along the following lines:

I understand that sometimes there are snags with getting the first invoice paid to a new vendor but that, unfortunately, creates a problem as regards your ability to use my work. The problem is that I have a copyright interest in my work until I am paid for my work. I would hate to put a kink in your production process, but as a publisher, I am sure you can understand that it is impossible for me to simply waive my copyright interest.

In the meantime, here is the completed second batch of manuscript. Let me remind you that I retain a copyright interest in my work until paid. I look forward to receiving payment for the first batch shortly so I can waive my copyright interest, and I look forward to timely payment for the second batch so that my copyright interest is negated.

Sending something like that often gets quick payment.

Hold work over the client's head until you get paid, as I explained in a post to a freelancers' e-mail list:

There was some major stiffing going on years ago when medical publisher A, a former employer of mine, was acquired by medical publisher B, which has since been acquired by medical publisher C.

I was the freelance production editor for a journal published by publisher A. Publisher B asked me to continue on, and I did. But payments got later and later, until things were at the 90-plus-days-late point for multiple invoices. I had periodically discussed the matter with absolutely everyone possible at publisher B. No joy; I was told that like every other freelancer of publisher A's who was brought along to publisher B, my being paid would have to await vetting of my contract by publisher B's lawyers.

Finally, I decided I'd had enough and was willing—nay, deliriously happy—to lose publisher B as a client. I contacted the editor-in-chief of the journal, an MD who was not [an employee of publisher B], and told him what was going on. I told him that I'd enjoyed working with him and his journal for several years but now could no longer afford to do so, especially because the new publisher would not speed up payment. He offered to pay me out of his own pocket. I thanked him but turned him down; I had contacted him not to get money out of him but because I owed him the courtesy of not just dropping out of sight without an explanation. I then contacted the journal's managing editor and let her know that because I'd had absolutely no success with her or her supervisors, I'd informed the editor-in-chief about the situation. She gasped and choked and sounded as if she were going to die on the spot. She told me how unprofessional my actions were; I responded calmly that publisher B was unprofessional in not paying its contractors. She allowed as how she could see what could be done to expedite payment. I said that I was ceasing work on the journal—and would not return any of its materials—until all of the money I was owed arrived in the form of a cashable check.

I had my money within 3 business days, via FedEx. I then packed up all 400 pounds of in-process materials and archived materials and shipped it to publisher B—on publisher B's FedEx account. It was a joy to watch the FedEx driver log in and load every single one of those boxes ... and to think about how large publisher B's FedEx bill would be for that one giant shipment.

Helpful Books, Articles, and Audio-Conference CDs
Here are links to books, articles, and audio CDs on getting paid promptly.

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Your Personal Twitter Guru

2010-07-20T12:37:00.004-04:00

If you've followed my blog for at least the last 12 months, you know that I'm a huge fan of using social media—Twitter in particular—as a marketing tool. And yes, I mean marketing your business, all of you editorial freelancers out there. Using Twitter is fun, but every little detail of how you do so effects the impression you make on Twitterdom.

Scary? It doesn't have to be. Want someone to help you figure out how to do it well but don't have much money for a huge campaign? I know just the person who can help: Marian Schembari. She's smart, young, energetic, knowledgeable about social media, full of ideas, outspoken, direct, and funny.

She's offering Twitter critiques that provide personalized and actionable tasks that will make you immediately more effective once you complete them. Here's how it works:

E-mail her with your Twitter handle (translation for newbies: Twitter name) and a brief summary of what you want to accomplish with your online presence.

Within 2 days, she'll get back to you with a half-hour video critique of your profile, along with a written report with the strategy outlined in the video.

You'll also receive a follow-up evaluation of your progress whenever you want, usually 2 weeks after implementation.

The cost? Only $100. Even for someone new to freelancing without a large budget, that's affordable. Just do it!

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Audio Conference on Handling Difficult Authors

2010-07-05T19:03:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, August 12, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern time, I'll spill my secrets in an audio conference, sponsored by Copyediting newsletter, on how copyeditors can work with authors who actively resist being edited, don't see the problems that the editor does, or are downright hostile. What are your options, as a copyeditor, when an author digs in his or her heels, and what can you do to avoid an impasse in the first place? You can get more details and register by going here.

The main topics will be

How to set authors at ease at the start of editing

How to write effective author queries

How to set boundaries with authors who hover

How to navigate relationships with prickly authors

How to communicate effectively with ESL authors

How to turn authors into repeat clients

How to deal with authors when a breakup is inevitable

I have been in publishing for 26 years, the first 11 as a production editor for various publishers, and since then as a full-time freelance copyeditor. I am a medical editor with a specialty in editing manuscripts written by non-native speakers of English. My editing has helped researchers in 20-plus nations get published. I am also the creator and curator of the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base. On Twitter, I am @KOKEdit.

If you can't change your schedule to participate in the audio conference, you can go here to order a CD of the conference. If you can't afford the cost of the conference yourself, you and one or more colleagues can register under one name and make arrangements among yourselves to share the cost. International callers are welcome; consider using VoIP to decrease the cost of your time on the phone. And remember, if you're already self-employed as a freelance editor in the United States, the cost of the audio conference (and the audio CD, if you purchase it) is a business expense that you can write off on your income tax forms.

Get ready to pick up your phone and learn from the comfort of your employer's office, your home office, or your home. If you've wanted to improve your relationships with authors, this is the conference for you.

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Twitter Tip: Résumés and Business Cards

2010-07-02T16:39:00.003-04:00

I'm reading a great new book, The Twitter Job Search Guide, by Susan Britton Whitcomb, Chandlee Bryan, and Deb Dib (published by JIST) so that I can eventually review it. (It's taking me a long while, not because the book is boring or a tough read but because I have so little spare time.) Meanwhile, I found a good tip in it that editorial freelancers might want to take advantage of:

List your Twitter handle (account name) on your business cards, résumé, and LinkedIn profile.

I'd add that you should also list it on your business web site and wherever else your business profile appears online, such as directories of those in your profession or members of a professional association.

I'm on Twitter all the time, mostly for business purposes, but it hadn't occurred to me to include my Twitter handle (@KOKEdit) on my business cards or résumé, even though I list it on my LinkedIn profile and on my web site. Including your Twitter handle on all of your project-seeking materials, including e-mail signatures, is a great idea because potential clients can then follow you on Twitter and get a sense of who you are, what your outlook on work and your profession is, and how you think.

Take a look at how I've incorporated my Twitter handle into my résumé (near the top of it).

Maybe including your Twitter handle on everything you can think of seems like a minor detail, but these days, it's important to take advantage of every possible tool to help potential clients to find you.

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Social Media Platforms as Marketing Tools for Freelancers

2010-06-18T15:19:00.002-04:00

I use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, in addition to my own web site, as part of my business presence. If you're a freelance editorial professional, I think that you should do so too.

To learn what Twitter does for me and to read instructions for getting it to do the same for you, read my article in the current issue (volume 25, number 2) of the AMWA Journal. I believe so strongly in the usefulness of Twitter that I am one of the people who serve as the official Twitter voice for both the Council of Science Editors and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences.

The book I've coauthored that I've recently posted about here—my first ever authorship of a book produced by a traditional publisher—came my way solely because of Twitter. The book's publisher found me on Twitter, liked how I represented myself and my skills, asked me to contract with them first as a copyeditor and then as a developmental editor, and then offered me the chance to be a coauthor.

My Facebook page is in my personal name, not my business's name. That's because when I signed up for Facebook, I wasn't aware that businesses could have Facebook profiles, and by now, I don't want to have to do the work of setting up a business profile and then to have to remember to post only nonwork stuff on my namesake profile and only work stuff on my business profile. I do post the occasional personal note on Facebook, such as yesterday's announcement that I believe I have the sweetest husband in the world, but I don't believe that that reflects negatively on my professionalism. After all, editorial professionals do sometimes have life partners. ;-) But generally, I post information and links about the publishing industry, science publishing, freelancing, and health-care news...because I am a full-time freelance copyeditor, working mostly with medical manuscripts. Some of my clients have "friended" me there; lots of my colleagues have. I like Facebook because it's much more up-to-the-moment than my fairly static business web site is. As I do with Twitter, I believe so strongly in the usefulness of Facebook that I am one of the people who manage the Facebook pages of the Council of Science Editors and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences.

LinkedIn, for me, serves as a more traditional-feeling venue for showcasing my résumé, work background, and related information. I think it's an excellent tool especially for freelancers who don't yet have their own business web sites; the free version of LinkedIn will let you display all that you need to without the headaches of setting up and maintaining a web site. Your profile will, though, have pretty much the same look as everyone else's on LinkedIn, which isn't the case on your own business web site. You can establish your authority and reputation on LinkedIn by participating in group discussions and sharing your expertise when less-experienced folks ask questions. And you can use LinkedIn to find out information about potential corporate clients by studying their profiles.

