Editing -- pay, contracts, etc.

Hey Sozobe,

Though I've never been comissioned "under the table" to edit (damn, I could use 15/hr), I have friends in the creative writing program here who have done such work and seemed to enjoy it. My own stuff is thus far limited to literary mags (working on a book), and my focus is on the short story, so I have never personally hired a line-editor.

Intuition tells me a contract would be a wise move. And I think the contract should outline a particular pay period. What I mean is, if you say that you excpect a certain amount after, I don't know, 20 hours of work (or halfway through the novel or book you're editing), you'll have the opporunity to see whether or not this person is legit without having completely slaved on his honor.

Do we have any A2K lawyers?

congrats, sounds like a good gig

Thanks, Gargamel! Pay period, very good point.

I think I'm going to see if I can find some sample contracts online...

Hi Soz, I'm a professional editor, and I've shied away from working for individuals for the reasons you've expressed here.

I would most definitely get something in writing. An agreement of what you'll be doing and what you'll be paid.

In my experience only very large projects that extend over a fair amount of time warrant partial payment agreements. However, if you feel more comfortable asking for partial payments, by all means, do so.

In theory the person doing the hiring should create the agreement. You could ask for one. However, I see no reason why you couldn't draft something and present it to him.

Good luck.

Yay, it's Roberta too!

Are you saying that usually the payment is made per project? Like, $250 for this, ready within two weeks, but nothing in particular about how much per hour?

This is to be an ongoing thing -- he writes an article, I help him with it until it's finished, he writes another, etc. I'm happy with per hour for that.

One last question, does "in writing" need to be on paper, or is email sufficient? How official do I need to be? Like, write something up, print two copies, sign them, send to him to sign both -- keep one, send the other to me?

This looks like a good sample:

June 19, 1998 Dear Ms. Shakespeare: According to our phone conversation today, I have agreed to copyedit your novel in manuscript form. In your estimation, the manuscript requires correction of spelling, grammar, syntax, and other mechanical problems, not major reorganizing or rewriting. As we discussed, my fee for this job is $25 per hour. As I explained, I'm accustomed to working through the mail and maintain a home office; we can confer by phone when necessary. If you wish, we can also meet in person, but neither of us currently anticipates a need to do so. We have agreed that a sample editing of 10 to 20 pages will help us both evaluate the whole job. Assuming delivery of the manuscript on the morning of June 19, I would expect to complete the sample editing by Friday, June 21. I will return the 10- to 20-page sample via certified mail (postage expenses to be itemized on my first invoice) and can expect to hear from you by the following Wednesday. Because I will be reserving time during the following week, I will need to know by Wednesday, June 26, whether you intend to proceed. At that time, should either of us decide not to continue with the project, we have agreed that I will be paid for the work done on the sample, not to exceed ten hours, and for any related expenses. If you decide not to engage my services but inform me of your decision after June 26, I will be paid a cancellation fee of $300. My preliminary estimate of the total time needed to complete the job is about two weeks after the sample is approved. My estimate, however, is based on the stated length of 450+ manuscript pages and the complexity of the work involved. If, upon review, the job appears to require more time to complete, I will contact you immediately, so that we can reevaluate the project's requirements. Should you decide to terminate the project before its completion, we have agreed that I will be paid in full for all the time I have spent on it up to that point, together with a cancellation fee of $300, and will return all materials, including edited manuscript, to you immediately. I will send you an invoice at the end of each week. My bills will include all time spent in actual editing, together with time spent in conference and in tasks directly related to the job. I will also include related expenses, such as those for postage and photocopying. I don't foresee any other expenses associated with this project and will inform you right away if I encounter any. As we agreed, invoices are payable within 15 days. My usual practice is to apply interest if payment is not made within 30 days, at an interest rate of 1.5 percent per month or partial month, including the month following the invoice date. No interest is due if payment is made by the fifteenth day. Should you decide after the job is completed that you would like the manuscript to undergo a second stage of editing, that work will be the subject of a separate agreement. If this arrangement is acceptable to you, please sign below, keep a copy for yourself, and return this copy to me. I've enjoyed reading your brother's plays, and I look forward to working with you on the book. Sincerely, Frances Bacon Understood and Agreed: ___________________________ (Judith Shakespeare) ___________________________ (Date)

http://www.the-efa.org/Codeaa.html

Hi Soz,

Your example looks fine. It's tailored to a specific project. You might want to consider something more generic so that you don't have to create a separate agreement every time he sends you something new.

I do contract work for organizations and individuals. The organizations always want a formal agreement because they need to make sure I sign a confidentiality agreement and we've agreed to payment terms. The individuals aren't that formal and usually will agree to whatever billing terms I suggest. I don't have time to send out invoices every week or even every other week so I tell them I'll send an invoice at the beginning of each month for the previous month's work at the agreed upon rate, payable within 30 days.

I've been doing this for 13 years and I've never had any major problems. Maybe I've just been lucky. Make sure you don't put any obligations in your agreement that require you to jump through hoops and don't allow you for any vacation time. If you say you'll return 'whatever' within 15 days and it arrives the day before you're leaving town for two weeks, you're screwed.

Oh, I don't plan to use that one word-for-word, just a model. I've made some adjustments to it already, I think it's coming along.

I like the once-a-month invoice, makes sense. I found that my edition of Word has invoice templates, so that should be simple enough.

My plan right now is to make a fairly simple contract (based on the one above but simpler and more general, with some elements from others), and email it to him saying, "Based on what we've talked about so far, this is the contract I've put together. What do you think?" Then more about happy to make adjustments, etc. Then once we've agreed to the content of it via email, send him two paper copies, both signed by me, one for him to keep and one for him to sign and send back.

