6 Easy Steps to Customize a Style Guide: What’s Your Style?

By Robin Martin

ISBN: 9781880407424

Maintaining consistent style throughout the course of a project is a crucial element of any editorial work, whether you are copyediting the main body of a manuscript, front and back material, charts and tables, or design elements. Sometimes it is necessary to finesse the rules. It has been said, ‘Punctuation is there to serve the writing, not the other way around.’ And though style is much more than punctuation, this idea, the premise that style should serve substance, is why editorial freelancers need this booklet. It presents a handful of core best practices that carry over from one project to the next which makes customization of style guides quite simple.

This booklet presents six easy steps to build a custom style guide for any client. Updated for 2020.

This booklet can be ordered wherever paperbacks and epubs are sold.

Paperback ISBN: 9781880407424

EPUB ISBN: 9781880407431

80 Common Layout Errors to Flag When Proofreading Book Interiors

By Lynette M. Smith

ISBN: 978-1880407-71-4

This book provides guidance on the types of layout errors commonly encountered in the interior layout of a book before it is published and gives some idea as to techniques the layout professional may employ to remedy the errors.

A Freelance Editor’s Guide to Book Production

By Rachel Hockett

ISBN: 978-1-880407-27-1

Veteran book producer Rachel Hockett details the process of taking a book from raw manuscript to printer-ready files in this updated and revised edition of the popular EFA guide. Topics include creating the schedule, estimating the costs, hiring the freelancers and suppliers, preparing the text, creating the front matter and index, reviewing the proofs, invoicing, and working with the author and publisher.

A Freelancer’s Guide to Difficult Clients

By Ann Kellett, PhD.

ISBN: 9780359165995

In this concise guide, the author analyzes freelance editors’ stories and identifies four broad categories of difficult clients: the manipulator, the rule changer, the procrastinator, and the willfully ignorant. Real-world examples of each are presented, as well as how the freelancer resolved the situation and the major lesson learned. Their stories are followed by advice from experts. In more than 30 years of writing and editing, the author has worked with only a couple of difficult clients, and they inspired her to learn more about preventing and resolving these types of situations to ensure that each party in the freelancer-client relationship is successful.

Advanced Features of Word: How to Easily Format Theses and Dissertations

By Rochelle Deans

ISBN: 9780359165353

How to Use Advanced Features of Word to Format Theses and Dissertations takes the guessing out of formatting, providing you with a headache-free path to formatting academic documents that are university-compliant and easy to change and unify. Learn how to update styles, create automatic tables of contents, use section breaks effectively, style and update page numbers, apply universal indents, access and understand the format painter, and more.

An Author’s Guide to Saving Money on Editing

By Janell Robisch

ISBN: Electronic format

From Section 1, “The Value of Patience”: “Congratulations, you’ve written a book! Now, according to conventional wisdom, whether you are planning to self-publish your book or submit it for publication through a traditional publisher, you need to have your book edited. The editing process, a series of several steps that includes structural editing, copyediting, and proofreading, will transform your book from a rough draft into a polished work that you can send off into the world and be proud of.”

An Editorial Freelancer’s Guide to Business Entities

By Alex Bennett, Esq.

ISBN: Electronic format

Adapted from the author’s introduction: “Like every other small business owner, freelance writers and editors need to think about the legal structure of their businesses. Choosing the right business form can have tax advantages and protect personal assets from litigators. This guide is a concise introduction to legal entities and several related ideas, directed at a typical freelance business with only one owner-employee and no outlandish financing requirements. Its goal is to give freelancers a sound foundation for making better business structuring decisions.”

Author and Editor Together: Building the Best Manuscript

By Jon Harrison

ISBN: 978-1880407-75-2

From the author’s introduction: “This booklet is about the author-editor partnership and the role it plays in creating the best possible manuscript. It focuses on the partnership between the freelance editor and his or her author-client.”

Building Successful Freelancer-Client Relationships

By Erin Wilcox

ISBN: 978-1880407-74-5

From the author’s introduction: “Today’s publishing landscape offers more opportunities than ever for freelancers and clients to work together. Major publishers, university presses, and small presses regularly hire freelancers to support every aspect of the publishing process. Many writers seek editorial services to develop their projects prior to submitting to an agent. Self-publishing authors avail themselves of expertise-for-hire at various points in the creative process, from research and fact-checking to project management, editing, proofreading, indexing, and book design. Freelancers might be called in on a short-term basis, or we might be engaged for longer-term projects. Whatever the scenario, a good-faith relationship between freelancer and client enhances both the editorial process and finished product. But how do we build that trust?”

