Writing and Editing Blog

Why writers need editors

2007-02-27T13:24:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

Writers and editors have a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. The connection can be both intimate and rewarding. ‘Almost like a marriage,’ a client once remarked. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but an editor working intensively on a text does become finely attuned to the rhythms and nuances of a particular writer’s style. You learn to live a little in the writer’s head. If not quite nuptial, the relationship is certainly delicate.

There are opinions. There are egos.

Despite the close links in their roles and their mutual interest in language, communication and style, there’s room for better understanding between writers and editors. It’s even more desirable now, because writers need editing more than ever.

Why should this be so? Not surprisingly, the devil is in the dollar. Once upon a time, (yes, I know this reads like a fairy story), publishing houses employed in-house editors to work with writers. Promising authors were signed up in the expectation that their work would need editing. Structural editing on a major work might take months. These days, publishers are cutting costs and the brunt of it is felt in the editing rather than the marketing department. Editing is more likely to be outsourced. Writers might never meet or even talk to their freelance editor. More seriously, publishers are much less likely to take a risk. A manuscript is unlikely to be accepted in the first place unless it is considered virtually ready to be published.

This leaves authors with a problem, and several ways to solve it. Unless you are truly gifted, very lucky and a born editor as well as writer, your unsolicited manuscript is not likely to emerge triumphant from the publisher’s slushpile. One way of making your work stand out is to make sure it’s free from the presentational and structural errors that will almost automatically consign it to oblivion.

How?

Hire an editor
Many writers work with editors before submitting their manuscript to a publisher. They feel they need a trained, ‘objective eye’, especially when they have spent years on the text and can’t approach it as a fresh, critical reader.

The literary editor’s job is not to impose a style on the writer, but to help bring out the writer’s unique voice. It’s to guide and suggest, but not dictate. Editors also provide technical assistance with grammar and spelling, but this is a minor part of the process.

The literary editor concentrates on narrative technique—this could include matters such as voice, characterisation, point of view, interior monologue, repetition, dialogue, style and structure. Editors bring their own life experience and research skills to the task and might also assist the writer with expert information, for example knowledge of foreign languages or a particular period in history.

An editor might also give advice on ethical and copyright issues. Perhaps as important as any of these things is a friendly, yet critical eye. Writing is a solitary trade. To be actively, critically, intelligently and professionally read is enormously useful to writers, especially new writers.

Editing could be the right option for a writer intending to self-publish, who wants the finished product to be as professional and well presented as possible. It might be the choice for a writer from a non-English-speaking background who wants to be read without first language interference. Writers who believe in their work and who want to give it that extra boost in the publication stakes often decide that editing is worth the extra money and effort.

Payment for editing can be difficult for writers to rustle up. Professional editors are unlikely to accept an offer of half the royalties on an unpublished book in lieu of payment. (I have declined just such an offer!)

The do-it-yourself approach
Over the years, I’ve noticed that many people who come to my literary editing workshops and lectures are there not because they want to become a literary editor, but because they want to learn how to edit their own work.

Not one to miss an opportunity to fill a need for editing education and training, I’ve developed a series of online courses that teach precisely these skills. The courses cover the basics of literary editing, as well as specialist modules. They cover fiction and non-fiction. There’s one on manuscript assessment and one on creative fiction. Others cover interviewing techniques for fiction and non-fiction writers and editors, genre, editing for writers and scholars and that old chestnut, grammar and punctuation for editors and writers.

These courses are designed for writers and editors alike and will be presented as workshops at the NSW Writers’ Centre (see www.nswwriterscentre.org.au for times and dates). Participants will receive a free copy of the online course as part of their enrolment.

If you can't make the workshops, you can enrol in the online courses. I will be publishing the new online series, Editing for writers from February to July 2007. The first cab off the rank is Showing, not telling Literary editing, an overview of the techniques of literary editing.

© Pamela Hewitt 2007
www.emendediting.com

A quiz for aspiring editors

2006-03-06T18:01:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

So you think you know all about editing? Test your knowledge and feel free to have a good time while you're at it. As promised last week, here are the answers.

A kern is

a Scottish hut
a grain used in Swedish breakfast food
spacing between letters
spacing between paragraphs
a composer of musical comedies

A kern is the spacing between letters. It developed in the days of hot metal printing and continues to this day with electronic printing technology. Only the more sophisticated word processing software allows for kerning.

Stet means

let it stand
so be it
and so on
province, in Afrikaans
to keep within limits

Stet means let it stand in Latin. It’s a standard proofing and copyediting mark to ‘undo’ a change made in error.

Which word(s) are spelt correctly?

supersede
accomodation
neccessarily
seperately
desicate

Only supersede is correct. The others should be accommodation, necessarily, separately and desiccate.

A widow is

a typo for a glassed-in section of a wall
a broken paragraph with the first line at the foot of a page
a broken paragraph with the last line at the top of a page

A widow is a broken paragraph with the last line at the top of a page. It's easy to remember because a widow ends up alone.

Author-date is used

when referring to writers whose best work is behind them
when Vancouver or documentary note is not house style
to give readers the author’s date of birth under the copyright and ISBN information
in secret editors’ code to refer to a derivative manuscript

Author-date is used when Vancouver or documentary note is not the house style. These are all systems for citation used in footnotes and endnotes.

A literal is

a typographical error
part of the coastline
someone who doesn’t understand subtlety

A literal is a typographical error.

As you know, Bob, refers to

the phrase that, in the 1930s, developed into ‘Bob’s your uncle’
an info dump in fiction writing
an ingratiating opening statement made by a hopeful author to a publisher.

As you know, Bob, refers to an info dump in fiction. This is when information needed to understand the plot is provided in dialogue in a way that is unnatural and awkward. (‘As you know, Bob, the time travelling machine was invented in the early twenty-second century, allowing people to move backwards and forwards in history.’)

Shovelware is

a section of garden supply shop
a trade name for coffee table books on gardening
print material transferred uncritically to the web

Shovelware is print material transferred uncritically to the web.

Link rot is

degeneration of the patella
a broken hypertext connection
appalling nonsense masquerading as logic in academic texts

Link rot is a broken hypertext connection.

The @ symbol is known as

the snail
the elephant’s trunk
the monkey's tail
the little mouse

All of them are correct. In French, Italian, Hebrew and Korean the symbol is called the snail, in Danish it’s the elephant’s trunk, in Dutch the monkey’s tail and in Chinese it’s known as the little mouse. Other names are the cat’s foot (Swedish) and the little dog (Russian). English has no name other than the description, ‘at sign’ . The Cambridge Guide to English Usage calls it ‘a symbol in search of a name'.

www.emendediting.com

You can find the answers to all these questions (and many, many more) in Emend Editing courses.

Wishin' and hopin'

2006-02-25T08:42:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

The blog has been quiet for a couple of weeks. Among other distractions, I'm putting the finishing touches on the third issue of The Fine Print and, with Shelley Kenigsberg, preparing for a night of wine, women and song titled 'The Editor, the Writer, the Book and Their Covers', coming soon to the Society of Editors (Victoria, Inc.)

Here's a taste of things to come. (Singing along is recommended.)

Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’
Plannin’ and dreamin’ of book sales that soar
That won’t get you in the bookstore
So if you’re lookin’ to write books that sell
All you gotta do is draft and redraft and redraft
The path to writing well

You’ve gotta find an editor, it’s no sin
Do the things she recommends
Purple prose? In the bin, ’cause
You won’t get there
Thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ and a-hopin’

’cause wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’
Plannin’ and dreamin’ ’bout winning the Vogel Prize
Creativity plus editing is wise
So if you’re plannin’ to be the next JK Rowling

What you gotta do is structure, restructure, read widely, write clearly
Yeah, just do it
And after you do, your book might win

You’ve gotta find an editor, it’s no sin
Do the things she recommends
Purple prose? In the bin, ’cause
You won’t get there
Thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ and a-hopin’

’cause wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’
Plannin’ and dreamin’, those contracts you’ll miss
That won’t get you on the shortlist
So if you’re thinkin’ of how great the writing life is

Don’t you worry ’bout the Nobel, the Vogel, the Booker, just cook ’er
Yeah, just do it
And if you do well, your book might sell
your book might sell
your book might sell

revised lyrics by Pamela Hewitt, with apologies to Hal David
'Wishin' and hopin' was written by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, sung by Dusty Springfield, 1964 (Dionne Warwick released an earlier version in 1963).

