Category Archives: Support

Forum matters: Educational publishing

This feature comes from the band of CIEP members who serve as forum moderators. You will only be able to access the posts if you’re a forum user and logged in. Find out how to register.

The CIEP forums are a wealth of information, but sometimes you need to know where to look. Joining a specialist forum can help you find other members who are in the same boat or who have encountered (and solved!) whichever problem you might be facing. In this article, we cover:

  • How much fact-checking should we do on textbooks?
  • Beyond the mechanics
  • Digging deeper into the specialist forums
  • Join a specialist forum

How much fact-checking should we do on textbooks?

On the SfEPLine forum, members discussed how much fact-checking should be done on textbooks during a proofread. Some said they are regularly asked to do it for education publishers, usually as a separate activity at second proof stage. Members might not feel comfortable fact-checking in a field in which they don’t have a specialism. It’s worth gauging the extent of the facts that need to be checked in order to give a fair quote that works within the client’s budget, and charging for the extra time you will need beyond a standard copyedit or proofread. This ties into an earlier thread about fact-checking that goes into a little more detail on what it requires.

Beyond the mechanics

Editors in any genre sometimes need to think beyond the style guide. We might need to consider the personal approach we’re taking to the job or to the client. A link to a helpful CIEP blog post about textbook publishing from an author’s perspective led to an interesting discussion of members’ experiences in editing textbooks and how they communicated with their clients, while a simple request for some suggested synonyms for some secondary school books turned into a thought-provoking and sensitive conversation about the nuances of language about religion.

Woman carrying a pile of books

Digging deeper into the specialist forums

Educational publishing is vast, and we have many members who work in the industry as proofreaders, copyeditors, developmental editors and project managers. We’ve even created several focused specialist forums where members can dig into these topics more deeply. There’s the general Education specialist forum as well as the English Language Teaching (ELT) forum and the MedSTEM forum (which focuses on medical, scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical textbooks). You can subscribe to as many of these as you like. For example, if you specialise in editing mathematics textbooks, you might want to subscribe to MedSTEM and Education.

If you’re not yet a member of the ELT or Education specialist forums and want to read the threads in the rest of this section, jump straight to ‘Join a specialist forum’ below. Once you’ve joined those groups, come back!

Editors working in ELT publishing will definitely benefit from this collection of resources in the ELT specialist forum. Others working in any area of educational publishing would probably enjoy the discussions about formatting answer keys to help dyslexic students and how many words per page are best for children’s educational books in the Education specialist forum.

More recently, the educational publishing landscape was drastically changed by the shift to hybrid learning in many countries, making this discussion about whether educational publishers consider home educators (also in the Education specialist forum) particularly useful.

Join a specialist forum

There’s no barrier to entry into the hidden specialist groups. Instead, they’re hidden from view to avoid overwhelming members on arrival. If you’re interested in a deeper exploration of a niche or subject related to editing, follow the step-by-step instructions on this page or get in touch with one of the forum moderators by emailing forums@ciep.uk. As well as location-based groups and the Education and ELT groups, we have other topic-based groups including Music, Fiction, Translation (Languages), Legal and more. And sometimes that’s where the real action is!

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by Susan Q Ying on Unsplash, woman carrying a pile of books by cottonbro studio on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Why you need to see yourself as a marketer (so that you do some marketing)

In this post, Malini Devadas talks about why you need to see yourself as a marketer, and feel comfortable in that identity, in order to actually do any marketing. She also shares one action that you can take today to find your next client.

There’s a model in coaching that I love, which is called ‘be, do, have’. Most freelancers want to have more clients, and they know that in order to do that they need to do some marketing. So they learn all about marketing; in other words, they focus on the doing. However, we won’t do something if it is in conflict with who we see ourselves as being. If we spend our time thinking about how much we hate selling, if we feel resentful about the fact that we need to be proactive about finding clients, or if we see ourselves as someone who is hopeless at marketing, we are unlikely to take marketing action. Instead of acknowledging the root cause of the problem, we decide it’s because we don’t know the ‘right’ marketing strategy. We then spend more time reading and learning about new platforms and tactics, because that feels easy and safe compared to actually putting ourselves out there.

As a transformational coach, my job is to help editors become someone who is comfortable with marketing and who even learns to enjoy connecting with writers they’d like to work with. Yes, it is possible! Here are some steps to get started.

Be comfortable with marketing and selling

The best way we can help a writer is to edit their piece (assuming that we are a good fit for the project). So, it’s in their best interest to know about what we do and how we can help them. They may decide not to work with us, but if they don’t even know that we exist, they are being denied the opportunity to get help.

Because selling, and talking about money more generally, can feel awkward, a lot of freelancers focus on giving away free content to help writers, such as through social media posts, blogs and podcasts. This has a place; personally, I like to give away free content so that I can help those who don’t have the budget to work with me. But I also think it’s important to share the message that I can help you more if you hire me, and invite people to contact me if they want to discuss the options.

I don’t think it’s likely that you’re going to go from hating something to loving it, so I’m not suggesting that you try to convince yourself that marketing your business is your new favourite pastime. Instead, I encourage you to start by feeling neutral about it. When the topic comes up, instead of joining in the chorus of complaints about having to do marketing or how bad you are at it or criticising other service providers who sell their services, don’t say anything. This may feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re used to leading the chorus of complaints. But over time you will notice that you no longer have such strong negative views about marketing and selling. And that will make it easier for you to do it.

Be confident in your offer

Yes, it’s the dreaded concept of niching! Having a niche for marketing purposes does not mean that you can’t have variety in your work. But if you are connecting with writers, it is much easier for you to find the right people, and for them to have more confidence in you, if you’re clear on the problem you solve (your offer). For example, do you proofread food blogs before they are published on a website? Do you do developmental editing of romance novels for first-time authors who eventually want to self-publish? Do you copyedit PhD theses for students in the sciences at Australian universities?

Put yourself in the shoes of a writer who thinks they might need help to reach their goals. If you don’t show empathy for your clients then it will be hard to write content that will appeal to them. If you spend all your time talking about the editing process, it is hard to connect with people, because many people outside publishing don’t understand what editing actually is. Instead, you want to be talking about things that matter to the people you want to work with.

And if you’re not sure what matters to your ideal clients, find some of them and ask them!

A smiling woman shouts into a megaphone

Be open to receiving more money

It may sound ridiculous, but it can be hard for some people to receive money. Here are some signs that you might be one of these people:

  • You stall on sending an invoice because you feel bad, especially if the invoice is for a lot of money (even if the client is happy).
  • You feel guilty about how much you earn compared to other people (eg parents, other family members, people with ‘more important’ jobs).
  • You feel bad about being paid for work you enjoy.
  • You think that people who earn a lot are greedy.