I figure that through my web site, potential clients get a good idea of my professional qualifications. Through Facebook and Twitter, they can get a fairly real-time sense of what it's like to work with me and deal with me. Let's face it: Many of us have fired clients because even though they offered plenty of work, they treated us shoddily. It would be great to be able to determine ahead of time whether a potential client is going to be hell to work with or out of touch with industry best practices. Shouldn't I give potential clients the chance to see whether, in addition to being well qualified, I'm also pleasant to deal with and knowledgeable about current events and trends in the fields I work in?

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An Answer to Haters of Comic Sans

2010-06-15T19:07:00.000-04:00

You know who you are. Comic Sans is mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore.

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What Do I Use Twitter For?

2010-06-09T12:32:00.001-04:00

My article "I'm On Twitter: Now What Do I Use It For?" is in the current issue of the AMWA Journal (volume 25, issue 2). AMWA (American Medical Writers Association) members can read it here; nonmembers can access it at this link (PDF).

As I say in the article, "Twitter is ... a place to keep up with industry news, learn what industry leaders are doing and thinking about, make new client contacts, and meet and build online relationships with colleagues," and I explain ways to do these things. My industries are publishing and, more specifically, medical publishing, and Twitter is a wonderful tool for me to use in keeping up with those industries.

What do you use Twitter for?

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My New Book!

2010-06-07T17:19:00.000-04:00

I heard back from the publisher today about my additions to the book I'm getting coauthor credit on:

The manuscript looks fine to me . . . send me an invoice and we'll get your final payment in the works. [The book was a work-for-hire project.]

I'm glad you enjoyed this project. On our end, you really saved us with the quick turnaround time and quality work. Certainly, as we need books updated in the future—some of those TechCareers publications are about ready to be updated for second editions—we'll be happy to kick some of that work your way.

We'll keep you posted as events warrant on Taking Charge . . . we'll do everything we can to make you and Karen [my coauthor] media darlings!

That made my week! I couldn't have asked for more. I got praise, the promise of more writing work, and the promise of publicity for the book. The publisher, TSTC [Texas State Technical College] Publishing, doesn't have a page up on its web site yet for this new (second) edition of the book, and the current page for the first edition (for which I wasn't a coauthor) is down while the web site is being redone. But here is the publisher's blog post about the book.

The publishing intern who wrote that post also assisted me in doing some of the research for the second edition, and I've asked that she be given credit on the title page as researcher. My publisher has agreed. I'll have a short bio and a head shot on the back cover.

The first edition was 236 pages and cost $40-something. The new edition will be longer, but I don't know the estimate page count yet or the price. If you're interested in getting a copy because someone in your family will soon be a brand-new college student, the ISBN is 978-1-934302-83-5. The book is scheduled to be available this coming September.

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Audio Course: How to Price Projects

2010-06-02T12:23:00.000-04:00

A trusted colleague of mine, a medical writer and editor, highly recommends the audio course How to Confidently Price, Quote and Win More Projects at Higher Fees for freelancer editorial workers. For $49 (the live teleclass was $39), you get an MP3 audio file of the class, a worksheet, and a transcript.

I haven't taken the class, and I do not have any connection with it or its creators.

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Elegance from My Husband the Master Cabinetmaker

2010-05-30T20:44:00.027-04:00

My Husband the Master Cabinetmaker^tm, otherwise known as Ed, is building an intricate half-round bench with back slats for a kitchen breakfast nook. He'll soon install the bench in the guesthouse of a home in the Hamptons.

Here are some progress photos. (Click on any photo to see a larger version of it.) The picture at the top left shows a cutting jig (pattern) that he had to make up before he could even cut any pieces for the bench. The vertical back of the bench (the part that people will rest their backs against) will eventually have 33 vertical tapered slats on it. The actual seat (the horizontal surface) will have no slats; it will be solid. The vertical part that will show behind where people's legs will be will have 14 vertical tapered slats on it.

I'm always astounded at my husband's brilliance in the wood shop.

Updated June 1, 2010, at 8:36 a.m.: More photos added.

Updated June 2, 2010, at 10:35 a.m.: And more photos added.

Updated June 6, 2010, at 7:01 p.m.: Ed finished installing the seat today. I've added photos 24 through 27. After this, the painters hired to paint the room will paint the bench (Ed was asked to just prime it), and then the home owners will have a cushion added to the seat.

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Reporting in From the Writing Trenches

2010-05-13T09:57:00.004-04:00

I've been very quiet here lately, so I thought I should report in.

My workload has been heavy. And right now, I'm writing updates to the second edition of a college's how-to-be-a-successful-student-and-grown-up textbook, for which I will be given coauthor status.

I am so amazed—I can do this book-writing stuff! But writing is requiring so much more brain power than editing does for me, most likely because I haven't been doing it on a daily basis in decades. (The last time I wrote for pay was as a journalist in the early 1980s.) I get a reprieve from the intensity of writing today because today is an edit-the-Indian-gentleman's-giant-cultural-history-and-genealogy-manuscript day, but I might sneak in a little writing anyway just because it keeps astounding me that I can still write, and I want to check to see if that ability has suddenly disappeared. I'm wiped out at the end of a day spent writing because of (1) the brain-power usage issue, (2) the exhilaration of being able to write, (3) fear that I will blow the deadline, and (4) worry that I'm missing important things at home because I've been concentrating so intensely on what's on my screen. You know: "Oldest child—any new grandkids from you? You other two kids—either of you grow up while my brain was away?"

Remember that feeling, way back in your student days, right after a final exam? That feeling that you'd just dumped all of your intelligence into the test and temporarily had none left? That's how I feel at the end of a day of writing. I suppose that if I were to do it for pay more often—instead of mostly just for personal use or for blogging or for mentoring—it would feel easier and take a little less out of me.

But damn, I do feel so alive!

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Giving Advice All Over the Place

2010-03-19T11:43:00.011-04:00

I've been so busy tweeting and working that I've been neglecting my poor blog. But I've kept on giving out plenty of advice about how editorial freelancers can get and keep clients. And the divine Marian Schembari has kindly written up some of that advice.

Updated March 22, 8:10 p.m.: And here I am being quoted again by Marian at Digital Book World, as are some of my colleagues and one of my clients.

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Safe!

2010-03-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

The world is a very, very good place for my family today: We get to keep our house!

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How to Transition to Copyediting From Another Career

2010-01-17T11:44:00.015-05:00

I'm always being asked how to get into copyediting by people who are in related fields such as teaching. Please note that having been an English teacher does not necessarily prepare you well to be an editor. There is no One True Way, but this is a path that I often recommend:

First, read "So, You Want to Be an Editor."

Then read the blog posts "Becoming an Editor" and "What We Do" [Note: This item was updated August 20, 2011.]

If you're still seriously interested, buy and work through The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, third edition. [Note: This item was updated August 20, 2011.]

And then subscribe to Copyediting newsletter.

Next, take some of the series of online editing training modules that Copyediting offers and the courses that the Graduate School offers.

Meanwhile, follow the links found in the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base on my web site, accessed through the first 7 links on the page. Take action on those that will help you fill gaps in your knowledge.

Then buy and read my onscreen booklet, Getting Started as a Freelance Copyeditor.

After all of that, take any additional courses that you need. There are plenty available, many that can be completed online.

Then begin contacting publishers and other organizations, offering your editing services. You will most often be required to take a copyediting test, time for which you will not be paid.

If you have gotten this far in the process, join a profession-related organization for networking and continuing-education purposes and to have colleagues who can answer your questions and teach you client-relations skills. I highly recommend the Editorial Freelancers Association, of which I have been a member since 1995.

Take courses periodically for the rest of your life. Above all, being a copyeditor requires being willing to constantly learn: Both language and grammar practices change over time, as does the technology used to edit. You may also want or need to learn related skills, such as indexing or page layout, to stay in demand in the industry.

Educate yourself about the financial and tax implications of being a self-employed freelancer and about how to market your editorial services. You will be a businessperson, so you will need to know how to act like one.

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My Germ-Away Tea

2010-01-12T18:35:00.011-05:00

Because it's the season for upper respiratory infections, at least in the northern hemisphere, I thought you might want my recipe for Germ-Away Tea:

Steep 2 teaspoons of dried, crumbled spearmint leaves and a dash each of ground turmeric, fennel seed, ground sage, and ground ginger in 12 ounces of steaming-hot water for 2 minutes. (You can substitute a small bit of grated fresh ginger for the ground ginger.) Fills two 6-ounce teacups.

Here are the health benefits commonly ascribed to the spices in the tea:

Spearmint: digestive aid, nausea fighter, indigestion fighter

Turmeric: antioxidant, antibacterial, digestive aid.

Fennel: digestive aid, diuretic, expectorant, sore-throat soother

Sage: antibiotic, cold fighter, anticongestive, digestive aid, disinfectant, flu fighter, immune-system booster, sore-throat soother

Ginger: anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, bronchitis fighter, circulation booster, cold fighter, anticongestive, flu fighter

It's a little spicy and tastes best hot.

