Disappointment

O Cruel Asian Spammers!
Your e-mails in lovely kanji, hiragana, and Hangul
Briefly fool me into thinking
That you might be
A new ESL editing client.


(Public-domain illustration of handwritten kanji from Wikipedia)



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Breaking News

July 10 will be the first annual Freelancers, Put on Your Pants Day.

What? You thought that we all wore business suits every day?


Updated at 12:27 p.m., 7/10/09: Before anybody goes all serious on me and thinks that I think freelancers are really just laid-off job holders or underemployed professionals who accidentally fell into freelancing—as some people on e-mail lists apparently believe that I think by virtue of my having posted the above link—I will explain:

Hey ... I'm a freelancer myself. No, I don't like it when people equate freelance with unemployed or underemployed. I consciously made the decision to freelance full time 14 years ago and am most often overbooked. I'm not moping around for lack of work.

But I had to laugh when I saw the post at the above link. I have lately been guilty of working while wearing a deep-purple nightshirt and fake leopard-skin slippers.

I sit down, still wearing my nightshirt, to eat breakfast but then get caught up in reading and answering the morning's e-mail and essential blog posts and tweets. I progress to doing project estimates or invoices, having finished my breakfast, but notice I'm still wearing my nightshirt. I intend to go get dressed for the day. I get back into the estimates, answer more e-mail messages, and begin doing "just a little" editing. Two hours later, I look down and notice that I'm still in my nightshirt. Work is just so engrossing that lately, taking time out to get dressed first thing in the morning seems like a time-waster. ;-)

By the way, it's now after midnight and I'm dressed in a T-shirt and shorts ... yet I'm still rebelliously wearing those fake leopard-skin slippers from yesterday morning.


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Marketing Tips for Freelancers

These are the marketing tips for freelancers that I posted to Twitter throughout May and June 2009. Please keep in mind that each one, including labels and hashtags (keywords) that don't appear here, had to be 140 characters and spaces or fewer to fit Twitter's limits on the length of individual tweets. I have not rewritten them here; they appear in the same telegraphic speech that I used on Twitter to meet those limits. When I wrote them, I had generalist freelance copyeditors in mind, but I believe that most of them will work for freelancers of any kind. Use them and prosper:

• Network. Join and participate in professional associations and e-mail lists.
• Post résumé everywhere you can, such as the EFA'S directory: http://bit.ly/2xJ9Pwk. [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• Hand out business cards absolutely everywhere. You never know who'll need your services.
• Be helpful to colleagues. It's fun and can also get you referrals from grateful associates.
• Maintain a professional-looking Web site. It's your calling card on the Internet.
• Keep in contact w/ clients. The one whom clients remember is the one who gets the gigs.
• Advertise judiciously. I'm med editor and have ad on CSE site; https://tinyurl.com/mu56ef67.
• Send small thank-you gifts to clients so they have something tactile to remember you by.
• Put your name and contact info on everything: mss., style sheets, invoices, e-mails ...
• Always be on lookout for new clients: mentioned on e-mail lists, in news, online ...
• During both feast and; famine, schedule time each week to contact potential clients.
• Approach clients—current and potential—from perspective of their needs, not yours.
• Buy "Getting Started as a Freelance Copyeditor": http://tinyurl.com/3cfww27.
• Use the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base: http://www.kokedit.com/ckb.php. [Note: This tip was updated April 29, 2012.]
• Read and use Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business: http://bit.ly/UopLvS. [Note: This tip was added August 27, 2014.]
• Buy audio recordings: getting started, http://bit.ly/2RTf3PS; medical editing, http://bit.ly/2khtIRA. [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• Don't look like an employee: Résumés for Freelancers; https://www.the-efa.org/booklets/. [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• What to Charge: Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants. https://amzn.to/2FRqj9b [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• Search online to learn who publishes materials you want to edit. E-mail those pubs.
• Find potential clients by looking thru ref work Literary Market Place at library.
• Improve marketability by honing your skills—learn from books: https://www.the-efa.org/booklets/. [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• Improve marketability by honing your skills—take classes: https://www.the-efa.org/education/. [Note: This tip was updated January 28, 2019.]
• Actively give and take on editing e-mail lists to build contacts: http://tinyurl.com/c2m66z4.
• Monitor publishing job listings; where there are jobs, there are freelance gigs.
• Publishing job listings to watch: http://url.ie/1pac and http://url.ie/8yax. [Note: This tip was updated September 2, 2016.]
  
