Money money money followup

First day after the long Christmas weekend, and I got some answers and some feedback on the late-payments issue.

I spoke with a managing editor with whom I have a particularly frank relationship, and asked per what per thought of the idea of a late-payment surcharge. Per chuckled nervously, ultimately saying that while per is a firm believer in paying individuals promptly for work performed, such a stance on my part would be viewed unfavorably among the higher-ups. Per said without much hesitation, "Don't even try it," and the tone in per's voice was even more discouraging than per's words. "In this economy at this time, no." As to the fast-pay discount, per encouraged that, saying that 2 percent would probably be effective. And I believe this particular publisher has indeed offered this option in the far-distant past.

Three responses from late payers. Freelancers, tell me if these sound familiar:

From an individual: "Boy is my face red. You beat me to the punch. I failed to complete my bookkeeping as promised. Prior to lunch today, I wrote your check, placed it in an envelope, and have put it in the mailbox to be picked up by the postman today. If you do not have it by the end of the week, please let me know. Sorry about that."

From publisher one: "I'm very sad to hear that you haven't received the checks. This new accounting system is giving everyone in our organization, and beyond, a heap of trouble!"

From publisher two: "I apologize for our extreme delay in getting payment to you. I just spoke with the accounting department, and the [project 1] check is cut and awaiting signature. I, however, have to confess that my own human error delayed the [project 2] check. I must have overlooked it in early November and did not submit it in a timely fashion. This check will be cut early in the new year. I apologize for our tardiness and will make a point to get payment through to you as quick as possible on future projects in 2009."

I feel bad (sorta) for the editor for publisher two, because I enjoy working with per, have met per personally, and know that per just made an honest mistake. Per also followed up with a copyediting job about an hour after our exchange, so that's good.

Unfortunately, late payments on their end means late payments for me on an outgoing basis, which has consequences that last way longer than the temporary inconveniences. And the question I always want to ask these folks is, "How would you feel if your accounting department said, 'Oh, by the way, the payroll check for the last two weeks you were expecting this Friday? Nope. And we don't know when you'll be getting it either. And your boss has some more work for you to do."

Arrrgh.

PS: This does not even include the two companies that are 3 and 6 months behind now. On the one that's 3 months behind, and which keeps sending me work, all I can say is that they've treated me well for years, and I'm trying to hang in there. They say by mid-2009 they should be back on track with timely payments. For the one that is 6 months behind, all I can do is trust the line they are giving me . . . that they've not yet been paid either. And as I've said, what are my options?

As my profile says, quoting Allen Ginsberg, "When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks and my hard work in the garden?" But frankly, I don't work hard in the garden, and there's a reason that my czar icon is a bespectacled basset hound.

post and prayer answered

Unbelievable. Got an answer within hours. Enjoy.

traffic

Feedjit's amazing . . . well, if you're looking for distractions from 800-page manuscripts.

Over the last few weeks, traffic on this blog has been split between the usual suspects (which seems to include a few new ones -- welcome, whoever you are; let me know what you think) and people around the world searching for images of Neil Armstrong and Louis Armstrong. Lord only knows what they think when they see the blog . . . not that it's written in their native languages anyway.

But you never know where things might lead or when. And probably I should just load up the site with iconic shots to drive traffic: Marilyn Monroe over the subway grate, FDR and his cigarette holder (I once worked on a book about FDR that showed him strolling up Broadway, I believe, in a parade -- before the polio took hold), Warhol's Campbell's Soup can. . . .

What I personally really want to see on the Internets, though, is the old dog food commercial with the bulldog speaking in Winston Churchill's voice: "This is dog food's finest hour." If that ever shows up on youtube, someone please let me know.

Back to the wheel.

Money money money

My list of clients who are late in paying me -- past 30 days -- is getting a little long. And that's mighty frustrating. These are reputable companies with long histories. They are repeating clients. And they (well, all but one of them; maybe two) generally give me what seem like valid excuses, or maybe I'm just gullible.

As a freelancer, what leverage do I have?