There are any number of limiting beliefs out there when it comes to money, and these can have a huge impact on how we run our business. Over the years, many editors I have coached have been shocked to discover all the negative thoughts they have about money.

Next time you find yourself criticising someone about their rates or making assumptions about what a potential client is willing to pay you, stop and consider how these thoughts may be hampering your business.

One action you can take today to find your next client

The easiest way to find a client is to start with your existing network, even if it is tiny. Here’s a script that I have used (and that has worked!) when I’ve needed more clients. You can use it to email someone you know.

Dear

[Some kind of introductory remarks.]

I wanted to let you know that I have recently started an editing business. I help [type of client/publication and the problem you solve].

You can find out more at my website [insert link]. (If you don’t have a website, just include any relevant information at the end of the email.)

If you think you might need my help, I’d love to make a time to chat about it. Or, if you know someone who might benefit from my services, I’d appreciate you forwarding this email to them.

[Some kind of sign-off.]

That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it!

If you’re struggling to send one email about your business to someone you know, this is an opportunity to look inwards and work out what the fear is that is getting in the way. Because until you uncover and deal with that, it’s going to be difficult to do the marketing that you need to do to grow your business.

This is not so much about expecting this one person to respond and offer you work. Statistically, in fact, this is unlikely to happen (this is why we need to tell lots of people about our business, to increase our chances of finding work). Instead, it is about taking responsibility for your business and telling the universe that you are ready to meet more of your ideal clients.

Going forward

Remember, so many writers need your services! But they can’t get help for their manuscript if they don’t know that you exist. Spend time building connections with your ideal clients and let them know how you can help them. Before you know it, you will be getting enquiries from people you want to work with on projects you find interesting.

About Malini Devadas

Dr Malini Devadas has been an editor since 2004 and a coach since 2018. Over the past five years, she has been helping editors learn to enjoy marketing and selling so that they can find more clients and earn more money. Malini takes on a few 1:1 coaching clients when her schedule allows. To find out more, you can email Malini (malini@mdwritingediting.com.au).

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: green shoot by PhotoMIX Company; megaphone by Andrea Piacquadio, both on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Wherever you go, there you are: Not-so-new learnings from parenting and editing

In this post, Ayesha Chari shares her experiences on running a freelance editing business while bringing up a young child. She opens up about her struggles to juggle work and childcare, some of the ways she’s had to adapt her work routines, and the things that have helped her to get through it all.

Acknowledgement: with thanks to clients and colleagues who’ve made safe spaces for conversations over the years. This is more personal than I wanted it to be, but I hope sharing will make someone somewhere feel they’re not alone. And that we can learn from each other if we let ourselves find community, even when we least expect it possible.

My four-and-a-half-year-old is coughing away as I attempt for the umpteenth time to write a sentence beyond the blog heading (which, at the moment, reads ‘CIEP blog’, but I hope will be cleverer by the end of this, if that comes). The noise from their tiny hands rumbling a box of classic Lego pieces in search of the perfect one for the pizza-delivery truck they’re building is deafening. The TV is playing today’s game of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022, silently. The partner has taken care of breakfast, cleared up and is going out for a quick haircut before the rest of our day unravels. Another device in the house, I’m not quite sure where, is playing Bollywood songs I’m annoyingly humming in my head on and off every time I get distracted from writing the next sentence here* or trying to figure out how many more days I should wait before getting the child seen by the professionals for the cold and cough that never seem to go away fully now that they’re in school.

(*It has taken me so long to focus that now the game has changed from whacking a ball with a bat to kicking it around furiously for 90 minutes. I hope you will be reading this before the 2022 FIFA World Cup trophy is won, but don’t be surprised if it’s well into the New Year!)

Yes, school. Who’d have thunk I’d be a four-and-a-half-year-old parent and still wondering how I got to where I am, where we all are as a family?! That I’d also be decently self-employed for now nine years and finally ready to call what I do a business. It feels like it was only yesterday that I took our sleeping cuddle-bundle to their first CIEP (then SfEP) local group meeting in person. Together, we’ve since attended nearly three years of regular virtual meetings, fewer in-person ones because masked life, one in-person annual editor conference, three virtual ones, and several editing and business-related webinars. My child’s also been a massive part of everyday editing – it’s about cooperation, I’m learning – and has even got surprisingly excited through my website-building journey last year. So, what, if anything, is this really about?

Parent and child working at a laptop

The not-so-brief backdrop

The year before parenthood was my first financially productive year in five years of freelancing. (New editors: sometimes it can take a while; hang in there, it’s well worth it.) It was that which helped me decide I wanted to stay self-employed and not fill in another full-time editorial job application. Ever.

I was already an Advanced Professional Member of the now CIEP, had committed to training regularly, was relatively active in the editorial community of colleagues-slowly-becoming-friends, and had regular clients who promised to be in touch as soon as I was ready to end maternity leave.

They kept their word, and I was officially back at work as an eight-month-old parent–editor. Without family or friends nearby to help with occasional dailyness, I struggled. We struggled. My workday started, reluctantly, when my partner took over child and house after his full day at work. I’m a morning person (as is the little person, so far), and though I get by with less than average sleep in general, this shift in routine was painful. I struggled to settle into any sort of rhythm, hated working in chunks of time not in my control, felt miserable not being able to take on as much work as I wanted to. The list is long.

The silver-lined obstacle course

A few months in, when the new parenting–editing work routine was beginning to feel a little less frantic, comfortable even, my partner’s work circumstances changed and we found ourselves doing weekdays apart and weekends together as a family. My workdays became night shifts and weekends, and grocery shopping, laundry, essential and non-essential household sundries had to be reorganised. We were maze runners, again.

But there were silver linings. I’ve had the most understanding of clients, a couple of whom were in similar situations as new parents and carers, and eternally supportive colleagues at the end of a direct message or even a phone call if I dared. It felt reassuring to know we were going to help each other get through each assignment one day at a time. Courses have got done, learning has happened, calamities have been overcome and tides ridden, new clients have had work published successfully, deadlines have been met, conferences and meetings have been attended, old tricks shared and new ones picked up, illnesses have been survived, growing confidence in business acquired, and food and laughter have made it to the table among family, friends and strangers even.

The pandemic, as all of us have experienced, magnified the hurdles, with or without children in the mix, with or without much change to daily routines for those with an already functional bedroom or under-the-staircase office. At a cost both personal and professional. But the editing communities that I’ve made my home show me every day that we’re in this together.

Lessons learnt and unlearnt

Clients and deadlines – the relationship puzzle

Emergencies and planned family time both need accounting for. As editors, we all know we’re cogs in the publishing/communications landscape we work in. We take pride in meeting those deadlines, many of which every now and then are not met by others in the same chain. Quite possibly with valid reason and for causes beyond their reach. Yet, we go into a flap when one creeps up on us. The uncertainties of parenting and other caregiving responsibilities make it trickier to plan around deadlines, holidays, rest and recuperation.