• Set up a profile at LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/, and share your expertise.
• Use Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (formerly known as Twitter) to showcase your skills and what you're like to work with: http://tinyurl.com/2bqknek [Note: This tip was added here on August 18, 2011; it was not tweeted. In 2024, I no longer use X. Instead, I use Bluesky and Mastodon.]
• Contact former employers about the possibility of freelancing for them.
• See feature story on co. that’s doing well? Contact them re need for editors.
• Don't limit the hunt for clients to your geographic area. The Internet is your friend.
• Snail-mail small periodic newsletter to clients so they have tangible reminder of you.
• Snail-mail "Happy New Year" cards to your clients, thanking them for their business. Enclose biz cards.
• Don't wait till your current gig is done to look for more work; contact clients now.
• Keep up with clients as they move from job to job, and they'll take you with them.
• Do pro bono editing for a charity? Request a credit line in the published work.
• Newbie? Sign with temp agencies that handle editors. Gigs may lead to good contacts.
• Join networking groups and tell them what you do. Be an active member.
• Treat all clients with the utmost respect and expect the same in return.
• Make sure authors know you're on their side. Query respectfully and give compliments.
• Booked up and have to turn down a gig? Thank the client for the offer and check back soon.
• Referring a client to trusted colleague when you're booked up helps client and you.
• It's exciting to land new clients, but don't let old clients feel taken for granted.
• Ask what you can do for clients. Never: "Got work for me?" Focus on clients' needs.
• Notify clients about your upcoming vacation. Some will offer projects for afterward.
• Never complain about your clients on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, or e-mail lists.
• Seek work from an attitude of abundance. Desperation rarely attracts project offers.
• When clients praise your work, get written permission to quote them on your web site.
• You’re an independent contractor. Don't just accept "This is what we pay." Negotiate!
• Clear, frank communication during projects heads off problems and pleases clients.
• If you make a mistake, be professional: own up, apologize, fix it, move on.
• Get project parameters before accepting a project, so you can set an accurate fee.
• Put this in all your contracts: If project scope increases midway, your fee goes up.
• Specify payment terms in all of your contracts, for your protection and clients'.
• A client contract can consist of your e-mails to and from client regarding a project.
• If you want offered gig but you're booked, ask client if there's schedule wiggle room.
• Don't keep accepting projects from a client who hasn't paid your invoices on time.
• Clients fold and contacts leave. Ensure your income by cultivating multiple clients.
• Protect your income. Vet new clients—research their payment history with freelancers.
• It may be comfy w/ just 1 client, but IRS may call you an employee. Get more clients.
• Never assume; get client's approval on overall style points early in project.
• Secret to keeping clients? Always do your best work. Don't get lazy.
• Get off feast-or-famine roller coaster: spend time each week marketing your services.
• Thank colleagues for referrals w/ thank-you notes, small gifts, reciprocal referrals.
• "Businesslike" doesn't equal "humorless stiff." Be professional but be yourself.
• Avoid dry spells by having more than one project at a time, each in different stage.
• Remember—the author is the subject-matter expert; you're the editorial expert.

Can you think of additional tips? Let me know.

Definition

Summertime: when working parents must remember it's not really their children's life goal to slowly drive them mad.


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You Say "Copy Editor"; I Say "Copyeditor"

Here's your chance to weigh in on whether the term should be copy editor (two words), copy-editor, or copyeditor.



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Want Marketing Tips for Freelancers?

Hey, copyeditors and medical editors: want to see my marketing tips for freelancers here, as they appeared on Twitter in May and June? I'll repeat them in a single new post here if enough of you are interested. Let me know by commenting on this post.


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Can You Translate English to Gujarati?

Calling all of my readers from India! Do you or any of your family or friends speak both English and Gujarati?

I would like to know how to say "best wishes"—as the sign-off in an e-mail—to one of my clients who lives in Ahmedabad. I do that sort of thing as a very small way of letting my ESL (English as a second language) clients, from whatever nation, know that I appreciate their coming to me for editorial assistance. (I am a freelance medical copyeditor.) I know that they have already done a huge amount of work in writing their research papers in English; the least that I can do for them is to reach a little way toward them in their language.