The perils of publish or perish

2006-02-12T08:08:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

This is the article I mentioned in 'Lost in globalisation', an earlier blog piece. It was published in the January issue of Vocabula Review, and is presented here with the phrases dogsbody and argue the toss reinstated for Australian readers.

Academic English is in a class of its own: last refuge of the intact infinitive, nursing home for Latin plurals. Where else do you find foci and fora gallivanting about in documents? Do people anywhere else follow the mid-eighteenth-century habit of using the indefinite article an before the word historical? Ah, the groves of academe.

It would all be quite quaint, if it weren't for the problem that writing like this excludes some readers, and irritates others. Worse, young scholars are trained to churn out tired language and stale forms. Academics, like any other writers, need to ask who their audience is. It wouldn't be a bad idea to take this further, asking who the audience should be, or could be. If an idea is worthwhile, it is worth expressing in a clear, uncluttered, logical way, preferably in the language of the reader. The silliest convention that lingers in much (although not all) academic writing is the use of Latin words, dropped into the text on the assumption that absolutely everybody understands them. Instead of for example, we read e.g. (sometimes, unfortunately, eg). Instead of that is, it's i.e. And let's not forget ibid., op. cit., loc. cit., passim, and all those Latin terms so often misused in academic citations. For the sad truth is that hardly any scholars know how to use these terms properly. Meaning is often confused, and much of the time of the academic editor is spent fixing up the errors in Latin usage, putting full stops after the al. in et al., to highlight a common culprit.

French and, more rarely, German and Italian terms are still used without explanation in many humanities texts. If it's a long time since Latin was routinely taught in our schools, it's also true that academic writers can no longer assume a working knowledge of modern European languages among their readership. In Australia, a smattering of Indonesian or Chinese is a more probable byproduct of a sound general education these days, yet dropping Asian terms into non-specialist texts has not caught on. It was never a good idea for academic writers to restrict understanding of their work to the graduates of private schools and elite public schools. If writers in the twenty-first century wish to write for an audience consisting largely of an over-40 elite, then they should by all means use Latin terms and pepper their scholarly prose with foreign terms. But wouldn't it be simpler to use English, or at least offer translations of foreign words?

Good scholarly writing is lucid and accessible without compromising its academic integrity. While there are times when academic language needs to use specialist terminology, obfuscation usually indicates that authors don't know what they mean. If a reasonably intelligent non-specialist reader has no idea what a text is saying, it's a sign that something's wrong with the way it's expressed.

Alongside this tendency to hide meaning behind a thicket of unhelpful words is the tradition of excessive signposting in academic writing. With some brave exceptions, university departments teach some of the best minds of each generation to write formulaically, especially when producing theses. At the beginning of each chapter, the scholar-in-training tells readers what they are about to read, then goes ahead and presents the information. Not content with this level of repetition, the argument is summarised at the end of the chapter, and despairing readers are then reminded of what they read at the beginning of the next. As any editor knows, this degree of clutter and repetition is counterproductive. It is the scaffolding good writers dispense with if it survives the first draft.

A related virus infecting scholarly prose is an inability to make an unqualified statement. It would appear that and there is evidence to suggest that or there is some support for the argument that are mealy-mouthed excuses for presenting original analysis.

There are signs of change. Contemporary scientific scholarship now accepts first-person reports. With the acknowledgment that people conduct experiments in laboratories and the field, the tortuous passive language of science is disappearing. It's a relief to read we conducted the experiment rather than the experiment was conducted.

The first editing world I found myself in was academic editing. There were no editing courses, or none that I knew of, so I searched for guiding principles in the workplace. It wasn't long before I noticed that the desire to argue the toss with the editor was in inverse proportion to the quality of the writer's style and the intellectual contribution of the work.
I also discovered that in scholarly manuscripts there were always discrepancies between the dates listed in the text and those in the bibliography. This is an ironclad rule, in my experience. I understand how it happens — tiny details like this are difficult to get right, a paper is circulated in one year, then printed as part of the conference proceedings in another — but I still find it a puzzling contradiction that a working environment that prizes accuracy and consistency and that attracts more than its fair share of pedants should throw up so many trivial errors, so consistently.

For fun, I kept a running list of words and phrases that caught my eye in the texts that crossed my desk. Some memorable examples were the workingclassisation of the North Korean people and the news that China's scientific modernisation was occurring in a somewhat headlong rush. An endearing typo that was picked up before it went to the printer was Gunadong for Guangdong. The mistake lent a delightfully Australian flavour to the name for the southern Chinese province. But the best example of a scholarly typo from that era must remain the famous one from the university's annual report featuring the Department of Hymen Paleontology. No copies survived, or so the story went, because the entire run was pulped.

Universities are profoundly divided institutions, and this may be one of the reasons for the lack of style in scholarly writing. The chasm between academic and administrative staff remains wide and deep. Editors are often classified as research assistants and occupy a precarious position somewhere between dogsbody and apprentice academic. Could this be why the views of editors on language are not taken seriously? In my experience, an editor's advice is generally taken with the same degree of serious consideration as any specialist recommendation in a government department or a business organisation — but not in universities.

None of this would matter if the work done in universities were unimportant. If there is nothing much worth communicating, then there is no problem about academics talking only to themselves. Yet if we are to have scholars who influence community debate — more than the familiar public intellectuals who are wheeled out for their opinion piece in the metropolitan dailies or their five minutes on current-affairs radio and TV — it would be helpful if the quality of academic writing improved.

© Pamela Hewitt
www.emendediting.com

Are you obsessive enough to be an editor?

2006-01-29T11:19:00.000+11:00

Robyn Colman

Some editors, I have heard, worry about being right-angle people (my graphic-designer friend’s polite phrase for ‘anal retentive’). Of course editors are worriers by nature – can a good editor ever relax before a deadline and without a drink? But I think the real question is not ‘Am I too obsessive about things?’ but ‘Am I obsessive enough?’ So I have devised a little quiz to help you place yourself on the scale of obsessiveness.

Office
1(a) Do you like to line up the objects on your desk so that they are parallel or at right-angles to each other before you start work?

Yes

1(b) Do you need to line up the objects on your desk so that they are parallel or at right-angles to each other before you start work?

Yes

2 Do you clean your desk weekly or more often than weekly?

Yes

3 Have you sorted and stored your pens in different colour groups – all the pinks, all the greens, all the purples, all the reds, all the blues, all the blacks? (You don’t have pink or purple pens? Tsk.)

Yes

4 Have you sorted and stored your pencils in different capacities – 2B, 3B, blue pencil, etc.

Yes

5 Do you clean your eraser?

Yes

6 When you put a new toner or ink cartridge into your printer do you immediately order or buy another one?

Yes

7 Do you need to be restrained in shops like Officeworks, Pepe’s Papierie and kikki.K?

Yes

8 Do you back up more often than once a day?

Yes

9(a) Do you archive old work files from your computer?

Yes

9(b) Do you archive old paper files?

Yes

10 Do you have a book diary or a portable electronic diary?
both

Book

Portable electronic

Both

11 Have you been saving items specifically for your accreditation portfolio since 2003?

Yes

Home
12(a) Are your clothes stored by type (all trousers together, all shirts together, all t-shirts together, and so on)?

Yes

12(b) Are your clothes stored by colour?

Yes

12(c) Are your clothes by colour within type or by type within colour?