Feel better.

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Get to Know the Council of Science Editors

2010-01-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

If you're a medical editor or copyeditor employed by or freelancing for science journals, publishers, authors, or medical associations, you can enrich your career by getting to know the Council of Science Editors (CSE). One way to do that is to follow the association on Twitter.

CSE, originally called the Council of Biology Editors, was established in 1957 by the National Science Foundation and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Today it has more than 1,200 members from around the world. It provides career development, provides educational opportunities, and develops resources for identifying and implementing high-quality editorial practices. It offers plenty of resources on its web site, including a member forum, access to publications on editing and the publishing process, and periodic white papers on issues in science publishing. Its journal, Science Editor, addresses all aspects of editing, from the technical to the interpersonal, from science education to ethics in science publishing.

CSE also puts together an annual meeting that offers educational courses, networking opportunities, and presentations of research posters and papers. This year's meeting will be May 14–18, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Check us out. Yes, I'm pleased to be a CSE member.

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What 26 Years in Publishing—15 as a Freelance Copyeditor—Have Taught Me

2010-01-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

The publishing industry, which includes both books and peer-reviewed journals, has undergone tremendous changes since I first began working in it in 1984. Back then, manuscripts were all still edited on paper, not on computer screens; authors saw both galley proofs and page proofs of their typeset manuscripts; and the only methods for contacting authors were phone calls, faxes, and letters delivered by postal services or express air couriers. But some things haven’t changed over the years:

If an editor treats authors respectfully, authors will return the favor.

Authors accept edits more willingly from an editor who explains the reasoning behind changes than from one who doesn’t.

Clients and authors always appreciate clear, straightforward, timely communication with an editor.

Misunderstandings can occur when there are language barriers, so both author and editor must assume good intentions on the part of the other as they work at communicating.

It’s important to respect boundaries. Authors are the subject-matter experts; the editor is the expert on grammar, syntax, overall flow, and the need for additional details.

No matter how experienced, an editor can always learn new things. I learn something new from each manuscript I edit and each client and author I work with.

Books and journals may eventually stop appearing in paper form and be available only onscreen, but success in publishing will always require attention to the human beings involved.

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The Journals in Which My ESL Authors Get Published

2009-12-30T14:46:00.002-05:00

I like lists; I keep them for many different subjects. They're good for organizing how we work and how we think. In looking at lists I made in 2009, I came across this one, a list of the medical journals in which my ESL (English as a second language) authors went on to have their research articles published after getting some language help from me:

Anesthesia and Analgesia

Anesthesia and Analgesia

Archives of Medical Research

Archives of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

Biophysical Journal

Biotechnology Letters

Chinese Medical Journal

Cleft Palate–Craniofacial Journal

Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research

Injury

Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science

Journal of Arthroplasty

Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery

Journal of Bone and Mineral Research

Journal of Clinical Anesthesia

Journal of Comparative Human Biology

Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics

Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery

Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care

Molecular Vision

Oncology Reports

Orthopedics

The Permanente Journal

Protein Expression and Purification

Radiology

Spine

I am grateful to all of the authors who trust me to handle their writing with care while helping them to describe their research as clearly and succinctly as possible.

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How to Find Clients Who Need ESL Editing

2009-12-10T11:24:00.003-05:00

I work with a lot of ESL (English as a second language) authors, physicians from outside the United States who have written articles that they want to submit to U.S. medical journals for publication. This is a rewarding, mentally stimulating niche to work in. How can editors find ESL authors? There's no straightforward way to find them individually in order to offer editorial services.

But there are roundabout ways:

Make it known that you specialize in ESL editing. Do this on your business web site, in your resume, in your entries in online directories of professional editors, in your LinkedIn profile, and everywhere else online where you have a presence, and explain what ESL editing is and what your work process is. You might even consider adding a line about ESL editing to your signature for posts to profession-related e-mail lists. Listmates have been known to refer potential clients to one another.

Do a version of hanging out where these authors are likely to be. For example, if you like working with university students who need ESL editing, contact various university department heads and let them know that your services are available and that you will abide by university regulations about students hiring editors. Contact various universities' international student organizations and ask if they'd post your contact info and a description of your services on their web site or their page of the university web site. If you want to work with researchers who need ESL editing to get their journal articles published, contact professional organizations that deal with subject matters you like to edit (engineering, psychology, physical therapy, economics, linguistics, education, business management, etc.) and ask to make your contact info and services description available to their members.

One of my versions of hanging out where these authors are involves contacting the editors-in-chief of journals whose subject matter I feel comfortable working with and letting them know that I know that there is great research being done by ESL authors but that because of budget and schedule limitations, the journals' staff members likely can't spend the necessary time to heavily edit these authors' manuscripts. I add that I can solve that problem for them by working directly with authors (i.e., the authors—not the journals—pay for my services, as an investment in their careers) and that I would be pleased if they (the editors) would consider referring promising ESL authors to me. I don't ask for exclusivity for such referrals; if the journals already have a list of freelance ESL copyeditors to whom they refer authors, I'm happy to be added to the list.

Seek referrals and cultivate continuing relationships with current ESL clients. As you gain ESL clients, those who are pleased with your work will be happy to tell others about your services. Make it clear in your communications, especially written ones, that you'll gladly accept referrals. You can even put a note to that effect at the bottom of your invoices or your payment receipts, if you provide these for individual authors, as I do. When you finish a project for an ESL client, be sure to mention that you'll be available for editing additional materials that the person writes in the future. E-mail these clients periodically to say hello and remind them that you enjoyed working with them and would like to work with them again.

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Internship for a Budding Copyeditor?

2009-12-09T18:23:00.000-05:00

I know an English major looking for a spring 2010 internship with a freelance copyeditor. She hopes to eventually go freelance full time. If you're willing to work with her for about 200 hours, e-mail me at editor at kokedit dot com and I'll put you in touch with her. Her name is Luann, and here's what she has to say about herself and what she can do for you:

I am in college right now working on an English degree. My goal is to work as a freelance copyeditor when I graduate. Before I returned to school in January 2008, I studied a lot about copyediting. Since I returned to school, my professors have been very pleased with the quality of my work, and this last semester I worked as a tutor in my school's writing center.

I am going to take the spring semester off school with a new baby, and I would like to use this time to complete a copyediting internship with an experienced freelance copyeditor. This will count as a class toward my degree. I will need to work at least 200 hours between now and mid-April.

Through this internship, I hope to gain more editing skills and confidence in my editing abilities. I also want to network more with other copyeditors and publishing companies and gain experience to add to my résumé.

The person I intern with will need to ensure that I have learning opportunities, supervise my work, and provide an evaluation at the end. My work should save my supervisor a lot of time, though certainly not 200 hours. I do not expect to work as quickly as a more experienced copyeditor, and my supervisor will need to review at least some of my work and answer questions.

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Is It Copyeditor Appreciation Week?

2009-12-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

This must be unofficial Copyeditor Appreciation Week.

Check out "Ode to a Copy Editor." You'll also like "Hail to the Copy Editor."

I could so easily get used to hearing praise for my profession.

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Being Thanked in Print

2009-12-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

I have the nicest clients!

One of my ESL (English as a second language) clients from China just sent me a PDF of his article, which I edited and which has just been published in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. He and his coauthors thanked me in the note at the end of the article. I'm in JBJS, at the top of page 2885 of volume 91, issue 12 (the issue for December 1, 2009)!

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Editorial Potpourri

2009-11-12T14:25:00.008-05:00

For your editorial pleasure, here is a potpourri of goodies:

This one is a handy tool for both editors and writers: "The Ultimate Resource Guides for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE." It's a compendium of links to web sites explaining the various styles and showing examples of materials that follow them.

Information on the Boycott the APA Manual Facebook page indicates that the American Psychological Association is now willing to provided corrected replacement copies of the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the first printing of which is rife with errors and odd style changes.

Spice up your office or home décor with the Periodic Table of Typefaces, Popular, Influential, & Notorious.

Finally, no editorial office is complete without tea, so I direct you to the delightful "AnTEAoxidant Rap."

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Excellent Employment News

2009-11-06T13:49:00.001-05:00

I interrupt the usual topic here—editing—to bring you this good news: Despite this horrid economy, my 26-year-old daughter, Rebecca (aka Becky), who earned her master's degree in social work 2 years ago, was just this morning hired for her first professional job as a mental-health counselor.

I told her that in calling me to inform me, she'd just performed her first act as a professional: She'd provided information that helped lift someone's gloom (mine). What's supremely ironic is that news stories are reporting that the U.S. unemployment rate has risen to 10.2%, the highest it has been since Becky was born in 1983.

