What Freelance Editors Need to Expand Their Businesses

by Auz Burger

When I decided to go to school to get my degree, I originally wanted to get a degree in library sciences, because books and the library had a huge impact on my life.

Not long before I began working on my AA, every library sciences program in the area got cut, so that left me to return to the drawing board.

I still wanted my career to be based in books, and I realized editing would be perfect for me. I’d been editing as a hobby for years anyway, so making it into a career seemed natural.

My Editing Career Started with a Job at the College Student Newspaper

As I was preparing to transfer to get my BA, the advisor I met with suggested I look into editing for the student newspaper to get experience in the field. While I was certain I didn’t want to work in journalism, based on the one journalism class I took in high school, I needed experience, so I applied for a position as an editor.

I got the job and worked there for the three years I worked on my BA. It turned out that my single class taken over a decade earlier wasn’t a good basis for whether or not I liked an entire field. Aside from the formatting not allowing me to use Oxford Commas, journalism wasn’t too bad, and I loved my job at the paper.

Fibromyalgia Made Working for a Company Near Impossible

I have fibromyalgia and a genetic condition that causes my joints to dislocate, making keeping a regular job hard. Working at the paper, if I was having a bad day, I could just work from home and hold video meetings with my reporters, but that isn’t a freedom I could get from most companies.

By the time I was preparing to graduate, I knew I would need to find a way to work from home. I looked into working remotely for a publishing house, but after I ran out of options there, I turned to freelancing, and I have been doing so ever since.

To Truly Expand Your Editing Career, You Need a Niche

My first year in freelancing was full of me taking any editing job I could get; I didn’t realize that having a niche could be important.

As I was beginning my second year of freelancing, I was told by a freelancing specialist that if I wanted to truly expand my career and business, I needed a niche.

After I thought about it, I realized that I’d had a niche all along: sci-fi/fantasy and role-playing game (RPG) books.

Sci-fi/fantasy is my absolute favorite genre, it’s what I’m always reading, and I knew I did my best work in that genre as a result. I already focused on editing that genre as much as I could, and I have a deep knowledge of the genre that I know makes me a better editor; making that my niche was the natural choice.

As for my niche in RPG books, that was pointed out to me by my husband. We play a lot of RPGs, and because there are so many books with information we need, I took it upon myself to gather all that information and combine it, editing the glaring errors in the content as I did.

I hadn’t really thought about it as editing until my husband pointed it out to me; I was just doing it for fun. It was just natural to make it a niche I specialized in once I thought of it that way.

How I Find Editing Clients

I don’t do very much marketing. I find the majority of my clients through Upwork.

I have my website, which focuses on my editing; it showcases all of the books I’ve edited that are published, and I have a Facebook account linked to that as well.

I also have a Twitter account where I focus more on my writing than editing, by posting the different articles I write as they get published. I have put up a few posts on Twitter informing writers that I have openings, but that’s really as far as I’ve gone for marketing. I plan to do more in the future, making some paid ads on Facebook and Twitter to help reach more prospective clients.

For finding clients on Upwork, I have a portfolio with different books I’ve edited in it, even those that haven’t been published yet. It took me a while to figure out how to best make my proposals for contracts in a way that makes me stand out. I highlight the types of editing I have experience in, and if it’s a book in my niche I point out that I specialize in it. I direct the prospective clients to my reviews, I explain my qualifications and my editing abilities that I think they would be most interested in.

I try to avoid business getting slow by regularly taking time to put out more proposals for contracts. On the weeks where it gets slow, I’m more diligent about it and I bid on a more diverse pool than usual. Usually, I manage to find a contract or two in those weeks that helps to fill in the gaps. I also reach out to previous clients and ask if they might have new work for me.

The Best Way to Retain a Working Relationship with a Writer

I’ve found that the best way to retain a working relationship with a writer is to put my heart into their novel as much as they do.

I know a lot of editors tend to look at books in a more clinical sense, but when I love the book it’s reflected in my work. While I understand that approach, I’m just not capable of completely avoiding being emotionally entangled in the novel.

I still provide the guidance and editing that is needed, but I also allow myself to laugh and cry with the characters, which makes me want to make the book the best it can be.

Showing an author that you love their book and want their novel to succeed is a good way to bring those authors back when they finish their next book.

Literature is my life, and I think that editing novels is the greatest job in the world.

My Most Lucrative Editing Project

Editing novels, especially in my genre, is the most lucrative thing I do.

What helps me to get more of these jobs is having excellent samples of books I’ve previously edited, the reviews I have from past clients, and the proof of my experience in the field.

I keep one or two chapter samples of the books I edit, in every genre I edit, and I showcase the best samples of that genre when I apply for a contract.

Expanding My Editing Services: Working with Writers Whose First Language Isn’t English

I have expanded my services some over the years. I still do some journalism style editing, because I have so many years of experience in the field.

One thing I fell into is working with writers whose first language isn’t English. I have worked with authors all over the world who don’t have English as their first language, so they need grammar polished and idioms fixed. I’m not sure if it’s a niche, per se, but it’s a field I’ve found myself working in a lot.

While editing is my true passion, I do some writing as well; I offer some copywriting services and have been working as a copywriter for a digital marketing firm for a year now. It has expanded my knowledge in a diverse number of fields, allowing me to continue expanding and growing as a writer.

Upwork is Great if You’re Just Starting Out

The one thing that has been the biggest help to my business is Upwork. I just fell into freelancing, and I honestly had no idea what I was doing when I started.

If it hadn’t been for Upwork, I doubt my business would have grown much, because I had no idea how to find clients on my own. I may have ended up stuck in a virtual assistant or customer service job instead of doing what I love.

One of the things I love about Upwork is the opportunities it has granted me. I’ve worked with clients literally all over the world because of that platform; if I was just working at a publishing house I would not have as many opportunities for something like that as I do now.

They also offer some great legal protections for both the freelancer and the client, to make sure everything goes smoothly on both ends.

Advice to a Young Author: Never Give Up

I would tell a young writer to never give up.

While being rejected is painful, look at the notes you’re given as to why your writing was turned down and think of how you can improve it.

Don’t take a contract that isn’t going to pay you what your time is worth; even if you really want the job, if they aren’t willing to pay what you need to make it worthwhile for you, don’t take the job. Stand your ground.

For a young editor, I would say that they should keep in mind that the novel they’re editing is a piece of the author’s heart and soul, and you should treat it accordingly.

While you need to give feedback on if it’s good or bad, if it’s bad, try to be nice about it, frame it positively. Start by telling them something you liked and then say what you think could use improvement. Being told only what’s bad and not what’s good is discouraging for anyone.

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The sci-fi/fantasy genre has been Auz Burger’s favorite for years, so when she created Chiroptera Editorial, she decided to focus on helping authors in that genre make their books amazing. Her love of tabletop RPGs, along with her love for creating resource material for her campaigns, also led her to want to help aspiring RPG creators make their worlds flourish. Auz doesn’t keep her editing limited to these genres though, she will edit any genre; she just loves books.

Auz has a Bachelor’s in English Literature and minors in media communications, professional writing, history, and women’s studies from Washington State University, which she utilizes in her editing to help the authors she works with shape their stories and worlds. Her business got its name because she has a lifetime love of bats, so she wanted to include that in her business; plus, it makes her the Bat Editor.

Auz is also a freelance writer whose work has been published on many websites.

For more information on Auz and her writing and editing business, you can visit her website or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.