Yes

13(a) When you hang out washing, do you hang socks and pyjamas (if worn) in pairs?

Yes

13(b) When you hang out the washing, do you like to hang things in categories – all socks together, all shirts together, all tea towels together?

Yes

13(c) Do you like to match the colour of pegs for each item or pair of items (for instance, do you like to use the same colour of peg for each of a pair of socks, and two or three pegs of the same colour for each towel)?

Yes

14 Do you use an iron more often than ‘rarely’ or ‘almost never’?

Yes

15 Do you have more than one ‘miscellaneous cooking tools’ category – for example, one for spoons, ladles and whisks, another for wooden spoons and another for Teflon-coated implements?

Yes

16 Are books by the same author in your library shelved in order of publication or in alphabetical order of title?

Yes

17 Do you clean your glasses every time you put them on?

Yes

18 Do you always know where your house and car keys are?

Yes

19 Do you know the call numbers of your favourite radio stations in case the power goes off and the one-touch programming is lost?

Yes

20 Do you make lists?

Yes

21 When you leave the house or office, do you try to walk on or over the same number of cracks in the footpath with each foot?

Yes

Scoring
1(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

1(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

If you don’t have use numbered B pencils, deduct 5. HB is not good enough.
5

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

9(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

9(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

Book: 5

Portable electronic: 0

Both: 5

The scoring is not a mistake, it’s just that I have a prejudice against portable electronic organisers but respect someone who has a belt and braces approach.
11

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(c)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(c)

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Yes: 5

No: 0

Your memory may be good but what about the anxiety factor?
21

Yes: 5

No: 0

How did you go?
0–70: You need to worry more.

75–110: You are obsessive enough to be a good editor, though remember, it’s not just about being neat and clean. (There are also the Australian Standards for Editing Practice.)

115–135: You are mad — possibly too mad to be good at your job, but then again …

© Robyn Colman 2006
www.word-wise.com.au

Lost in globalisation

2006-01-22T11:14:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

Editors are vulnerable to criticism every time we put fingertip to keyboard or pen to paper. The words we write are scrutinised, whether they are corrections to a manuscript, an informal email or even a scrawled note to our child’s teacher. Some people take a special delight in picking up errors made by editors.

The other day, I was accused of the egregious crime of misspelling. Now, I’m pleased to be alerted to any mistakes, even by an unsigned email that lacks a subject line. (Critics are bolder when anonymous, I find.)

The ‘error’ in this case was the spelling of the word enrol and its derivatives, which appear several times on my website. As many would know, this is not an error but a regional variation in English spelling. In Australian, New Zealand and UK English, among others, the word is enrol. In US English, it’s enroll.

Since I live and work in Australia, I use standard Australian spelling on my website and in my courses. Australians are exposed to a great deal of US text and so read it without difficulty. We also have many UK editions in our bookshops and the slight differences between North American or British English and Australian spelling present few problems for tri-dialectal Australian readers. The same is not always true in the opposite direction.

While most Australians read American and British English fluently, they don’t all have the ability to write it. It takes someone with an intimate knowledge of varieties of English to pick up all the words that have a different shade of meaning for the target audience.

The differences between US and Australian English come up in my interview with Australian author, Dorothy Johnston, in Issue Number 2 of The Fine Print. When one of her novels was republished in the US, she found that spelling variations were only the beginning of the task of English–English translation.

As it happens, the correspondence from my email critic was timely. I recently submitted an article for publication in a US journal and although changing the spelling of words for the US reader was a simple matter (color and organization, for example), I was surprised to find that the highly literate journal editor hadn't come across the term dogsbody (the closest US English equivalent is gofer, a word most Australians understand but few would use naturally).

I love the word dogsbody and didn’t know that it wasn’t in common use in the US. Rather reluctantly, I changed it to drudge. Not quite the same thing but close enough. I did a bit of digging and found that, although he didn’t invent it, James Joyce used dogsbody in Ulysses, and it seems to have taken on its modern meaning from about the time of the book’s publication in 1922.

He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.

James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973 (1922), p. 52

Just to thicken the plot, dogsbody originally meant pease pudding boiled in a cloth. Maybe the original dogsbodies were the ones who had the task of preparing this delightful dish. How could anyone not love a word like that?

Another editorial query was my use of the phrase argue the toss. Although I am far from sporty, a moment’s reflection suggested to me that the toss is a cricketing term. (When two teams begin play, the umpire tosses a coin and the winner chooses whether to bat or to bowl. Only a bad sport would argue the toss with the umpire — dispute who won the toss.) The Macquarie Dictionary defines it as ‘to go on arguing after a dispute has been settled’. The phrase is so deeply embedded in Australian and British English that most people don’t think of its origin when they use it.

Once alerted to these small differences, I found it easy to find alternatives to terms that would exclude a US audience. But the experience convinced me that the content of my website, including the courses, should be translated into a parallel US English version. I'm discussing the possibility with an American editor now. I have a feeling it will be an interesting process.

In the transition, I doubt that matters of the enrol/enroll variety will take the most time, thought and care. I’m braced to lose many of my jokes, having found from bitter experience that they don’t always manage the long swim across the Pacific. (Sometimes they can’t even make it across Sydney Harbour to the North Shore.) And there is some hard research to be done to find equivalent texts and organisations to match the Australian ones I use.

Won’t it be fun, though? I’d love to hear your stories about language being lost or found in translation from one type of English to another.

© Pamela Hewitt 2006
www.emendediting.com

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.

Naming rights

2006-01-09T12:20:00.000+11:00

Janet Mackenzie

Galloping technology has many effects, one of which is to play havoc with language. This has resulted in new definitions for words such as mobile and text, and other terms have become obsolete or misleading.

An example is the profession formerly known as book editing, which for convenience I will refer to here as the PFKBE. Those who are unfamiliar with the PFKBE will find its knowledge base listed in Australian Standards for Editing Practice. Now that many of its practitioners work on screen publications rather than books, the PFKBE needs a new title.

There are many types of editing, of course, and the designation book distinguished this group of editors from those with similar titles whose duties differ significantly. For instance, the tasks of the PFKBE mostly concern the written language and so are distinct from the editing of film and video; and PFKBE practitioners generally do not control content in the way that editors of newspapers and magazines do.

A word commonly applied to the tasks of the PFKBE is copyediting, but it is inadequate. The copyeditor is generally seen as having a limited brief to attend to minor solecisms — summarised dismissively as ‘caps and commas’. The PFKBE, in contrast, covers project management and collaboration with the author of a document, as well as responsibility for its logical or narrative structure and the register and level of its vocabulary.

What we need is a word that highlights the important tasks of the PFKBE with a broad definition such as ‘the action or process of preparing for publication’. Amazingly, the English language in its infinite richness and diversity can oblige.

The word is redaction. It appears in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary with exactly that meaning, first recorded in 1803. Its verb, redact, is noted as a late Middle English word revived in the nineteenth century with the definition ‘to put (matter) into proper literary form; to work up, arrange or edit’. The agent noun is redactor. The terms exist; they can be claimed and promoted until they gain acceptance.

If the PFKBE is redactive in this matter, perhaps the Institute of Professional Editors will be renamed the Redaction Institute — or is that a redactio ad absurdum?

© Janet Mackenzie 2006

Technical, moi?

2006-01-01T09:11:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

What’s a nice girl like me doing in cyberspace? I’ve always been a word-on-the-page person. I read. I write. I edit. I teach. So what am I doing using web technology, digital imaging and electronic design software to pioneer online professional editing courses and electronic publishing?

It’s the old story. I hoped technology would give me the freedom to spend more time writing and creating new work. But when you set about saving time with the aid of technology, sometimes you let yourself in for more than you bargained for.

Let me explain.

As well as being an editor, I’m a qualified teacher. I enjoy the creativity of designing and presenting courses and I love the contact with students. For the past several years, I’ve combined these two passions — in language and teaching — to run workshops and give lectures on editing, as well as editing manuscripts.