I saw another freelancer's website the other day in which per claimed 20 percent markup for invoices paid after 30 days. Now, unless you have a spouse who is an attorney from hell who doesn't mind doing collections work, what are you supposed to do? Say it's 35 or 40 or 60 or 120 days, and the check comes in for the invoiced amount. What do you do? Return the check? Or just deposit the thing? And when that client calls the next time, what do you say: "Oh, sorry. I won't work for you anymore because the check didn't include the markup"? Uh-huh. These are the policies of someone who doesn't need the money. I can only imagine the laughter I would get on the other end of the phone from some of my clients if I were to suggest a late-pay fee.

Having said that, I'd love to institute a 3- or 5-percent-off incentive if it's paid within 10 days. Let's see: on an $800 job, would I take $760 for a quick payment? Yeah, I probably would. Maybe I'll experiment with some invoices and see if I can get anyone to take the bait.


A pet peeve: Some of my clients don't give me FedEx or UPS numbers to ship jobs back to them. So I pay for Priority Mail (or my old favorite: DHL Ground, RIP) and then add the amount to the invoice. So what happens? I'm reimbursed for the shipment as part of the regular check, so naturally it appears as income on the 1099. So I'm paying income taxes on the amount they are refunding me for shipping a job to them.

I know these companies have UPS or FedEx accounts. I can't imagine them not having such accounts. I have just finished proofreading a job for one of these clients, and I'm tempted to say, "I'll ship it back to you when I get an account number. There is no reason for me to be paying taxes on the shipping refund." To me that makes perfect sense.

One particularly enlightened client pays me for printing out jobs on my end, as opposed to them printing the job and sending it to me. And they cut me two separate checks. Somehow, I suspect that the check for the printing is not included in the year-end 1099.

Mystery solved . . . and an ominous answer

A few posts ago, "Work extra hard so someone else doesn't have to," I wondered about a client that told me to pay particular attention to copyediting the documentation because it probably wouldn't be proofread. In an email exchange regarding the project, I asked the press's managing editor about this comment. The response I received is rather chilling:

=========

Many presses no longer proofread, given that manuscript goes straight from electronic Word file into typeset files without rekeying. This still makes me woozy, because I know copyeditors don't--and can't--catch everything. (Princeton UP had a recent book it pulped and reprinted because of all the errors that slipped through.) We stopped proofreading notes on scholarly books--which generally have fewer than 1,000-copy printings--about a year ago as a cost-saving measure, under the assumption that many people don't read them, so lingering errors there are less likely to be noticed than they would be in the general text. I'm no big fan of the idea, but unfortunately with an ever-tightening budget, we're having to make some tough choices.

We do use freelance proofreaders, if you're interested. Our rates are between 65 (trade) and 75 (scholarly) cents per book page, though--not much if one's trying to make a living off of the task.

=========

Frankly, I could rant about these comments for quite a while, but I believe I'll let them stand alone.

Quote from the current project

Sorry to double-dip in one day on quotes, but this is just too good. From a series on politics and culture in the twentieth-century South . . . a book about the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina:

Of course, most Citadel backers [believed] instead that the mere presence of women in the classroom or the barracks would destroy the school. Besides the previously stated arguments calling females a distraction, many offered a far more intriguing analysis of how women would compromise their ability to build men. Contrary to the notion that the college's system spawned crude, loutish behavior and attitudes, several students claimed that The Citadel allowed them to establish intimate bonds with their cadet brothers. When referring to the barracks as "a place where a man can be a man," several cadets felt most free to express themselves in the communal showers. One cadet explained that, especially as freshmen, "We are in the showers, it's very intimate. We're one mass, naked together, and it makes us closer. . . . You're shaved, you're naked, you're afraid together. You can cry." Another continued, "I know it's all trivial but all of us in one shower, it's like we're all one, we're all the same, and--I don't know--you feel like you're exposed, but you feel safe. . . . I just can't explain it, but when they take that away it's over. This place will be ruined." One summed it up succinctly, "With no women, we can hug each other." The irony lies in the fact that these students believed that by shutting out the judgmental eyes of the outside world, their closed, all-male environment helped them become men by giving them the freedom and security to be more intimate and sensitive, traits some of them might have deemed feminine. (Macaulay, Marching in Step: Masculinity, Citizenship, and The Citadel in Post-World War II America, UGA Press)

oscar peterson "nigerian marketplace"