She got this job despite having had to slow her job search because she has a small child (my delightful 2-year-old granddaughter, who was born right about the time Becky finished the requirements for her master's degree) and despite the fact that she and her husband haven't been able to afford to have Internet access at home. That has meant that potential employers couldn't reach her in a timely fashion by e-mail, which many prefer to use rather than the phone, and that she could only occasionally get to the public library to complete online job applications, which is how most potential employers now prefer to deal with job applicants.

I am so proud of her persistence. That kid—er ... um ... mental-health professional—has guts and a good heart. She'll be working for an organization that "provides housing and support services to some of Long Island's neediest people: families and individuals who are homeless, working their way out of crisis, or faced with debilitating medical conditions or mental illness." This is exactly the kind of work she wanted. She did an internship with a social worker employed by a public school and didn't find the work there stimulating enough.

You rock, Becky!

Love,
Mom

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A Dose of Beauty from My Husband the Master Cabinetmaker

2009-10-29T17:11:00.001-04:00

Here's a stunning screen door with Asian-influenced design that My Husband the Master Cabinetmaker^tm restored and refinished for a client in the Hamptons. (The trim around the door and window will be refinished by house painters; the slate top step is covered with a temporary plywood box to protect it while carpenters, cabinetmakers, interior painters, electricians, and other craftspeople go in and out with heavy equipment.)

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A Few Too Many Oopsies in the New APA Style Manual

2009-10-13T19:09:00.000-04:00

The first printing of the new sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which I have yet to purchase, apparently has a good many errors, and those who peruse the APA web site won't easily find links to list of corrections. This article in the online magazine Inside Higher Ed contains links to pages on the APA site detailing the corrections, including corrections to four error-laden sample research papers.

You might also find the APA's blog APA Style helpful in figuring out what's changed and what's an error in the new edition of the style manual.

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Where to Find Professional Editors

2009-10-10T11:58:00.003-04:00

I'd love it if all authors who need an editor wanted to contract with me. But because I can't possibly edit every manuscript out there, I'm providing this nonexhaustive list of directories where you, dear authors, can search for professional editors. Your choice of which directories to search depends on the type of manuscript you've written: fiction, general nonfiction, academic, medical or scientific; book; white paper; journal research article; brochure copy; web-site copy.

Bay Area Editors' Forum

Board of Editors in the Life Sciences

Bookbuilders of Boston

Cambridge Academic Editors Network

Council of Science Editors

Directory of CE-L Freelancers (choose the "Freelancers" tab on that page; these are copyeditors from around the world who subscribe to the Copyediting-L e-mail discussion list)

Editorial Freelancers Association

Editors' Association of Canada

Northwest Independent Editors Guild

San Diego Professional Editors Network

Society for Editors and Proofreaders (UK)

Society of Editors (NSW) Inc. (Australia)

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Redesigned PubMed Interface

2009-09-30T21:01:00.000-04:00

Medical copyeditors and writers, have you seen the preview of the streamlined new PubMed interface? The details about the redesign are here.

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The Copyeditors' Knowledge Base

2009-09-26T18:11:00.000-04:00

I'm so pleased!

The Copyeditors' Knowledge Base (accessed through the first 7 links on this page of my web site) got a nice little write-up on the MediaJobsDaily blog:

Have a knack for grammar and know AP, CMS, and/or MLA style inside and out? Maybe you want to try copyediting.

We mention this because not only does mediabistro have a bazillion copyediting courses coming up, but we just discovered a fantastically thorough and free resource for copyeditors and copyeditor wannabes at Katharine O'Moore-Klopf's web site.

The Copyeditors' Knowledge Base is chock-full of reading material and examples, and it is free, free, free. Learn where to get formal training and/or certification, see sample letters to clients (a project estimate, a sample contract), learn about reference books to buy, and so on. ...

Please do spend some time perusing the information accessed through the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base. Whether you want to get into editing or are already an experienced editor, there's plenty of information you can use on industry basics, education and certification, business tools, editing tools, networking, finding work, and profession-related reading.

It's my theory that there really is enough work out there for all freelance editorial professionals, if only we know where to look for it. And doesn't it make work life just that much easier and more pleasant if we help one another?

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New MTA Tax for Freelancers in NYC Metro Area

2009-09-26T17:41:00.003-04:00

I just found out about an obscure new tax that applies to self-employed individuals living in and businesses located in New York City and several surrounding counties: the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax (MCTMT).

The first estimated payment for it is due on November 2. I've seen no publicity about this tax, so it does seem to have been sneaked into place; it was enacted May 9, 2009. Here is what a colleague posted about it to one of the editing-related e-mail lists that I subscribe to:

[Here] is the Web site [with] information for the self-employed: [The MCTMT] applies to the five counties of the City of New York plus Rockland, Nassau, Suffolk, Orange, Putnam, Dutchess, and Westchester counties, for net earnings with $10,000 as the threshold point. (Below that figure, you don't have to worry about this.) The tax rate is .34% (.0034) of total net earnings within the geographic area listed above. That's $34 on $10,000. We are supposed to calculate this and make estimated tax payments starting on November 2, 2009. See the Web site above for all the details.

Please check with your accountant.

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National Punctuation Day 2009

2009-09-24T00:05:00.014-04:00

Today, September 24, is National Punctuation Day, a celebration dear to this copyeditor.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate, including participating in the National Punctuation Day Baking Contest. Just think: You could prepare and enjoy the Official Meat Loaf of National Punctuation Day. I can imagine people in households everywhere eating colon cakes, comma con carne, and semicolon sweetmeats. Can't you?

Another way to celebrate is to play Grammar Ninja, to which I am now seriously addicted, thanks to an editor colleague. Play it if you dare!

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Like Father, Like Son

2009-08-25T19:50:00.006-04:00

It seems that my 14-year-old son, Neil, has inherited his father's skilled hands.

I am so impressed with Neil these days. In addition to being fairly emotionally mature for a 14-year-old (he'll be 15 in December), he is becoming quite a skilled handyperson. The photos above show what he did today for my husband, Ed: repairing our wooden utility trailer.

Ed uses this trailer to transport equipment from his cabinetmaking shop and cabinetry when it won't fit into our van even with the back seats removed. Periodically, Ed has to replace sections of the trailer even though by this point in its life, most sections are made from less-likely-to-rot pressure-treated plywood—because sometimes it sits outdoors, holding tree and bush cutoffs from our yard until it's full enough to be emptied at the town dump, exposing it to rot-inducing dampness.

Right now, Ed has absolutely no time to fix the trailer because he has a small cabinetmaking project going on in addition to his usual two days a week driving a truck for a company that delivers groceries to individual customers. But he'll need the trailer soon to transport a refinished cabinet to a customer in the Hamptons. So after Ed provided instructions this morning, it was Neil to the rescue. Neil has just now finished, doing it all without supervision because Ed was off delivering groceries. I'm so proud of both the work Neil has done and his attitude about it. We're not able to pay him anything for this, yet he happily worked away, probably because our pride in him fueled him.

It's so great to have two very handy guys in the house!

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The Delicacy of Cross-Cultural Communications

2009-08-25T13:36:00.003-04:00

In cross-cultural communication with clients, it's very important that both freelancer and client assume that the other is operating from a position of goodwill, even when there are occasional misunderstandings.

Being aware of the Asian tendency to what one of my editor colleagues has called a "much more rigorous and formal structure of politeness in negotiations" (in comparison with that used by, say, Americans), I am always careful to compose my first few e-mail communications with new Asian clients very formally and letting them know that I am "very happy" or "pleased" or even "delighted" to work with them, and I always thank them for their trust in my editing skills. I also keep track of national holidays in Japan, China, and Korea and e-mail clients in those nations the appropriate holiday wishes at the appropriate times, and I include a "thank you for your continued trust in my editing" sentence. When there have been natural disasters or warnings of them in countries where I have clients, I have always e-mailed them to check on their welfare.

After I've worked with clients a few times, I ask them to call me Katharine, rather than Ms. O'Moore-Klopf (or Editor or Editor O'Moore-Klopf, as some have addressed me), if they wish. They in turn become less formal and will often tell me about their vacations or departmental events when they get back in touch with me to ask that I edit their newest manuscript. Some even ask me to address them by their nicknames.

Generally, what I'm editing for my ESL (English as a second language) authors are medical journal manuscripts. They may want me to edit the manuscripts immediately, but I may have to ask them to wait a few days because I already have a journal manuscript or two, plus a book manuscript, in process. Occasionally, a project scheduled ahead of theirs may run longer than planned or an emergency editing project may come in, pushing theirs back a couple of days.

That happened a few weeks ago with a PhD from Korea, one of my repeat clients. I do keep my authors informed about the status of their manuscripts in my schedule. But not having heard from me as soon as she would have preferred, this client wrote:

Hi, Katharine.

I cannot receive the editted manuscript. What's the problem with you? Please check up the process of my paper. Thank you.

