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.
First, let me say that I don’t believe there is one right way to be a freelance editor. People freelance for many different reasons, with different strengths and goals, so a model that works for me might infuriate and exhaust someone else. Likewise, a model that works for someone else might bore me or leave me chafing at the restrictions.
I’m also not going to share my whole life story here. I’m pretty open about the particular challenges and benefits that have shaped my journey—but this is the internet at large. Y’all don’t need to hear about that.
Last, none of these lessons are about how to be a good editor. Knowing your style guide and building other editorial skillsets are prerequisites to being an editor. These lessons are about how to be a freelance editor.
This is part one of two posts about some of my lessons learned. Today’s lessons are about nitty-gritty, rubber-to-the-road business and financial aspects of freelancing.
1. Talk to a Financial Professional
There are so many ways to structure a freelance business, and the tax requirements can vary from one situation to the next. If you’re serious about this, talk to a financial pro at least once when you’re getting set up. They can help you understand what business structure is best for your personal situation. (Looseleaf, my company, is an LLC that currently files taxes as an S-corp, but that won’t be the right fit for everyone.) They can also help you understand your tax obligations.
Even if you can’t afford to outsource any other business-running task, it’s worth paying for an initial consultation with a financial pro. (Better than paying for messing it up!)
I recommend talking to a CPA, but there are other types of qualified financial pros out there to help you. And yes, as a blood relative of some excellent CPAs, I didn’t have a hard time getting my financial advice. But I would have gone to the trouble even if I hadn’t been able to discuss it over the dinner table.
2. Don’t Put Your Eggs in One Basket
Diversify your client base as much as you can manage. That doesn’t mean you need to be on every platform or marketplace trying to find work—not if you have enough work to keep you fed and sheltered. But I recommend trying to keep each work pipeline you don’t control to a third or less of your overall income.
The Dangers
For example, I have a profile on Reedsy, and I take contracts for two or three other editing companies as they need me. But if I got all my work from Reedsy, then if that marketplace went under or if their fees and terms become too burdensome for me to work with, then I’d lose all my business. Same if I got all my contracts from one of those other companies. In that situation, their marketing gets me work, so if they go under or won’t pay me a higher rate and I need to move on, I lose all my work.
This has happened to me. I once had a client who kept me on a generous monthly retainer. So I let my other ways of getting work dry up. Then the company restructured and discontinued my contract. I had to rebuild almost my entire clientele from scratch. I had a few holdovers from my early career, but not many. Fighting for momentum again was hellish.
I’ve also watched this happen with an editing agency I used to work for. When they lost their biggest client, work dried up for almost their entire pool of freelancers. (I took only a handful of projects a year from that agency, so I was fine.)
Right now, a little less than 40 percent of my revenue is from clients who arrive on my website for various reasons. (Some get there through social media, but most through personal referrals.) That 40 percent is provided by many different clients, often different ones from year to year. It’s a diverse bundle of folks arriving via a platform I control.
I don’t let any other company or platform reach that high a percentage of my revenue. I’m happy to take work from other editing companies and from marketplaces, but I try not to let any of them get above 25 to 30 percent of my total annual revenue.
The Caveats
Although this is a business strategy I’m very firm about, I know that the stress of managing multiple pipelines for work is not for everyone. This is one reason why many freelance editors choose to work for editing agencies. Those agencies usually pay less than what you could get on your own—they have overhead to cover—but they provide some degree of predictability. For editors who—for whatever reason—don’t see the multiprong approach as a good tool for them, these agencies can be a good option. They’re also particularly good for folks who freelance as a stopgap between other employment situations.
3. Always Be Ready to Try
It never actually hurts to send a cold-contact email or to apply for a full- or part-time job that fits your skill set. (I mean, yes, I agonize over cold-contact emails to the point of extreme nausea. But my rational mind knows I’m overreacting.) Although cold-contacting is something I’ve had less success with, I’ve gained several clients by applying for relevant employee (not contractor) jobs I wasn’t sure I wanted. Multiple companies added me to their freelance pools the skill relevant to their job listing or because they saw my expertise in an adjacent skill or task.
The point is that it doesn’t hurt to try or to be ready to try—you never know how much you can lift until you at least try to pick things up. Keep a few versions of your resume up-to-date and ready to submit. Compose a couple different introductory paragraphs for yourself to put in intro emails and keep them readily accessible. Then if an opportunity crops up, you’re ready to pounce on any cold or not-quite-cold contact.
You never know when, where, or how you’ll stumble on a great opportunity.
What are some business lessons you have learned in your (long or short) career? Leave them in the comments below, and come back for more of mine tomorrow. Read part 2 of this series here.
Kristy S. Gilbert is a book editor and designer specializing in science fiction and fantasy for her company, Looseleaf Editorial & Production. In 2021, she was named the first-ever Editor of the Year for the League of Utah Writers and Utah Freelance Editors. Outside of all things bookish, she enjoys cooking, kayaking, and krav maga.
Photo credits:
Plant growing in money: Photo by Visual Stories || Micheile on Unsplash
Basket of eggs: Photo by Cara Beth Buie on Unsplash
Woman lifting weights: Photo by John Arano on Unsplash.