EFA Booklets

If you want freedom, flexibility to express personal style, more time for your family, interests and hobbies, more variety and more control; and, you have self-discipline, a strong work ethic, good interpersonal skills, appropriate assertiveness, situational awareness, and don't mind working home alone, you may be ready to launch your business as an editorial freelancer. Being an editorial freelancer takes a variety of professional abilities, personal attributes, and business skills. You will find the essentials for developing all of these in this booklet; as well as, definitions of the types of editorial freelancing, lists of skills, tools, resources, and pros and cons of freelancing. This booklet answers the most common questions asked by editors considering the freelance life: How to get started-choosing a business name, type of business entity and accounting system, basics for marketing the new freelance business, find clients and assignments, how to identify possible fraud, how much to charge, and how to get paid. The authors share practical skills such as what language to include in service agreements and how to send invoices and collect payments. Written by two experienced editorial freelance professionals at different places in their careers, the revised edition of Freelancing 101 includes expanded information about finding work through job placement and freelance websites, marketing freelance businesses and finding work using LinkedIn and social media, and details about SaaS tools that automate some of the tasks of running a freelance business.

Writing nonfiction for children takes skill with research as well as with writing. The facts and the research supporting children's nonfiction must hold up under intense scrutiny. Sometimes called "kidlit," today's successful children's nonfiction is engaging and enticing and supported by the most credible source material available. Today's successful children's nonfiction authors must believe that facts matter, embrace the crucial role that research plays, know the difference between cursory and quality research, model good research practices for young readers, tap into the joy of chasing new knowledge and in sharing it with others, and bring all of these things to bear on each new book.Just the Facts: On Researching Your Nonfiction Children's Book walks a writer-researcher through the steps from pre-planning a subject, to determining the format, to establishing the scope, to embarking on the research-writing-research-writing cycle.The booklet contains a sample project plan, outlining in great detail the process the author uses once committed to a new nonfiction children's book idea, from brainstorming, to note-taking, organizing your workspace, sketching out the plan, identifying and collecting source material, creating a writing schedule, stepping away, revising, and when to call it done.Owens recommends tools such as Google Bookmarks, Twitter bookmarks, private YouTube playlists, and Scrivener's research-collection feature to capture online sources for review.Topics include: How to find valuable sources and get access to them. How to select and validate secondary sources. Best practice for testing facts, including the rule-of-three, a rule adhered to by most publishers. Helpful lists of sources, mentor texts, and other resources included.

For editors of content for print, digital, and the internet, this booklet teaches six steps to easily customize a style guide for published content. A publishing house, journalism outlet, corporation, sole proprietor, or the like, wanting to assure consistency in their brand and writerly voice, maintains a house style guide reflecting their official grammatical, mechanical, usage, and design preferences for the writing they produce. A consistent house style is a kind of contract with the reader, designed with them in mind. There are a handful of common style guides designed to suit the fields in which they are used. The author of this booklet, Robin Martin, has eleven years' experience customizing style guides as a freelancer and as the managing editor of a literary magazine. One of her projects was as a volunteer at the EFA, collaborating with other stakeholders to generate a house style for the organization. She has taught MLA, AP, and CMOS styles to students, and worked with each of these style guides online as well as in print. Rules of grammar and usage may be prescriptive or descriptive, and there are differences among reference books, dictionaries, and other respectable sources. The intention of this booklet is not to elevate one over another or to suggest an open disregard to established guides, rather it is to recommend approaching style with an open mind. The author presumes not only the freedom to customize, but the obligation to customize with the needs of the rhetorical situation at the forefront. A handful of core best practices carry over from one project to the next and make customization of style guides quite simple. This booklet for copyeditors sets out and delves into six steps to easily customize a style guide for a client's content. Step one is establishing the rhetorical situation, step two is identifying and mapping patterns, step three is querying the author of the work, step four is structuring and formatting the guide, step five is applying the style to the work, step six is adjusting and refining the style guide. A style guide should be seen as a living, breathing, document that ensures intention and consistency throughout the entirety of a client's content.

Copyright can often be a perplexing topic, but not understanding it well can land you in legal hot water. Copyright and Permissions: What Every Writer and Editor Should Know gives you the practical knowledge you need, what copyright is, how it works, its role in the digital landscape, and walks you through the permissions process, offering useful samples and step-by-step advice for finding work as a permissions editor. While debunking common misconceptions about copyright, author Elsa Peterson lucidly explains how copyright is established, how long it lasts, and what type of material is eligible. You'll learn the meaning and scope of public domain and ways to navigate the murky parameters of fair use. You'll also grasp how the concept of copyright has shifted in the age of digital communication and the ramifications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other legislation that addressed the novel issues created by evolving technologies. Email, texting, social media, and other avenues of online sharing have made it more difficult to control copyright infringement. This book provides concrete examples of the scenarios editors may confront when they seek permission to use material from these sources, as well as from digital collaboration projects and open-access initiatives like Creative Commons. Along with a solid grounding in copyright principles, you'll get a detailed introduction to the permissions editing process and learn how to: • Examine a manuscript to identify all the material that requires permission • Create and use a permissions database or log • Contact a copyright holder and submit a permission request letter • Prepare acknowledgments and negotiate fees And, you'll discover the types of organizations that hire freelance permissions editors and strategies for getting your foot in the door.