Sound OK?

Good point about vacation time, thanks.

I don't have any advice. I just stopped in the say congratulations and I hope it works out well.

As a landscape architect working in a firm, by myself, and with a business partner, I've had quite a range of contracts with my name on them.

My long time mentor used a very simple max two page contract with the second page full of things like contract can be cancelled by either party with seven days notice - a sentence I still don't understand - but luckily it never happened in a couple of hundred projects I was involved in.

I put his contract into my own words, leaving that bit out I didn't understand, when I had my own small practice in LA. When I partnered up here in north north, my business partner (who has been a successful-in- westside-LA landscape contractor/designer) had clear ideas for a succinct one page contract.

Both she and my earlier boss built their businesses out of design performance and to some extent personal presence, and had very few trouble spots re lawsuit time over long years. Clients are comfortable with that.

Alternately, we are taught to have fairly elaborate contracts, and specifications to drawings, and while this is very useful once we're engaged, it can be a real bummer when presenting a proposal & agreement to a regular residential client. Potential clients shiver. The more complicated specifications to drawings, dozens to hundreds of pages - chill residential contractors.

Thus my associates' experience brought the contracts down to the one or two page agreement.

We had to have errors and omissions insurance for a highway project a couple of years ago (we still owe on that insurance via Visa) and that project involved a real lollapaloosa of a contract. Since we were insured and advised to use such a contract, we had our next serious residential client agree to one of those too. Poor woman. I dunno, at least ten pages. Luckily we've done the project (for a thoughtful beautiful house floating in a meadow by a river, but with a drainage problem) and she is completely happy a few years later (and last year had extravagant rains... she lives in one of the highest rain areas in the country.)

We got over it. Too much bugwash. We've been back down to the smaller agreement but slightly expanded - sort of a happy medium - for a couple of years now, with no repercussions.

On the editing job, my own qualm would be that I probably would want to rewrite the piece, which is not, I gather, the purview. Having been married to a guy who was always rethinking scripts I can hardly help that kind of mental jumping.

So that brings up, what if one gets in to actually helping someone to write?
Do you stop yourself from doing that? or not? and then what. Well, whatever, that isn't appropo to think about re this task - except that there was a paragraph in your model that did say or imply you wouldn't go there.
I suppose there are editorial practices on that. It would be hard to shut up, though....

Actually it's exactly that, helping him to write. I just gave my impressions the sample he gave, and I guess that's what he liked. Things like, "This is a hoary subject and hard to put a fresh spin on it, but I think that if you emphasize..." And restructuring the first paragraph -- his own words, mostly, but in a different order, and holding back one thing to use for the ending. He says that's what he wants, plus more mundane typo kinds of things.

That's one of the first things I changed, from the model to:

As per our email exchanges, I have agreed to provide writing help on your articles, including correction of spelling, grammar, syntax, and other mechanical problems, as well as assistance with reorganizing and rewriting. As we discussed, my fee for this job is $15 per hour. As I explained, I'm accustomed to working via email and maintain a home office.

(I still have a ways to go.)

I used to edit grad students' papers for $1/page years ago. It was a very casual arrangement, of course. Made hundreds of bucks, and could have done more. I was limited as I was working more than full time at my other job at the time.

Anyway, just chiming in to say that the writer might be reassured by a confidentiality clause as J_B mentioned above. That you won't reprint, post, or publish any part of his work, or some such.

And congratulations!

Soz, I'd advise you to order a copy of "Writers Guide" right away. You can probably get it from amazon.com. Not only will it give you pricing guidelines, but also sample forms, general ethics, etc. "Writers Guide" has been the standard for years. I use it often.

The contract seems complete. In fact it's far more complete than anything I've ever seen from a publisher. Better safe than sorry, I guess.

I'm not an expert on contracts, but I am on editing. I know it's just a sample, but two weeks to edit 450 pages is outrageous. Who can edit 225 pages a week?

Reorganizing and rewriting are different (and higher) levels of editing than correction of spelling, grammar, syntax, and other mechanical problems. (One is developmental; the other is copy editing.)I'd consider doing the latter for $15 an hour but not the former.

You asked if I charge per project or by the hour. I much prefer a per project fee. I find that being paid by the hour penalizes quickness. However, I do both--whatever is offered to me. From what you've described, an hourly rate seems reasonable.

How goes the new job, Soz?

Hi there J_B, nice of you to ask!

This one is sporadic, the guy made that clear from the outset -- worked intensively for a while, he was thrilled with it, called that one finished, no new one yet. But in the meantime I got another job that is much more steady, (at least it will be for a while), editing content that will end up on the web. With Roberta's advice in mind, I negotiated for a per-assignment rate rather than the per-hour rate they offered, so I get $9 a report with an expectation of getting it done in about 45 minutes (vs. $12/ hour), but if I get it down to 23 minutes each or so that works out to $18/ hour.

Plus I am interrupted constantly (coff -sozlet- coff) and it's much easier to just do the assignment until it's done rather than thinking, "OK, I started this at about 2:00 and the 'must have food NOW' crisis took about 15 minutes and now it's 2:30 so I guess I worked for 15 minutes so far..."

Oh and I just got another offer, another web content one, this one is $15/ hour. (Reminds me, gotta respond to that -- I guess things are looking up when I almost forget about a job offer, eh?)

Glad to hear it's all working out and you're enjoying what you're doing.