Now, if a U.S. author were to write me and ask, "What's the problem with you?" I would be offended, thinking that the author was being rude by implying that I am incompetent. Knowing, however, that with this author there is more of a language barrier than with some of my other ESL authors, I wrote back:

Hello, C.

I started work on your manuscript today and should be able to finish the first round of editing tomorrow. I have had some emergency editing projects in the last few days, which required that I do triage on all of my projects. I apologize for the delay; it was unavoidable.

I understand that you may be unhappy about the delay. I am hoping that you are not angry with me.

Fortunately, she replied:

Hello, Katharine.

I'm not angry with you. I apologize for the my poor expression. I will wait your reply.

And then I replied:

I am very pleased. I like to keep my authors happy.

She has since asked me to edit two more manuscripts for her, and you can bet that I'm now updating her about my schedule much more often than I do with other clients. I'm glad that I addressed the issue of her satisfaction and didn't just assume that she was fuming and that I'd not be asked to work with her again.

Being forthright, honest, and unfailingly polite serves a freelancer well when working with any client, but it works especially well with clients from different cultures.

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Deciding Which Social Media Platforms Will Work for You

2009-08-24T14:06:00.001-04:00

After hearing over and over that you should be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media platforms, you're ready to try some of them out. But how do you choose which ones will work best for you?

Here's an excellent summary of who it is that you'll reach—and how—when you use a particular social media platform. That page is just part of a more in-depth blog post, which you should read to get the bigger picture.

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Why Contracting with an Editor Is a Good Investment

2009-08-17T17:13:00.000-04:00

Authors, this blog post is for you: "How to Save Time and Money with Professional Editors."

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How to Mess with an Editor's Head

2009-08-10T19:22:00.002-04:00

Scary news for copyeditors: The new sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association brings back two spaces between sentences! See here, under "Chapter 4: The Mechanics of Style," on the page of the APA's web site that explains what's different from the fifth edition of the book:

Punctuation—return to two spaces after the period at the end of the sentence recommended for ease of reading comprehension

Just when we'd gotten all our holdout authors trained to use one space, the APA goes and messes with our heads.

Updated at 9:25 p.m.: The APA Style blog says that this change is just to make reviewing draft manuscripts easier for the people who do it; it's not intended for published articles. But that's silly, because somewhere down the line after peer review, some poor schmuck of a production assistant or a freelance copyeditor is going to have to run a macro to remove all the extra spaces.

But holy cow! Someone's set up an entire blog—not just a blog post—in protest of the change.

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LibraryThing's Easy Tool for Showing Off Your Book Projects

2009-08-03T16:10:00.003-04:00

LibraryThing is a fun tool for keeping track of and categorizing the contents of your personal library. But it also allows users to generate code for LibraryThing widgets for their blogs and web sites.

Go to the Widgets and Extensions section of the LibraryThing web site to read about them.

A good while back, I used the the "LibraryThing Blog Widget" to create a rotating mini showcase of the books I've copyedited over the years. I placed it in the sidebar of this blog. But the really exciting use for it didn't occur to me until just this week: I also placed a book widget atop the main Projects page of my business web site. I used the "Advanced options" link on the widget-creation page at LibraryThing to tweak the colors and type used in the widget for my web site. I really like it on the Projects page because it's something visual amid all the text there and so it brings to life the lists of clients there. I don't want visitors to my site put to sleep by too much text.

When you're filling out the LibraryThing form in preparation for generating the HTML for the widget that you will eventually paste into your web site's or blog's HTML, you can narrow down what books will be shown by choosing the tags you've used on LibraryThing to group your books together. I chose the tag "copyedited by KOK Edit" so that only books with that tag, and not also the ones that I've read for pleasure or that I use as reference works, appear in my widgets. If you're a proofreader, you might use the tag "proofread by Josef Detailoriented"; if you're an indexer, "indexed by Marina del Category"; if you're a designer of book covers and/or book interiors, "cover [or interior] designed by Vanessa Talent"; if you're an author, "written by Martin Scribner."

You see the possibilities?

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Why I Love Social Media

2009-07-31T09:00:00.019-04:00

I was trying to hunt down some software for a colleague of mine, so I posted his description of it to several of the profession-related e-mail lists I subscribe to. I ended with

I'm on Twitter, I use Ping.fm, I use Twhirl, I have a web site, I have a blog, I subscribe to numerous RSS feeds through a feed aggregator ... but I am not sure exactly what it is he wants. Do any of you know?

That prompted one listmate to ask

I am not on Twitter, I do not use Ping or Twhirl, I do not have a web site (though I do have a blog), and I do not subscribe to numerous RSS feeds. I am starting to wonder why so many people do. ... So ... am I shooting myself in the foot? Are these communication options offering people a significant upturn in work opportunities or enriching their professional and personal relationships? Are these, in fact, today's Tools For Success?

So I explained why I like social media:

What my business web site, blog, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn do for me is give potential clients more arenas in which to find me. And find me, they have—in droves. I am perpetually busy; I haven't had a work dry spell in years now. Now, it helps that I've been freelancing full time for nearly 15 years and have 25 years' experience, so I'm well established. But if I were well established and less visible, far fewer clients would find me. I ask new clients how they found me, and they've found me through my web site, my blog, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. They've also found me through the online member directory of the Editorial Freelancers Association and through the online directory of Copyediting-L freelancers. They've found me through my ad on the web site of the Council of Science Editors.

I simply do not want to close off any avenue through which potential clients find me. I wasn't fond of the feast-or-famine roller coaster (to mix metaphors) of my early years as a freelancer. The absolute only way to get off that roller coaster is to constantly be doing marketing, whether your desktop is empty or piled high with projects. And the various social media venues make it much easier for me to market my services: I don't have to get on the phone and talk with people I've never met and who might not want to talk with me because they don't know me, I don't have to prepare snail-mail marketing letters, and I don't have to get all dressed up and meet potential clients in person.

At the moment, I'm incredibly grateful for those venues, because my family very much needs all the income I can bring in. The recession has made my cabinetmaker husband's wealthy clientele sit on its money, so the only income he's bringing in right now is from a low-paying part-time job as a driver for a grocery-delivery service. It isn't that he hasn't been looking for fuller employment, either. He's about to turn 48 and has 25 years' experience in his profession, as I do in mine. No one wants to hire someone whom they think has "too much" experience, because they think he'll demand high pay or won't work well with younger, less experienced managers—and they won't even give him a shot to see whether their prejudices are true. Without additional income from him, we are in danger of foreclosure on our mortgage. But because I am constantly booked with work, we can still pay all our other bills, including expensive health-insurance premiums, with my income alone. Except for our mortgage, I am nearly single-handedly supporting a family of four, no mean feat on New York State's Long Island.

So yeah, I'll spend the time necessary each day to maintain an active presence on multiple forms of social media, but I try not to let the process take up too much time.

The value of RSS feeds? Blog posts and news stories on topics I'm interested in come to me, saving me valuable time because I don't have to go hunt them down, one by one. I'll use all the time-saving devices I can find. I find it extremely helpful to my business to keep on top of information about industry trends. If' I'm out of the loop on major events and trends, I can't prepare for changes in my industry and will likely be less able to attract enough work to keep busy through every industry sea change.

Another listmate posted to say that he thinks social media sap people's thinking time and thus their creativity. He wrote:

Don't even get me started on Twitter, which strikes me as egotism run amok.

He explained to me later that the Twitter feeds he's

been encouraged to subscribe to are riddled with cute kid stories, pining for happy hours that are hours away, and cute back-and-forth—in other words, life as Facebook-status update.

That "egotism" charge really ticked me off. My response:

Twitter is a tool that universities use to let their students know about emergency conditions. It's a tool that people used today [July 30] in Texas to let people in the area of Texas A&M University know that if they hadn't heard already, they should evacuate the area because a large chemical plant was on fire and could be explosive. It's a tool that professors use to communicate online with their students. It's a tool that one town used to update commuters with BlackBerry devices regarding traffic snarls during a major event. It's a tool that medical journals use to draw in more readers, which could be seen as bad because it's a kind of advertising, but when journal staff members tweet, they often post headlines and links to quite helpful medical research—that's how I found out recently that the brand of insulin that I take just might be linked to increased rates of cancer.

E-mail can be abused, as it is by spammers. That doesn't make e-mail bad overall. Blogging can be abused, to cast aspersions on others or to impart misinformation. That doesn't make blogs bad overall. Facebook users can post inane and boring stuff; that doesn't mean everything posted to Facebook is valueless. Some, like me, post information there about their industry that others find helpful. And others use it to make contact with people they haven't seen in decades, which can be life-changing.

Once upon a time, the typewriter was seen as a bad thing because it lured women away from home (gasp!) to work in offices. But the world did not end because lots of women used typewriters. TV could be seen as evil, I suppose, because some of the shows on it are mushy oatmeal for the brain and the ads try to sell people junk they don't need. But it does have good uses: news coverage, broadcasts of political debates, broadcasts of classical or jazz music concerts ...