For me parenthood has reinforced the importance of being transparent about what I can/can’t and will/won’t do. The boundaries I set for myself help to create realistic expectations with clients. I share as many or as few details as I want to, but if I need time off I let my clients know as early as possible – whether my child is unwell (which can happen overnight), I’m planning CPD time off or I’m unavailable at fixed times of the year. When agreeing deadlines with author-clients specially, I ask if they have other commitments – caring responsibilities, travel, work – and require buffer in the schedule. I make sure they’re comfortable sharing if the need arises and set ground rules about communicating openly and often, especially when a change that may affect the editing project is anticipated.

If the ongoing pandemic has taught us anything it is that we’re all human, that life happens, that priorities lie on an ever-changing spectrum. Extrovert or introvert, people thrive in relationships, in community. Children are brilliant examples of the natural need for human connection. My work is as much about editing as it is about communicating, clearly and well. I’m a strongly opinionated introvert who’s on a mission to learn to be unafraid of sharing, of having difficult conversations and of collaborating consciously. Build your editing business on relationships, not textbook rules.

Parent reading to child

Scheduling – flexibly firm routines

Changing, erratic routines come with the territory that is parenthood. It’s one of the first lessons in the role. Not a pleasant one if like me you thrive on being in control. Not fighting the change makes dailyness slightly less painful. Guilt – for working too much, letting your child cling to you, not working enough, letting someone else care for your child, for yelling, not being firm enough, for sleeping or even eating that last cheese slice/cookie – will come and go. That is reality too. See it for what it is and let go.

In late 2021, a 12k-words-long article that should’ve taken a few hours’ work took a very guilt-filled, tearful two weeks to edit. If I took my own medicine, the matter would’ve been easier to close the chapter on a year later. I know now it won’t be the last, only that moving on will happen with a smidgen less anger. I fought with myself to make the most of my peak productive morning hours, but ended up swinging between tears and fury by the end of daylight hours because I hadn’t edited anything, hadn’t ‘worked’. Not even when the child was asleep and I’d planned to send those emails, clean up files, sort author queries. Vicious cycle until I realised that I was still efficient, just in a different way from what I was used to. It made the editing at night so much smoother: slower but simpler. Routines as a family change with time, age and circumstances. Being flexibly firm is a middle path worth trekking. Unnatural-to-you rhythms can be your friend if you prioritise you in the equation.

Juggling tasks – caregiving versus business

I’ve worked around caring for others, older family and ill friends before. But a little human who needs 24/7 attention of some form is a different juggling act altogether. So, how do you handle the responsibilities? I’ve found (re)prioritising is a constant and perfection a myth. Doing a job well involves managing one’s own expectations and self-care too. Think about whether and how you can share tasks with a partner, with other family and friends, or pay for professional care.

Being not OK is not OK. Running a business and childcare (read: life) don’t come with manuals and are not meant to be in constant opposition. It has taken lots of trial and error for me to get comfortable with what works for us as a family and for me as a self-employed parent. If I could mass-produce sticky-notes for new parents, they’d include ‘Ask for help’, ‘Don’t apologise for having a child/being a parent/having needs’ (in check boxes), ‘Ask for help’, ‘It’s OK to be not OK, but also not’, ‘No rights and wrongs’, ‘No guilt’, ‘Go outdoors’, ‘Work or life, seek help’ (yes, again). Parenting and editing aren’t mutually exclusive: which takes priority when depends on your circumstances.

List of work tasks and birthday reminder

Superpowers –  multitasking ninja or specialist wizard?

Parenting, editing and running a business require all the superpowers of the universe and some. No fooling anyone! Have I got said superpowers? ’Course not. Has my ability to run a business changed since parenthood? Of course it has!

I’ve got more confident in recognising that with responsibility comes power (or is it the other way round?!) – the power to choose when and how to multitask, to focus, (re)train, specialise or generalise, who to work with, what to work on and which services to offer. The power to know when to take time off, how to organise schedules, when to let the laundry pile and the dust collect or hire help with housework, when and how to turn down projects, how to delegate. Even how to put on those trainers and run round the block. (What I’ve not been able to do is figure out how on earth you listen to a podcast while ironing or cooking.) Whatever your superpower, don’t be afraid to restructure your business to suit your family’s needs.

Helpful reminders – editing and parenting

  • Cliché and all, but find your people. Join that professional network, care and share. Build a strong referrals list of colleagues for when your juggling is wobbling. Your clients and colleagues will be grateful. CIEP, ACES, EFA, Editors Canada, IPEd, MET, Sense, ICF, PEG South Africa are all welcoming communities meeting different needs. Find a good fit for you and your business.
  • Plan for eventualities, money and time-wise. Broken bones, illness (sudden or otherwise), school and non-school events, loss and grief, special-O days (birthdays, first-time days). The inventory is endless. Prioritise, compromise, get help, slow down to snail’s pace.
  • Practise efficient editing. Leave buffer time for all projects as default, then add some more. Have healthy money chats. Use tools and tech to make life easier but don’t hesitate to unplug whenever you need. Make time for yourself mindfully, even if five minutes (mine is when I brush my teeth).
  • Make practical changes. Adjust your work space to make it child-friendly. (You will have to share the colourful pens and good stationery sooner than you realise!) Set reminders around your child’s activities and school routines. Use a simple planner to accommodate work and family. Involve your child in your work like they involve you in their play. (Mine is an expert scanner and knows when to flip document sides in the machine.)
  • Find other parents – they need you as much as you need them. Look online but also ask about events in public spaces like libraries, community centres, activity clubs, neighbourhood facilities. Ask your healthcare providers for local networks. Ask parent-friends and parent-colleagues.

For more practical tips, check out coach and fellow-editor Laura Poole’s Juggling on a High Wire: The Art of Work–Life Balance When You’re Self-Employed. It is an excellent, essential read for all who work freelance, with a separate section on ‘Caring for Others and Yourself’ and a chapter on ‘Working at Home When You Have Kids’.

Open forum! Share your favourites and anything that has helped you as a parent and editing business-runner.