Teaching editors and writers is inspiring and fun. The drawback is that if you do it properly, it takes a long time to research a new course. Running a workshop once or twice is barely viable. In order to recover the significant development costs, you need to present the same workshop many times over.

My courses were popular and I was often asked to repeat them. After a few times, presenting the same workshop loses its flavour, until it’s like chewing cardboard.

One day I had a brainwave. I’d put my courses online. People could download courses whenever they wanted and pay for them online. Piece of cake.

Oh, and while I was at it, I might as well establish an online journal about editing. I’d put the word out and soon fabulous articles would come tumbling in. Highly regarded editors would jump at the chance of joining the editorial board and we would have, for the first time, an independent, online Australian journal for editors and writers. Nothing could be simpler. Do I hear cynical laughter?

Well, as a matter of fact, it all happened! And just to prove that it wasn’t a flash in the pan, we did it again. The first two issues of The Fine Print are available free, online and the third is in production. It seems to have struck a chord. The response has been enthusiastic and positive.

The courses were a more complicated affair. Developing a website with an e-commerce gateway took longer than I expected. It wasn’t just a matter of researching and writing hundreds of thousands of words of courseware especially designed for web delivery. You also chew up hours removing obstacles you didn’t even know existed. You think you’ve anticipated every possible hitch and then there’s a problem with the DNS. Or the ‘includes’. Or you have to make decisions about arcane, liturgical-sounding activities like transferring hosts.

I’ve been running my own business for ten years. I was used to estimating the time a job would take and then adding a bit extra for unforeseen events. But websites are different. They’re a kind of Bermuda Triangle for time.

When the first series of courses went live, it was the culmination of an enormous effort. There was more involved in web development than I could have predicted when I blithely decided to embark on the project. Maybe I’d never have begun if I’d realised … But it’s been more than worthwhile.

Along the way, I also learnt many new skills in rapid succession. Perhaps more importantly, I learnt to trust my instincts about what works and what doesn’t in the electronic world.

Learning new skills

Over the past year I’ve acquired and learnt several new software packages, including Dreamweaver, InDesign and Photoshop. It’s dizzying to pick up skills at the same time as developing content but it’s also been great fun.

I’ve become a terror with a digital camera. All my friends will attest to it. I photograph meals at restaurants, patterns in the footpath, scaffolding on building sites. You never know when an image might come in handy on the site.

It might sound crazy to attempt to pick up so many new skills in such a short time. And yet, everything I’ve learnt meshes neatly into my existing skills. Although people still associate blue pencils with editors, we don’t use them any more. These days I rarely mark up on hard copy. Most editing is now done on screen. Editors moved into the information economy long ago.

And this is a lesson I’d pass on to anyone who wants to develop new technical skills—don’t underestimate what you already know. Trust your knowledge of your market and your business. If you’ve been operating successfully in business, you’re bound to know a good deal about the market.

You can build on this knowledge as you move from one form of delivery to another.

An unanticipated bonus of web development was the teamwork. As a freelancer, I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoyed working with designers, illustrators and all the other people whose skills go to putting a journal and a website together. I relished every aspect of the process—briefing the artists, responding to the roughs and, best of all, seeing the finished product on the screen.

My learning curve has been not so much steep as nearly perpendicular. I cringe when I see the faltering steps I made only months ago. Along with everyone else picking up complex new skills, the more you learn, the more you see that there is to find out.

What’s next?

Another aspect of working with websites is that you’re never finished. There’s always something to change, something to update. Even in the unlikely event that your business needs don’t change, the technology will.

I know that taking my business online will mean maintenance as far as I can look into the future. Luckily, I have some plans.

As a matter of fact, the other day, I had a brainwave. When my courses are all online and running smoothly, why not offer them in MP3 versions too? I can just see would-be editors and writers listening to courses as they jog around the harbour foreshore or travel to work listening to a Discman or an IPod.

It might be the next stage in online education. I’ve already found the perfect voice coach. And as well as podcasting, there’s the video plan …

© Pamela Hewitt
www.emendediting.com

The Emend Editing courses most relevant to this article are Page to screen Editing for the web and Wired words Onscreen editing for PC and Mac.

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.

Hourly rates

2005-12-24T10:49:00.000+11:00

Janet Mackenzie

I agree with much of the previous discussion in this blog, but it seems to me that a whole dimension is missing. Although other bloggers recognise that different rates are paid in different sectors, their comments seem to be based on the false assumption that ‘editing’ is a uniform process that can be delivered in precisely measured units.

The hourly rate of pay cannot be divorced from quality and speed – the standard of the editing and the number of pages edited per hour. It’s a horrible thought, but perhaps there are editors out there whose work is so deficient or so slow that in fact it does not merit more than $35 an hour. A recommended minimum hourly rate is desirable, but to mean anything it would have to be based on some uniform standard of editorial achievement or skill. The proposed national accreditation scheme will obviously be important in establishing this.

Inflation

Before we look further at quality and speed of work, there is another consideration that we cannot afford to ignore: the continual decline in the value of money. At present inflation is about 2–3 per cent, so freelancers who are not raising their rates by that amount every year are falling behind.

A couple of percentage points may seem insignificant, but compounding has a powerful effect. For instance, supposing inflation is steady at 3 per cent, the sum of $50.00 in 2000 is equivalent to $54.64 in 2003 and $67.21 in 2010. Pam Hewitt’s surveys of editors are extremely valuable, but their information about rates cannot be accurately compared over time unless the figures are adjusted for inflation.

Fitting the brief to the budget

Some editors contest the concept of hourly rates, preferring to quote a fixed sum for a particular job. It is true that they generally derive this from some notional hourly rate, but they need not reveal what that figure is. If freelance editors generally adopted the practice of quoting a total sum for a particular job rather than by the hour, variations in the quality and speed of work would be more readily apparent to clients.

Whether the editor’s hourly rate is implicit or explicit, it combines with three other factors to determine editorial costs. These are: the client’s budget; the desired quality of the finished publication; and the hours worked by the editor. The editor has no say in the first, some influence over the second, and total control over the third.

Where a client has a fixed budget, in the initial discussions about the job brief the editor may negotiate the standard or amount of work to be done. Other professionals commonly do this. If you have a troublesome tooth, for instance, the dentist may suggest replacing it with an implant for $10,000, or fitting it with a crown for $3000, or extracting it for $200.

Similarly an editor may say to a book publisher, ‘This job would benefit from a structural edit, which would cost $5000, but it would not result in any extra sales. I therefore recommend only a copyedit, which I can do for $2000, but I warn that the reviewers may pick on the structural weaknesses.’[1] Clients who are not professional publishers may need the editor’s help to articulate their assumptions about the quality they require.

Pages per hour

Once the hourly rate, the budget and the quality of the publication have been decided, the only remaining factor is the hours worked. And apparently this factor varies wildly: if anecdotal evidence is to be believed, some editors can do an acceptable job in about half the time that others take.

Freelancers can achieve a respectable number of pages per hour if, for instance, they:

can touch-type at a good speed
are expert in the use of Microsoft Word
can read very fast with full attention for long stretches of time
are swift to decide whether a sentence is so ungrammatical or obscure that it needs to be altered
have a systematic approach to the range of editorial tasks required on a job, such as copyediting, language editing, checking references, preparing prelims and captions, and managing various versions of a document
maintain courteous and productive relations with authors and clients without wasting time on unnecessary meetings, phone calls and emails
take care not to do more work than the brief requires
operate their business efficiently, having reliable, up-to-date equipment and streamlined methods for keeping track of work in progress, performing computer back-ups, maintaining financial records and so on.

Let’s look at one of these points, expertise in Microsoft Word. An inexperienced user who is replacing a word may delete it letter by letter instead of combining the Control and Delete keys to remove the whole word or – even faster – highlighting the word and typing the replacement over it. Such techniques, multiplied by thousands of alterations in a document, can have a significant effect on the pace of the work. An editor who does not use macros for routine tasks, such as removing unwanted formatting and changing hyphens to en rules in spans of figures, is probably working too slowly.