Quote from the current project

The survey results of Gallup pollsters John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, assembled in their important book Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, lead to some startling and counterintuitive conclusions: Muslims around the world do not see the West in stereotypic terms. They criticize or celebrate countries based on their politics, not based on their culture or religion. Muslims everywhere and non-Muslim Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally justified. Those who condone acts of terrorism are no more likely to be religious than the rest of the population. What Muslims around the world say they admire about the West is its technology and its democracy--the same top-two responses given by Americans when asked the same question. And what Muslims around the world say they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values--again, the same response given by Americans when posed the same question. Americans look askance at the apparent desire for the integration of religion and politics in Islamic societies, unaware that a majority of U.S. citizens also want the Bible to be a source of legislation. (Myers, Living Beyond War, Orbis Books)

Comfort? I don't want no stinking comfort

You know, as much as I've railed against them on this blog, style manuals are one place in my life where I desire heavy doses of totalitarianism. Tell me what to do, so when I'm pestered about it, I can blame it on someone else.

I was wondering about the possessive of "corps" -- corps's? corps'? -- and was directed to CMOS 7.21, where they give their rule, such as it is, and then go on to say, "Opt for this practice only if you are comfortable with it and are certain that the s is indeed unpronounced." (By the way, no 's' after the apostrophe when the 's' at the end of the root word is unpronounced.)

What is this "only if you are comfortable with it" jive? What the hell does my comfort level have to do with anything? Isn't that the whole point of style guides, to give me some standard to go by, even if it makes me uncomfortable as hell? If all I needed to rely on was my own comfort, publishers throughout our fair nation would be in a world of hurt. Multiply that by the comfort of all the other freelancers out there, and you'd have anarchy. Anarchy, I tell you.

Perhaps the worst sentence I've read this decade

"One of the important contributions made to secondary theology by studies of these texts governed by, and subject to the disciplines appropriate to, literary, historical, and phenomenology of religion interests is the way they serve to discipline study governed by, and subject to the discipline appropriate to, theological interests (in ways in which God relates to all that is not God, who the God is who relates in these ways, how to understand other realities as God-related, and what counts as appropriate ways of responding to God's relating) by making unavoidably clear the concrete particularity of each of the texts on the canonical list, how they differ from one another in literary genres and rhetoric, their cultural assumptions, their theological assumptions and affirmations, their concrete historical occasions, and the particular situations to which they are addressed."

I am bouncing this one right back to the author. I mean, what are you supposed to do with something like this? Grammatically it is essentially correct, is it not? And it is by no means the most difficult concept presented in the book--far from it.

One of my other publishers would say to leave it alone--that it's the author's style, and anyone reading this tome would probably be right there along with per.

And this particular publisher's managing editor told me recently--in discussing some of the troubles with other publishing houses not sufficiently editing their books before they come to me for copyediting--that when a book comes to me for copyediting, I can pretty much assume that it's the way they want it, aside from the quality control function that a copyeditor brings.

Authors, if you're typing in 12-point Times and your sentence exceeds four lines, it's time to drop back and rewrite, unless you have a real solid reason not to do so. I don't think the passage above qualifies. I am querying it and saying, "Please try to break up into 2 or 3 sentences," but that's not even the point. The point is, who in their right mind composes something like this and thinks it's OK?

comprise; book sales

1. Observation: An inverse correlation exists between extent of author's use of the word "comprise" and author's ability to use it correctly.

I mentioned this to a managing editor today, and he informed me that Merriam-Webster's 11th now allows the wrong use of "comprise"--that is, " . . . is comprised of." He doesn't agree with it either. I opined that Merriam-Webster's 12th and Chicago 16 will both be about three pages long: a copyright page, a page saying "Do what you want to but be consistent," and an order form for the next edition.

2. Speaking with an editor/typesetter last week, he mentioned that one of the publishers he used to work for once said that all he hoped for out of a certain volume was that the "sales exceed the page count." If you want an idea of the kind of stuff typically on my desk, that just about sums it up.

On the other hand, I received word today that I'd be receiving for proofreading a book of daily quotes and meditations on recovering from sex addiction. Should be a nice change of pace.

PS: Thanks to you regulars out there who have been checking in during my nonposting last few weeks.

