Groups directory

Accreditation exam

tmathey — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:19:04 -0500

Just wanted to see what everyone thought of the exam? Have ne'er heard a peep from anyone since!

Thoughts?

Fourth national survey of editors

ipedadmin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:29:34 -0400

Pamela Hewitt
The fourth national survey of editors was conducted at the conference, ‘From Inspiration to Publication’, held in Hobart in May 2007. There were 132 responses to the survey, an increase on the responses to the third national survey of editors, carried out in October 2005 at the Melbourne conference.

These surveys are the only comprehensive, national collection of information about editors. Although participation at national conferences is not necessarily representative of all editors, they are excellent opportunities to gather national data and views, and they provide a snapshot of the profession. To allow comparison over the four surveys, the same questions were asked, where possible.

As the conference was held in Hobart, there is a disproportionate representation of Tasmanian editors. Some 16% of respondents were from Tasmania. Even so, there is an encouraging continuity of response, which suggests that we can have confidence in the findings. The most variable responses are in the area of rates and charges so I conducted a state-by-state analysis to allow comparison.

Who is an Australian editor?

It comes as no surprise that women continue to outnumber men in the profession, with 87% female respondents and 13% male.
As all the previous surveys have shown, editors are highly educated. The percentage of editors who hold at least a degree remains steady at 92%. In 2005, just over a quarter of respondents held a Masters or Doctoral degree; in 2007, the number of higher degrees had increased to 36%. The combined percentage of people holding qualifications higher than an undergraduate degree is an impressive 63%. Many respondents reported multiple higher degrees, for example two Masters degrees or a Masters and a Doctorate.
The proportion of editors who reported participating in professional development programs also increased slightly, to 97%, continuing the increasing trend for professional skills upgrading noted in previous surveys.
The proportion of respondents who had more than 6 years’ experience as an editor increased slightly, to 71%.
The proportion of full-time editors was 54% compared with 60% two years earlier, with 28% working part time and 14% working in the field in addition to other employment.
The changing role of editors in the publishing industry continues to be reflected in the terms we use to describe our work. In 2007, 31% of respondents described their role as copyediting or proofreading, 22% saw themselves primarily as substantive editors (twice the 11% who identified their work as substantive editing two years earlier), 10% described themselves as project managers while 36% agreed that it was impossible to distinguish between combinations of these activities. Many used job titles: commissioning editor, acquisition editor, publisher, communications manager, development editor, writing services manager, web writer/editor, corporate communications, team manager, partner in a writing and editing business, managing editor and more.
In this survey, a slightly higher proportion (48% compared with 46%) of respondents worked as employees. Just under half of respondents were freelance, with the rest describing their employment status in various ways, including contractor, company director and, in one case, ‘dormant’!

Rates

The 2005 survey reported a significant increase in the reported rates editors charge. The national average hourly rate of $61, a marked increase on the $50 average reported in the previous two surveys, had barely increased in 2007 and is now $62.55, to be precise.

A breakdown by state and territory follows: average hourly rates for editing were $66 in Victoria, $65 in NSW, $64 in the ACT, $63 in South Australia, $62 in Tasmania, $56 in Queensland and $51 in Western Australia. There were some overseas respondents and some which were unidentified by state. The average figure for this ‘other’ category was $62 but it is based on a small sample.

The huge variations reported in previous surveys are still a feature of the profession. The highest reported hourly rate for editing was $160 and the lowest was $34. All these findings relate to freelance editing rates. Higher rates are charged for services such as project management and document development.

Comments about rates included ‘Some publications have low fixed rates’, ‘corporate and educational editing seems to pay better than trade and commercial book editing’, ‘I should be charging more’ and ‘other editors tend to be cagey about what they charge’.

One respondent observed that editors should charge as much as graphic designers. ‘Rates for most editors depend on what the client is willing to pay’, said another. ‘Charging low rates results in the industry being seen as a cottage industry’. Pleas for IPEd and professional associations to provide advice on rates repeated comments in earlier years. Geography was a reason cited by several respondents for low rates—the comment was that in smaller states and country towns, higher rates are harder to achieve. A common strategy is to charge different rates for different clients, according to capacity to pay and the perceived going rate in that area of the industry. Another comment that was echoed by many was that it is better to charge by the job than by the hour and several respondents remarked that they charge the same rate regardless of the type of work performed (proofreading, copyediting, structural editing).

I’ll leave you with this realistic but hopeful comment on rates: ‘People work for very low rates for editing, therefore undercutting each other. However, sometimes you get what you pay for. Hopefully, accreditation will even this out a bit more.’

