Service Level Agreements

Understanding and Creating Them

And you may ask yourself: What do service level agreements have to do with writing, editing, and publishing? 

That there (above) is what we call starting a manuscript in medias res, or “in the middle of things.” It’s a popular tactic to draw readers into a story, beginning at an interesting point and filling in important details from before the beginning of the plot through dialogue or flashbacks. This literary device has been in use for thousands of years; you can see it in ancient writing including The Odyssey.

That’s your writing tip for the day, the rest of this Shelf Life (and Thursday’s) is about service level agreements (SLAs). This is a story that grew in the telling—into a two-parter—so today’s Shelf Life will go over the basics and purpose of service level agreements while Thursday’s will dive into the specific parts of an SLA and the questions each part should answer.

A service level agreement is a tool. It is documentation of the responsibilities of each party in a business arrangement between a service provider and their client. It details the expectations the client can expect from the service provider and the responsibilities the client has to provide necessary information to the service provider. It also contains information for the client on who they should contact, and when, and how; and how they can escalate concerns that are not satisfactorily addressed by their primary point of contact. Finally, it sets forth metrics by which the service can be assessed for success.

The reason I see this as being relevant to writers and editors is that editors are service providers to authors, but often neither party in an editor–author relationship has created, shared, or agreed to a service level agreement. Without one, authors availing themselves of editorial services may not know what to expect, when to be concerned about problems with the service, or how to measure the quality of the editorial service they receive. This puts both parties at risk: The author may walk away from the relationship feeling that they did not receive the service they paid for, or the editor may find themself with a client who leaves a bad review or refuses to pay, even when the service was delivered as the editor expected.

A service level agreement is the written manifestation of one of my favorite workplace activities, the management of everybody’s expectations. That’s why I like these documents a lot. In my work I sometimes write them and sometimes negotiate those that have been written by other parties.

The relationship between author and editor is often a contractual relationship between a consumer (the author) and a freelance or independent service provider (the editor). When an author signed to a publisher working with an editor who is employed by that publisher, there are agreements and contracts in place to protect everyone’s interests. The author has their contract with the publisher (hopefully negotiated by the author’s agent) and the editor has “a contract”—so to speak—of employment with the publisher. 

I have “a contract” in scare quotes because many Americans are at-will employees and do not have “a contract” with their employer, however, employees have an agreement with their employer that the employer manages certain aspects of their employment. For instance, if you are a copyeditor working at a publisher, the publisher is going to pay you your salary or hourly rate regardless of whether the author is happy with your work or whether you deliver the copyedited files on deadline. You might get reprimanded about a performance issue or fired if authors are unhappy, but you’ll get paid for your time.

Anyway, when working with or as a freelancer, neither party has the safety of that larger organization to ensure everyone gets what they’re entitled to and to mitigate disagreements. This is where a service level agreement can come in really handy.

Here are some examples of what can go wrong. I have not experienced these personally, but have heard these on social or in writing forums—many of these more than once.

• A freelance editor is taking longer than the author expected to return edited files to the author. The author wants to know what recourse they have to get the edit finished and back to them.

• An author hired a freelance editor to perform a developmental edit of their manuscript, but the finished edit was returned to the author with typos like misspelled words and punctuation errors still in the manuscript. The author does not feel the edit was completed properly and refuses to pay their invoice.

• A freelance editor was hired to provide a manuscript evaluation and returned to their client author a two-page document detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript. The author expected to receive edited, redlined Word documents back from the editor but did not receive them.

In the three cases listed here, an author has hired a freelancer to provide a service. Without more information than what I included in the bullet list, we can’t know who is wrong.

In the first scenario: What was the deadline for the edited files? Was there one? Has that agreed deadline passed? Was there an agreed-upon grace period after the deadline for late delivery of files? Was there an agreement between author and editor on what escalation path the author should take if the deadline is missed?

I’ve heard authors say, “I think my editor’s taking a long time, I wonder if I should nudge them?” and then I find out, after asking, that the editor has gone radio silent on the author for an unconscionably long period of time, leaving their client high and dry. I’ve also heard authors say, “My editor has taken much too long, should I take them to small-claims court?” and then I find out the editor didn’t receive half the manuscript till last week.

In the second scenario (bullet two): A developmental edit does not typically include copyediting to fix typos. Did the author and editor have an agreed understanding of what specific services would be included in a developmental edit? Did the author and editor agree to additional copyediting services as part of the service package or for an additional fee? In the third scenario: A manuscript evaluation often does not include an edit of the files. Did the author and editor discuss what deliverables the author would receive?

If you are a freelance editor, you might be thinking: “I don’t need a service level agreement, I can just explain to my client in an email what they can expect.” Oh my god Becky that’s the service level agreement. It doesn’t have to be a formal document that everybody signs with a wet pen. An SLA is just written account of what everyone can expect from the business relationship, that everyone agrees to, before money changes hands or work begins.

If you are an author or an editor (or both), you might also be wondering how the success of an edit, or its quality, can be captured with metrics. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Editing is about half science and half art and it’s really hard to qualify art using metrics. It’s hard to get data about the quality of editing and it’s hard to aggregate and communicate those data. Good news is, part of my job for many years has been to monitor editorial quality in large bodies of work (millions of edited words per year) so I have some ideas about how to do this.

Everyone has heard about the project manager’s triple constraint—or the tailor’s adage—that you must balance quality, cost, and speed and that when you change one of those you affect at least one of the others. As the tailor says, “I can do it fast, cheap, and well—but you can only pick two of the three.” These are the pillars of any project or service:

• What can I expect? (Quality or scope)

• When will it be delivered? (Timeliness or schedule)

• How much will it cost me? (Cost)

These are the main things a service level agreement must cover to be effective. Additionally, the SLA must spell out what recourse either party has if the agreed-upon quality, timeliness, or cost are not met.

The final thing to consider when creating or evaluating an SLA is the inputs and outputs. An author usually focuses on the outputs—the deliverables. When will I receive my edited files? What will they look like? How much redlining will there be? How can I tell if the edit is “good”? However, it’s just as important to explain the expectations for inputs—the project materials that will be delivered by the author for the editor to work on. When will you deliver files to the editor? All in one batch or piecemeal? In a usable file format? And how clean and orderly are these manuscript files?

A good SLA will mandate the responsibilities of both parties pertaining to the agreement.

From here, now that we’ve arrived at a good understanding of what should be in an SLA, we can move forward on Thursday to creating an SLA that a freelance editor can share with their author clients, or a helpful list of questions an author may ask their freelance editor to clarify expectations if the editor does not provide an SLA.

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