Every job presents different challenges; as each one reaches completion, the editor should evaluate the working methods to see where time could have been saved.

Yes, but

I entirely agree with other bloggers that in many cases hourly rates are scandalously low for the skills applied. I have said elsewhere that anything less than $50 an hour (in 2004 dollars) is derisory for a competent editor.[2] I am not arguing that rates can be raised to realistic levels simply by an improvement in working methods. Such a suggestion would amount to blaming individuals for a systemic failure.

Nevertheless, wide variations are reported in the quality and speed of editorial work. If these reports are true, some editors need to lift their game. It is easy to sit back and bleat that editors are underpaid, but the obligation cuts both ways: the client should pay a reasonable hourly rate (whatever that means), but the editor should deliver work of reasonable quality done at a reasonable pace (whatever that means). I agree with Grant Bailey that research is needed, but it should go beyond a questionnaire on remuneration.

Efficiency is an area that is entirely under the editor’s control; while we’re waiting for the research to be done and the clients to be persuaded, freelances who constantly strive to work faster and smarter will improve their hourly rates.

Notes
This article expresses my personal views. In my capacity as liaison officer for the Institute of Professional Editors, I have informed the Interim Council of IPEd about Grant Bailey’s suggestion for a national survey of rates. All rates are expressed in Australian dollars.
[1] Paraphrased with updated figures from Nick Hudson, ‘Money’, in J. Mackenzie (ed.), At the Typeface: Selections from the Newsletter of the Victorian Society of Editors, Society of Editors (Victoria) Inc., Melbourne, 2005, p. 16.
[2] J. Mackenzie, The Editor’s Companion, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2004, p. 182.

The great rate debate

2005-12-18T11:06:00.001+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

In last week's blog, Grant Bailey puzzles over the results of my 2005 national survey of editors whose respondents reported an average national hourly rate for freelance editors of $61. He compares this with a 2001 NSW survey finding of $40 and current anecdotal reports of a shameful $35 an hour. ‘Who should we believe?’, he asks.

The answer, I think, is straightforward.

The three findings are probably all accurate. These different results are neither inconsistent nor unreliable. It's just that the evidence was collected at different times, from different groups of people, in response to different questions.

The most important factor in a freelance editor’s rates is client. Publishers, universities and private clients pay much less than corporate and government clients. It’s as simple as that.

Another factor that has an influence on freelancers' income is location. It’s not surprising that the NSW survey reported lower rates in that state than the national average. This finding is mirrored in the state breakdowns of the data on rates. It is also likely that rates in NSW have increased in the intervening four years.

I’m not sure which editors were consulted to arrive at Grant’s anecdotal $35 an hour ‘or less’. If they worked in trade publishing, however, this would also be unsurprising. Editors who work for publishers receive payment far below the going rate for corporate and government work.

Of course, some freelance editors command appropriate rates in their trade, academic and private work and some work for absurdly low rates for government agencies and businesses. My findings suggest that these are the exceptions.

The hierarchy for editorial rates, in my experience and backed by my research, goes something like this: at the top of the tree is corporate work, followed by government contracts. When quoting in these areas of the market, you would not be taken seriously if you listed less than $50 an hour, average rates are around $70 and many charge a good deal more, into three figures. Climbing down the scale, in terms of profitability, most editors who work for publishers and universities find that they are expected to work for $35–60 an hour. Students and private clients sometimes baulk at even these extremely low rates. My surveys report some individuals working for as little as $20 and $25 an hour, a discounted rate for students and writers. This amounts to subsidy since it is not possible to operate a professional business on this basis.

Each time I’ve conducted my national surveys, respondents have sought guidance about rates. A common comment was that they didn’t want to undercut their colleagues and yet they felt under pressure to keep their rates down in order to win quotes.

Let the debate begin

I’d like to open Writing & Editing Blog to comments on rates. Here are some thoughts and questions to get the discussion going.

If we don’t discuss rates, they will remain low. Isolation promotes exploitation.
Should editors consider promoting a recommended minimum professional rate for editors? (The Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers has done this for many years, and their base rate of $55, excluding GST, is widely accepted across the profession and by clients.)
Would there be benefits in discussion and negotiation about rates with organisations such as the APA (Australian Publishers Association), ASA (Australian Society of Authors) and MEAA (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance)?
How can freelance editors grapple with the problem that their ‘industry’ is as decentralised as they are themselves? We often think of ourselves as working in the ‘publishing industry’ and some of us do, some of the time. But many of our clients are not publishers. To concentrate only on book editing in trade publishing is to ignore the majority of our colleagues, who work in universities, banks, councils, museums—anywhere words are published, whether on paper or on screen.

What do you think?

Please contact me with your thoughts, articles, comments, questions and criticisms. It could be that 2006 is the year of the Great Rate Debate.

The Emend Editing courses most relevant to this article are On your marks An introduction to editing, Tricks of the trade Freelance editing and What’s it worth? Costing and quoting.

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.

Pay rates of freelance editors

2005-12-11T18:50:00.001+11:00

This week's blog is by Grant Bailey, a Sydney freelancer responding to Pamela Hewitt's Third National Survey of Editors. Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment on rates.

Conflicting reports

What is the going rate for freelance copyediting work? The current evidence presents inconsistencies. The most recent survey, undertaken by Pamela Hewitt during the National Editor's Conference in Melbourne in October, indicated that the average rate of payment for editors nationally is currently around $61 per hour (the results, and a useful discussion, can be viewed below). The NSW Society’s 2001 survey of members (the most recent available for that state) indicated that an average rate of around $40 per hour was typical for copyediting work at that time (although direct comparisons are difficult due to the methodology employed in the survey). But even this much lower rate compares unfavourably with the current ‘target rate’ of $35 or less that a significant number of editors have reported anecdotally.

Who should we believe? It is likely that the differing reports about pay rates can be explained by differences in the circumstances of the editors surveyed. For example, it is possible that the results of Pamela Hewitt’s survey overstate the national average due to the sample being over-represented by editors from Victoria (presumably because editors from other states – particularly ‘strugglers’ – were unable to afford the cost of attending the conference). Conversely, the NSW results might reflect poor rates in that state which are not accurate for the rest of the country. The anecdotal reports of $35 per hour or less might arise from experience of some particular sector of publishing not representative of the industry as a whole. It is not clear, for example, that the copyediting of trade publications is paid at the same rate as the copyediting of government reports. Neither of the surveys asked respondents to specify the type of work they do.

The need for further evidence

The inconsistent evidence thus far justifies a more detailed and widespread investigation. The best means of obtaining accurate data about pay rates would be by means of an anonymous survey to be mailed to all members of the various state and territory editors’ societies nation-wide. The Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) should give serious consideration to organising such a survey.

The methodology of the survey will require careful consideration. Rather than focusing on hourly rates, the aim of the survey should be to obtain a true picture of the market value of editing work by eliciting data about the time worked in, and the income received from, editing. This is because declared hourly rates are often an inaccurate indication of income received from editing work. For example, a full-time librarian who does editing work part-time as a means of supplementing their income might be inclined to charge $70 per hour for their services on the grounds that it would ‘not be worthwhile’ to do the work for lower rates. Being able to ‘pick and choose’, the part-time editor’s hourly rate looks favourable. By contrast, a freelance editor devoting themselves full-time to editing work may have no option but to accept $35 per hour for the same work. If the latter situation was the norm within the profession then the average of the two rates would not be an accurate indication of the economic value of editing work.

The survey should ask respondents to estimate the average number of hours worked per week (over the last twelve months) as editors and their annual income from editing work for the last financial year. This would provide the most accurate means of estimating the average hourly rates of editors. Moreover, the survey should clearly differentiate between employed editors and freelance editors to account for differences in their pay and conditions (while freelancers may earn a higher hourly ‘rate’ they do not necessarily enjoy regular work, holiday pay, sick leave and superannuation).