Challenges

Extending skills was the challenge most frequently cited as the most important and it was the most commonly listed item overall, followed by keeping abreast of technology and maintaining and extending networks. Managing workload emerged as a common challenge for many, who commented that the workflow is often out of their direct control when clients and publishers are late with manuscripts or don’t allow sufficient time for the work to be done. Several respondents identified their efforts to have clients value editorial work as a challenge.

Priorities

A greater public promotion role by professional associations was the clear favourite development requested by respondents, with the highest number of people listing this as their number one priority, followed by the need for the provision of more professional development for editors, followed closely by a desire for a greater employment brokerage role on the part of societies.

As in earlier years, many stressed the need for a mentoring scheme, career advice and career development. Many commented favourably on the establishment of the accreditation scheme. Other suggestions were more liaison with industries beyond publishing, and a plea for a greater sense of professionalism among editors.

Subject areas

Once again, the most common description for most editors was ‘generalists’. Education was by far the most common subject area with 48 responses. Next was science (34), trade fiction and non-fiction (14), history (13), government, the environment (each with 10), academic, business and finance (each with 9), health (8), theology and religion, corporate, medicine and the arts (all with 7), and biography or memoir, law and maths (all with 5)

The many single-item responses included intelligence, current affairs, music, accounting and biology.

Here are some more parting quotes from respondents:

“I think editors need to be micro-specialists and macro-generalists.”

“We’re not paid enough for what we do, and we need greater awareness and visibility and value of our profession… We will be paid more when people appreciate what we do — or when men enter the profession.”

“Despite my science background, I’m finding that editing other areas (e.g. management and business) is surprisingly straightforward. I’m coming to think that editing in an area different from my background may well be an advantage — I can better stand back and take an objective view of how understandable the text really is.”

“I enjoy and pursue a lot of variety and eclecticism in my work and so have successfully resisted specialisation.”

“I’d like to see more professional support for freelancers starting off. A mentoring scheme would be valuable and could even be ‘fee for service’. Work experience schemes with publishers would also be useful.”

“I am sick of hearing about women supplementing their income when they are stuck at home with kids by doing ‘a bit of editing’. I wouldn’t dream of doing ‘a little doctoring’ or ‘a little engineering’. Editors need to be acknowledged as professionals, and important ones at that.”

What are you worth?

test — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:12:58 -0400

Rates revisited
Pamela Hewitt

Seven years ago, I presented a paper to the national conference for indexers and editors held in Canberra. When the Professional Editors’ Association decided to hold a meeting on the topic ‘What are you worth?’ I dug out my old paper to see how much things have changed.

Here, I offer an updated version of what I saw as the situation way back then, with some new ideas for where we might take the debate and the action.

Editors, on the whole, are

highly skilled, combining generalist and specialist knowledge
highly qualified, almost always with a first degree, and more often than not with one or more postgraduate qualifications
highly experienced, often with a track record of many years in the industry
working in industries at the forefront of technological change, at the very heart of the information revolution.

This is looking promising. Surely here we have the cream of the knowledge society, highly prized specialists for the industries of the future. It should go without saying that, as employees, we should command high salaries, a company car and generous executive packages. As freelancers, the sky should be the limit. What wouldn’t a corporate client pay for the services of such people?

But wait. There are some other characteristics of the editing trade that I haven’t yet mentioned. Consider these

gaps in national education, training and professional development program
a predominantly female, underorganised workforce.

Even more damning

our work is to do with words.

And, difficult as it is to measure, I would suggest that there is another killer factor at play here. As a rule

we love our work.

We find it stimulating, fulfilling, varied, creative, engrossing.

When all these factors are combined, it turns out that we have a profession where the work is bound to be grossly underpaid.

This doesn’t mean that we should remain underpaid.

There is a range of options that we can explore as individuals and as members of professional associations to improve the standing of the professions in the industry and beyond. These include

professional association or trade union membership and activism
improving our technological skills
promoting educational pathways for initial training and continuing professional development
showcasing our skills to business, clients and the public through the activities of professional societies, through partnerships with other professionals…

My focus is a little more inward looking. While the activities that I have just outlined are vital, there is also a place for taking a step back and looking at how we think about ourselves. At the risk of sounding overly self-analytical, I suppose I am talking about the importance of professional self-esteem.

It’s my belief that valuing our services will lead to valuing ourselves and, vitally, in others’ valuing our services and us. In order to value ourselves and our services properly, it might be helpful to remind ourselves why our services are valuable.