I found an online forum about Gujarati in which one member posted that "Mari shubkman tamari sath che" translates as "My best wishes are with you." Is that correct, or should I say something else in my e-mail to my client?


Updated at 12:25 a.m., July 1, 2009: Thanks to a friend of a friend, I now have the Gujarati for "best wishes" (shubhechao), "How are you?" (Tamay kem cho?), and "Thank you" (Aabhar). What did we all do before the Internet?



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Lantus Insulin May Be Linked to Cancer

Just heard about this on Twitter, and it worries me, because I take Lantus (generic name: glargine) insulin as one of the medications for my newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes:

"Studies Show Diabetes Drug Might Have Cancer Link," says the headline of a story in the Wall Street Journal; the drug in question is Lantus. I couldn't read the full story because it's behind a subscription firewall; if you have a subscription, you should be able to read it. I found a version from the news service Reuters:

Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) said on Friday that new data on the safety of its blockbuster diabetes drug Lantus had not reached any definitive conclusions on a possible link to cancer.

The French drugmaker has been rocked in the past two days by a safety scare over Lantus, following rumours that a damaging analysis of the product's safety was shortly to be published in a major medical journal. Its stock fell 8 percent on Friday.

Sanofi said it had just been made aware of data associated with a retrospective follow-up of four patient registries but said no firm conclusions could be drawn on any possible causal link to the occurrence of malignancies.

It added that the authors of the study had also pointed this out.

"We consider that the results of these patient registries are not conclusive," Jean-Pierre Lehner, the company's chief medical officer, said in a statement. ...

And here's a story from Science Daily with more info on the science:

The risk of cancer possibly increases if patients with diabetes use the long-acting insulin analogue glargine instead of human insulin. The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), in collaboration with the "Wissenschaftliches Institut der AOK" (WIdO), the research institute of the German Local Health Care Fund, analysed the data of almost 130,000 patients with diabetes in Germany who had been treated with either human insulin or the insulin analogues lispro (trade name: Humalog), aspart (Novorapid) or glargine (Lantus) between January 2001 and June 2005.

The analysis has now been published together with further studies in the scientific journal Diabetologia.

The disturbing result is that malignancies were found more frequently in patients treated with glargine than in those prescribed a comparable dose of human insulin. "Our analysis does not provide absolute proof that glargine promotes cancer," says Peter T. Sawicki, IQWiG's Director and co-author of the study. "Our study does, however, arouse an urgent suspicion which should have consequences for the treatment of patients." ...

Ironically, when I viewed the page, there was a Lantus banner ad at the top.

Here are PDFs of the uncorrected author page proofs of soon-to-be-in-print studies that initially raised alarms, made freely available by the medical journal Diabetologia because lots of people are concerned about Lantus now:

• First study


• Second study


• Third study


• Fourth study

Two of the studies found a possible risk; the other two had inconclusive results.

If you take Lantus, please have a chat with your physician—as I plan to do with mine as soon as I can get an appointment—about the advisability of switching to another kind of injectable insulin. Do not stop taking Lantus without consulting your physician. Yes, I know, lots of substances are carcinogenic, but if you can avoid injecting a potential carcinogen into your body, that's probably a good thing.

By the way, because Sarnoff-Aventis is the maker of Lantus, its stocks' values are dropping because of the news.


Updated at 12:03 a.m., June 28, 2009: The Reuters story has been updated.


Updated at 11:13 p.m., June 28, 2009: Here is a very balanced discussion of the issues from a diabetes expert who has type 2 diabetes herself.


Updated at 8:45 a.m., June 29, 2009: Here is a Q&A from Reuters.


Updated at 5:11 p.m., June 29, 2009: And now, Sanofi weighs in, trying to make the Lantus studies out to be much ado about nothing.


Lantus glargine insulin cancer Sanofi-Aventis EditorMom

Trying to Buy Love

The online newsletter Inside Higher Ed is running a story, dated June 23, saying that the marketing department of textbook publisher Elsevier sent out e-mails to textbook authors offering $25 Amazon.com gift cards to anyone who would post a five-star (positive) review of a new Elsevier textbook to Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. Elsevier is now reportedly saying that the offer was "a poorly written e-mail" by "an overzealous employee" and that the company wants "unbiased, honest reviews."

Here's what the e-mail—sent to contributors to the textbook—said:

"Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels."

