If you’re a freelance editor, you’ve likely chosen this career because you love the written word and the chance to learn from every new editing project. But how do you manage your editing projects? Do you underestimate costs, overestimate requirements, and go above and beyond to make your clients happy?
To keep your editing business thriving, take a cue from project managers. Here are seven project-management-related concepts you should know more about if you want to manage your editing projects better.
Sunk cost
Sunk cost is any cost (money or time) you can’t recover. If you fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy, you’ll use this cost to justify continuing on a path that’s no longer profitable.
Let’s say a new client has asked you to edit her book. You’d love to! You set up a meeting to explain your editing approach and answer her many questions. She wants to schedule another meeting, as she’s not sure about her budget and she prefers using another software for marking up the manuscript. You reach an agreement during that second meeting. While you wait for her to sign the contract, you spend a few days learning how to use the software.
And then you don’t hear back from the client for a couple of weeks.
She apologizes, she’s been busy. No, she hasn’t signed your contract yet, but she will—later. You shouldn’t worry, though. She assures you that you’re the only freelance editor she wants to work with.
By now you’ve already spent several non-billable hours trying to sign in this client. And two days figuring out how to use the new software. If you give up now, all that was a huge waste of time.
So what do you do? Do you go ahead with this potential client’s editing project despite the red flags? If you do, you’re either a very optimistic freelance editor or you’ve let the sunk cost fallacy guide your decision: The more time and money you put into something, the more you’re likely to keep going—even when you shouldn’t.
In general, when you spot the signs of a nightmare project, you’ll come off better if you quit early. Of course, not all freelance editing projects that have a rough start will fail. Use your common sense, gut feeling, and experience as a freelance editor to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Takeaway: Accept that in business there are costs you’ll never recover. Do not take them into account when deciding the next steps on your freelance editing path.
Cost of conformance vs. cost of nonconformance
The cost of conformance is the cost you’ll incur for ensuring your editing work meets the client’s requirements. For example, it can be the cost of refreshing your APA Style training, upgrading your software, doing several editing rounds instead of one, and so on. Factor in these costs when you prepare a quote for an editing job.
The cost of nonconformance is the cost you’ll incur for failing to deliver what the customer wants and has agreed to pay for. In other words, it’s the cost of work not being done right the first time. There are many types of costs of nonconformance: the cost of rework, loss of business, loss of reputation, and more.
Takeaway: To avoid the cost of nonconformance, make sure you understand all the requirements of the editing project upfront. And when estimating your freelance editor fee for the job, factor in the cost of conformance.
Law of diminishing returns
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines the law of diminishing returns as follows: “If one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increases in output.”
If you are an experienced freelance editor, you have surely worked on a manuscript that needed many more editing passes than you usually do. And at the end, you did one extra round of edits, for your peace of mind. But while the first editing rounds allowed you to catch dozens of blatant errors, this last one revealed only a few insignificant details: a missing Oxford comma and a hyphen instead of a dash.
Was it worth it to spend time doing this last editing round? I agree it depends on the copy, the client’s budget and requirements, level of accuracy needed, and so on. But usually, going above and beyond on an editing project doesn’t take you very far.
Takeaway: Beyond an optimal point in your editing process, each additional editing pass will result in increasingly less value for the client. Learn to identify the optimal number of editing rounds for each document considering the client’s requirements and budget and your experience as a freelance editor.
Low quality vs. high quality
In everyday language we tend to say a product is high quality if it’s much better than others in its class. For example, we say a rosewood coffee table is higher quality than a plywood coffee table. In fact they’re different grades, not necessarily different qualities.
But in management terms, quality is the degree to which a product is fit for purpose. For example, if the cheap plywood coffee table does what’s supposed to do, it’s high quality. But if the manufacturer says its rosewood table can hold 10 kg, but it can’t handle the weight of The Chicago Manual of Style, the table is low quality.
Let’s go back to the freelance editor’s world. If a copyedited manuscript fulfills all the requirements of the client, it’s high quality. A document that doesn’t meet the preferences of a freelance editor—one packed with abbreviations or jargon, for instance—is still high quality if it meets the client’s requirements.
That’s why it’s so important to understand what the client wants from an editing project. Ask them what they mean by “high-quality editing”.
One client may say, “High-quality editing is editing that results in a document with no major grammatical mistakes or typos that affect the comprehension of the information in the document. It’s fine if the formatting is off, or if there are minor inconsistencies, as the report is meant for internal use only”. This is a great answer. It also comes from someone who has experience outsourcing copyediting.