Why should we value our services?

You are good at what you do. You have to be. We all know that in the commercial world, you are only as good as your last job. If you are getting work, especially repeat work or work that comes via personal recommendation, then you must be offering a valuable service.
When we offer our services, we bring our knowledge of the trade. In addition, we often bring
knowledge of specialist fields (languages, academic disciplines and subject areas, technology)
knowledge of the publication process
the ability to meet punishing deadlines
specific negotiation skills for working with authors, designers, illustrators, printers, typesetters, management or editorial boards…
high levels of speed and accuracy
many years’ experience.

Paragons like us would do well not to undersell such virtues.

By this stage, I hope you are all feeling worthy of respect and recognition. But of what practical use is this knowledge, you might ask yourself, if the marketplace holds your skills in low regard. In what follows, I propose some ways that we might put this ‘professional self-esteem’ to use.

Next time you provide a quote, or you find yourself negotiating with a client, think of it also as a platform to demonstrate the calibre of your professional skills. The next time you are working with colleagues, think of these activities as a way of increasing your knowledge of the profession. And if you are pressured to undermine your own worth by selling yourself short, think of the effects on your fellow editors.

Here are five ways to consider as avenues to augment the value you attribute to your own services.

My first proposal for considering the merit of your own work can be summarised by the word solidarity.

This is a quaint old-fashioned word that I think retains contemporary meaning. If I undercut my colleagues, in the long run I undercut myself. If I sell myself short, I sell my colleagues short. If I don’t value my own services, I undervalue the services of my colleagues. I prefer not to do any of these things. I would rather that my colleagues didn’t behave this way towards me. Solidarity forever.

A second way of improving your position in the industry at the same time as providing benefits to others is a simple one—networking.

Networking through professional associations, at conferences and through more informal groups increases your professional awareness and the value of your work. How? You might find out about new technological developments. You could hear about professional opportunities. A well connected editor can direct a client to an appropriate colleague who has specific expertise for a particular job. This might be experience with a certain kind of software, the ability to understand Russian, a background in astrophysics or expertise in literary editing. That colleague could be you, this time or next time.

Most of us have had the experience of people asking us to help find work or to help find someone with the right skills for a particular job. It helps everyone to put the right team together. As well as letting you know about opportunities, networking can also alert you to problems in your local industry. Networking might let you know about a client who pays late or not at all or about the disadvantages of a new contract under offer. Information like this can stop you from wasting your time and help you to target your services, which is another way of valuing your time and effort.

Our professional associations are networks, as are our personal links with other professionals. In addition, there is room for formal and informal groups of editors to join together to put forward tenders requiring specific combinations of skills and also to balance better the times of flood and famine that we often experience. No one wants to recommend a client whose work is not up to scratch and the best way to find out the calibre of your colleagues is to work with them.

Third, knowing your own worth is crucial when you are negotiating.

Your services will be valued and you will be taken more seriously if you start any negotiation from a position of strength. By this I mean working out your bottom line and deciding your position in advance. In the negotiating room, don’t be tempted to shift from this position unless you are offered some additional element that might make a new deal worthwhile. Put simply, this is another way of valuing your services. It means that in any negotiation you are clear about how far you are prepared to go, and it means that you will never walk out of the negotiating room empty handed. Even if you don’t get the contract, you walk out with your professional standards undiminished. You know that you have not undersold yourself (or your colleagues).

This leads me to my fourth area, and it is a vexed issue. People don’t talk about it much, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Can I be the only person who has been asked to lower my rates for some special reason? I’m talking about the dreaded D word, discounting.

I don’t think that bakers or mechanics are routinely asked if they will bake bread or fix cars for less than their advertised prices, but I know that editors are. Clients sometimes ask for discounts, we sometimes give them. In fact I am not opposed to discounting under any circumstances (although I know that some editors are). What I am opposed to is random discounting. An explicit discount for work you consider to be in a good cause or because the job is intrinsically interesting is very different from a discount because the client is trying it on, or because you feel sorry for the person asking for a discount or because you find it hard to say no. If you let clients know that you are providing your services at a discount rate for particular purposes by writing it into your quote, they shouldn’t expect it from you or any other colleague as a matter of course in the future.

If a client genuinely has only so much in the budget for editing, instead of working for less money, it’s often possible to negotiate performing a different service that does not involve underselling your skills. It might be possible to offer a manuscript assessment or a chapter edit, instead of the full edit originally discussed, for example.