About Ayesha Chari

Ayesha ChariAyesha Chari is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and an independent editor specialising in sensitive editing of interdisciplinary academic writing. When not helping scholars solve content and language problems, she can be found helping undo extra tight Lego bits, hiding glitter, dreading the next dress-up day in school as much as muddy puddles, excitedly jumping at every new word her nearly five-year-old reads (now often in Mama’s emails!), and teaching them to identify constellations in the night sky, among other things.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by William Fortunato, parent and child at a laptop by August de Richelieu, parent reading to child by Lina Kivaka, sticky notes on a monitor by RODNAE Productions, all on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Resources round-up: The publishing process

Welcome to this round-up of resources compiled by the CIEP. This time, we look at how books are made. We have divided our picks into:

  • Free resources from the CIEP
  • Books
  • Glossaries
  • Articles

Resources round-up: The publishing process

Free resources from the CIEP

Forgive us for leading with our own resources, but some of the free fact sheets on the CIEP’s practice notes web page provide a useful overview before we delve into the details of how books are made. ‘Anatomy of a book’, which describes the different parts of a book, is a good place to start. After that, you might want to explore the book-making process with ‘The publishing workflow’, supplementing that with the ‘Good editorial relationships’ infographic. Finally, ‘Proofreading or copyediting?’ covers which type of editing happens at different points in the creation of a book.

Books

These books aren’t free, but you can read free reviews of some of them by members of the CIEP, which might help you decide which are worth investing in.

Books about the publishing process

Two major editing and proofreading books – Butcher’s Copy-Editing (4th edn, Cambridge University Press, 2012) and New Hart’s Rules (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 2014) – contain overviews of the publishing process. You might already have these volumes, so see what gems you can find within.

Inside Book Publishing by Giles Clark and Angus Phillips (6th edn, Routledge, 2019) covers the processes of traditional publishing in more detail. And to really dive into the subject, reach for the Oxford Handbook of Publishing, edited by Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar (OUP, 2019). Since this was reviewed by a CIEP member, a cheaper paperback version has been published.

If you’re coming to book production from a self-publishing point of view, the Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Self-Publishing (Bloomsbury, 2020) could be helpful. Read the CIEP review for more.

The parts and people that make up the books

From a book’s blurb to its index, the different parts of a book have been explored in recent publications that are as entertaining as they are fascinating. For more recent bookish books, read our end-of-2022 round-up blog.

To add to these, get a copyeditor’s experience in The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller (Chicago University Press, 2016), and hear from a lexicographer about how dictionaries are made in Word by Word by Kory Stamper (Pantheon, 2017).

Woman in a bookshop reading a book

Glossaries

Introducing ‘Publishing terminology explained’, Penguin Random House says: ‘Publishing shouldn’t be a mystery and that’s why we’ve pulled together an A–Z list of terms that we use in our business to help you navigate conversations and become familiar with how a publishing team operates.’ The CIEP has also written a free glossary of editorial terms.

Articles

Articles by and for the self-publishing industry excel in discussing how books are made. Recent examples include: ‘Why prologues get a bad rap’ by Tiffany Yates Martin on Jane Friedman’s website and ‘When should you have a table of contents and an index in your book?’, a TwitterChat run by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). You can rely on ALLi to really drill down to the intricate details that self-publishing authors might not realise they need to think about before the process starts.

However, one element that most authors will consider is the cover of their book. Cover designer Jessica Bell wrote articles recently on different aspects of this. For Jane Friedman, she discussed ‘The key elements of eye-catching book cover design’, and for ALLi she wrote about ‘Indie author book cover design: what works in 2022’. From ALLi you can also discover what really doesn’t work, in the TwitterChat ‘How a bad cover can ruin book sales’.

Last but never least is indexing. Indexer Geraldine Begley took to the AFEPI Ireland blog with ‘Indexing: An introduction for the curious’ which answers every question about indexing you can think of, including ‘Can’t a computer do that?’ (‘No’), and ‘Do I have to read the whole book?’ (‘Yes and no’). For anyone considering entering this interesting profession, or simply interested in what indexers actually do, this is indeed a great introduction for the curious.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: laptop and notebook by Maya Maceka on Unsplash, bookshop by Alican Helik on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Dealing with the death of a client

In this post, Vanessa Wells reflects on what happened when one of her repeat indie clients died unexpectedly. The CIEP information team also give some practical tips for dealing with the death of a client.

Vanessa’s experience

I’ve been editing for a decade and last week had my first experience of the death of a client.

This fellow was a repeat client. He’d been nominated and shortlisted for awards for his excellent books. He was the type who paid literally within five minutes of receiving my invoice. He was thoughtful and appreciative of the editing process. In short, he was the ideal client.

I was going to edit his next novel shortly; he just wanted a few more weeks to tweak the manuscript. Meanwhile, I’d come down with Covid, and when I saw online the news of his death, I was gutted – perhaps made more emotional by feeling physically depleted but also because it was yet another good person gone: I’d lost a dear friend early on in the pandemic and a former student died by suicide this year. Aside from no longer having this great writer to work with, I started to wonder why his death hit me as it did.

The author–editor relationship

The longer I edit, the more I appreciate writers’ craft. I really am impressed with their abilities and, in those with perhaps less skill, their tenacity and courage. I don’t take lightly the idea that we are here to collaborate with authors, rather than rewrite their work as we see fit. What they produce deserves to be treated with respect, and how we interact with them and their text should be a safe space. Sometimes the vulnerability they reveal is shocking. There are projects where we are the first person to read what they have written. David Shannon wrote Howul while his wife thought he was watching footy every night in his den. So there can be a creative and intellectual intimacy with an editor that a writer doesn’t have with others. The more vulnerable the author, the more they are opening their heart to someone whose metaphorical red pen they fear. The trust they are placing in us to provide constructive suggestions can be immense.

Conversely, we might be the first person to validate their efforts. Perhaps their labour of love has been denigrated by others as just a hobby. We may be coaching someone who’s kept their desire to write a secret or an untried exercise for decades. The analogy to writers birthing their babies may be a bit hackneyed, but I’m very conscious of the midwifery role I play.

As a sensitive person, I know what it feels like to be corrected. I bear that in mind in the wording of my comments and suggested edits, regardless of whether my feedback is gently critical or laudatory (and usually it’s a delicate balance of the two). I often feel like I learned the dynamics of this from my twenty years of teaching, also moulded by my own student experience of both kind and mean teachers. We have the power to inspire or wound (be it as editors or just in everyday life), and sometimes we can discern something of our clients’ personalities from their first emails to us. A tentative little dance underlies their questions, which can make us feel sympathetic and perhaps already a little protective of them in the process they’re about to take on.

I think this special type of relationship is not common to many professions, and the resulting connection that is lost upon a client’s death can leave us feeling gutted.

Financial considerations and the future

A friend commented that my author’s death must have come as a financial blow, too – which it did. I hadn’t asked him for a non-refundable deposit as I knew how reliable and accommodating he was. (And, in fact, fate unexpectedly dropped a new indie client in my lap the same day.) But even if I had been more proactive about using my usual contractual practices with him, I certainly would never have kept the deposit. Perhaps if there were different circumstances with, say, a single author and an executor, I might consider pursuing my balance owing if I had (almost) finished an edit. But as an editor, I believe my business is as much about the writer as the text, and I would not be comfortable pursuing payment no holds barred.