Someone who has never hired a freelance editor before might say, “High-quality editing is editing that makes a document perfect”. This is not a great answer, because expecting a document to be perfect after editing is not realistic in many cases—there are time and budget constraints.
Takeaway: A high-quality document will meet all the requirements of the client. A low-quality document will not be fit for purpose, even if it fits your preferences or those of another freelance editor. Always ask the client what they need and then customize your editing approach accordingly.
Gold plating
Gold plating is giving the customer more than they have asked for.
Let’s say a client has asked you to copyedit his report. But after editing it, you have some extra time on your hands. So you tweak the references, rewrite the conclusion, and change the layout. He’s a repeat client, so you always go above and beyond for him.
That’s what new freelance editors do when trying to please their clients: do extra work for free. But working as a freelance editor is not exactly like being a shop owner and throwing in a few samples with a customer’s purchase. You sell language editing services, and everything you do costs you time and money.
If you want to reward a customer’s loyalty, offer them a discount on their next order. Or work for them for a preferential rate. Or send them a free style guide template or another freelance editing resource that you think will help them.
If you often give away your services for free, you’ll hurt your freelance editing business. Some clients will feel you’re trying to force services on them. So, ask the client upfront if they need the extra service—be it formatting or reference checking or anything else—and make it clear it has a price tag.
Takeaway: Cross-selling is fine. Gold plating isn’t.
Scope creep
Scope creep is the plague of the freelancing universe. Scope creep is what happens when the scope of the work changes during the project. For example, a postgrad pays you for proof-editing her PhD thesis, but later asks you to rewrite her discussion chapter. It’s just “heavier proofreading”, you read in her email. No. It is project scope creep.
To avoid it, before you start working on your editing or proofreading project, spend enough time to understand the client’s requirements. Put them in writing and get your client’s approval. If the scope of the editing project is not well defined or is subject to change, you might want to negotiate an hourly contract or ask for milestone payments.
When scope creep happens, be diplomatic. Remind the client that the new work is beyond the scope of the project, but you’re happy to do it (if you are) for an extra fee.
Takeaway: Have the client approve the project scope. Make it clear to them that changes to the scope of the work are fine but require renegotiating the contract.
Estimating project cost and delivery time
Coming up with time and cost estimates is part and parcel of a freelance editor’s life. But “accurate estimating” is almost an oxymoron.
We overestimate our editing pace, underestimate how long editing will take, underestimate the costs. Getting our estimates wrong usually means losing time and money so we don’t lose a client. That’s why knowing how to prepare project estimates is crucial for a freelance editor who wants to succeed. Yet many of us are more familiar with ballpark estimating than the estimating techniques project managers use:
- Analogous estimating—Use it if your current project is similar to a past project. This technique is generally difficult to apply, unless you have a lot of experience as a freelance editor. Analogous estimating is fast and easy, but not very accurate.
- Parametric estimating—Use it if you’ve edited a sample of a document and you need to estimate how long editing the entire document will take. It’s a simple method to estimate your editing pace, but it works only if the sample is representative of the whole copy.
- Three-point estimating (PERT estimating)—Come up with three estimates: for the best-case scenario (O), for the most likely scenario (M), and for the worst-case scenario (P). Then, use the formula (O + 4M + P)/6. The PERT estimate won’t differ much from the most likely case, but it’s a bit more accurate.
- Bottom-up estimating—You list all the tasks you need to complete for an editing project and then estimate the duration (or cost) of each one. Then, sum up the estimates. This technique is time-consuming, but it’s accurate if you know each activity’s most likely duration (or cost). Bottom-up estimating will help you the most if you are an experienced freelance editor.
Takeaway: Get better at estimating editing costs and delivery times. Overestimating may grow your profit margin or loosen your schedule, but you lose clients. Underestimating hurts your revenue and wreaks havoc with your schedule. You can improve your estimating of editing projects’ cost and duration by keeping track of your editing pace and cost per word for each editing project and for each client.
Freelance editors, wear your project manager hat more often!
Many freelance editors do not think of themselves as project managers. But they are. So, learning to apply project management knowledge to your freelance editing business can make you more efficient. Being familiar with the project management concepts discussed in this article can put you on the path to a successful career as a freelance editor.
Are you looking to hire a freelance editor with project management knowledge? Send me a message at editor@languageediting.com.
Related posts:
- Tips from an editor on managing content writing projects
- Things I’ve learned from eight years of freelance editing
- Why I worked as a freelance editor on Upwork and why I quit 2 years ago
Last revised on 4 August 2022