Contracts Demystified: A Guide for Editors and Authors

By Sarah Dubel

ISBN: 9780359165957

This booklet provides editors insights for consideration when creating custom contracts that not only protect their livelihoods, but also help build successful business relationships with clients. Authors and editors alike will come to know the logic behind the inclusion of certain terms and conditions, and shall be able to negotiate and tailor the provisions with their unique engagements in mind.

Copyright and Permissions: What Every Writer and Editor Should Know (Revised Edition)

By Elsa Peterson

ISBN: 978-1-880407-37-0

Copyright can be perplexing, and not understanding it can land you in legal hot water. Copyright and Permissions: What Every Writer and Editor Should Know is full of practical information about what copyright is, how it works, its role in the digital landscape—and walks you through the permissions process, explaining how to:
• Examine a manuscript to identify what requires permission
• Create and use a permissions database or log
• Contact copyright holders and submit permission requests
• Prepare acknowledgments and negotiate fees

Purchase from your favorite bookseller with the ISBN number, author name, and title.

Paperback 9781880407370

Epub 9781880407387

Ebooks and Editors: What You Need to Know

By Kevin Callahan

ISBN: 9781880407448

Editors play a vital role in creating ebooks by providing well-structured manuscripts, accessible text and images, and ebook–only material. They collaborate in new ways with everyone in book production — designers, photo researchers, typesetters, ebook developers — to produce high-quality print and ebook editions. This booklet describes the different digital formats and how they are produced. More importantly, it lays out how ebooks expand publishing possibilities and how editors can contribute. Updated for 2020!

Order from your favorite bookseller (We’re in the Ingram Catalogue.) Or maybe even pick it up from your library!

Paperback: 9781880407448

EPUB: 9781880407455

Editorial Expectations

By Judith Reveal

ISBN: 9780359165681

Establishing a successful relationship between the author and the editor depends on transparency between both parties. Both parties should ask the questions that will affect their relationship and the answers should be clear and concise. Editorial Expectations, by Judith Reveal, is designed to address the most important topics and allow both the author and the editor to approach each issue to obtain clear understandings as they move forward to a successful association.

This booklet may be ordered from your favorite bookseller.

Paperback 978-1-880407-01-1
EPUB 978-1-880407-07-3

Editorial Networking

By Jocelyn Kerr

ISBN: 9780359166169

Who says networking is a bad word? Well, a lot of people, actually. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s one of the most effective ways to meet potential new clients and land editorial gigs, so it’s worth exploring. Gear up and get ready to start talking—and no, you don’t have to be that sweaty person pushing business cards into everyone’s hands. This is how to take the gross feelings out of meeting new people. Yes, even for introverts. Is networking different for writers and editors? Not really. Editorial Networking gets creatives (slightly) out of their comfort zones and breaks down the where and how of business networking. No, that doesn’t mean coming on strong or writing up elaborate sales pitches. This book is for writers and editors who are looking for ways to be more comfortable expanding their social and professional circles.

Feast and Famine No More: How to Fill Your Editing Schedule and Keep It Full

By Blake Atwood

ISBN: 9780359166213

At some point in your freelance editing career, you will face every freelancer’s fear: a blank schedule. Your inbox is empty. Your former clients may not write another book for years. And you’re at a loss for how to find those elusive would-be clients. You’re not sure when you’ll next be able to pay yourself. You may even begin to wonder if freelancing was the right decision. Famine threatens your livelihood. But there are proven steps you can take to reinvigorate your pipeline. If done with purpose and consistency, you can have clients proactively contacting you for their next editing need, and your schedule will get full and remain that way. But it takes work, so let’s get to it.

Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business (Revised Edition)

By Ruth Thaler-Carter with Robin Martin

ISBN: 978-1-880407-35-6

Being an editorial freelancer takes certain professional abilities, personal attributes, and business skills. The authors address the most common questions asked by editors considering the freelance life, including the practical information about getting started in editorial freelancing, getting work, and getting paid that made the first edition so valuable to so many. This new edition of Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business, includes expanded information about job placement and freelance websites, marketing with LinkedIn and social media, and SaaS tools that automate some of the tasks of running a freelance business.