Quote from the current project

"There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site." --Sidney Harris

Work extra hard, so someone else doesn't have to

Folks, I've been doing this kind of work for quite a while, as you can tell from this blog, but that doesn't mean I can't be surprised.

I received a job the other day from a press for which I have a lot of respect. Not only are their projects prepared well before they come to me, but their books typically are interesting, too. For me, this is not a common combination.

One problem I do have with this press, though, is that each job is accompanied by literally about 9 pages of notes and instructions for the copyeditor. I guess this speaks some to their attention to quality and detail . . . but I'm not getting paid to read those 9 pages. On the other hand, if I don't follow the instructions therein, I'm not getting more work from the press.

Anyway, I'm giving the latest list of instructions the once-over before the file goes into the stack of jobs I'll be tackling later. Screaming off the page comes this sentence: "Please pay extra attention to the documentation, because the proofreader will not be reading it."

WTF???

First, I don't pay any more or any less attention to the documentation (notes and bibliography) because I'm told to do so. As I've ranted about in a previous posting, one of the things that grinds my guts is when a copyeditor does a bang-up job on the running text and feels like it wasn't worth their trouble to do a decent job on the documentation. So I always try to do as good a job on the documentation as I do on the rest of the book. It's not like I take the approach of, "Well, I'll give 90 percent on these pages and 110 percent on these pages." They all benefit, I hope, from the same approach and quest for quality.

But to be told that the proofreader will not be reading the notes and the bibliography . . . (1) Why the hell not, and (2) Where do I sign up???

Choosing text for running heads . . . subtitles

Unless I go off on some tangent, this won't be the most exciting post you've ever read. And with a opener like that, is it any wonder I did not follow my forebears into sales?

One of my presses requires me, as part of the copyeditor's duties, to compose a running head list for the typesetter. Running heads are the identifiers that appear with the page numbers to show, for example, book name and chapter title, or chapter title and chapter section, or in the case of the project I just finished, author name and chapter title, because it's a Festschrift.

(Now, there's a word I never came across until I was an editor. A Festschrift is, according to the trusty Merriam-Webster's 11th, "a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar.")

So, the verso (left-hand) pages carry the author's name, and the recto (right-hand) pages carry the chapter name.

But what do you do when the chapter name is too long? Or if the chapter includes a title and a subtitle?

Take a look at a list of recent nonfiction books or peruse the shelves at your local library or bookseller. The title is a hook, something catchy, something that will fit on a spine. And for the most part, the title tells you very little about the subject of the book. For most books, the subtitle is the phrase that's doing the heavy lifting.

Given that most of the books I work on carry heavy bibliographic information, I can say that the same is often true in peer-reviewed journal articles and, often, dissertations.

I am working off and on with an author who is agonizing over the title of his book. He's trying to cram as much information into about five words as he can to tell what the book is about. And so the title changes every few months because he can't settle on something . . . and none of it is catchy.

Finally I told him: forget the title. If the book is ever accepted for publication, it wouldn't surprise me if the publisher has its own ideas anyway because of how the book should be marketed. To tell your potential readers what the book is actually going to do for them, you should put that information in the subtitle.

So, back to the running heads. Here are the titles and subtitles of the chapters for the book I just packaged up:

“. . . Under Pontius Pilate”: On Living Cultural Memory and Christian Confession
“Faith” as a Christological Title in Paul
Hypostasis as a Component of New Testament Christology (Hebrews 1:3)
“Mingling” in Gregory of Nyssa’s Christology: A Reconsideration
Flesh and Folly: The Christ of Christian Humanism
The Corporate Christ
Forces of Love: The Christopoetics of Desire
“But you, who do you say I am?” A Homily on Ideological Faith from the Gospel of Mark
Christology and Diakonia
Children, the Image of God, and Christology: Theological Anthropology in Solidarity with Children
“On earth as it is in heaven”: Eschatology and the Ethics of Forgiveness
“We Knew Him Once from a Human Point of View”
Personhood and Bodily Resurrection
From Easter to Parousia

Obviously, some of those titles are not going to fit on the 4.5 or so inches allotted across the top of a 6x9 page. So what to do?

In some cases, I instructed the typesetter to set the title and in others the subtitle. It came down to which would be more helpful to the reader.

