Utah Freelance Editors

Local editors, copyeditors, & proofreaders

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How Do Freelance Editors Set Their Pricing?

This month’s business-intensive slew of articles has come to one of the most fraught topics in freelancing: pricing. To get new and established editors a broad perspective on the issue, I surveyed Utah Freelance Editors about their pricing practices.

This survey received 27 responses but has much more divided results than the ones about finding work and nurturing client relationships. There are many viable strategies for pricing, and most independent editors adjust their strategies over time. This article outlines some of the most common strategies and some of the reasons why you might choose them. It also provides some tips on how to choose your pricing.

This article will not tell you what you should charge as an editor. There are too many factors, and I wouldn’t want to rob you of the (terrifying and anxiety-inducing) joy of determining your own destiny. That’s part of the fun of freelancing!

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6 Tips That Build Client Trust

An image of hospital beds—for editorial bedside manner. Image is overlaid with the words: "6 Tips That Build Client Trust by Lehua Parker" and the Utah Freelance Editors logo.
By Lehua Parker

You are ready.

You passed your final university exam with twenty minutes to spare. Commas, parallelism, metaphor, story structure—all down cold. Chicago calls you with esoteric grammar questions.

Your first freelance client! It’s for a quirky contemporary romance, the second novel of an indie author who’s looking for something between a developmental and a copyedit. You top off your Diet Coke and dive in, keeping your secret disappointments to yourself. Using track changes isn’t the same as your special red pen. You miss that printer paper smell.

Days later, you resurface, slurping the last watery dregs of your tepid Diet Coke. You know you’ve nailed it. Every misplaced modifier, stereotypical character, and historical inaccuracy is meticulously identified and annotated. Your backup research detailing which wildflowers are actually in season for an August New Hampshire wedding is particularly stellar. You send off the edited manuscript and wait with bated breath for the accolades that will surely come.

Crickets.

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How to Build Client Relationships

Most editors begin their training in college, in training programs, or as entry-level employees in a company. That means they learn to edit in ways that appeal to people who are interested in quality editing but are rarely the folks who wrote the material. When an editor turns freelance, that dynamic shifts.

A photo of a business handshake overlaid with text: "How to Build Client Relationships, by Kristy S. Gilbert" and the Utah Freelance Editors logo.

As an independent editor, you often provide editing services directly to writer clients. Even when you interact with a managing editor or other non-writer, you’re building a relationship directly with them. An instructor will continue to give students assignments and training until a course is over, and an employer will continue to use and train their employee (unless things go really sour). A client has no ongoing, day-to-day pressure to return to that same editor when they next have a project. (Or a reason to send that editor personal referrals, which are the primary way freelancers find new clients.)

Clients return to editors who do good work and who build effective professional relationships. If you can already do good work, then it’s time to focus on nurturing client relationships. I asked Utah Freelance Editors members about how they build these relationships to give you the best advice UFE has to offer.

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How Freelance Editors Find Work

By Kristy S. Gilbert

This month is business month on the Utah Freelance Editors blog, so we’re tackling some of the most common questions editors have when they’re starting or expanding their businesses. Today we answer that sprawling question: How do you find work?

I polled the Utah Freelance Editors Facebook group for data points. Twenty-seven people responded to the survey, all of them UFE members. For most questions, respondents could choose more than one answer. Keep that sample size and group in mind when looking at the results. They provide a snapshot of UFE, not of all freelance editors at large. But the strategies and comments below should help editors discover some new ways of finding clients for their business, and each section ends with some key takeaways.

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6 Lessons from a Decade of Freelance Editing (Part 2)

2021’s Utah Editor of the Year Kristy S. Gilbert shares some of her lessons learned in the past decade. See the first article of this two-part series here.

Yesterday I posted some fairly practical, straightforward lessons from a decade of freelancing. This week’s lessons are also practical, but they’re less about the nitty-gritty about running a business and more about how to keep a healthy, sustainable outlook as a freelancer.

