JM, the potential client I mentioned in a recent post, was delighted with the sample edit and eager to hire me. He said pleasant things about the quality of my work, and sent me the next chapter within a few hours. He has now PayPal'd me the 50% deposit so I could start work without waiting for his institution's accounts payable department to get me a check. They sent me a form to sign so they could pay me, which the client assumed was routine. I read it and told him that there were two unacceptable clauses--freelance editors get used to explaining that no, we don't have or need business liability insurance--so I crossed s couple of things out, wrote in half a sentence, and sent it back. Now someone at USC has to read and OK the slightly revised contract and process the payment, and the client wanted me to start right away. (I was grumbling to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cattitude about that contract before I spoke to JM, specifically that if they had a standard contract, they should have sent it to me the form before JM and I agreed on a rate, he sent me the work, and I did it and sent it back; I was a little worried I might have to push for payment for the work already done.)
After we sorted out the basics of payment, we had a cheerful conversation about scheduling and deadlines, which included me assuring the client that I didn't think the office manager's email about payment and contracts was rude, just direct--"It's OK, I'm from New York" and he said oh, right, his father's side of the family was from Queens. So we have a schedule of when I'll be getting more chapters of the manuscript (3 and 4 probably by Monday) and when he'll have the book back (by July 5). Near the end of the conversation he asked if I edit articles as well as books. I said yes, and it sounds like he'll be sending me more work after this book.
This client prefers telephone to email, but hasn't been using up a lot of my time with the calls, so that's okay, just unusual. I have freelance clients, including the person who referred me to him, who I have literally never spoken to; it's all been by email.
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I once got hired to do a contract job at a public library, and left the interview with the impression I'd start the next week. So did my employers, and it was only afterwards that they found it'd have to go through a bureaucratic process that took over a month before I could start, which wound up fitting everyone's schedule needs a lot less well.
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When I say "you're asking the wrong person" I don't mean it's inappropriate, I mean I don't have a lot of good information to offer.
I've gotten a few jobs via the Editorial Freelancers Association directory, and one small one from the directory of the copyediting-l email list. EFA is a paid membership organization (though the membership is a tax-deductible business expense in the US). copyediting-l is just the email list, and free to join. It's much more for quick turnaround copyediting-related questions than for finding work, though there's a JOB-OP tag that gets occasional use.
Katherine O'Moore-Klopf (who is very generous to her colleagues) maintains a useful Copyeditors' Knowledge Base, including sections on finding work and networking.
I've also been advised to tell everyone you know that you're now freelancing/self-employed as an editor, or proofreader (or graphic artist, etc.), because you never know who might need something edited. I'm not very good at that (or other sorts of self-promotion), but there's a wide space between actively telling everyone, and waiting until people ask "what are you doing these days?" and telling them you're now a freelance proofreader. One friend of mine had a side gig for several years editing nonfiction articles for his dentist.
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