Article
March 17, 2019
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by Stephen

Mindful Communication with Clients

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

I do not check email in the morning.

Depending on the day, I either first check around 12:30 pm or 1:30 pm and respond to what I can within half an hour, though I often don’t need that much time. I then check again around 5 or 5:30 pm, though I have to admit that as the afternoon wears on, it can get harder and harder not to check in the interim. Especially if I am expecting a reply from someone. 

This is a new practice I have been cultivating over the last couple of months. The purpose is to spend the hours reserved for work actually focused on my work, instead of being distracted by emails that may or may not (mostly not, in my experience) need an immediate reply. So far this has been a positive experience. If clients have noticed, they have yet to comment or complain. The biggest change has been in myself.

I had previously noticed, when I would check email first thing in the morning and then continue to check every hour or couple of hours, that my motivation for checking email was often a mixture of boredom and anxiety. I would feel bored with my task and the prospect of a shiny new email was enticing. I would feel anxious about my task or about something coming up in the future and checking email was a way to avoid the anxiety. More often than not, my inbox would be empty or only contain junk mail or other messages that could be easily left for later, and so I would have to return to my task, only this time with my attention fractured. It would then take additional time to get back into the task, which meant I would often accomplish less in the day than I wanted, which often led to more anxiety. The more I checked, the more fractured my attention seemed to get and the harder it would be to return to my work. While email is still my preferred form of communication (my phone is usually on vibrate and out of sight in my bag), I came to realize that the way I was using email was not actually helping me, either with my work or with my mental health.

Nowadays, I can still get bored or anxious with a specific task. I am still tempted to check email as a temporary balm. These are separate issues not directly tied to email. I also find that I am often much happier in the mornings because I have the time to myself and I can focus without fear of being interrupted. Afternoons can be more difficult, in part from simply getting tired as the day wears on, but if I can stick to my email schedule and temporarily forget again that email exists, the afternoon can also be quite focused and productive. While I still need to find ways to manage anxiety and boredom, at least I am not escalating those issues through mindless email checking. 

But what about responding to clients in a timely manner? What about missing out on possibly work opportunities? In talking to other freelancers, this seems a common concern. I have heard some say that they try to reply to emails within five minutes of receipt. If that was me, I do not think I would get any work done, as for me focus seems to be all or nothing. And so I want to push back a bit on this expectation of instant communication.

Most of my work comes from repeat clients and I have found that they are usually willing to wait a few hours for a response. I still try to reply within the same day. I do get some queries from new clients, some of whom I know are contacting multiple freelancers at once. I probably have lost some work from these people due to a slower response, and I am okay with that. These account for a small percentage of my work, and for me the improved focus, productivity, and sense of well being outweighs the lost projects.

I have also realized that I don’t actually get very many emails in a day that require an immediate, or any, response. Most emails I receive are newsletters, notifications, or from listservs, all of which may have some value but are hardly critical. I am not adding value to my day by frequently checking these types of emails. 

It has also been important for me to realize that my work is valuable and deserves to be protected. This is both for my own sake, so that I can complete projects on time with less stress, and also for my clients, because I think that my work is better if I am less distracted. This is understanding that communication is a tool in service of the work rather than the work itself. 

I realize, of course, that my email schedule will not work for everyone. New freelancers, especially, who are trying to book every project they can, may want to check more frequently. But even with more frequent checking, I think it is possible to be more mindful about how we communicate and how communication impacts and intersects with the rest of our work. Perhaps less and higher quality communication will actually help us serve our clients better, as well as keep ourselves more focused and engaged in what we do. 

Article
May 7, 2018
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by Stephen

The Value of a Diverse Client Base

One of the most daunting questions to face a new indexer is, where does the work come from? How do I land my first client? That experienced indexer over there has lots of work and it looks like they don’t even market. How does that happen?

I will write about marketing next week (I promise). Suffice to say for now that it is possible to get to a point where marketing can take a back seat, though I think one should always keep an eye out for new opportunities. The publishing scene is too dynamic to become complacent. 