Purchase today at your favorite bookshop.

Freelancing Paperback 978-1-880407-35-6
Freelancing EPUB 978-1-880407-36-3

Get Those Grants!

By Katherine Harper

ISBN: 9780359165193

Today’s nonprofit organizations rely on outside financial support. Get Those Grants! provides an informative introduction to prospect research and proposal writing. Author Katherine Harper, a veteran grant writer, explains what types of funders exist, how to find them, the information that matters to them, the process of crafting a successful proposal, and how to locate and work with nonprofit clients. A resources section lists grants-related books, periodicals, databases, and training opportunities, many of them free of charge.

Google Docs for Editors

By Karin Horler

ISBN: 9780359165902

Copyeditors work in diverse roles, and in some industries—especially the education, corporate, and tech sectors—G Suite, not Microsoft, is the standard. Independent authors with limited budgets or clients from developing countries may prefer the free Google Docs over the pricey Word. Google Docs has features that can facilitate collaborative work. Thus, many freelance editors need to understand web-based word processing, regardless of whether they use it for their actual editing, to offer a workflow that makes sense for their clients.

Grammatical Gleanings

By Patricia M. Godfrey

ISBN: 978-1-880407-26-4

Grammar maven Patricia M. Godfrey offers guidance to “working professional copy editors and any others who share their love of the English language and who delight to explore its byways” in fifteen essays that originally appeared in “The Wizard of Rs,” a regular column in the Editorial Freelancers Association newsletter. Discussing issues of grammar and syntax, idiom and semantics, and punctuation and typography, “this brief collection will clarify a few obscure points, warn of imminent linguistic peril, or simply add to the knowledge and relish with which its readers regard the language.”

How to Manage Erratic Workflow, Make Time for Fun and Gain Peace of Mind

By Serena Howlett

ISBN: 9780359165438

To manage erratic workflow you need to strengthen or acquire business skills: market research, networking, product differentiation, and sales. A business plan is the first step toward effective management. An annual evaluation of successes and shortcomings will enable you to focus your energy, identify market demand for the skills you possess and develop a competitive strategy. You will learn to manage the volume and quality of work. When you focus on the kind of editing you do best, clients are likely to appreciate your true value. With more predictable workflow and income, you will have the opportunity to make choices as to how to spend free time.

Just the Facts: On Researching Your Nonfiction Children’s Book

By Lisa L. Owens

ISBN: 978-1-880407-33-2

Writing children’s nonfiction? Successful children’s nonfiction authors must believe that facts matter, embrace high-quality research, and tap into the joy of chasing new knowledge and sharing it with others. Author Lisa L. Owens, herself the writer of dozens of books in the genre, walks a writer-researcher through the steps of embarking on the research-writing-research-writing cycle. Including: How to find, access, and validate valuable sources; tips for adjusting your plan as the writing takes shape; and, best-practice strategies for putting your facts to the test.

Order today from your favorite bookseller.

EPUB 978-1-880407-34-9
Paperback 978-1-880407-33-2

Language Bias: An Editor’s Guide to Biased Language

By Emily Mahan and Sandra Distelhorst

ISBN: 978-1880407-70-7

From the author’s introduction: “Language bias is language that reflects or perpetuates ‘demeaning attitudes and biased assumptions about people.’ There are both practical and ethical reasons for avoiding biased language. The use of biased language has a rhetorical effect: it may alienate or offend readers, and decrease your credibility with them.”

Respectful Querying with NUANCE

By Ebonye Gussine Wilkins

ISBN: 978-1-880407-10-3

Editors working with writers of color or marginalized writers have dictated editorial changes that have misrepresented the writers’ voices for far too long. Writers receiving assistance from editors who don’t share their cultural backgrounds or experiences often don’t get the appropriate editorial support because of misunderstandings. Respectful Querying with NUANCE offers a framework that allows editors to continue to provide the necessary guidance while still respecting the author’s voice and encouraging the author to make the manuscript’s final editorial decisions.

Order today at your favorite bookshop.