I hope that one day my client’s wife will look me up in his email and offer to let me read his sequel. I appreciated him for his work, not the income. From what I’ve seen in social media posts about him since his death, he was widely admired for his character as much as his skill. I’m sorry to have lost him as a client, but I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to work on such excellent writing. Another loss during this difficult period, but another blessing to recognise in my career as an editor.

Blue skies, sir!

Pink blossom being blown from a tree in front of a blue sky

Practicalities: What to do if your client dies

If you are aware that your client has a terminal illness (you might, for example, be working on their memoirs), you should agree in writing the steps to take in the event of their death. This may cover who will contact you with news of their death, the proportion of the fee to be paid, and what to do with the manuscript.

You may, in fact, find it helpful to include such information in your contracts as a matter of course – and to include similar information for the client in the event of your own death or incapacity while you are working with them.

Be sensitive to the feelings of your client’s family and/or colleagues – and allow time for yourself to grieve, if necessary. Similarly, if you have only just found out that your client has died after chasing a response or asking for a new draft, try not to feel guilty if you think your approach seemed insensitive. You couldn’t be expected to know what had happened.

If you have completed the work and wish to be paid, you will need to be proactive. Again, try not to feel guilty – if you have completed the work and fulfilled your part of the contract, you have the right to be paid as part of the business transaction.

Corporate clients and publishers are likely to have accounts departments, which will be independent of your contact and have their own email address. Write to them, explaining the situation. They will use their internal processes to find out the status of your payment. For example, if your contact died before raising a purchase order, the accounts department should identify an appropriate colleague who can verify your work and raise the PO retrospectively.

For individual clients, such as self-publishing writers, the executor of their will is responsible for ensuring their debts are paid but this might take months or even years. You might feel it’s not worth pursuing and that it’s more prudent to write it off.

If you send out email newsletters or other forms of marketing, remove your client’s name from the mailing list immediately.

If your contact was a corporate or publishing client, and you wish to keep working for the organisation, find out who is covering their work or replacing them and politely introduce yourself. Outline some of the projects you’ve worked on for your client and the benefits your work brought. This is the same approach you might take if your contact had simply left the company.

About Vanessa Wells

Vanessa Wells is a fiction editor and an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. She lives in London.

 

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: clocks by Giallo, blossom by Recal Media, both on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

How to network better

Laura Summers of BookMachine explores networking benefits, tips and more.

From small beginnings in 2010, starting as a group of colleagues coming together to talk about the book publishing industry, the BookMachine community has grown to become a global organisation. During this time I’ve met hundreds of editors and proofreaders. I remember some of them really well because they’ve stood out against the crowd by their ability to network.

Instead of simply telling me or anyone they’re networking with about themselves and leaving it at that, these professionals show their ‘interest’. They do this by asking insightful questions and aim to be the ‘interested’ person in each discussion or conversation they’re in.

Even if you’re not a networking fan, it’s one of the easiest ways to form connections that might lead to new opportunities. Thankfully, living in today’s digital world means we have online communities that make networking easier for all of us (introverts, extroverts and ambiverts!) to connect.

Not convinced that networking is for you? Here are three reasons to get started.

1.  Spread the word

If you’re a freelance editor or proofreader, networking is an essential way to let people know what you do. Having an up-to-date website is a great start, but to ensure that the right opportunities come your way, you need to connect with others and tell them specifically about what you can do for them.

Networking isn’t limited to talking with potential clients. When you network with other freelancers, along with gaining advice and friendships, you can create partnerships and offer your clients a better service. For example, if you are an editor you can partner with a copywriter to offer your clients more skills.

2.  Understand industry trends better

I read The Bookseller online daily, but there is still so much more to know about the industry. The more people you speak to and connect with, the more you understand current trends in the industry. This, in turn, gives you a deeper understanding of what’s important to your clients and their businesses.

Having more industry knowledge also gives you the added bonus of having more professional topics to talk about during meetings – whether you’re a freelancer or an in-house professional.

3.  Gain more confidence

This one is simple. The more you meet and talk to people, the easier it gets.

Convinced about networking but unsure where to begin?

Explore membership organisations

As well as using CIEP membership to connect with editors and proofreaders through virtual and in-person events and the CIEP forums, consider joining BookMachine’s vibrant community to interact and learn during mixers, virtual hangouts and in-person events. If you want to mix a bit of exercise with networking and check two things off your list at one go, you could even come for our ‘Walk & Talk’ events!

If you’re a publishing hopeful, perhaps in the early stages of your career, think about the Society of Young Publishers (SYP). Attending SYP events and conferences, signing up to be a member and applying for their mentorship programme can help you get your foot in the door and teach you how to network better. Since it’s a volunteer-run organisation, you can even get involved with their online and in-person events if you have something to offer.

Leverage social media

Whether it’s BookTok, Bookstagram or #BookTwitter, there are plenty of ways for you to find fellow publishing professionals and connect with them on social media. Following some of the most valuable and popular accounts within publishing can help keep you in the loop and give you the opportunity to join discussions, conversations and events.

When it comes to social media, don’t underestimate the power of hashtags and the ability to squeeze yourself into a conversation when possible. Try keeping an eye on (or follow) hashtags like #workinpublishing, #publishing and #joinbooks.

Five valuable publishing-related accounts to follow on Twitter: The CIEP; BookMachine; Publishers Association; The Publishing Post; BookBrunch.

Use LinkedIn wisely

When you connect with someone, send a note. Introduce yourself and include a few words about what you do and why you’re interested in connecting with them.

Twitter will cap your tweets at 280 characters, but on LinkedIn, there’s no such limit when you post. But the key is to keep your interactions short and sweet – people have limited attention spans and time when networking. The goal is to make yourself memorable and interesting within that short interaction.

Be helpful

Another useful way to stand out is to answer questions using advanced search. Both Twitter and LinkedIn have great search capabilities. Think about the questions you had when you started out. Or even questions you had two months ago. Search those questions and variations of them on these sites.

What you want is to be helpful to those in your industry and around you. Offer answers, insights, or even follow-up questions to make the discussion more interesting. Don’t worry about sharing your tips and secrets – collaborating and boosting others in your industry is an ideal way to start networking.

Step forward as a speaker

Another idea to network and simultaneously showcase your skills is to pitch yourself as a speaker or as part of a panel at any relevant event. Pitch ideas to event organisers and highlight your areas of expertise so they can introduce you and your work to a wide audience. You can find plenty of these events when you start following and interacting with publishing professionals and publishers on social media.