Instead, today I want to write about the value of building a diverse client base. Marketing will certainly help you gain clients, but I believe that long-term sustainability as a freelancer comes from gaining and retaining at least a handful of regular clients. You don’t want to have only one or two clients, no matter how much work they provide, nor do you want to have a revolving door of clients who never contact you again. 

Why is this so? I have observed three reasons, from my own experience and from talking to other freelancers.

  1. Your mix of clients will change over time. Even if you are the world’s best indexer, your clients will change over time. Having one or two clients that provide all the work you need may be awesome in the short term, and it will also be disastrous should that client suddenly disappear. Changes in your client base is not a reflection of you. Instead, it is the reality of a changing publishing scene. In the last few years, I’ve had my very first client shut down and absorbed by a larger press. Another university press, which for a while was providing me with a fair chunk of my work, was downsized by its university as a cost-saving measure. An editor at a third press, who also provided me with a lot of work over a couple of years, decided to herself freelance. I still get the occasional project from the new editor, but nowhere near the volume of work I used to get. If any one of these had been my only or primary client, my schedule and income would have taken a major hit. As it was, though I was sad to lose those books and contacts, work from other clients filled in the gaps. I currently have about a dozen clients who regularly or occasionally send me work, and somehow it all balances out. 
  2. Because many potential clients are small. I live and work in Canada, and as author Eve Silver once told me, in a workshop, there are no big publishers in Canada. Not like there are big publishers in New York or London. I used to worry about this, thinking that I needed to find an in with the big name publishers so that I would have a guaranteed stream of work, or so that I could index New York Times bestsellers. I don’t worry about that anymore. Someone has to index those books, and if that person is you, congratulations! But still, as mentioned above, I would caution about relying too much on a single big publisher for work. I also want to suggest that if you are in a market full of small to mid-sized publishers, it is still possible to build a business. Most of my clients only send me a handful of books per year, because that is all they produce, but several handfuls add up quickly. If this is the kind of market you find yourself in, work with it. 
  3. So you don’t have to work on the same thing all the time. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy variety in my work. If my brain is getting tired wrestling with a scholarly text, a light trade book can be refreshing. If I am getting tired of economics, indexing a book about nature is a nice change of pace. This reason is more about personal enjoyment than the realities of publishing, but still, you will probably be more successful if you are enjoying your work. You may not always get work from the clients you want, but you should certainly pursue work that you will enjoy.

What I have written here assumes that your clients will mostly be publishers, book packagers, or other organizations. These are clients who can send you regular, repeat work. An alternative approach is to work primarily with individual authors, who can recommend you to their friends and colleagues, which is another way to build your client base and get additional work. A downside with authors is that they often have long gaps between projects, so you will probably have to wait at least a year before an author hires you again. This is why I have chosen to focus on developing relationships with publishers, who can either hire me directly or recommend me to their authors. But both approaches are possible and can lead to full-time work.

You may be wondering at this point, how am I going to get five or ten clients if I don’t even have one? Having to market is daunting enough. Now I have to up my goal for the number of clients I need? Well, yes and no. Keep working on finding that first client. Don’t worry about finding others for now. And when you get hired for that first job, celebrate and then get to work. Just keep it in the back of your mind that long-term one client will not be enough. You will want to find more. In my first few years as a freelancer, it was my goal to add each year at least one new regular client. Often I would end up with two or three new clients, and some years, as I mentioned, I would also lose a client or two. Building a diverse client base takes time. It is also well worth the investment.

The Freelance Career Launch Series is a set of posts about how to start your freelance career. The focus will be on indexing, because that is what I do, but the principles are universal. 

Article
April 2, 2018
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by Stephen

Readable Invoice Templates

Who wants a snazzy invoice?

I do. I like the idea of reflecting a small part of myself in a document that is otherwise so impersonal. I also like the idea of making business, including invoices, fun. There is a part of me that has always chafed at formality.   

I was therefore pleased to learn, when I first got the invoicing program that I use, Billings, that it came with pre-designed templates. I chose one with a clean design that matched my minimalist tastes. I thought it was both professional and had a certain light quality, with blue and grayscale lettering.

All seemed (mostly) wonderful until a few month ago, when I received an email from a long-time client. Their finance person was having trouble reading my invoices. The font was too small. A PDF of my invoice—as they saw it—was helpfully attached.