Whether or not the concerns about deteriorating pay and conditions are confirmed, the collation of accurate survey evidence would have the further advantage of enabling IPEd to set recommended minimum rates for editing work. Minimum rates would provide individual editors with guidance on what rates to expect and would help to promote fair pay within the profession.

© Grant Bailey 2005

The chicken or the egg

2005-11-20T22:37:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

How do you gain experience as an editor? Clients want to hire experienced editors but how does someone new to editing find those crucial first jobs?

It’s not easy to start out in business—any business. Even if the work is there, finding it is not a simple matter, particularly in the beginning.

My solution to the problem of starting out was to have two strings to my bow. I’m a qualified teacher, so I took a part-time job teaching English while I built up my clientele. As the business became established, I was able to cut down the teaching hours. After a year or so, I was a full-time editor.

Starting strategies

Other people have successfully used different strategies. One approach is to combine freelance editing with a part-time inhouse position. This has the added advantage of keeping your industry knowledge current. You will also gain invaluable experience in juggling multiple tasks and deadlines as you balance your inhouse and freelance roles.

The ability to manage more than one project is one of the hallmarks of the successful freelancer. If nothing else, freelancing is the art of treating every client as your number one priority.

Another possibility is to start with a voluntary job before applying for paid work. The world is full of text that needs editing and many will jump at your offer to polish their reports, submissions or publications. You can pick the ‘good cause’ that is nearest to your heart, a further bonus.

Let people know about the skills you have and the ones you are acquiring. When her boss discovered she was enrolled in an editing course, one of my students found herself looking over copy for her organisation’s newsletter. Pretty soon, she’d created a role using her new skills.

‘Relevant experience’ can include non-editing work. Over the years, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews with professional editors. Although everyone’s experience is different, there was one fascinating characteristic all these people shared—they didn’t set out to be editors.

Before turning to editing, some had been journalists or researchers, there were many librarians and teachers, bureaucrats, scientists, university lecturers and administrators, journalists—among other professions. Their experience in special subjects brought valuable skills to their new trade. What’s more, their background in these fields often provided the initial springboard into that first editing job.

My own entrée to editing came through my knowledge of Chinese language and society. I found myself editing an academic journal and a monograph series in Chinese studies. One thing led to another and pretty soon, books and writing had taken over my professional life.

Skills audit

So, make a list of all your skills. You might be surprised at its length and diversity. What can you do? What have you studied? Your background as a singer, linguist, architect or librarian can be the deciding factor in being awarded a job.

Your life experience can be relevant too. Your travels, cultural background or sporting participation can put you ahead of the pack when competing for a project on those topics.

Just as important, you need to be aware of the skills you lack. Whether you’re new to editing or you’ve been out of the field for a while, it could be that you need to brush up your knowledge of current industry practice. Many new freelancers underestimate the skills involved in running a business. Your ability to manage the business is just as important as your professional expertise.

When you identify a skill deficit, there’s a range of steps you can take—you might enrol in a course, do some research or consult a professional. Working with a more experienced colleague is a fantastic way to combine the best of both worlds—the autonomy of the freelance life and the benefits of collaboration and teamwork.

Once your client base grows, it’s much harder to find the time to plan a marketing campaign or learn about copyright law, so look on any periods when you’re not swamped with work as opportunities to take stock and brush up on your skills.

Networking

Networking is an aspect of freelancing that is all the more important because it’s up to you, as a sole trader, to create and nurture them. In an office job, your networks are largely formed for you. You don’t usually choose your colleagues or the people you consult in other organisations.

Freelancers can’t afford to be isolated. You need to make connections with individuals and organisations. Again, take the time to make a list of all the groups that you are involved with. Are you a member of a quilting club, book group, editors’ society, writers’ centre, choir, residents’ action group? If you are a psychologist or lawyer, is your professional association membership current? Networks such as these are vital to freelancers.

Most people have a set of social and other informal networks—friends, colleagues, school or university contacts. Let them know that you’re starting a business. Everyone needs an editor, after all.

Professional registers are another great way to become known. Most societies of editors have a print and electronic freelance register. Participating on email listings and blogs can help you develop an online identity. Your own website can give clients more than a profile. It can showcase your work, highlight your versatility and skills and give people an idea of the person behind the professional persona.

Lately, I’ve been coming across younger students who are looking to a career in editing and publishing as their first career choice. This is bound to become more common as inhouse training declines and more people come to publishing via education and training. It will also make it even more important for editors to develop freelance skills outside the publishing industry.

When existing clients return with new projects or recommend you to colleagues, you can breathe more easily. It’s the best indication I know that you’ve started to make it in the world of freelance editing. You know things are going well when your chickens come home to roost.

©Pamela Hewitt 2005
www.emendediting.com

The Emend Editing courses most relevant to this article are On your marks An introduction to editing, Tricks of the trade Freelance editing and What’s it worth? Costing and quoting.

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.

Editing—a moveable feast

2005-11-12T17:17:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

Someone asked me the other day if it was possible to make a living as a freelance editor outside big cities. She had moved to a beautiful spot on the coast. It was a wonderful place to bring up her kids, but could she make a go of it in the editing business?

I remembered my last move, from Canberra to Sydney. I’d built up a successful freelance editing business and wasn’t looking forward to starting from scratch again in the big smoke.

I was glad to be back in inner-city Sydney. I loved living in a Victorian house again, not to mention the proximity to bookshops, the harbour and the fish markets. Despite careful planning, the move itself was hell. There were the usual minor disasters, frayed nerves and exhaustion. Amid the cartons and bubble wrap, I heard these words from a family member: ‘Let’s die in Glebe’. It sounded appealing.

Before I had a chance to unpack properly or get out the paint brushes, manuscripts began to land in my inbox—my electronic inbox, that is. I discovered that many of my clients didn’t know I’d moved and, for those who did, the distance was no barrier to email contact and the occasional phone call.

Before the move, I’d joined the local Society of Editors and my business was listed on the Society’s electronic register. New work found me and I never had to scout around for new clients. When I stopped to think about it, I realised that my authors were already far-flung. Their emails and attachments reached me from all over Australia and also from Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, the US …

These days I rarely meet my clients. The work comes through cyberspace and it is generated by referrals from satisfied clients and repeat work from existing ones. I think that my experience is common among freelancers. You don’t need to live in any particular place to achieve a good reputation as an editor. I have editing colleagues who live on Kangaroo Island, in Kiama and far north Queensland. One travels almost constantly, taking her work with her on her laptop.

Editors can live almost anywhere. And so can their authors.

It’s liberating to realise that the chief requirement to operate effectively as a freelance editor is a computer connected to the internet—and, of course, the skills, knowledge and equipment to do the job. Beyond that, it’s a moveable feast.

©Pamela Hewitt 2005
www.emendediting.com

The Emend Editing courses most relevant to this article are On your marks—An introduction to editing, Tricks of the trade—Freelance editing, What’s it worth?—Costing and quoting and Wired words—Onscreen editing (for MAC or PC).

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or you’d like to reproduce it.

Editors on the move

2005-11-05T11:22:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

Editors are getting younger and richer.

Well, only a little bit younger and only a tiny bit richer, but progress is progress. The third national survey of editors found that hard work and organisation are showing results.

I’ve been conducting these surveys for four years. In 2001, I was writing a paper for ‘Partnerships in Knowledge’, a national conference of editors and indexers held in Canberra, and I was dismayed to discover that there was little useful quantitative or qualitative information about Australian editors. It seemed that the only way I could get reliable information on what editors did, thought and charged was to ask them myself.

The result was a survey that asked editors for standard statistical information on age, sex and residence. It went on to find out about their educational background and employment experience. The survey contained questions about the challenges editors face and their professional priorities. It also provided, for the first time, reliable data on the rates Australian editors charge.