Have a positive attitude

Finally, networking may seem challenging but try to think about it in terms of building relationships, friendships and long-lasting connections. The more people you know and speak with, the better and easier it will be for you to find the right opportunities to help your career thrive. On a personal level, it’ll also boost confidence in your intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships.

Also, it’s easier once you get started – I promise!

About Laura Summers

Laura Summers is the Director of BookMachine, the fast-growing global Community and Creative Agency specialising in book publishing. Her mission is to provide every publishing professional with the knowledge, ideas and connections to help them to progress in their careers. Follow Laura on Twitter @LauraSummersNow. Connect with Laura on LinkedIn.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: maze by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash, networking meeting by Redmind Studio on Unsplash.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Preparing text for typesetters and designers

What’s the difference between a typesetter and a designer, and why does it matter? How should copyeditors prepare text for typesetting? In this post, Rich Cutler gives us a brief introduction to the world of typesetting and design.

The first thing to realise is that copyediting is a game of two halves: editing the content (language, style, fact-checking, consistency …) and preparing the copy for the publication process. Although modern copyediting has changed significantly this century, the latter task (copy preparation) remains vital for most published texts.

Second, copyeditors need to know that a typesetter and a designer are different beasts: ‘typesetter’ and ‘designer’ are not synonyms, though some designers can typeset, and some typesetters can design. The copyeditor should ask their client whether the copy will be going to a designer or a typesetter.

It helps to know the background and evolution of typesetting and design when preparing copy. The two professions are often lumped together but in actuality are very distinct and require different approaches by copyeditors.

A brief history of typesetting

The origins of typesetting lie in printing. Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionised book making in the 15th century by its use of movable and replaceable metal type, which allowed books for the first time to be made quickly and as multiple copies – previously, books were mostly painstakingly handwritten. Early printing houses employed people who arranged or ‘set’ these individual metal characters as words, lines, paragraphs and, finally, pages, ready to print on sheets of paper: these were compositors, later called typesetters.

Typesetting centres on two key principles: aesthetics and readability. A typesetter will arrange text and displayed material (such as illustrations and tables) on a page so that the eye is led naturally from one idea to the next, making sure that the context is conveyed at a glance through careful placement of the elements on a page (eg headings and line and paragraph breaks).

Typesetters are problem-solvers. The ideal layout is not always possible – the perfect placement of, say, an illustration in relation to the design and the sense of the text may result in unacceptable positioning of subsequent material – so compromises are needed to achieve a balance between readability and aesthetics. Authors, clients and proofreaders may grumble about the less-than-ideal location of a figure, but an experienced typesetter will have sound reasons for its placement.

Typesetting has always been a highly technical profession. During Gutenberg’s time and into the 20th century, pages were composed as mirror images of the printed pages by placing metal type with reversed characters in backwards order into a frame. Hot metal typesetting was replaced by a photographic technique – phototypesetting – in the mid-20th century, and a record of the text composed by the typesetter was stored as perforated paper tape. Typesetters were so skilful that they could interpret the patterns of punched holes in the tape as typographical characters and layout. Phototypesetting machines in the 1970s replaced this paper record with magnetic tape, but were yet to have screens allowing the typesetter to see what they were composing.

Preparing copy for a typesetter

Today, typesetting, like many professions, is done using computers and specialist typesetting software costing several thousands of pounds (the best known being Arbortext). The historically highly technical nature of typesetting is visible in Arbortext and its ilk, which focus on showing the operator the content of a page on screen rather than its actual appearance (see the screenshot) – headings, paragraphs, lists, etc, have arbitrary styles that simply differentiate these items from each other and bear no relationship to how they will appear in print (not unlike Microsoft Word in the early 1980s – before Windows existed!). All text items are assigned tags in a computer language (typically XML) that defines what the elements are – and a master definition file dictates what should be done with these elements, such as their appearance in print and online (which may differ), and whether certain elements are to be hidden in some versions (eg for particular markets).

Typesetters are therefore very computer literate, and are familiar with Microsoft Word, computer code, styles, tags, macros and so on.

So, if a copyeditor provides a typesetter with tagged text, a Word file using styles or even a Word file using local formatting rather than styles, the typesetter should have no difficulty producing proofs with the required layout and appearance.

If the copyeditor wants to make the typesetter very happy – and to reduce proof errors – the copyeditor should

  • remove all unwanted formatting and styles that have been applied to the text
  • use a tagging or styles scheme only (or perhaps a combination) to indicate appearance
  • provide a key to their scheme.

Additionally, the copyeditor should flag anything out of the ordinary or requiring a specific layout or appearance (unusual characters, alignment and indents in, say, a poem, illustrations that must appear together, etc). Using local formatting to indicate the appearance and layout of text for typesetting is not ideal because this unsystematic approach can be ambiguous and unclear.

How designers differ from typesetters

Adobe InDesign hasn’t yet been mentioned. It is a graphic design program, not a typesetting program. Although it can be used for typesetting, it is slow and inefficient compared with dedicated typesetting software like Arbortext. InDesign is aimed primarily at graphic designers: in particular, a breed of designer that appeared alongside phototypesetting.

A phototypesetting machine produced photographic paper with an image of text. This could be an entire laid-out page, which was used to make a printing plate. However, the pages of complex publications like magazines or newspapers were easier to create by typesetting blocks of unlaid text, cutting up this text and gluing it (along with illustrations) to a sheet of card. These hand-made pages were then sent to the printer. Graphic designers who did this job were called paste-up artists: they were skilled designers, but did not have the technical focus on type that defined typesetters.

The widespread adoption of computers in the 1980s led to the appearance of desktop publishing (DTP) software aimed at graphic designers working in publishing. DTP software was affordable and easy to use compared with typesetting software, and allowed designers to typeset publications themselves for the first time. The best-known DTP program today is Adobe InDesign.

DTP changed commercial typesetting forever – and divided typesetters into camps:

  • those whose lineage is printing
  • those with a graphic design background.

To better understand how designers approach page layout compared with typesetters, we need to know a bit about DTP programs: they are the digital equivalent of paste-up – text and illustrations are placed in frames, which can be resized and moved about a page; also, a page will print exactly the same as it appears on screen (not unlike today’s Microsoft Word). A designer’s focus is primarily on aesthetics and appearance, and not so much on the structure and function of text like a typesetter. Most designers therefore have a less technical approach to typesetting, and may not use or understand tags or Word styles – many prefer to copy and paste text into InDesign, to deliberately lose all styles and formatting, then manually reapply styles and formatting in InDesign.

All typesetters work in a similar way, but the same cannot be said for designers: the copyeditor needs to find out how the designer wants text prepared. Some designers may be happy with a tagging or styles scheme, others prefer to copy and paste and then manually apply formatting. Some designers doing the latter may be efficient at spotting and transferring formatting, others may be more hit and miss, so highlighting formatting such as italics and superscripts for them can help.