EPUB 978-1-880407-14-1
Paperback 978-1-880407-10-3

Resumés for Freelancers: Make Your Resumé an Effective Marketing Tool . . . and More (Revised Edition)

By Sheila Buff and Ruth Thaler-Carter

ISBN: 978-1-880407-15-8

This 2020 revised edition of Resumés for Freelancers explains why a functional, or skills-based, resumé is a more effective strategy for freelance editorial professionals than a traditional resumé, and illustrates how to create one. The authors also explain ways to supplement your resumé, leverage LinkedIn effectively, target your job search, build your network, and protect yourself against scammers.

Purchase today from the Editorial Freelancers Association Bookstore!

Sensitivity Reads: A Guide for Professional Editors

By Ebonye Gussine Wilkins & Lourdes Venard

ISBN: 9780359166275

More and more, authors and publishers are turning to sensitivity readers to make sure their novels or nonfiction pieces accurately and authentically represent a culture or group of people. But what exactly is a sensitivity reader? And what does the job entail? This booklet will answer those and other questions. We’ll explain what a sensitivity reader does, both for fiction and nonfiction. We look at categories or niches you may want to explore; issues you should be targeting as you read; use of language and unintended meanings; how to break a sensitivity read into macro and micro points; and how to position yourself to find such work. In addition to the how-to’s of doing a sensitivity read, we also focus on the business side—fee schedules, contracts, and nondisclosure agreements. This book also provides checklists for when reading fiction or nonfiction, explains current publishing terms you will need to know, and offers additional resources helpful to a sensitivity reader.

Tell Them A Story: Using Narrative Nonfiction in Your Everyday Writing

By Ben Riggs

ISBN: 9781880407394

What does storytelling (narrative) have to do with reporting (nonfiction)?
Everything!
Most writing for marketing, selling, persuading, or entertaining today is driven by storytelling. If you’re writing articles or blogs or online-marketing copy, how can you use storytelling to your advantage? In Tell Them a Story: Using the Best Lessons from Narrative Nonfiction in Your Everyday Writing, Ben Riggs breaks down the differences between a report and a story and suggests joining the two to meet the needs of an audience.

Order today from your favorite bookseller.
Paperback 978-1-880407-39-4
EPUB 978-1-880407-40-0

The Art of Editing for the Corporate Market

By Mary Johnson

ISBN: 978-1-880407-30-1

For those who may have thought of entering the world of corporate editing, this is the book that can help you make that transition. Mary Johnson, who has been editing for the corporate market for nearly three decades, takes you beyond the everyday rules of grammar and punctuation to provide insight into the unique editing requirements of business publications. She honed her skills editing for the corporate world at a major high tech firm. This book is a winner!

Three Types of Editors: Developmental Editors, Copyeditors, and Substantive Editors

By Eric Reeder

ISBN: 978-1880407-82-0

From the author’s introduction: “There are many types of editors. With all the different kinds of editing that exist and all the various words to classify varieties of editing and editors, it can be difficult to know exactly what certain terms mean. It is definitely challenging for authors in need of editing services to determine what differing sorts of editors do or what varied categories of editing entail.”

Using Freelance Platforms Safely and Effectively

By Wes Cowley

ISBN: 978-1-880407-48-6

Freelance job platform Upwork has over 600,000 active clients and over 200,000 open job posts. Fiverr has 3.8 million active clients, while Freelancer.com has 2 million freelancers and over 16,000 active job posts. If you’re starting your career or looking for new clients, how do you determine whether you should add your profile to one of these sites?

Learn what you’re getting into before joining a freelance platform. This booklet will help you understand the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of online freelance job platforms and help prepare you to start researching the one that might be right for your career.

Paperback 978-1-880407-48-6

EPUB 978-1-880407-49-3

Visual Grammar: Design Foundations for Editors

By Kristy S. Gilbert

ISBN: 978-1-880407-50-9

Book design and general document design awareness is increasingly important in the quick-publishing models embraced by web publishers and rapid-release book publishers. Freelance editors become more valuable to publishing production process when, in addition to knowing written rhetoric, they understand the basic grammar of document design. This booklet explains the four basic principles of design along with examples of what to do and instances where things go wrong. It also presents how each principle can serve a project’s message, purpose, and audience.

EPUB 978-1-880407-51-6
Paperback 978-1-880407-50-9