Freelancing can be a tough road, and a lot of people burn out on it. If you’re settling in for a long haul of freelancing—whether as your primary income or as a regular supplement—prepare your mindset and your support system for the journey.

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6 Lessons from a Decade of Freelance Editing (Part 1)

This year marks my tenth year as a self-employed editor. It’s also the year UFE and the League of Utah Writers named me Utah’s first Editor of the Year, the year I drafted an entire book about copyediting, and the year I finally figured out how to consistently put a flash drive into a computer the right way up on the very first try. So many milestones.

So I think it’s appropriate to sit down with y’all and share some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past decade. A sort of mid-career retrospective.

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Giving Your Characters Pain

By Lauri Schoenfeld

We all go through pain—psychologically, emotionally, physically. No one shares their agony exactly in the same way as another because of our different personalities, upbringings, experiences, and perspectives. But we all deal with pain. None of us are free from it.

Your characters will always have something in one of these areas they’re striving to get through, understand, and process. They may be searching out who they are, and maybe because of their upbringing or culture, figuring those pieces out causes them a great deal of affliction. Perhaps the loss of someone they love has dramatically affected their worth, will, drive, or purpose for existence. Or physically, an illness they feel is so intense that even getting up to take a shower is more than they can bear. Each area can weaken your character’s spirit and heart.

Readers want to keep reading because pain is a universal thing, even if they don’t completely relate to what that character is dealing with. They want to root for them. The readers feel the agony, empathize with how much this space hurts the characters deeply, and want to be there to push them forward.

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Along the Road

By Lauri Schoenfeld

A few years back, I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, coming home from a road trip, wondering why I’ve never stumbled upon this book before. I needed a new perspective, a different outlook, and his words sang to my heart. I felt them. They resonated with me. My highlighter couldn’t go fast enough as I colored page after page of some of my favorite paragraphs. Ones I have come back and read again. I’m not sure if he knew when he was writing this book that it would have this impact, but it changed me!

I always have a plan set in motion in my personal life, knowing exactly where I’m going to go. I can see it, feel it, and even breathe the excitement of the next chapter. Until life happens and a bump in the road leaves me flying on the asphalt. I promise you, that’s never in my agenda for my story as I know that’s not in yours either. That’s the thing with life—much like writing a book—it never entirely goes the way you start planning it to be.

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How Character and Plot Work Together, Part 2

by Ruth Owen

How Character Creates Plot

Did you notice I already touched on this when talking about plot? The thing is, the protagonist’s desire is a necessary part of the conflict that creates the plot. If ET didn’t want to go home, there would be no movie.

Which leads me to a new term: Character Agency.

Modern readers—that is, readers in the last 20 years or so—have come to expect and want to read about characters who make choices that cause the plot to happen. They want characters who want something and then try to get it. They want characters who make mistakes and who experience the consequences. Maybe in the past, books got published with characters who just experienced the plot happening to them, but that won’t cut it for modern readers anymore.

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How Character and Plot Work Together, Part 1

by Ruth Owen

When I wrote my first book, it felt like a huge accomplishment. It was as if I had built a whole house. I showed it to some family and friends, who basically told me, “Cool! I like your house! It’s neat. One of the windows was a little askew, and there weren’t doorknobs on some of the bedroom doors, but I loved it. Let me know when actual real people want to move in.”

So I felt pretty good about myself. Then I got some actual, real beta readers—writing peers who knew more about writing books than my family and friends. They also weren’t afraid of hurting my feelings. Beta readers are like construction workers—they’ll recognize some things you’ve built wrong and give suggestions for how to fix it.

Suddenly I was getting comments akin to “You’ve done your wiring wrong” and “You haven’t put in enough insulation.” Bigger issues. I went back and revised. I tore open walls, fixed the wiring, and added insulation until it was up to code.

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