For example, “'On earth as it is in heaven': Eschatology and the Ethics of Forgiveness." Now if you are a reader flipping through a book, and you see a running head that reads, "On earth as it is in heaven," you're going to presume that the chapter has something to do with the Lord's Prayer. And you'd be right, but only partially. More what's going on is that the Lord's Prayer is used as a jumping-off point for the real meat of the chapter, eschatology and the ethics of forgiveness.

(Well, actually, if you're like me, you're reading titles like this and wondering how come no good sports books or lesbian science fiction has come across my desk lately.)

But in another chapter, "Children, the Image of God, and Christology: Theological Anthropology in Solidarity with Children," I went with the title as opposed to the subtitle, thinking that the title was descriptive enough. And when space allowed, I recommended that the title and subtitle both appear. And in most cases, I would prefer just to go with the title -- unless space is an issue and the subtitle says it better.

Another hour in the life of the freelance editor. Boy, if it were any more exciting than this, I'm not sure what I'd do.

Sweet words at a needed time

From a new client:

Dear Bob:

There is nothing like reading the corrections of a professional copyeditor to make you say, "Now why didn't I see that?" (Oh dear, is there a period at the end of the previous sentence?)

I thank you for finding things that I think we should have caught, as well as making modifications that required your knowledge and expertise.

Your suggestions for some rewriting are right on target, and I think the author will find them useful and worth following.

Thank you for doing a fine job quickly. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

xxx

Why the blog?

The whole blogging thing is making me scratch my head.

It's interesting the way people find this place. Other than the few regulars, I think many happen upon it through searching for images. They see the image in context, realize that the blog is not what they were looking for, and leave . . . never to return. Of course, this is common behavior. I've done it myself.

Some people link to it through a friend's blog, or they see my comments at her place and might be curious enough to look a little further. And maybe they come back.

Admittedly, the blog is of narrow interest . . . and it doubles as a commercial site, which probably violates any number of commandments right there.

And I try to do a little cherry-picking. I'll troll the Internets looking for people or organizations that might be interested in what I do and then plant the seed. One never knows at what point it'll bear fruit.

Years ago, more than I care to think about right now, I sent out a number of letters to publishing concerns in Atlanta. One night while I was proofreading at one of my side gigs, Tere calls me to say that a magazine editor had called wondering if I was still freelancing. He'd saved my letter from 18 months prior just in case, and was very excited that I was indeed still a freelancer. (Actually at the time, I might have also been a full-time employee somewhere else.) But the point is that he saved that letter. The seed was planted for when he needed it.

The situation for me was rather difficult the first time I went to work for him. A new owner had purchased the magazine and instituted severe cost-cutting measures, most of which entailed getting rid of about 90 percent of the staff. So my first meeting with the editor of the magazine took place after I walked through the work area to his office . . . past all the other former staffers who were packing their boxes because they'd been fired. And here I come to do some of their work. As the editor told me, "I've been left to put out this magazine by myself and need some help."

So, if you're just happening on this blog, or you're one of the folks or organizations I've cherry-picked to get you to consider my services, please don't take it as just another cold call or intrusion. You never know when you might be in a bind and you need some proofreading, editing, or indexing done. Maybe your usual freelancers are unavailable, maybe you're overloaded, whatever.

I'll still be here. Contact me.

Bob

Catch of the day

Footnote from the current project:

224. Paul VI, “Message to the American cosmonauts: Luis Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins (July 21, 1969).”

Good ol' Luis Armstrong, known ever after to his buddies as Satchmoon.

(In the interest of accuracy, Neil Armstrong is the photographer here. The photo is of Buzz Aldrin.)

On Demand? Not Land. Copyediting for Demand Studios; Proofreading for Demand Studios

Well, I've had it. If any circumstances emerge to change the nature of this post, I'll take it down. But in the meantime, there might actually be someone interested in what's happened here. And far be it from me to provide a teaser and then disappoint my vast public.

I've already relayed this information in an email to bloggoddess extraordinaire Moi, so what mostly follows is the text of my email to her. I have a few things to add afterward, but here goes. This is the story of my interaction with Demand Studios, an internet film and publishing website that advertises for copyeditors and proofreaders, among others.