Overzealous employee. Uh-huh. This is the same company whose parent corporation, Reed Elsevier, used to host international weapons fairs in London, Abu Dhabi, various cities in Europe, Rio de Janeiro, and Taiwan that were attended by high-ranking military officials from all over the world ... until uproar in the medical research community convinced the corporation to drop the shows. Physicians, who are trained to save lives, didn't like knowing that their research articles were being published in medical journals produced by Elsevier, whose parent corporation was showcasing tools for taking lives.

This is also the same company whose marketing department produced fake medical journals to help Big Pharma sell more drugs.

It keeps getting harder to find honesty in this world.



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Freelancers Left High and Dry

Here's a sad New York Times story of publishing freelancers facing financial ruin because their clients have stopped paying:

A factory in New York has vanished. The door is locked and the lights are out. The phone rings and rings. No one answers. The promised checks are not in the mail, and a small army of workers, owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, scramble to pay the rent and buy groceries. ...

Mr. Baxter is one of about 50 unpaid freelance writers, editors, page designers and others who worked this year for Inkwell [Publishing Solutions] on textbooks that are to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which is owned by a holding company based in the Cayman Islands, and floats in oceans of debt.

"The explanation I have been given is that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt owes Inkwell money," Mr. Baxter said. More than 30 freelancers who were interviewed by phone or e-mail told the same story: Inkwell stopped paying them for work on textbooks, claiming that Houghton had stopped paying it. ...

What makes things worse is that in New York State, full-time freelancers are not entitled to unemployment compensation. We're at the mercy of the financial health of our clients. And we lose homes and health insurance just like people laid off by employers do, but we're not counted in the unemployment statistics. We're invisible.


Updated at 11:55 p.m., June 22, 2009: Someone who commented on the blog post here claims to have access to a memo that was distributed to all Houghton Mifflin Harcourt employees after the Times story appeared, saying that HMH did pay Inkwell and is asking the Times to print a correction. This may not be the end of the story.


Updated at 12:20 p.m., June 24, 2009: The original June 19 column in the Times now has a postscript, added today:

The About New York column on Sunday, about the closing of Inkwell Publishing Solutions, a book development company in Manhattan, reported that about 50 of its freelancers were still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work on textbooks commissioned by the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In an e-mail message to the freelancers, Inkwell's president blamed slow payments by Houghton, which did not respond to three requests for comment before the column was published. On Monday, a spokesman for Houghton said it had made the "vast majority" of its payments on time to Inkwell, with the final two checks it owed issued on May 8 and June 1. Inkwell ceased operations in mid-May.

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Goodies from the AMA Manual of Style

I just noticed a set of cool tools that's available with an online subscription to the AMA Manual of Style: quizzes (and answers) on AMA style for references, "correct and preferred usage," punctuation, and grammar.

Once you're a subscriber and logged in, look in the left-hand column for the "Learning Resources" link. And any subscribers who would like to use the quizzes in a classroom can click a link to e-mail a request for permission to photocopy and distribute the quizzes; the JAMA and the Archives journals say that they will not charge for such use.

Go here to subscribe.



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Oops! Sorry About the Fake Science

Hear about the recent uproar in the STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publishing community over the faux medical journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine commissioned by giant pharmaceutical Merck? Merck paid the Australian division of Elsevier to publish eight compilations of scientific articles in a format that looked like a peer-reviewed journal. The New York Times reported:

... The Merck-sponsored publication is among the evidence in the Australian trial in which the lead plaintiff in a class action suit alleges, among other things, that the company used misleading and deceptive marketing strategies in promoting Vioxx.

Nine of 29 articles in the second issue of the journal referred positively to Vioxx, and an additional 12 articles referred positively to another Merck drug, Fosamax, a bone treatment, Mr. Donovan said. ... [Donovan is an expert witness for the plaintiff.]

Elsevier issued a press release today saying that it is working on new guidelines for custom publications that it produces for pharmaceutical companies, so that they will be clearly identified as not being peer-reviewed medical journals.

So Merck's on trial. Will Elsevier ever be, for making money off a drug that it must have known has been reported to have killed people? I say they'll probably both get off scot-free. Once again, the consumer will pay.


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Why Americans Are Going Broke

Many Americans are just one major medical illness away from financial catastrophe.