A tool is just a tool. And people don't have to use any particular tool if they don't want to. No one's forcing anyone to use Twitter or any other social media tool. But please don't tar all users of a tool with one broad brushstroke. We're not all egotistical or stupid or boring.

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Medical Journals on Twitter

2009-07-30T18:01:00.000-04:00

If you're a medical editor—and even if you're not—and are interested in following some biomedical journals on Twitter, here is a list of which ones are there.

medical editing medical journals Twitter EditorMom

The Editor–Author Relationship

2009-07-29T21:54:00.008-04:00

It was a very short message, but it made my day.

I'm slammed by deadlines, with several projects all needing to be done at once. So I reluctantly e-mailed one of my favorite ESL (English as a second language) authors to tell him that I needed to postpone the start date for editing his research paper. I told him that I would prefer to be the one to edit his manuscript but that I would refer him to one of my colleagues if he had a deadline for submitting it to a medical journal.

His reply:

Katharine, I want your editing. My concern is the quality, not the time. I will wait.

freelancer self-employed copyeditor copyediting editor editing publishing EditorMom

Racism: Alive and Well in Publishing

2009-07-28T15:29:00.005-04:00

This is a tale of damnable, ridiculous book-cover racism by a publisher.

Publishers Weekly reports on the industry's response, which is bogus.

If it makes you as angry as it does me that the publisher, Bloomsbury, thinks book covers featuring white people sell better than those featuring black people and so put a white girl on the cover of a book about a girl who is "black with nappy hair," as the author describes her, e-mail Bloomsbury's public relations department to say so.

Updated at 4:00 p.m., 8/6/09: I'm happy to report an update: Because of the public outcry and the author's unhappiness, the book's publisher says it will rejacket the U.S. version of the book:

"... This week Bloomsbury officials have switched course. 'We regret that our original creative direction for Liar—which was intended to symbolically reflect the narrator's complex psychological makeup—has been interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character's ethnicity,' Bloomsbury officials said in a statement to [Publishers Weekly]. 'In response to this concern, and in support of the author's vision for the novel, Bloomsbury has decided to re-jacket the hardcover edition with a new look in time for its publication in October. It is our hope that the important discussions about race and its representation in teen literature continue. As the publisher of Liar, we also hope that nothing further distracts from the quality of the author's nuanced and accomplished story, and that a new cover will allow this novel's many advocates to celebrate its U.S. publication without reservation.' ..."

You can read the rest of the story in Publishers Weekly here.

Updated at 6:29 p.m., 8/6/09: And, from the book author's blog, here's what the new cover will look like, with a gorgeous young black woman on it:

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Why Freelancers Charge What They Do

2009-07-24T16:36:00.002-04:00

Artist N.C. Winters, creator of the comic strip Freelance Freedom, has produced another winner: His July 20 episode, #114, explains exactly why freelancers truly need to charge rates that are higher than employees' salaries broken out as hourly rates.

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So Long, Farewell ...

2009-07-23T18:10:00.001-04:00

I always feel a bit sad when nearing the end of a book editing project. For each book manuscript I edit, I get inside author's head and the book's world, so finishing a project is like saying a permanent good-bye to a friend.

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Middle-Aged Eyes

2009-07-21T22:51:00.003-04:00

I finally found the sweet spot in my new progressive bifocals for comfortable reading on the computer screen! I'd almost been ready to request a redo from the ophthalmologist.

It's not like I hadn't been wearing progressive bifocials—you know, bifocals without the horizontal lines through the lenses—for a few years already. But my most recent vision check resulted in the biggest change in my prescription in years. It seems that middle age, and presbyopia, have hit. Past prescription changes have taken me only a few hours to get used to. This one took me 24 hours. Maybe that's not long to most people, but I suppose I'm not very patient when it comes to being able to see well, especially because visual acuity is an important tool in my profession. You can't see well? Then you can't edit well. Gee, I'm starting to sound cranky. Better quit now before I end up a stereotype.

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EditorMom's Got a New Skin

2009-07-21T13:17:00.007-04:00

Hi, all my thousands of readers. ... Okay, make that all 20 of my readers. I'll bet you think you accidentally wandered off EditorMom and onto some other blog.

But you haven't. This is the same EditorMom you know and love. It's just shed the old Blogger skin and gotten a lovely new professional skin that ties in visually with my business web site and my Twitter page. I figured that if I'm going to be all over the Internet, I might as well be easy to spot by my looks. In marketing-speak, I wanted a unified image. ;-)

I hired brilliant web fairy Jennette Fulda of Make My Blog Pretty to adapt the look of my business web site for use on Blogger and Twitter. And if Facebook and LinkedIn ever make it practical for users to change the skins of their pages there, I'll hire Jennette again. (Facebook does allow some adaptation, but only with a plug-in that viewers also have to be using to see other users' fancied-up pages.)

Jennette's fast, her prices are great, she knows what she's doing, she's friendly, she's funny, and she's not a prima donna. Hire her, please! I'd like to see her stay in business for a long, long time.

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Editing Scholarly Works

2009-07-16T16:53:00.001-04:00

Copyediting newsletter is offering you the chance to learn from the best about editing scholarly publications.

As newsrooms downsize and corporate publishing units consolidate, the scholarly sector of the publishing industry is looking newly attractive to editors. Copyeditors who have the education, training, and skills to succeed in scholarly publishing report high levels of job satisfaction. But is scholarly copyediting right for you? How different is it from what you are used to? How do you break in? If you're already in, how can you improve your skills and expand your client roster?

Find out on Thursday, July 23, when Copyediting will host "How to Copyedit Scholarly Publications," a 90-minute interactive audio conference led by the Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, second edition, the book that has helped many copyeditors get started. She has worked as a freelance writer and copyeditor for more than 25 years and has taught courses in copyediting, developmental editing, and grammar. She earned a B.A. and an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan and a C.Phil. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Go here for more details and to register for the conference.

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Disappointment

2009-07-10T16:37:00.003-04:00

O Cruel Asian Spammers!
Your e-mails in lovely kanji, hiragana, and Hangul
Briefly fool me into thinking
That you might be
A new ESL editing client.

(Public-domain illustration of handwritten kanji from Wikipedia)

freelance copyeditor copyediting editor editing medical editing publishing EditorMom

Breaking News

2009-07-09T21:26:00.005-04:00

July 10 will be the first annual Freelancers, Put on Your Pants Day.

What? You thought that we all wore business suits every day?

Updated at 12:27 p.m., 7/10/09: Before anybody goes all serious on me and thinks that I think freelancers are really just laid-off job holders or underemployed professionals who accidentally fell into freelancing—as some people on e-mail lists apparently believe that I think by virtue of my having posted the above link—I will explain:

Hey ... I'm a freelancer myself. No, I don't like it when people equate freelance with unemployed or underemployed. I consciously made the decision to freelance full time 14 years ago and am most often overbooked. I'm not moping around for lack of work.

But I had to laugh when I saw the post at the above link. I have lately been guilty of working while wearing a deep-purple nightshirt and fake leopard-skin slippers.

I sit down, still wearing my nightshirt, to eat breakfast but then get caught up in reading and answering the morning's e-mail and essential blog posts and tweets. I progress to doing project estimates or invoices, having finished my breakfast, but notice I'm still wearing my nightshirt. I intend to go get dressed for the day. I get back into the estimates, answer more e-mail messages, and begin doing "just a little" editing. Two hours later, I look down and notice that I'm still in my nightshirt. Work is just so engrossing that lately, taking time out to get dressed first thing in the morning seems like a time-waster. ;-)

By the way, it's now after midnight and I'm dressed in a T-shirt and shorts ... yet I'm still rebelliously wearing those fake leopard-skin slippers from yesterday morning.

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Marketing Tips for Freelancers

2009-07-08T21:10:00.025-04:00

These are the marketing tips for freelancers that I posted to Twitter throughout May and June 2009. Please keep in mind that each one, including labels and hashtags (keywords) that don't appear here, had to be 140 characters and spaces or fewer to fit Twitter's limits on the length of individual tweets. I have not rewritten them here; they appear in the same telegraphic speech that I used on Twitter to meet those limits. When I wrote them, I had generalist freelance copyeditors in mind, but I believe that most of them will work for freelancers of any kind. Use them and prosper:

Network. Join & participate in professional associations and e-mail lists.

Post résumé everywhere you can, such as the EFA'S directory: http://tinyurl.com/lo256q.

Hand out business cards absolutely everywhere. You never know who'll need your services.

Be helpful to colleagues. It's fun & can also get you referrals from grateful associates.

Maintain a professional-looking Web site. It's your calling card on the Internet.

Keep in contact w/ clients. The one whom clients remember is the one who gets the gigs.

Advertise judiciously. I'm med editor & have ad on CSE site; http://tinyurl.com/3zus79u.

Send small thank-you gifts to clients so they have something tactile to remember you by.