I was shocked at what I saw. It looked like my invoice had been printed out, written on, and then either photocopied and/or scanned back into a digital format. The greyscale and blue lettering had not transitioned well, and what remained was fuzzy. Even I could not read portions of the invoice.

No kidding, the font was too small.

To make this worse, I heard something similar from another client a few months earlier. Again, their finance department was having trouble reading my invoice, specifically my address. Though the editor I work with at that publisher is fantastic, I had had payment issues with them for a few years, so I have to admit that I was not the most sympathetic for their finance department. Yes, I want them to get my address correct, but to redesign my whole invoice? Really? I found a workaround by re-writing my address in the comments section, in a large, black font, and that seemed to work for them. When I received this second complaint, it finally hit me–maybe the reason for the payment issues was because they could not read my invoices either.

I felt guilty and embarrassed. How many other clients had been struggling to read my invoices? I assumed that my invoices stayed in their digital format, as a PDF, but clearly that is not always the case. I also should have taken the first complaint much more seriously, and tried to understand why their finance department was having trouble. 

I also needed to redesign my invoice.

Looking through the templates in Billings showed that they all incorporate colour or greyscale, and they all use a small font size. I tried to modify the template I was using, but increasing the font size caused the text to bunch together, which still made for difficult reading. In the end, I modified a different template. This is now strictly black and white, has large font, and has a spread-out design, so the text does not bunch. I also avoided any sort of background design behind the text, so that the text and the background do not blend.

The template is not as snazzy, but so far there have been no complaints, and payment problems with that one client seem to have stopped. Lesson learned that while fun and personalization have their place—I still think—functionality is also important. It is a problem if my clients cannot access the information that I am trying to send them.

What business practices have you had to change based on feedback from clients? How did you deal with them?

Article
November 15, 2015
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by Stephen

Wither Pacific Educational Press?

I got an email this summer from an editor at Pacific Educational Press informing me that the press was being shut down this fall. Pacific Educational Press, or PEP, run out of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, was a small press, publishing only a few books each year, but still a client that had been with me since I began freelancing. Thanks to a connection and reference from my former supervisor at Harbour Publishing to a PEP editor, I received my first freelance contract within a month of leaving Harbour.

That first project was tough. It was an updated edition of an anthology on teaching social studies to elementary students.  Chapters had been added, deleted, rearranged, and revised. I was not familiar with the subject matter, and this was my first time facing a revised edition. The editor suggested I take the index of the previous edition and update it.

Now, any indexer who has been around for a while knows that “updating” an index for a text with this many changes is “indexing hell,” as I heard it so delicately described recently. T0 be fair, I don’t think the editor realized what she was asking. I was still naive enough, however, afraid of the topic, and afraid of offending my first ever client, that I agreed to the editor’s proposal.

Sure enough, indexing that book was hell, but I got through it. More importantly, I learned from it. I learned from the previous index I was working from how to approach this sort of text. I gained confidence that I could tackle a project this different. I felt great when the editor contacted me a few months later with another project.

Since that first project three years ago I’ve indexed five more books for PEP.  Two have been high school textbooks, on fashion and nutrition and health. The others have been on dyslexia (which was also neat in that it was typeset to be more accessible to people with dyslexia), a book on teaching Shakespeare to elementary students (I wish my teachers did that when I was a kid), and finally, this spring, a book on Imaginative Ecological Education.

It was a shock to hear this summer that PEP was closing down. I have enjoyed their books. As I’ve built my business it has been encouraging that the editors at PEP have repeatedly asked me to work on their titles. As my first client, I do have a soft spot for them. Reflecting on the news of their closure, I decided that I did want to write some sort of farewell.

Looking again on their website, however, I see that PEP is not quite as gone as I thought. PEP is now an imprint at UBC Press. Will I work again on their titles? I don’t know. I have worked for UBC Press as well, but UBC Press is a much larger press, with a diverse publishing program, and it is impossible to predict what they might ask me to work on.

So perhaps this is still a farewell. Thank you, PEP, for allowing me to work with you these last three years. I wish you all the best in your new home. Hopefully I will cross paths again with your titles.