Welcome to Thursday’s thrilling conclusion to the legalese-iest Shelf Life you’ve ever read or cared to read. I hope you like terms and conditions. Haha! Just kidding! No one likes terms and conditions! Perhaps next week I’ll write a Shelf Life about how to write and interpret end-user license agreements; that would guarantee nobody would read it. Nobody has ever read anything associated with or related to a EULA in the history of the world.
After covering the basics of service level agreements on Tuesday—what they are, who they’re for, how they help authors and editors—today I’m delving into the specific terms and conditions that authors and editors should be concerned with—or at least thinking about—when entering into an editorial business arrangement.
1. Cost
Cost is perhaps the most straightforward factor. Authors hiring a freelance editor will likely not have to press their service provider for a detailed breakdown of costs. I suspect most freelancers have an excellent understanding of what and how they charge for their work.
All parties should understand how costs are assessed. Editorial work is usually billed by the edited word or by the hour spent editing. Neither of these is universally better than the other, in my opinion. I have traditionally charged by the word because I like all parties to know up front exactly how much the work will cost. That said, I know plenty of editors who strongly prefer to charge by the hour and I understand the benefits there, too—an editor charging by the hour will not find themself shortchanged if they have to spend more time on a very messy manuscript, and an author can expect to pay for the time used and not a set fee.
In the event that an editor charges per hour, the hourly cost and also an estimate of hours should be part of the SLA. Authors are unlikely to know how many hours they should expect an edit to take, and giving the hourly rate without at least an estimated hours for completion leaves them in the dark about their financial liability for the project and leaves them vulnerable to overcharge.
The SLA should also cover any eventualities that could cause the edit to cost more than expected: For instance, if the edit is likely to exceed the estimated hours to complete, how will the author be notified of the forthcoming overage? If the author prefers not to spend more money than initially agreed, will the editor stop the project and charge for hours worked?
Conversely, if the author requests additional work not stipulated in the original agreement, how will that be charged? For instance, if the author supplies Chapters 1 through 5 for editing and then, after editing, supplies a new, substantively revised Chapter 1 and asks that the new Chapter 1 be added to the package—how is that billed? Or if, after receiving their edited Chapter 1, the author makes minor revisions and then asks the editor to “take a quick second look”—how is that billed?
The SLA should also clearly set forth expectations for when and how the service provider will be paid. When are the deposit and the balance due? Within how many days after final delivery must the invoice be paid, or does the provider require payment be completed before releasing the deliverables? If payment is later than the terms of the SLA, is there a late fee associated? What forms of payment does the service provider accept?
2. Schedule
An SLA should contain a schedule for both inputs (author supplies manuscript for editing) and outputs (editor returns final files). This can be as simple as:
Author supplies all files by Monday, October 2.
Editor returns all edited files by Monday, December 4.
Schedules start getting complicated quickly, though, with rolling input and output delivery dates. It’s a good idea to make sure both parties know how the deadlines and expect-ready dates can be affected by late deliveries on either side.
Some people, and some projects, work best with a complete batch. I deliver the whole raw manuscript to you at one time and you return the whole edited manuscript to me at one time. However, not every person or project works best that way—and sometimes even the best laid plans et cetera et cetera.
If the plan is for the editor to return a sample chapter for approval before proceeding with the rest of the manuscript, then the schedule should set clear expectations for when the sample chapter will be delivered to the author and when the author must provide their feedback on the sample chapter to the editor so that the rest of the edit may proceed. The author’s inputs are crucial to nail down for both parties because they can cause the rest of the schedule to waterfall if they are late.
If an author and editor agree, for instance, on a two-month schedule from October 2 to December 4, the author cannot hold their feedback of the sample chapter from October 9 till November 20 and then signoff on the edit to proceed and still expect their finished files on December 4.
Editing workflows may also follow a chapter-by-chapter flow model where the author sends files to the editor as they are drafted; the editor returns files to the author for review as the initial edits are complete; the author returns their review of each edited chapter as it is done; and then the editor returns final, edited files as they are completed. A schedule like this breaks down into a lot of input and output dates so, to simplify, you might specify something like:
Raw manuscript files from author to editor, October 2 through October 23.
Edited files from editor to author for review, October 16 through November 6.
Author’s review and feedback to editor, October 23 through November 13.
Final, clean files delivered to author, November 13 through December 4.
3. Scope
I said it was going to be cost, speed, and quality but I lied. There’s also scope. Scope is kind of the same as quality for certain types of projects, including editing: The quality and scope are the same in that the recipient of the edit is looking at what they got and determining, “Did I get what I paid for?” That is, “is the edit good?” and “did the edit do everything I thought it should?” are part of the same question.
