Titivillus Editing for the Health Sciences

Preparing Ideas and Research Results for Publication

Timothy DeVinney, Author's Editor and Copy Editor

Titivillus Editorial Services

Business Plan for a Freelance Editor

Contents
Introduction
Question 1. What are you offering?
Question 2. Who is going to buy it?
Question 3. Who are your competitors?
Question 4. How will you approach your clients?
Question 5. What marketing materials or media will you use?
Question 6. What investment do you need to make?
Question 7. What income is needed to make a profit?
Question 8. What will be your pricing strategy?

Introduction

A business plan is simply a way of thinking things through before you get started and of checking periodically on your progress. This is important for several reasons.

First, a business plan should help you focus your efforts accurately. Where are your best prospects for success and how can you best pursue them? What time and money can you save by avoiding things that really don't matter?

Second, a business plan should help you coordinate your efforts so they support and reinforce each other. For example, what computer software and skills will you invest in, and will they be consistent with your marketing? What image will you try to project in every contact you have with clients and prospective clients? You will work against yourself if you try to market desktop publishing skills to academic publishers, while at the same time investing in graphics software they will never want you to use for them.

These are some of the things you will need to coordinate:
—investment in skills, resources, and organization
—how you look for prospective clients, how you approach them, what image you try to project, and how you follow up after your initial approach
—how you negotiate the terms of a job, how you complete it, and how you present your invoice

Third, a business plan should help you foresee some of the problems you're likely to face. Taking time to research different approaches to avoiding those or dealing with them if and when they arise may prove invaluable when you're feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day details of coping with a business.

Finally, a business plan should help you approach other people (like bank managers) for assistance. If they see you have made the effort to organize your own business, they are more likely to be willing to help.

A business plan is generally formulated as
—a series of questions
—a list of the different possible answers to each question
—a plan for finding the information needed to choose the best of those answers to each question
—a choice of approach for each area of working as a copy editor that will be consistent with the other parts of the plan: a clearly expressed idea that you will try to pursue in a focused and coherent way, and that you can review later to see where you have made mistakes and how you might avoid repeating them
—and, finally, a detailed plan of how to put your ideas into practice

Questions

Question 1. What are you offering? What skills or services?

A. Possible answers (probably a selection of these, though some are essential)

core copyediting skills
—English grammar, spelling, and usage
—contemporary styling according to one or more of the major style guides (Chicago Manual of Style, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and so on; see the glossary)
—organization and presentation of information
—mechanics of preparing text for printing, including marking up copy, writing queries, and typecoding
—searching in a library or online database for bibliographic or other information

core business skills
—basic accounting, financial planning, and tax preparation
—small business law and insurance

basic computer skills
—computer maintenance
—installation and repair of software
—word processing software: Microsoft Word (including use of macros and Styles), Corel WordPerfect, and Star Office
—Internet communications: e-mail (including document attachments) and FTP

adjunct copyediting skills
—styling and vocabulary in a particular genre or specialized field (e.g., science, math, financial reporting, car manufacturing, or pharmaceuticals)
—DTPs: Quark Xpress, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe FrameMaker, or Ventura
—Microsoft PowerPoint slide presentations
—Adobe Illustrator
—PDF files and the preparation of files for a printer

B. Where and how to research

—What skills do you already have? Which could you acquire quickly?
—Look at your competitors: their Web sites and the organizations that support copy editors. What do they offer?
—Look at job offers on the Web. What qualifications are employers seeking in copy editors? Or, even, what skills are they seeking in project editors and managing editors (or whomever you would be working for)? And what skills would you need to work for them?
—Follow Internet mailing lists. What skills do they talk about?

C. Decision

Take your time and write down what skills you have, what you've learned, and what you want to offer.

D. Plan

Take a calendar and plan when you're going to learn the skills you need.

Question 2. Who is going to buy what you're offering? What is your market? What sort of client is most likely to want to hire you or purchase the services you've targeted in Question 1? What do they need and what do they think they need?

A. Possible answers

There are many different markets for freelance copy editors.

B. Where and how to research

1. Do you have special skills or experience in some particular subject or field? Do you have hobbies or job experience in an field or business where they produce lots of written material? Draw up a list of everything you have ever accomplished. Could anything on that list be a starting point for work as a copy editor?

2. Look at the products of companies in a market that might interest you (e.g., sports or travel).

3. Investigate potential clients in the markets that interest you. What publications do they produce? What is their technical vocabulary? What kind of styling is used in what they write? Do they follow AP styling, Chicago, or some other style? (See glossary.) In general, how do they try to communicate with and persuade their customers?

C. Decision

Make a decision about what market you would like to focus on. Then write down and collect everything you've learned about it so far.

Start a specific list of 150 to 200 target candidates for whom you would like to work. These will be the subject of your repeated marketing.

D. Plan

Set up information forms for each of the 150 to 200 prospective clients you are going to target, and schedule regular times at which to learn more about them.

Question 3. Who are your competitors? What do they offer and how do they present themselves?

A. Possible answers

Your competitors may be former in-house editors for the companies they now have as clients. Or they could be people with experience working in non-editorial areas of the market who found they had a talent for editing and made a career change.

B. Where and how to research

—Look at the Web sites of copy editors.
—Talk to people working in your market.
—Join and follow an Internet mailing list for copy editors.

C. Decision

Write out a clear profile of the typical copy editors you have read about or talked to who work in your market.

