Utah Freelance Editors

Local editors, copyeditors, & proofreaders

Kristy S. Gilbert

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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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