Freelance Editor AMA

I like doing these posts every so often, because I enjoy helping out. That includes any new editors looking to gain experience. I’ve taken on interns before for that very purpose, though right now I don’t have any openings.

Please feel free to ask me anything you’d like, and I’ll answer to the best of my ability. I do dev editing, line editing, research, and more. I specialize in SF&F, but also do romance and mystery. When it comes to dev editing, I do a lot of work helping people craft worlds using real historical, philosophical, and scientific research.

I get most of my business through word of mouth, or by interacting in forums like these, rather than going by what manuscripts I’ve edited. I recommend being suspicious of editors who use the manuscripts they’ve touched as evidence of how good they are, unless the author in question has specifically recommended them; if the editor was good, then you can’t tell how much work they put in on that manuscript.

In my case, I’ve been a freelance editor since January 2010. My first editing gig was for Sophia Institute Press (a Catholic publisher), when they were experimenting with a new fiction arm. That failed, primarily because Sophia Institute Press thought marketing fiction was the same as marketing nonfiction, and they didn’t listen to me telling them otherwise.

I took that particular gig only because I had recently been downsized from another job and needed a little extra. The only other fiction editor was my writing mentor in college. I wasn’t intending to be an editor myself. After the fiction arm closed down, I decided to hang out my shingle online as a freelance editor, just until I got that coveted Real Job. I’m still doing it fifteen years later.

When the fiction imprint closed down, the senior editor started her own company, Chesterton Press, and bought up a bunch of the titles. This was shortly before the 2013 self-pub explosion on Amazon made it a hub for indies. She remembered the stuff I said about marketing (plus I was one of her students in college) and brought me on for consultation. I did marketing for her as well as consultation on which books to pick up (or, most often, which books to not pick up).

Chesterton Press is no longer around, but it lasted well beyond the average lifespan of a small press. For those of you who read my homeschool conference hand-selling tips, this was where I got that experience.

Most of the time, though, I just went from manuscript to manuscript, author to author, usually by word of mouth. As one of the few known SF&F specialist freelancers (and the only one of my religion for a while!), I tended to get more than enough business through word-of-mouth. The only reason I started up a website in the first place was because I found myself repeating advice a lot and eventually just wrote blog articles so I could link to them instead of retyping things over and over. (It’s a terrible site. I’ve cleared some time in my schedule this fall to go through the website course and rebuild it, as well as combine it with my wife’s.)

So with that partial CV out of the way, please feel free to ask me whatever you’d like.