About Rich Cutler

Rich Cutler began in publishing as a desk editor for STM publishers – first at Pergamon Press, then Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. He later became a freelancer and co-owner of Helius – a business that has been providing bespoke services to publishers for three decades, including development editing, copyediting, proofreading, project management, illustration, graphic design and typesetting. Rich is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. He is also an occasional lexicographer, and helped to write the Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: letters by Jirreaux, printing press by Mari77, both on Pixabay, Arbortext by Rich Cutler.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

The CPD in the work we do

In this post, Abi Saffrey thinks about the ways in which we develop our professional selves while doing the job we do – an often overlooked form of CPD.

This article considers:

  • Informal conversations and guidance
  • Seeing a task from a different perspective
  • Observing colleagues and peers
  • Procrastinating on the internet
  • Teaching others
  • Writing an article
  • Continuing professional development

It’s highly likely that most of the people reading this post have put some formal training on their professional development plan for 2022. I certainly have every intention of signing up for the CIEP’s Plain English for Editors online course, or perhaps the References one. I also have some of the Publishing Training Centre’s e-Learning modules to work through.

When building our development plans, we often dismiss or forget the informal learning that we do every day while working. There are so many ways to learn new skills, adapt current ones, deepen our understanding, broaden our experiences – these are perhaps harder to label than a training course, but equally important in keeping our careers, and businesses, on track.

Informal conversations and guidance

Whether working for an organisation or ourselves, we have networks of people that we talk to. In an office or via an instant messaging tool, we can ask colleagues quick questions, or perhaps jump on a video call to discuss an idea.

Even a more formal meeting can be a learning opportunity, not just about how to carry out a task but how to communicate about it, finance it or improve it.

For those of us who work at home alone, having conversations with peers can remind us of our professional sense of self, and I find that after one of those conversations, I’m more proactive and productive.

Seeing a task from a different perspective

It’s very easy to focus on how we race through a task that we do often, and I suspect we’re all a bit prone to forgetting the actions that sit around that task. With my editorial project management work, I can gain insights into how copyeditors and proofreaders work, into what designers and typesetters need to know, into the priorities of the publisher – and I can take that and apply it to my own editing or proofreading (as well as future project management).

Taking a step back and thinking holistically about a project can be informative and rewarding, remind us of the bigger picture, and perhaps help us identify areas for more formal CPD.

Observing colleagues and peers

This is easier when working in an office with someone, clearly. I learnt so much from those around me as an employee, and when working in a client’s office as a contractor.

I’m in an accountability group, and on one of our professional retreats we spent a session looking at how we’d edit different types of texts – we all had different approaches and talked about which approach worked best for each text. With a bit of planning, this could work well over a video call or even in an online chat forum.

Talking of online chat forums, the CIEP member forums are full of gems covering every aspect of editing and running an editing business.

Procrastinating on the internet

Twitter, hey? It’s a right time-sink. How about that Wordle game? At least you can only play it once a day, but then did you read the articles about how to get better at it?

This may be the wrong thing to say, BUT there is value in procrastinating on the internet. So many of us scold ourselves for spending a bit too long on social media platforms, but there are great things in among the pyramid scheme promotions, political despair and, of course, cats. There are relevant blog posts, discussions, contacts being made, creativity being sparked, unknown terminology being discovered, different approaches to the same problem and the worldwide #StetWalk movement.

Teaching others

Teaching someone else how to do something that we know how to do is a fabulous way to reinforce our own knowledge. It can help us to realise how much we do know, and often highlights what we still don’t know. There is a lot of value in rewinding our understanding and trying to build up that understanding in someone else. That word you use all the time? They don’t know it. Those who learn from us can ask questions that we might never have thought of, and finding out you didn’t know what you didn’t know will be a revelation.

Writing an article

Write about what you know. Tailoring an article to the intended audience is a skill, and writing has the same benefits as teaching. For editors, writing also has the added value of building empathy towards those whose words we work with. When this article comes back from its proofreader, I will be nervous about what corrections may have been made. And once this is published, I’ll wonder about what kind of reception it will have. Receiving feedback help us to better give feedback (and give better feedback).

Continuing professional development

The skills that we need change and evolve, as do the industries we work in. Let’s welcome informal professional development into our work lives, and acknowledge that which already exists. I’ve covered the kinds of learning I’ve benefited from throughout my career – share yours in the comments.

About Abi Saffrey

Abi Saffrey is an editorial project manager, copyeditor and the CIEP’s information director. In 2022, lots of her informal CPD will come from working with her CIEP Council and information team colleagues.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: snowdrop by Kiwihug; Toronto perspective by Nadine Shaabana, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Forum matters: The treasure in the CIEP forums and how to find it

There is precious metal in them thar forum messages, and sometimes you have to dig for it. So, before we highlight some of the gems, we’ll tell you how to use the unearthing tools. We cover:

  • How to mine the forums
  • Threads of pure gold
  • Daily updates
  • Occasional pupdates
  • Invaluable advice for fiction editors

How to mine the forums

First, fill a mug with your beverage of choice and relax in front of your screen. Select a forum to peruse, say SfEPLine, and click. You’ll see about 30 rows of alternating grey and white that highlight the separate posts. Top right above the rows is the forum page you are on (SfEPLine has 275 pages; Off topic has 89). You can click forwards and backwards to your heart’s content.

If there is a blue box on the left that says ‘New’, then it is a thread you haven’t read or posts have been added since you last opened it. If you click on the blue box you’ll be taken to the latest message you haven’t read while in the forums (although if you’ve been following a thread and receiving the emails, you will have).

Each row tells you the subject and the name of the original poster, and the date, time and name of the last person to add to the thread. Useful if you know that a particular person is always worth a read.

In the middle are two columns for Views and Posts. The former tells you how many folk have been attracted enough by the subject line to have a gander. The latter tells you how many have been sufficiently moved by the content to contribute a post. Once either of those numbers goes above a single digit you can bet it will be interesting; if it’s gone to three or more digits, then it is probably forum gold.

If you don’t feel like a thorough trawl to find subjects that pique your curiosity, then here are a few threads we think are fun.

Threads of pure gold

On 24 August 2017, Margaret Hunter thought it was time for ‘an invitation to get you [Lurkers] started with a (hopefully) non-threatening post’ to ‘Tell us how you first heard of the SfEP’. By 29 September the thread had attracted 66 posts and, to date, has had 1,170 views. The posts illustrate the diversity of our membership and the myriad routes there are to becoming an editing professional. ‘Lurkers – yes you – look in here.’