However, for those looking to use this Shelf Life as guidance on writing SLAs for purposes other than editing, it will be helpful to differentiate quality and scope.
Scope refers to the definition of the project deliverables. Anything in scope is part of what the author can expect to receive at the end of the project. Anything out of scope is not going to be done as part of the work.
For instance, a developmental edit is a big-picture edit that tackles structural elements of a manuscript (organization, pacing, plot, characterization) and does not attempt to correct grammar, spelling, mechanics, formatting, punctuation, and other small-ticket items. These items are handled during copyediting and proofreading. The general consensus is there’s no point in attacking these small items during a developmental edit, because the authorial revision that happens after a developmental edit will only introduce new text that needs copyediting.
Therefore, editing for grammar, spelling, mechanics, formatting, punctuation, and other small-ticket items is out of scope for a developmental edit. Editing for structural elements including organization, pacing, plot, characterization is in scope. Defining what is in scope and out of scope for the project should happen before the provider begins work and before money changes hands.
The SLA should also specify what the project deliverables are. “Edited manuscript” can mean a lot of things. Is the author going to receive a package in the mail with their printed-out manuscript marked up with a red pencil? Will they receive Word files? One set (redlined) or two sets (one redlined one clean)? Will the author have an opportunity to review the redlines, provide feedback and answer queries, and then receive a final clean version from the editor with the author’s feedback incorporated? Or does the editor provide redlined files as the final deliverable, with the author responsible for cleanup?
4. Quality
Measuring the quality of editing is one of the most challenging parts of editorial management and, if you’re an author working with a freelance editor, probably a big challenge for you, too. Few parts of editing are completely objective. An editor may know know the grammar and mechanics of the language in which they are editing inside and out but—in all writing but especially in fiction—the author’s voice and intent trump the dusty old rulebook. Then, conversely, an author may believe an edit is of poor quality because too many suggestions and corrections were made to a manuscript they felt was nearly perfect already.
I don’t mind admitting that measuring editorial quality is much easier in the aggregate and over a long period of time than it is in one single work. One of the ways I keep track of editing quality is by measuring how many post-publication corrections are requested over time and how many of those are for items that my editors should have caught, but didn’t.
Anyway, importantly, the quality of an edit is determined, in part, by whether the author of the manuscript is happy with the editor’s work at the end of the project. The author should feel satisfied that their content was read carefully, evaluated thoroughly and fairly, that the editor paid special attention to particular aspects of the manuscript as requested by the author, and that the job they hired the editor for was completed: That the manuscript was developed, copyedited, proofread, evaluated, or what have you, to the author’s satisfaction.
This is hard to spell out in an SLA, however. My recommendation to any freelance editor working with a new client, or to any author working with a new editorial service provider, is to review a sample edit as part of the process. One chapter is usually appropriate; the freelance editor will charge for the work on the sample edit—it’s not done for free—but the process should include an opportunity for the author to review the sample edit, ask questions, and provide feedback based on their review. If both parties agree that they are satisfied with the sample edit, then the project can proceed and the author will be able to measure the quality of the rest of the edit against what they received in the sample.
If an editor doesn’t provide a sample of their editing and a chance for the author to review it as part of the process, I’d suggest any author hiring an editorial service provider to ask what recourse they have if they are not happy with the quality of the final edit. Whatever recourse that is should be—you guessed it—specified in the agreement.
5. Escalation and Recourse
When I draft or review a service level agreement with a large company—for instance, with a vendor that provides editorial services to my employer or with the large HVAC company that services our house—I want to see that there’s an escalation path of some kind. If I have an issue and I’m not getting traction on it with the folks on my team, how do I escalate that issue? Is there a person higher up in the organization I speak to?
When working with a freelance editor, there’s not going to be an escalation path in that way—a freelancer or an independent contractor is one person and does not have a manager to speak to. Further, the author—if they are hiring a freelance editor, that is, and that a publisher is not doing the hiring on their behalf—is also one person and does not have an accounts payable department the freelance editor can go to if they need assistance with their invoice.
So it’s important to know—both as a provider and as a consumer—what recourse does either side have to resolve issues in the business arrangement. What happens if the fees aren’t paid on time? What happens if the deliverables aren’t handed off on time? At the end of the day the ultimate escalation path is to take the situation to Judge Judy but, hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.
The agreement should spell out how the author should make any dissatisfaction about the service known to the provider and what the provider is willing to do to address it, if anything. If the author is dissatisfied with the edit and can make a case that the work does not meet the agreed-upon terms, will the editor work the files again? Will they provide a discount to their rate for the work already completed, or refund any part of fees paid? Ideally it wouldn’t come to this any more than it would come to Judge Judy but it’s better to know in advance than to find yourself out a large sum of money and holding a pile of files you can’t use.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.