Put your name & contact info on everything: mss., style sheets, invoices, e-mails ...

Always be on lookout for new clients: mentioned on e-mail lists, in news, online ...

During both feast & famine, schedule time each week to contact potential clients.

Approach clients—current & potential—from perspective of their needs, not yours.

Buy "Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business": http://tinyurl.com/3j3wwzz.

Buy "Getting Started as a Freelance Copyeditor": http://tinyurl.com/lfkhte.

Use the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base: http://www.kokedit.com/library.shtml, 1st 7 links.

Buy audio CDs: getting started, http://is.gd/2Tqh3; medical editing, http://is.gd/2TqRZ

Don't look like an employee: Résumés for Freelancers; http://tinyurl.com/3h6gkp6.

What to Charge: Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants. http://url.ie/1ozz.

Search online to learn who publishes materials you want to edit. E-mail those pubs.

Find potential clients by looking thru ref work Literary Market Place at library.

Improve marketability by honing your skills—learn from books: http://url.ie/1p4s.

Improve marketability by honing your skills—take classes: http://url.ie/1p4u.

Actively give & take on editing e-mail lists to build contacts: http://url.ie/1p8w.

Monitor publishing job listings; where there are jobs, there are freelance gigs.

Publishing job listings to watch: http://url.ie/1pac, http://url.ie/8yax, http://url.ie/1paf.

More publishing job listings to watch: http://url.ie/1pag, http://url.ie/1pah.

Use TwitJobSearch to find freelance gigs: http://www.twitjobsearch.com/. [Note: This tip was updated August 18, 2011.]

Set up a profile at LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/, and share your expertise.

Use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to showcase your skills & what you're like to work with: http://tinyurl.com/2bqknek [Note: This tip was added here on August 18, 2011; it was not tweeted.]

Contact former employers about the possibility of freelancing for them.

See feature story on co. that’s doing well? Contact them re need for editors.

Don't limit the hunt for clients to your geographic area. The Internet is your friend.

Snail-mail small periodic newsletter to clients so they have tangible reminder of you.

Snail-mail "Happy New Year" cards to your clients, thanking them for their business. Enclose biz cards.

Don't wait till your current gig is done to look for more work; contact clients now.

Keep up with clients as they move from job to job, & they'll take you with them.

Do pro bono editing for a charity? Request a credit line in the published work.

Newbie? Sign with temp agencies that handle editors. Gigs may lead to good contacts.

Join networking groups and tell them what you do. Be an active member.

Treat all clients with the utmost respect and expect the same in return.

Make sure authors know you're on their side. Query respectfully & give compliments.

Booked up & have to turn down a gig? Thank the client for the offer & check back soon.

Referring a client to trusted colleague when you're booked up helps client and you.

It's exciting to land new clients, but don't let old clients feel taken for granted.

Ask what you can do for clients. Never: "Got work for me?" Focus on clients' needs.

Notify clients about your upcoming vacation. Some will offer projects for afterward.

Never complain about your clients on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, or e-mail lists.

Seek work from an attitude of abundance. Desperation rarely attracts project offers.

When clients praise your work, get written permission to quote them on your web site.

You’re an independent contractor. Don't just accept "This is what we pay." Negotiate!

Clear, frank communication during projects heads off problems and pleases clients.

If you make a mistake, be professional: own up, apologize, fix it, move on.

Get project parameters before accepting a project, so you can set an accurate fee.

Put this in all your contracts: If project scope increases midway, your fee goes up.

Specify payment terms in all of your contracts, for your protection and clients'.

A client contract can consist of your e-mails to and from client regarding a project.

If you want offered gig but you're booked, ask client if there's schedule wiggle room.

Don't keep accepting projects from a client who hasn't paid your invoices on time.

Clients fold and contacts leave. Ensure your income by cultivating multiple clients.

Protect your income. Vet new clients—research their payment history with freelancers.

It may be comfy w/ just 1 client, but IRS may call you an employee. Get more clients.

Never assume; get client's approval on overall style points early in project.

Secret to keeping clients? Always do your best work. Don't get lazy.

Get off feast-or-famine roller coaster: spend time each week marketing your services.

Thank colleagues for referrals w/ thank-you notes, small gifts, reciprocal referrals.

"Businesslike" doesn't equal "humorless stiff." Be professional but be yourself.

Avoid dry spells by having more than one project at a time, each in different stage.

Remember—the author is the subject-matter expert; you're the editorial expert.

Can you think of additional tips? Let me know.

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Definition

2009-07-08T16:34:00.000-04:00

Summertime: when working parents must remember it's not really their children's life goal to slowly drive them mad.

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You Say "Copy Editor"; I Say "Copyeditor"

2009-07-08T09:39:00.002-04:00

Here's your chance to weigh in on whether the term should be copy editor (two words), copy-editor, or copyeditor.

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Want Marketing Tips for Freelancers?

2009-07-06T22:28:00.001-04:00

Hey, copyeditors and medical editors: want to see my marketing tips for freelancers here, as they appeared on Twitter in May and June? I'll repeat them in a single new post here if enough of you are interested. Let me know by commenting on this post.

freelance marketing copyeditor copyediting editor editing medical editing publishing EditorMom

Can You Translate English to Gujarati?

2009-06-30T20:52:00.002-04:00

Calling all of my readers from India! Do you or any of your family or friends speak both English and Gujarati?

I would like to know how to say "best wishes"—as the sign-off in an e-mail—to one of my clients who lives in Ahmedabad. I do that sort of thing as a very small way of letting my ESL (English as a second language) clients, from whatever nation, know that I appreciate their coming to me for editorial assistance. (I am a freelance medical copyeditor.) I know that they have already done a huge amount of work in writing their research papers in English; the least that I can do for them is to reach a little way toward them in their language.

I found an online forum about Gujarati in which one member posted that "Mari shubkman tamari sath che" translates as "My best wishes are with you." Is that correct, or should I say something else in my e-mail to my client?

Updated at 12:25 a.m., July 1, 2009: Thanks to a friend of a friend, I now have the Gujarati for "best wishes" (shubhechao), "How are you?" (Tamay kem cho?), and "Thank you" (Aabhar). What did we all do before the Internet?

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Lantus Insulin May Be Linked to Cancer

2009-06-27T00:25:00.006-04:00

Just heard about this on Twitter, and it worries me, because I take Lantus (generic name: glargine) insulin as one of the medications for my newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes:

"Studies Show Diabetes Drug Might Have Cancer Link," says the headline of a story in the Wall Street Journal; the drug in question is Lantus. I couldn't read the full story because it's behind a subscription firewall; if you have a subscription, you should be able to read it. I found a version from the news service Reuters:

Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) said on Friday that new data on the safety of its blockbuster diabetes drug Lantus had not reached any definitive conclusions on a possible link to cancer.

The French drugmaker has been rocked in the past two days by a safety scare over Lantus, following rumours that a damaging analysis of the product's safety was shortly to be published in a major medical journal. Its stock fell 8 percent on Friday.

Sanofi said it had just been made aware of data associated with a retrospective follow-up of four patient registries but said no firm conclusions could be drawn on any possible causal link to the occurrence of malignancies.

It added that the authors of the study had also pointed this out.

"We consider that the results of these patient registries are not conclusive," Jean-Pierre Lehner, the company's chief medical officer, said in a statement. ...

And here's a story from Science Daily with more info on the science:

The risk of cancer possibly increases if patients with diabetes use the long-acting insulin analogue glargine instead of human insulin. The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), in collaboration with the "Wissenschaftliches Institut der AOK" (WIdO), the research institute of the German Local Health Care Fund, analysed the data of almost 130,000 patients with diabetes in Germany who had been treated with either human insulin or the insulin analogues lispro (trade name: Humalog), aspart (Novorapid) or glargine (Lantus) between January 2001 and June 2005.

The analysis has now been published together with further studies in the scientific journal Diabetologia.

The disturbing result is that malignancies were found more frequently in patients treated with glargine than in those prescribed a comparable dose of human insulin. "Our analysis does not provide absolute proof that glargine promotes cancer," says Peter T. Sawicki, IQWiG's Director and co-author of the study. "Our study does, however, arouse an urgent suspicion which should have consequences for the treatment of patients." ...

Ironically, when I viewed the page, there was a Lantus banner ad at the top.

Here are PDFs of the uncorrected author page proofs of soon-to-be-in-print studies that initially raised alarms, made freely available by the medical journal Diabetologia because lots of people are concerned about Lantus now:

First study

Second study

Third study

Fourth study

Two of the studies found a possible risk; the other two had inconclusive results.

If you take Lantus, please have a chat with your physician—as I plan to do with mine as soon as I can get an appointment—about the advisability of switching to another kind of injectable insulin. Do not stop taking Lantus without consulting your physician. Yes, I know, lots of substances are carcinogenic, but if you can avoid injecting a potential carcinogen into your body, that's probably a good thing.