This booklet describes the difference between the content and style of a traditional resumé and the functional resumé, which the authors recommend for freelancers seeking work. A skills-based resumé is a more effective strategy for freelance editorial professionals because potential clients can identify at a glance whether the freelancer has the skills required for the job. For serious freelancers committed to self-employment in the communications and publishing industries, the traditional resumé is fundamentally flawed. It doesn't accommodate the variety of projects an experienced editorial professional may have worked on as a freelancer. If their last full-time job was years ago, the reverse chronological approach makes it look like they've been unemployed since then. More importantly, a traditional resumé doesn't tell a potential client whether the freelancer can do the job. Managing editors looking for proofreaders, for instance, don't really care about previous job titles or where an applicant went to college. They want to know that they'll do a good, fast, accurate job on schedule and on budget-in other words, that they'll be a reliable professional. One of the best ways to present oneself as a freelance editorial professional worth hiring is with a functional resumé. This type of resumé focuses on a freelancer's skills, abilities, and accomplishments, though it may mention previous job experience and educational attainments. For a self-employed editorial professional who wants to get freelance work, a functional resumé extracts valuable skills hidden in the traditional resumé and highlights them to emphasize writing and editorial skills for specific clients. To create a solid functional resumé, rethink the old chronological resumé. Look at the skills used in all prior jobs, including those outside publishing. Skills developed through volunteer work also count. The authors have provided four sets of before/after resumés to assist the reader's understanding of the differences between the two and to envision how the functional resumé might work for them as they pursue self-employment or work on marketing their small business. In addition to explaining the benefits of the functional resumé, this booklet discusses elements of resumé design that take into account artificial intelligence screening as well as human foibles that might affect a job offer. The authors also describe ways to supplement your resumé, leverage LinkedIn effectively, target your job search, build your network, and protect yourself against scammers.

Editors working with writers of color, nonwhite writers, or simply writers hailing from a different cultural background and experience from their own have for too long dictated editorial changes that have silenced the voice of the writers. Respectful Querying with NUANCE presents a blueprint for editors that allows editors to continue to offer the guidance necessary to polish a manuscript, and also, helps the editor respect the authorial voice and ensure that the final decisions regarding the manuscript lie with the author. Each letter in NUANCE is a reminder of what the editor should keep in mind: N-Notice; U-Underscore; A-Accept; N-Narrow; C-Consult; E-Empower. Editors should be, able to use the framework to construct thoughtful queries that allow the editor to assist rather than obstruct. Over time, editing and querying with NUANCE will sharpen an editor's thought processes and become a useful tool for working on fiction and nonfiction manuscripts. When it comes to comma usage or incorrect tenses, a good editor will notice, when something is off. For the mechanics and grammar of Standard American English, a good editor has got it covered. A more experienced editor may see some rules being broken and decide that it is okay because it makes sense for the context. This predictability of what to expect with language is largely a result of what an editor was, taught as an editor, a writer, or a reader. Any editor should ask themselves questions, when editing something that is outside of their cultural experiences or just requires knowledge that the editor may not have. They have to be able to identify why something doesn't make sense or seems wrong to them. Without pre-programmed knowledge or specific backgrounds and expertise-an editor may not know what is truly going on in the context and accepting this is crucial to working with diverse writers. Getting clear on what they think needs addressing is the first step toward being able to offer guidance to the author. Then it's time to prepare a query to the author. This book guides this entire process.

Assuring successful author/editor collaborations depends on meeting expectations regarding process, changes, money, contracts, deadlines, communications and trust. This EFA Booklet, written for both freelance editors and writers who plan to hire an editor, highlights how to set up transparent expectations so they can be met by both parties in the relationship. The collaboration between the author and editor should be rewarding, and if handled properly, will continue through the years as the author grows in their own experience. Establishing a successful relationship between the author and the editor depends on transparency between both parties. And, what does "transparency" mean? Both parties should ask the questions that will affect their relationship, and the answers should be clear and concise. An author should have some idea of what questions to ask when they approach an editor. They should ask pertinent questions about how the writer's work will be, handled by the editor and what they will get back at the end of the process (the deliverables). When hiring a freelance editor, a writer can help negotiation get off on the right foot by attending to the following: Defining your goals for the project; Taking stock of where you are in the creative/publishing process; Researching the market for independent editorial services; Determining a rough budget for your project.