Considering doing editing part-time

Christracy19 · Sep 27, 2016

I'm currently enrolled in college and looking to make some money part-time. My mother is published so I have a lot of background as far as story writing goes. I critique and edit my friends manuscripts regularly and many of them have been suggesting I charge. I'm more story structure rather than grammatical, but if there is some sort of market for someone like me I could really use the money.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions, thanks.

Maryn · Sep 28, 2016

My second-hand experience, one of our kids' former romantic partner who edits, is that there is more money in a college environment if you are able to do the grammar and usage kind of line editing, since most schools have a fair number of students enrolled who are not native English speakers. They want to turn in papers that contain few or no blunders an ESL speaker might make, so they pay for edits (and in most cases, try to learn from them). In Jess's experience, some wrote better than many native speakers, and others wrote so poorly it took a face-to-face to know for sure what they were trying to say.

Students writing fiction have no urgent need to succeed right now, so your critique of structure and other big-picture issues may not be within their budgets. Marketing yourself beyond campus can be difficult and/or costly.

WeaselFire · Oct 1, 2016

Tutoring will likely bring you more steady work and money, or working at your local fast food joint. Developmental editing, what you describe, is a harder gig to sell without some serious writing or editing cred, or a MFA in creative writing. Having a published relative unfortunately doesn't get you anything unless you edited her manuscript. After all, you can't call yourself a combat flight trainer just because your brother joined the Air Force.

The flip side is that students do pay for formatting, proofreading, grammar, spell checking and fact checking term papers. Just don't get into the trap of changing their paper since it may get you, and them, kicked out of school.

Jeff

gettingby · Oct 4, 2016

If your friends are suggesting you charge for your services, start charging them. Seriously. Then you will know how much people are willing to pay and how much they think it's worth. I agree with WeaselFire that your mother's credentials do nothing for you. That's not a good selling point. Are you a published writer? What are your credentials? If it's just the praise of your friends... Again, see if they are really willing to pay you.

Most universities have a newspaper, literary journal and/or press. That might be a great place to really develop your editing skills. Some of those positions are paid, but most of them are not. And to get one of the paid slots, you will probably need more experience than you have at this point. However, working for any of those kind of places will give you experience and be something you can put on your resume if this is the kind of work you want to do after graduation. Talk to your advisor or the head of the English department or journalism program. Those people should be able to point you in the right direction.

Treehouseman · Oct 4, 2016

In terms of boosting your CV without paying for courses, check out remote internships with Literary agencies. If you follow agents on Twitter (which you should) they'll often advertise for people to be readers - that is, read the incoming slush and make a judgement as to whether it is worth being passed up to the agent, or sending a nice "Thank you but..." letter.

The commitment isn't huge, about 10 hours a week, but will mean you're more likely to have publishing creds of some kind.

Considering doing editing part-time

Christracy19

Maryn

At Sea

WeaselFire

Benefactor Member

gettingby

Treehouseman