Finally, quoting. Quoting is a very public way in which we tell the world what we think we are worth, by offering to do a particular set of tasks for a specific sum.

Many of you will be familiar with the following scenario: your quote for a job is accepted. When you begin, or part of the way through, you find that the specifications have changed. The job is bigger than the one you quoted on or there are endless meetings that you were not told about or you are asked to incorporate author changes that were not part of the original quotation. Bakers are not expected to throw in extra cream buns, much less to double the amount of bread they agreed to bake for a certain price. Mechanics will charge you more if you bring the car back with a new problem. I have known them to charge twice for the same problem! This is not the place for a detailed discussion of quoting protocols. But I would say two things about quotes or tenders if you want others to value your services.

The first is to make sure your original paperwork is very clear about precisely what your quote covers. This can save a lot of heartache. It clarifies your position in the event of any later differences in interpretation of words and phrases in the written quotation such as ‘proofreading’, ‘editing’ or ‘project management’.
The second is to suggest that you resist client requests to perform extra tasks for no extra payment. It sounds so simple, and yet if all the editors in Australia did this, we would find we were not taken so much for granted and our services were valued a great deal more. Overnight, perhaps.

When clients place us under pressure to lower our rates, or to do extra work for no extra payment (which comes to the same thing) remember that behind an hourly rate lurk many hidden costs. In particular, remember that a freelance editor is paid by the hour, by the job, by the page, or, the ultimate in piecework, by the word. Time is certainly money, but time is not our only cost. Freelancers are not paid when they are sick, they do not receive superannuation benefits, recreation leave, long service leave, professional development, they are not paid for the time spent in administration, coping with IT problems, preparing quotations, or for the costs of running a car and upgrading equipment or administering the GST on behalf of the government. So when you fail to incorporate those costs in your services, you are giving them away, as well as your time and your skills.

I resist clients’ requests to divulge my hourly rate, preferring to quote on the job. I find this to be an entirely successful work practice. It makes it unlikely that the client will go for the lowest hourly rate on the often mistaken assumption that it is cheaper. An experienced and skilful editor can often quote competitively at a higher hourly rate than a less experienced or skilful one. The quality of the work is a factor that clients would do well to take into account when assessing quotes.
Much of this paper has concentrated on outlining the problems we face in ensuring that our services are adequately valued.
You might ask ‘If it’s all so hard and so poorly recognised, why do it? Why not be a baker or a mechanic?’

It has been said that doing the work you want to do is worth $100,000 a year (a comment attributed to Isaiah Berlin). Add that to whatever you earn, and editing starts to look pretty attractive.

It’s heartening to know that what you do is creative, worthwhile, skilled and absorbing. It’s wonderful indeed to find your work satisfying. It’s great to be happy with your work.

But you might as well be happy and valued.

In preparing my original paper, I tried to get useful data on editors. As I expected, meaningful information was hard to come by. So I conducted a survey, asked editors about their professional priorities, their educational and employment background, their special skills and their current rates. I continued to run the survey at national editing conferences every two years. The captive audience seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

My aim was to provide some useful data for editors to publicise their levels of skill and expertise, and to gather information as a basis for further advocacy work.

The section that most people were interested in was the one on rates. Here is the average taken from the responses to the question about hourly rates, gathered in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007:

$49 (2001)

$50 (2003)

$60 (2005)

$62 (2007)

We know that many editors charge well below that rate. We also know that it is less than a third of the MEAA rate. I therefore proposed that PEA develop a recommended minimum rate, publish it on our website and promulgate it through the industry.

Given that $62 was the average reported rate from the last national conference, I suggested $55 as our starting point. I thought it was an achievable figure for competent editors to charge. Having a minimum recommended rate advertised on the website will help us educate clients about industry standards and as a guideline, individual editors naturally retain the freedom to charge above or below the recommended rate. It also dovetails nicely with the professionalism that will be generated by the national accreditation scheme which will hold its first exam on 18 October 2008.

The meeting at which I presented the proposal went one better and upped the recommended minimum rate to $60 per hour with built in CPI increases. Who am I to argue with my colleagues?

Pamela Hewitt, ‘Valuing our services, valuing ourselves’, Partnerships in Knowledge conference, Canberra, May 2001.

The surveys were conducted at national editors’ conferences held in Brisbane (2003), Melbourne (2005) and Hobart (2007). It will be run again at the survey in Adelaide in 2009.

‘What are you worth?’, meeting of Professional Editors’ Association (NSW) (Inc.), 22 September 2008.