It came as no surprise to me to find that the profession is both experienced and well qualified. As I said at the time, editors are:

highly skilled, combining generalist and specialist knowledge
highly qualified, usually with a first degree, often with one or more postgraduate qualifications
highly experienced, often with a track record of ten or twenty years in the industry
working in industries at the forefront of technological change, at the very heart of the information revolution.

This is looking promising. Surely here we have the cream of the knowledge society, highly prized specialists for the industries of the future. It should go without saying that, as employees, we should command high salaries, a company car and generous executive packages. As freelancers, the sky should be the limit. What wouldn’t a corporate client pay for the services of such people?[1]

Anyone in the trade will be rolling their eyes by this point. It’s well known in the industry that editors are not at the top of the publishing tree in this country.

There have been enormous changes in the publishing industry worldwide, and editors work in a globalised economy, along with everyone else. Desktop publishing, email and the internet have transformed the way we work. Editors haven’t been slow to see the possibilities technological change offers for freelancing. Many set up small businesses, typically one-woman shows, and publishers were also quick to take advantage of the cost benefits of outsourcing a large slice of the editorial role.

There has been sometimes heated discussion about the declining editorial standards in Australian book publishing, with Frank Moorhouse, Hilary McPhee, Nikki Christer and others weighing in from different perspectives.[2] I won’t revisit that debate here, except to consider the role of freelance editors, and to suggest some possibilities for cooperation.

For editors, the results of changes to the editorial function in publishing houses have been mixed. What they gained on the swings of autonomy, they often lost on the roundabout of running a microbusiness, hunting for work, juggling deadlines and the flood and famine of publishing projects. All the same, there is a cadre of freelancers with experience of inhouse production processes who make a mostly modest living by offering their skills on the market.

Education and training

Some of the gaps left by the reduction in inhouse training have been taken up by the higher education and TAFE sectors. Most universities and many vocational colleges now run courses that include editing and publishing, sometimes as specialist qualifications and sometimes as components in communications, journalism and creative writing courses. The industry has stepped up its training, with the APA running courses and now offering accreditation to external providers. Societies of editors, writers’ centres and private providers also offer a range of short courses.

My surveys show a continuing and growing interest in education and training. The greatest demand is for professional development programs. In 2001, 30% of respondents wanted to see more professional development programs as a matter of priority and this jumped to 79% in 2003. In the latest survey, 68% of editors rated the need for professional development highly, second only to the need to establish a national organisation for editors.[3]

An ageing profession?

Despite the fact that many people still come to editing after a career in areas such as teaching, librarianship and academia, there are now younger entrants with newly minted publishing and editing degrees and the intention of making a living as editors, not merely subsidising the production process.

When I conducted the first survey, some people expressed concern at the ageing of the profession. In 2003, 63% were over 45 and this is now a slightly lower 58%. As one survey respondent commented, ‘We are not dowdy housewives filling in time while hubby’s at work, but strong, committed, dynamic professionals with a specific view of publishing… not an “add on” but a specialised, powerful group with “insider knowledge”.’

As editors with inhouse experience leave the industry and younger people with professional qualifications take their places, the cottage industry model of freelance editing will be increasingly unsustainable. Lots of experienced book editors have moved into more viable areas — government and corporate work, website and electronic editing (fields where you make a lot more with the same essential skills by calling yourself a communications consultant, knowledge content provider or information architect).

Rates

The significant increase in reported average hourly rates in this year’s survey is a pleasing development. The national average of $61 an hour is a step up from the $50 mark that the first two surveys reported. Even so, it masks huge variations. The lowest rate was a paltry $25 an hour. Survey respondents made wry comments, including the words ‘slave labour’ and ‘ridiculous undercharging’ about the amounts that their work commanded. The highest reported rate in this survey was $120 an hour, a rare outlier in the data but not too different from the recommended MEAA freelance rate for book editors.[4]

To run a small business, as freelancers do, this hourly rate needs to be raided for equipment and home office costs, including internet and phone charges, software, holiday and sick leave, education and training, IT maintenance, supplies, the daily administrivia of emails, phone calls, banking, postage and advertising. And this is without even thinking about superannuation or insurance. After all, most freelancers don’t.

Too many freelancers don’t charge enough to do much more than pay for their overheads. There are exceptions to this sad rule, but most of these people don’t work as book editors but with more lucrative government and corporate clients.

Working together

I provide summaries of the survey findings to IPEd and editors’ societies. I’ll be making my findings available to the MEAA and there are signs of a renewed phase of cooperation between editors and their union. Many former union members have drifted away from an organisation that they felt didn’t understand or represent them, but there seems to be a new willingness on both sides to work together. As we move into a grimmer industrial relations era, everyone in publishing has much to gain from joining forces and finding common ground.

I’m aware that many professional writers would be glad to earn anything like $60 an hour for their work. Before you frame retorts about relative value and wage justice for authors, let me say that I’d love to see writers properly paid for their work. I’d add that many writers engage in editing as their day job and, indeed, many editors are also published writers. We have a lot in common.

Both groups want the publication they’re working on to be as good as possible. We also want publications to sell, giving us common cause with publishers. We all want to be part of an Australian publishing industry where good writing and good editing are valued and nurtured.

If my bookshop spending is anything to go on, paying editors properly might be the start of an editor-led recovery in the Australian publishing industry.

Notes

[1] ‘Valuing our services, valuing ourselves’ paper presented at ‘Partnerships in Knowledge’ conference, Canberra, April 2001.

[2] Frank Moorhouse, Australian Author, Hilary McPhee, interview with Ramona Koval, Books and Writing, Radio National, broadcast 12 May 1999, For Nicki Christer’s and others' comments, see Jane Sullivan, ‘Publish and be damned’, Age, 14 December 2002.

[3] The new Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) was announced, to fanfare and song, at the Melbourne conference. See Jane Sullivan, ‘Letters to the editors at the typeface’, Age, 16 October 2005 and www.case-editors.org.

[4] The current hourly freelance rate for book editors and proofreaders is $189, and the daily rate is $756.

The surveys are used in Emend Editing online courses, along with many other current industry sources. The courses most relevant to this article are On your marks An introduction to editing, What's it worth? Costing and quoting and Tricks of the trade Freelance editing.

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.

Third national survey of editors

2005-11-05T10:55:00.000+11:00

Pamela Hewitt

The third national survey of editors was conducted at the conference, ‘Editing in Context’, held in Melbourne in October 2005. There were 108 responses to the survey, a slight increase on the responses to the second national survey of editors, carried out in July 2003 at the Brisbane national conference.

These surveys are the only comprehensive, national collection of information about editors. Although participation at national conferences is not necessarily representative of all editors as a whole, they are excellent opportunities to gather national data and views, and they provide a snapshot of the profession. To allow comparison over the three surveys, the same questions were asked, where possible. Much has been achieved on the national front in the past four years, so the survey has been refined to take into account changing national issues.

As the conference was held in Melbourne, there is a disproportionate representation of Victorian editors. Some 40% of respondents were from Victoria. Even so, there is an encouraging continuity of response, which suggests that we can have confidence in the findings. The most variable responses are found in the area of rates and charges so I conducted a state-by-state analysis to allow comparison.

Who is an Australian editor?

