I don’t read as many blogs as perhaps I should, but one I do follow is Rich Adin’s An American Editor (http://americaneditor.wordpress.com/). Rich is a tough-talking lawyer-turned-editor who looks at freelance editing as a business rather than an art and offers constant reinforcement for those who take a business-like approach to freelancing. He has made a number of convincing posts about the value of doing editing as a company with more than one editor on board, rather than working solo, and why that business model might be the wave of the future.
Choosing a business model is one of the basics of freelancing for any of us to focus on, either when we begin our freelance careers or sometimes when we’re well on the path to success as freelancers. Rich’s business model is that of a company owner with people who work for and with him; mine is that of the solopreneur.
Becoming an editing company makes a lot of sense for anyone who, in particular, wants to handle large publishing projects. A solopreneur or one-person firm can take on big projects, but probably not ones as huge as a company with more than one editor (or writer, proofreader, indexer, graphic artist, webmaster, etc.—whatever your niche may be) can tackle. I just turned in a 1,123-page book manuscript that I edited for one of my clients, and that’s about as big a job as I want to do. It pales beside a 20,000-page ms. that Rich mentioned recently, but it’s certainly more than the couple of dozen pages I usually write, edit, or proofread for most of my clients.
With smaller projects, the overall fees may not be as attractive as what a huge text might generate, but the work can be as profitable when you take into account the different level of effort or scale of project and the fact that the solopreneur ends up with the whole fee in pocket, rather than some of it going to employees or subcontractors.
Most of my writing work is for magazines, newsletters, and websites; I write articles and columns, for the most part—not books. Most of my editing and proofreading work involves articles and layouts for magazines, newsletters, blog posts, occasional book-length manuscripts for trade associations, website content, and other relatively short or small-scale assignments. A company might not find such projects worth doing. I enjoy working on them and I make enough money on them, especially because I work fast and efficiently (as well as accurately!), to pay my bills and have a comfortable profit margin as well.
There have been times when I’ve been offered a project much larger than what I normally work on or that I prefer not to handle for some reason. Those are the times when it might be useful to be a company with employees or subcontractors already in place. However, thanks to my history of networking over the years, I can turn to colleagues who might be comfortable working together or on such projects.
Editing colleagues who work with MA and PhD students or academic authors trying to submit manuscripts to journals often do quite well as solopreneurs on projects that would not be big enough for a company, or whose authors might not be able to afford the fees of a company. Of course, some of the financial aspect is a matter of perception and assumption; a large editorial company might not charge that much more than a solo freelancer, but a lot of prospective clients assume that companies will be more expensive than individuals. Individual freelancers can often use that as a bargaining chip when negotiating with prospective clients.
It can be difficult to find individual clients who will pay enough to be worthwhile for solopreneur editors, and the expanding world of self-publishing may mean more and more authors who don’t think they need editors, rather than more and more who understand the importance of editing to make their work its best. But some of us do well in working with such clients, once they find us or we find them.
If I had a business partner or employees/subcontractors, I could and would take on much bigger projects, but I also would have a whole new layer of administrative responsibility that I don’t want! Having a company means finding, vetting/testing, hiring, training, overseeing, and paying the people who do some or all of the editing work, as well as finding projects big enough to support a staff or network of subcontractors. Only some of those tasks can be handled by someone other than the head of the company. I would rather spend my time doing the actual editing work; the billing and related aspects of my business are nominal compared to what I assume such administrative activity is for a larger-scale editing company.
I’m open to reconsidering how I structure my business over time as the markets evolve, but for now, my solopreneur model is working nicely for me, both personally and financially. STC colleagues who are considering freelancing can look at the pros and cons of being companies rather than solo businesses and pick the business model that works for them. Keep in mind that the solopreneur can always branch out into being a company at some point, and the company can always cut back and revert to solopreneur status if necessary.
STC member Ruth E. Thaler-Carter is a long-time, award-winning freelancer; author/publisher of “Get Paid to Write! Getting Started as a Freelance Writer”; author of “Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business” for the Editorial Freelancers Association; and owner of Communication Central, which presents an annual conference for editorial entrepreneurs every fall.