D. Plan

Arrange to keep in touch with your competitors. Join a mailing list or association.

Question 4. How will you approach your prospective clients? How will you stand out from your competitors? What can you offer that they don't, or how else can you stand out from among them?

A. Possible answers

There are many different images you can try to project for your business.

—Do you offer personalized service, always from the same reliable individual? Or are you a general editorial services office, where several people are available to deal with anything a client might require?
—Are you a specialist? Or can you handle just about anything?
—Are you expensive and highly qualified? Or are you economical and reliable? (See also Question 8.)
—What visual logo or verbal motto might help fix your image in the minds of prospective and established clients? (Try to stimulate the visual as well as the verbal memory of the prospective clients you approach.)

B. Where and how to research

Look back over what you've learned about your competitors. Do you think they have it right? Are they offering what your prospective clients want? Will you develop a variation on their approaches, or can you come up with something better?

C. Decision

Choose a level and an image for yourself, and make sure not only that the two are consistent with each other, but that everything you do and produce reinforces both.

Question 5. What materials or media will you use to approach your prospective clients? How will you approach them? What will be your marketing budget and schedule?

A. Possible answers

There are several approaches to finding freelance clients:
1. mailings: send a covering letter, résumé, and business card, to each of the prospective clients on your target list of 150 to 200.

2. telephone calls: either before or after sending in your letter and résumé, call up the most promising prospective clients on your list and try to speak to someone who will tell you whether they do hire freelance copy editors, and if so who does the hiring. If you can talk to that person, try to find out what their plans are and whether they might want to hire you. If they don't hire freelancers, then do they know someone else who does? (Note: "cold calling," as this is called, is not for everyone, and in some markets it is actively discouraged.)

3. follow-up marketing: at regular intervals (every month or so, perhaps) send to the prospective clients on your target list of 150 to 200 (both those who have answered and those who have not) some sort of material to remind them of your existence: a brochure, a coffee cup, a postcard, or anything you can think of to fix your image in their minds.

B. Where and how to research

What do other copy editors in your market do? Follow the mailing lists and other forums where they exchange ideas. What can you think up yourself? What do prospective clients in your market ask for when they post job openings? Do they ask for a letter and résumé, or do they also ask for sample edits?

C. Decision

Specify a budget for marketing. Design a marketing campaign. And make a schedule for following it.

D. Plan

At the beginning, you may spend nearly all of your time and whatever resources you have available on marketing. Once you are established, though, this should not be neglected entirely. It is normally assumed that a freelance business will need to budget 5 to 10 percent of its gross income and a similar percentage of working hours, for on-going marketing. So set a budget and schedule on your calendar the different marketing steps you will take throughout the coming year.

Question 6. What investment in equipment, software, and training do you need to make?

A. Possible answers

1. the minimum
—hardware: computer, modem, and printer
—software: Microsoft Word, antivirus software, a Web browser, and an e-mail program
—reference works: dictionary, style guide, and usage guides

2. fully equiped
—hardware: computer, modem, printer, fax, scanner, backup power supply, and backup recording device (tape or Zip)

B. Where and how to research

Have a look at Mindy McAdams' list of books for copy editors.
[http://www.well.com/user/mmcadams/reference.html Accessed October 17, 2002]

C. Decision

D. Plan

Question 7. What will your hourly overhead be and what level of income must you sustain to make a profit?

A. Possible answers

B. Where and how to research

Add up what you will need to spend on supplies, utilities, rent, and so on, each month or year, and divide by your billable working hours for the same time period.

C. Decision

Decide how much you will invest in equipment, software, reference materials, and training each year.

D. Plan

Schedule expenditures for the above.

Question 8. What will be your pricing strategy? Are you going to set your prices high and try to establish a reputation for quality? Or will you price your services at or below your competitors? Will you bill by the hour, page, or project?

A. Possible answers

1. price level:
—only the best quality of service—with prices to match
—prices that match those of your competitors
—prices below those of your competitors

2. pricing approach:
—price each job at so much per hour
—price each job per 250-word page or per word
—offer a total price for a given project (based on your own calculations of what it will cost you in time and expenditures)

B. Where and how to research

—What is your hourly overhead? (See Question 7.)
—What do other freelancers charge?
—What do clients offer when they post jobs? Look at the different markets for freelance copy editors.
—What is the customary approach in your market? Do clients expect to be billed by the hour, page, or project?

C. Decision

Pick a pricing level and tie it in to your marketing approach. Decide whether your clients might appreciate the security of a total, agreed price for a given project. If you're a person with some ingenuity, working from a project total might motivate you to find ways to do the job more quickly and thus increase your effective hourly rate of pay.

D. Plan

For individual projects, if you are going to quote a total project fee (and, perhaps, even if you are not), ask for a representative sample of the work to be done. Then edit half a dozen pages while timing yourself, and multiply that by the total number of pages. Add the time you estimate it will take to edit the tables and figures (if any), and to do all of the non-editorial things: researching, fact-checking, typecoding, cleaning up the formatting, communicating with the client, etc. And then add 10 percent to that, as a margin for error. Finally, multiply that total of estimated hours by your hourly rate, and give the result as your price for completing the project.

URL for this page: http://www.HeathSciEdit.com/tes-busplan.htm
© 2003–2009 Timothy DeVinney. Page last updated November 24, 2005.