Also in August 2017, Sophie Playle had an invaluable idea: ‘Most newbies have a lot of the same questions, so I thought I’d collate some of the fantastic advice more established SfEP members have offered over the years. Here’s what I’ve come up with! I’m sure there’s much more to say on each topic, but hopefully this provides a good place to start.’ She then extracted some key posts on such topics as: how to find work; some good courses; and what to charge. The advice may be nearly four years old, but it is still sound – and useful – as confirmed by a thank you posted in February 2021. ‘Newbie FAQs and Collated Wisdom from SfEP Members’ has been made easy to find by being ‘stuck’ at the top of the Newbies forum, which explains its 3,896 views.

Daily updates

Two threads effortlessly gather new posts to stay on the first page of Off topic. The first is ‘Typo of the day’, a fount of hilarious examples of why our profession is justified, with 1,637 posts, umpteen attached files and nearly 18,000 views over the seven years since Michelle Bullock kicked it off with, ‘I thought it best to give him a wide birth’.

The second is ‘Wildlife distraction of the day’, which is a relative youngster, but a lovely breath of fresh air. Frances Cooper kicked it off in June 2020 with mention of a sparrowhawk, which attracted 206 posts and many pics for the over 2,000 readers.

Occasional pupdates

Pet lovers may want some time with gorgeous photos and general pet covetousness, in which case have a drool over ‘New puppy (for Wendy!)’. There are plenty of pics (dogs, cats, hedgehog and gecko) although only 31 posts, so perhaps it deserves more than its 192 views.

Invaluable advice for fiction editors

The specialist Fiction forum is a mineshaft full of nuggets for editors interested in the field. Perhaps one of the original 2016 posters on ‘How long does it take to edit a novel?’ might be surprised by their development, or otherwise, in terms of time versus income. Especially if they took the advice to start a spreadsheet.

Over to you to have a dig. If you find an old thread you think is still relevant and deserves reviving, then adding a post will bring it to the surface. We’ll all be enriched by the reminder.

This feature comes from the band of CIEP members who volunteer as forum moderators. You will only be able to access links to the posts if you’re a forum user and logged in. Find out how to register.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: Gold by Lucas Benjamin; pups by Bharathi Kannan, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Six pieces of advice from runners to editors and proofreaders

Run On, the CIEP’s virtual running group, was founded on Facebook two years ago this week. We now have more than 70 members, who post pictures of the scenic backdrops to their runs – our members really do live in some stunning places, from Scotland to Switzerland, Hong Kong to Ecuador, Cornwall to Melbourne – and share running tips and stories, injury woes, and recommendations for listening as they pound the miles. The group contains fell runners, parkrunners, marathon runners, ultra runners, occasional runners, resting runners and retired runners, all of whom offer support and encouragement to each other. If you’re a member of the CIEP and a runner, why don’t you join us?

When an article by Ron Hogan on what writers could learn from runners came up on Jane Friedman’s website in June, Run On members were asked what editors and proofreaders could learn from runners. Their responses fell into six categories:

  1. Build slowly
  2. Take steps to clear your head
  3. Get enough rest
  4. Push through procrastination
  5. Seek a wider network
  6. Now and then, remind yourself why you do it

1. Build slowly

Many a runner has been caught out by training too much too early and ending up with an injury. One member counsels:

Building distance is not unlike growing your business/doing CPD: start off with modest goals and build slow and steady. A good training base for building experience is better than ‘shortcuts’/skipping the fundamentals.

2. Take steps to clear your head

If you’re seeking a breakthrough or inspiration in an area of your work, it makes sense to step away from your desk and do something else. The answer may well come to you in a different environment, particularly if you’re out in the fresh air:

I find running clears my mind and lets me work out problems. These could be related to editing, running my business or planning ahead. I usually run with music, but occasionally listen to the Editing Podcast too, which helps me solve some of these problems, or at least gets me thinking about them on my next run.

When I’m running, when I lose focus on my breath (I try to meditate on it while running), I allow my mind to drift to work issues and mull over what I’m currently editing/writing. I find I can sort through my thoughts on all kinds of issues in that space. It really clears my head for the day ahead.

3. Get enough rest

Few runners run every day. They know it can lead to injury and exhaustion. One Run On member observes:

Rest days are important for runners, and the same is true for editors, especially when your desk is at home seven days a week and the temptation is to keep working. Rest reduces the risk of exhaustion and burnout, and helps us come back to our work refreshed and enthusiastic. We may even work out/spot things we missed before the break. And just like runners may need to take a break because of injury, so editors need to listen to when their editing brain needs a break.

4. Push through procrastination

You’ve planned a run but a nice sit-down seems much more inviting. Just as runners sometimes have to force themselves out of the door, editors and proofreaders sometimes have to spur themselves on to that next chapter or paragraph. But, running or editing, the effort is always worth it.

There are days when I really don’t want to run at all, but I make myself do it because I know how good I’ll feel at the end of the run … a metaphor for pushing through moments of editing procrastination and being rewarded with a job well done, a load off our minds and a happy client in the end?

5. Seek a wider network

Even though runners often train on their own, they find that joining a real or virtual running group inspires them to carry on and offers support when they need it. The CIEP, and other professional groups, work in a similar way for editors and proofreaders.

Even though these are things we often do alone, online support and advice (and occasional real-life meetings) can make us feel part of something much bigger.

6. Now and then, remind yourself why you do it

If you’re a runner, the two comments below will make you itch to get your trainers on and head out. As editors and proofreaders we, too, need to be inspired by each other. Seek out sources of inspiration – such as training, conferences and other networking opportunities, podcasts, blogs, articles and books – so that you can return to work with new fire.

I typically listen to podcasts or music when I run, but when I really want to be in the moment, I unplug and mindfully notice everything around me: sounds, the movement of my body, the alignment of my posture, the smells in the air, the temperature … This attention to detail sharpens and kind of *empowers* my mind, and it reminds me that running is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one – l think editors owe the same level of awareness and mental fortitude to the work our clients give us.

There’s a comparison for me that’s something to do with the value of sustained/focused attention. When I’m running, I become hyper-aware – in a good sense – of my physical state: what’s hurting, what is or isn’t moving smoothly, what effect it has if I change gait or pace or running surface or any other detail. The result is a much greater feeling of control over and harmony with a body that often otherwise feels like it’s working against me due to my chronic condition. I’m doing a very in-depth developmental edit at the moment and there’s a parallel there, with how immersed you become and how that eventually gives you an instinctual feel for the right structure, tone, word choices etc.

Thank you to all the runners who so generously contributed their thoughts to this blog, and the wider membership of Run On who have made the group such a fun, supportive and inspiring place to be over the past two years.

About Run On

Run On, CIEP’s virtual running group, was founded on 13 June 2019. In autumn of that year, we had our inaugural run at the CIEP conference in Aston, Birmingham (pictured). We support CIEP runners through our Facebook Group page.

 

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

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Photo credits: runner by sporlab on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.