By the way, because Sarnoff-Aventis is the maker of Lantus, its stocks' values are dropping because of the news.

Updated at 12:03 a.m., June 28, 2009: The Reuters story has been updated.

Updated at 11:13 p.m., June 28, 2009: Here is a very balanced discussion of the issues from a diabetes expert who has type 2 diabetes herself.

Updated at 8:45 a.m., June 29, 2009: Here is a Q&A from Reuters.

Updated at 5:11 p.m., June 29, 2009: And now, Sanofi weighs in, trying to make the Lantus studies out to be much ado about nothing.

Lantus glargine insulin cancer Sanofi-Aventis EditorMom

Trying to Buy Love

2009-06-24T16:55:00.001-04:00

The online newsletter Inside Higher Ed is running a story, dated June 23, saying that the marketing department of textbook publisher Elsevier sent out e-mails to textbook authors offering $25 Amazon.com gift cards to anyone who would post a five-star (positive) review of a new Elsevier textbook to Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. Elsevier is now reportedly saying that the offer was "a poorly written e-mail" by "an overzealous employee" and that the company wants "unbiased, honest reviews."

Here's what the e-mail—sent to contributors to the textbook—said:

"Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels."

Overzealous employee. Uh-huh. This is the same company whose parent corporation, Reed Elsevier, used to host international weapons fairs in London, Abu Dhabi, various cities in Europe, Rio de Janeiro, and Taiwan that were attended by high-ranking military officials from all over the world ... until uproar in the medical research community convinced the corporation to drop the shows. Physicians, who are trained to save lives, didn't like knowing that their research articles were being published in medical journals produced by Elsevier, whose parent corporation was showcasing tools for taking lives.

This is also the same company whose marketing department produced fake medical journals to help Big Pharma sell more drugs.

It keeps getting harder to find honesty in this world.

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Freelancers Left High and Dry

2009-06-21T15:26:00.002-04:00

Here's a sad New York Times story of publishing freelancers facing financial ruin because their clients have stopped paying:

A factory in New York has vanished. The door is locked and the lights are out. The phone rings and rings. No one answers. The promised checks are not in the mail, and a small army of workers, owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, scramble to pay the rent and buy groceries. ...

Mr. Baxter is one of about 50 unpaid freelance writers, editors, page designers and others who worked this year for Inkwell [Publishing Solutions] on textbooks that are to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which is owned by a holding company based in the Cayman Islands, and floats in oceans of debt.

"The explanation I have been given is that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt owes Inkwell money," Mr. Baxter said. More than 30 freelancers who were interviewed by phone or e-mail told the same story: Inkwell stopped paying them for work on textbooks, claiming that Houghton had stopped paying it. ...

What makes things worse is that in New York State, full-time freelancers are not entitled to unemployment compensation. We're at the mercy of the financial health of our clients. And we lose homes and health insurance just like people laid off by employers do, but we're not counted in the unemployment statistics. We're invisible.

Updated at 11:55 p.m., June 22, 2009: Someone who commented on the blog post here claims to have access to a memo that was distributed to all Houghton Mifflin Harcourt employees after the Times story appeared, saying that HMH did pay Inkwell and is asking the Times to print a correction. This may not be the end of the story.

Updated at 12:20 p.m., June 24, 2009: The original June 19 column in the Times now has a postscript, added today:

The About New York column on Sunday, about the closing of Inkwell Publishing Solutions, a book development company in Manhattan, reported that about 50 of its freelancers were still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work on textbooks commissioned by the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In an e-mail message to the freelancers, Inkwell's president blamed slow payments by Houghton, which did not respond to three requests for comment before the column was published. On Monday, a spokesman for Houghton said it had made the "vast majority" of its payments on time to Inkwell, with the final two checks it owed issued on May 8 and June 1. Inkwell ceased operations in mid-May.

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Goodies from the AMA Manual of Style

2009-06-12T14:14:00.001-04:00

I just noticed a set of cool tools that's available with an online subscription to the AMA Manual of Style: quizzes (and answers) on AMA style for references, "correct and preferred usage," punctuation, and grammar.

Once you're a subscriber and logged in, look in the left-hand column for the "Learning Resources" link. And any subscribers who would like to use the quizzes in a classroom can click a link to e-mail a request for permission to photocopy and distribute the quizzes; the JAMA and the Archives journals say that they will not charge for such use.

Go here to subscribe.

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Oops! Sorry About the Fake Science

2009-06-04T20:21:00.001-04:00

Hear about the recent uproar in the STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publishing community over the faux medical journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine commissioned by giant pharmaceutical Merck? Merck paid the Australian division of Elsevier to publish eight compilations of scientific articles in a format that looked like a peer-reviewed journal. The New York Times reported:

... The Merck-sponsored publication is among the evidence in the Australian trial in which the lead plaintiff in a class action suit alleges, among other things, that the company used misleading and deceptive marketing strategies in promoting Vioxx.

Nine of 29 articles in the second issue of the journal referred positively to Vioxx, and an additional 12 articles referred positively to another Merck drug, Fosamax, a bone treatment, Mr. Donovan said. ... [Donovan is an expert witness for the plaintiff.]

Elsevier issued a press release today saying that it is working on new guidelines for custom publications that it produces for pharmaceutical companies, so that they will be clearly identified as not being peer-reviewed medical journals.

So Merck's on trial. Will Elsevier ever be, for making money off a drug that it must have known has been reported to have killed people? I say they'll probably both get off scot-free. Once again, the consumer will pay.

Merck Elsevier fraud big pharma medical journals EditorMom

Why Americans Are Going Broke

2009-06-04T14:28:00.001-04:00

Many Americans are just one major medical illness away from financial catastrophe.

A research team from Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine that 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies are caused by overwhelming medical bills ... and that more than 75% of families that declared bankruptcy because of medical bills had health insurance that provided insufficient coverage.

The researchers said that the proposed changes to the health-insurance system that are being considered "are unlikely to help many Americans" and urged converting to a single-payer system. I agree; our current system is well past broken.

health care insurance medical bills bankruptcy EditorMom

Vanishing into the Amnestic Sphere

2009-06-04T12:53:00.000-04:00

I've always been unable to explain very well why I don't retain much of what I read on the job. But my editor colleague Elaine breaks it down perfectly:

People often comment to me that I must learn a lot from all the different material I copyedit. It's hard to explain that the mind in "copyediting" mode works differently from the one in "learning" or "reading for pleasure" mode—you just don't retain much meaning or knowledge when you're thinking in the "small" terms of details of spelling, usage, punctuation, and so forth. There's no time for the kind of rehearsal and deep reading that leads to retention. (Unfortunately, I've done a lot of really interesting books that have completely vanished into the amnestic sphere.)

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What Some Clients Try to Do to Freelancers

2009-05-30T20:04:00.003-04:00

Here's a short video on what some clients try to do to freelancers in today's economy:

Learn how (here and here) to keep this from happening to you.

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Inventive Terminology

2009-05-20T13:01:00.003-04:00

For the last few days, colleagues on an editing-related e-mail discussion list have been posting about words and phrases that they dislike. Most of those either are overused or add no information to sentences that contain them.

But one colleague reported reading online that someone has an aversion to the word nostril.

Every time I see that word, I want to laugh: I remember how one of my precocious sons, lying in his bed and unable to sleep because of nasal congestion, phrased his complaint about the stuffiness. He didn't use the word nostril, because at 2 years of age, he wasn't yet aware of its existence. My husband and I, trying to sleep in the next room, heard him mutter:

Stupid one-hole nose-breather!

We had to stifle our snickers so he wouldn't know we were listening.

That 2-year-old is now a 14-year-old high school freshman, by the way.

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Wiggling Back to Attention

2009-05-19T14:59:00.002-04:00

On editing-related e-mail lists I subscribe to, some listmates have often recommended sitting on an exercise ball, rather than a desk chair or computer chair, while working, to help with back problems and strengthen core body muscles.

I just read about another reason for using a ball as a chair that might help some of you: The print version of the summer issue of ADDitude magazine, a publication that focuses on living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), notes that working while sitting on a ball aids concentration. Lots of people with AD/HD have found that sometimes fidgeting and wiggling can help refocus wandering attention. Maintaining a seat on a ball would definitely entail some wiggling. Even for those who don't have AD/HD, I can imagine that wiggling on a ball could help them get through really boring projects with their eyes still open. ;-)

Updated 12:50 a.m., 5/20/09: Here's a study (or here; requires payment for access to the full article) showing that allowing children with AD/HD to wiggle in their seats (with the aid of a special cusion) helps them focus better in the classroom.

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Results of Spring Showers

2009-05-13T13:37:00.003-04:00

Here are some shots of the flowers in my yard, for your enjoyment. They were taken by Neil, my 14-year-old son. Top left are blooms from our Mother's Day azalea, and next to it is a flower from a regular old azalea. Kathy F., this one's for you: Underneath are some lovely wisteria racemes.

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