A research team from Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine that 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies are caused by overwhelming medical bills ... and that more than 75% of families that declared bankruptcy because of medical bills had health insurance that provided insufficient coverage.

The researchers said that the proposed changes to the health-insurance system that are being considered "are unlikely to help many Americans" and urged converting to a single-payer system. I agree; our current system is well past broken.



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Vanishing into the Amnestic Sphere

I've always been unable to explain very well why I don't retain much of what I read on the job. But my editor colleague Elaine breaks it down perfectly:

"People often comment to me that I must learn a lot from all the different material I copyedit. It's hard to explain that the mind in 'copyediting' mode works differently from the one in 'learning' or 'reading for pleasure' mode—you just don't retain much meaning or knowledge when you're thinking in the 'small' terms of details of spelling, usage, punctuation, and so forth. There's no time for the kind of rehearsal and deep reading that leads to retention. (Unfortunately, I've done a lot of really interesting books that have completely vanished into the amnestic sphere.)"

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What Some Clients Try to Do to Freelancers

Here's a short video on what some clients try to do to freelancers in today's economy:




Learn how (here and here) to keep this from happening to you.


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Inventive Terminology

For the last few days, colleagues on an editing-related e-mail discussion list have been posting about words and phrases that they dislike. Most of those either are overused or add no information to sentences that contain them.

But one colleague reported reading online that someone has an aversion to the word nostril.

Every time I see that word, I want to laugh: I remember how one of my precocious sons, lying in his bed and unable to sleep because of nasal congestion, phrased his complaint about the stuffiness. He didn't use the word nostril, because at 2 years of age, he wasn't yet aware of its existence. My husband and I, trying to sleep in the next room, heard him mutter:

Stupid one-hole nose-breather!

We had to stifle our snickers so he wouldn't know we were listening.

That 2-year-old is now a 14-year-old high school freshman, by the way.



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Wiggling Back to Attention

On editing-related e-mail lists I subscribe to, some listmates have often recommended sitting on an exercise ball, rather than a desk chair or computer chair, while working, to help with back problems and strengthen core body muscles.

I just read about another reason for using a ball as a chair that might help some of you: The print version of the summer issue of ADDitude magazine, a publication that focuses on living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), notes that working while sitting on a ball aids concentration. Lots of people with AD/HD have found that sometimes fidgeting and wiggling can help refocus wandering attention. Maintaining a seat on a ball would definitely entail some wiggling. Even for those who don't have AD/HD, I can imagine that wiggling on a ball could help them get through really boring projects with their eyes still open. ;-)


Updated 12:50 a.m., 5/20/09: Here's a study (or here; requires payment for access to the full article) showing that allowing children with AD/HD to wiggle in their seats (with the aid of a special cusion) helps them focus better in the classroom.



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Results of Spring Showers

Here are some shots of the flowers in my yard, for your enjoyment. They were taken by Neil, my 14-year-old son. Top left are blooms from our Mother's Day azalea, and next to it is a flower from a regular old azalea. Kathy F., this one's for you: Underneath are some lovely wisteria racemes.



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A Perfect Afternoon

Ever have one of those perfect afternoons?

I'm having one now. My two sons are home after school, and because it's Friday, they have no homework. It's 72 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny outside with a light breeze, everything is green, I'm editing an easy article for a medical journal, and oh my God spring smells so damn fine!

A little while ago, 14-year-old Neil was out in front of our house playing basketball with some other neighborhood high school guys, and for just one moment, I had a flash vision of him in the near future—he's going to be a really hunky guy. And as my husband, Ed, says, "He's not nerdy either, the way I was until adulthood." (I always did have a soft spot for cute nerdy guys.)

The windows are open, the fans are blowing, 7-year-old Jared has cartoons on the TV. The only thing that could make this moment any better would be for Ed to get done very, very early tonight with his second job.

No, I have not been snatched away by aliens and replaced with a happy robot. Why do you ask?


Updated at 5:45 p.m.: Neil just started mowing our lawn without being prodded to do so. I just may have to faint in delighted amazement.



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Geekish Excitement

Let the massive confetti shower begin!

Annual subscriptions to the new searchable online version of the 10th edition of the AMA Manual of Style are now available!

You don't know what the excitement's about? Then you must not be a medical copyeditor who's been wishing only for forever that the style bible of medical editing would be made available online. No more fruitless searches through the hard-copy index!



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