It comes as no surprise that women continue to outnumber men in the profession, with 87% female respondents and 13% male.
Editors are getting (a little bit) younger! While 58% of respondents are over 45, this is down slightly from 63% in 2003, and 42% are under 45.
We’re a well educated bunch. 92% of editors hold at least a degree. Most (58%) hold more than one higher education qualification, and just over a quarter have a Masters or Doctoral degree.
Editors are working harder to extend their skills, with 95% participating in professional development programs. This continues the increasing trend for professional skills upgrading noted in the previous survey.
Almost 70% of respondents had more than 6 years’ experience as an editor, and the remaining 30% had been in the profession for up to 6 years.
Most editors bring to their work previous experience in relevant professional areas. The most commonly mentioned fields are teaching, administration, journalism, librarianship and writing. Many bring subject specialties to their editing work, such as science, law, linguistics and management. Experience in bookselling, policy, archives, computing, communications, university lecturing and business are just some of the other areas of relevant work experience that editors listed.
There was an increase in the proportion of full-time editors (60% compared with 51% two years ago), with 27% working part time and 13% working in the field in addition to other employment.
Mapping the changing boundaries of the profession is vital to our continuing relevance to a changing workplace. The nomenclature editors use is an important indicator of shifts in the industry and of the ways we see ourselves. In previous surveys, I asked respondents if they described themselves primarily as copyeditors and/or proofreaders, substantive editors, project managers or whether they used some other title. Many indicated that these boundaries were impossible to delineate in their working lives, so this time I framed the question differently. The changing role of editors in the publishing industry is now more accurately reflected in the findings. In 2005, 19% of respondents described their role as copyediting or proofreading, 11% saw themselves primarily as substantive editors, 16% described themselves as project managers while 37% agreed that it was impossible to distinguish between combinations of these activities. Among the other 17% of responses, many used different job titles: communications manager, onscreen and website editor, editorial consultant, managing consultant, content developer, project editor as well as knowledge management professional and others.
Compared with the 2003 survey, a higher proportion (46%) of respondents worked as employees, reflecting the greater levels of in-house employment among editors in Victoria. Just under half of respondents were freelance, with the other 5% describing their employment status as contract, volunteer or a combination of employee and freelance.

Rates

Now for the news we’ve all been waiting for. There has been a significant increase in the reported rates editors charge. The national average hourly rate is now $61, a marked increase on the $50 average reported in the previous two surveys.

Even better, this is not merely a result of the over-representation of Victorian editors. A breakdown by state and territory follows: average hourly rates for editing were $67 in Victoria, $63 in the ACT, $60 in NSW, $55 in South Australia and $49 in Queensland. The Tasmanian, Western Australian and Northern Territory figures provided too small a sample from which to generalise. For the first time, we can report on rates in New Zealand, which average $45, albeit against a small sample.

As we know, these averages mask huge variations. The highest reported hourly rate for editing was $120 and the lowest was $25. As in the past, many editors charge different rates for different services. Proofreading rates averaged $38, indexing was $45, thesis editors averaged $39 and manuscript assessment rates were $36 or $325 per manuscript. Higher paid services were project management, which commands an average hourly rate of $82, and document development, at an average hourly rate of $56.

There was a great deal of discussion about rates in the space provided for comments. It comes as no surprise that the most common remark was ‘these rates are too low’ (10 respondents said this, some using terms such as ‘slave labour’, ‘ridiculous undercharging’ and one commenting ‘I can’t believe people are working for $35 an hour’). A repeated suggestion was for societies to provide guidelines on rates, hold seminars on the topic and work to improve the way clients value our work.

Another familiar response was that some editors charge different rates according to what they believe the client will pay, or can afford. Several people also raised the problems of undercutting by colleagues and lack of information about what to charge. Here is a typical response: ‘I would like some more guidance about professional rates because I don’t know the range in which it is reasonable to negotiate; at the moment I’m at the mercy of what the publishers suggest as an hourly rate.’

In contrast to the practice of charging differential rates, others commented that their time is just as valuable to them and the client, regardless of the service performed, and so they did not vary their charges. Others said that they resisted quoting an hourly rate in favour of quoting on the job.

To summarise, there has been progress on this front but it is clear that many editors would like to increase their charges and that they look to societies and the profession nationally to help them achieve this.

Challenges

Extending skills was the challenge most frequently cited as the most important and it was the most commonly listed item overall, followed by keeping abreast of technology and increasing income. This response is much the same as those of previous surveys. Several individuals said that they saw improving the way editors are valued as important.

Other priorities were becoming more time efficient, keeping up with administration and balancing lean periods with times of oversupply of work. One editor listed ‘refusing tempting jobs’ as a challenge, while another remarked that these things are not ‘challenges’ but ‘all in a day’s work’.

Priorities

The groundswell of support for the establishment of the national organisation (the Institute of Professional Editors, or IPEd) was clear, with the highest number of people listing this as their number one priority, followed closely by the need for the provision of more professional development for editors and a desire for a greater advocacy and promotions role on the part of societies. There is growing support for societies to take on an employment brokerage role, the next most popular choice of priority.

Individuals also stressed the need for a mentoring scheme for newcomers to the field. This was spontaneously raised by several respondents in the last survey and I will include it as a separate item in Hobart in 2007. Some other suggestions were an online e-list, stronger partnerships with writers, publishers and other industry organisations, and accreditation of courses.

Subject areas

Rather than listing subject areas, this year’s survey merely asked respondents to nominate their own fields. The results were remarkably compatible. Once again, most editors either described themselves as ‘generalists’ or listed a range of subject areas. Education was by far the most common subject area (42 responses). When you add higher education (11), vocational education (4), curriculum and assessment (1 each), this confirms the broad field of education as the largest single subject area for editors. Science accounted for 20 responses, with a further 6 specialist scientific areas mentioned. The humanities, broadly defined to include social sciences, history, ancient history, anthropology, politics, philosophy, critical theory and archaeology was the next on the list, with 25 responses. Twenty respondents listed trade fiction and non-fiction, including children’s books, biography and poetry. Business, finance, marketing, human resources and accounting, when grouped together, amounted to 18 of the listed subject areas, while 15 respondents listed government and corporate editing among their subject areas.

Small numbers of respondents listed many additional subject specialties. These included language and linguistics (7), law (4), information technology (3) and indigenous affairs (3). The many single-item responses were too numerous to list in a summary but I am happy to provide them on request.

Many people added some final thoughts at the end of the survey. A couple suggested that the accreditation system be altered: ‘I believe editors with tertiary qualifications in the field should be accredited via a different pathway than those with experience only’ and ‘while I support accreditation, I think there should still be room for recognising in-house qualifications’. Here are some more parting comments:

Specialist knowledge can be an advantage when looking for a niche in publishing.

I would be interested to see ‘tests on editing’ on the websites.

an important part of my contribution is in developing processes and briefs, in addition to editorial activities — this is an area often referred to in a general way … but very necessary for smooth production process.

Editors are too passive. We need to be entrepreneurs — in-house or independent. Editors must be able to describe what they do, how they will work with the client and demonstrate VALUE, VALUE, VALUE (not just pedantic correction — although that is critical).

An overarching challenge … is to continue to define for ourselves and others how we add value to published texts.

It would be great to see the development of a national professional association run by paid office-bearers. The voluntary work by current CASE reps is fantastic but vulnerable as it rests on those who are passionate enough to devote their spare, unpaid time to it.

Would be helpful to have more professional development or mentoring systems to ‘open up’ specialist/niche areas.

Editors need an image makeover. We are not dowdy housewives filling in time while hubby’s at work, but strong, committed, dynamic professionals with a specific view of publishing… not an ‘add on’ but a specialised, powerful group with ‘insider knowledge’.

Would be good to make your findings available to the MEAA so they can be more effective on behalf of editors.

I’ve taken up this final suggestion and will be making the survey findings available to the MEAA as well as IPEd, individual societies and other players in the industry. I hope that many of the other suggestions that emerged will also come to fruition between now and the next survey in 2007.

The stand-out issues from this survey are the collective wish to:

establish a strong national organisation
move on increasing rates
develop an effective mentoring scheme
expand the opportunities for professional development
improve the status of editing within the industry.

A number of people thanked me for conducting the survey and thanked the people who have taken a leading role in national developments through IPEd’s working groups. I’d like to thank respondents for taking the time to complete the survey and to express my pleasure at seeing editing develop as a profession that has a greater sense of where it is going and how we intend to get there.

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