======================================

This goes on for a while. You might grab a few fingers of your local poison and sit back.

Through the feedjit widget on my blog, I saw that someone found boblandedits by searching for proofreading for Demand Studios. I looked them up, and they claim to have all kinds of copyediting and proofreading (and writing) assignments for websites and film titles. You pull up the jobs you want, work on them, post them back to the website. You can take as much or as little work as you want, and it might pay from 8 cents up into many more dollars (I guess the 8 cents would be like for a title page or a simple screen credit). They pay by PayPal every Friday. So I'm thinking, I waste enough time in front of the computer; I might as well get paid for it.



So I send 'em my resume, which is barebones because I never use it and want it to fit on one page, and a link to my blog, which should establish my cred pretty quickly. I'm thinking that since they are a Web-based organization, a look at my blog should do the trick.

In response, I get your basic, "We have no assignments for you at this time."

I write them back saying, "Your website shows you have thousands of proofreading and copyediting assignments available. If there's something in my resume or on my blog that turned you off, it would be helpful for me to know."

This is what I get back:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the inquiry. Your resume did not reflect the extent of the editing experience that you seem to have. It did not provide enough details as to the type of editing you have performed nor the breadth of your experience in editing. In addition, aside from your freelance work, your job title does not imply that editing is your main duty in your current company.

However, if you do indeed have 30 years of copy editing experience, then I can pass your resume along (with that footnote) to the lead copy editor for further consideration.

Thanks,
The Demand Studios Team

Please reply back to this email without changing the subject line if you need further assistance.

Sincerely,

* * *

No shrinking wallflower me, here's my response [I'm thinking of posting it to the blog, so you'd be reading it anyway :) ]

Dear Demand Studios Team:

Thanks for the second look.

From 1984 to 1988 and then 1990 to 1994, I was a full-time writer and editor of university-level business and insurance textbooks for what was at the time the world’s largest self-study insurance education program. I wore many hats while there: developmental editing, substantive editing, and copyediting, in addition to working with permissions, review panels of industry experts, and printing and other types of vendors. (Before 1984, I was a full-time proofreader.)

In the interim years of 1988 to 1990, I was the lead editor for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where my main task was substantive editing and copyediting of the Economic Review—four research articles on a bimonthly basis written by the Ph.D. staff economists at the Atlanta Fed. In addition, I was responsible for editorial oversight of two monthly newsletters and various smaller publications. We also published a book-length history of the Atlanta Fed while I was there, and I served as the main editor for that volume.

Since 1994, I have been a full-time freelancer—proofreading, copyediting, and indexing. Since 2000 in particular, my copyediting tasks have focused mainly on university presses—University of Georgia and Tennessee, and Baylor University Press—and for denominational and religious/spiritual presses: Westminster John Knox, Crossroad, Orbis Books, Templeton Foundation, among many others. I work steadily for all of them and am more than happy to provide references.

On the not-so-scholarly side, I also work for trade presses, such as Health Communications, which handles the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and I have served as editor and copyeditor for many of those books over the last 10 years, in addition to others that they publish. Because they had no one on staff who knew anything about golf, they basically turned over primary editorial duties for Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul to me, including story selection. When HCI sends me a book that I think is beyond copyediting, they give me a free hand to rewrite as necessary. I have rewritten a number of books for HCI over the years.

I also edit three columns each week for two syndicated newspaper columnists in Georgia, whose names I’d just as soon not provide. I edit for a local columnist here in SW Va/NE Tenn, as well as for a Korean American businessman of some prominence in Atlanta whose written English needs some help.

At one point when I was living in Atlanta in the 1990s, I was copyediting for four competing business publications. That was fun.

I presently serve as the managing editor for the America’s Greatest Brands series, now preparing its seventh volume—editing text, working with designers, and handling traffic with many of the nation’s largest brands and ad agencies.

I am a one-man operation. I am an editor, proofreader, and indexer. I know of no fancy job title to put on that. My dozens of repeating clients don’t seem to require one.

Please refer to my blog for a complete client list: boblandedits.blogspot.com. You can read the posts relative to editing and proofreading and indexing if you have any lingering concerns that, indeed, working as a freelancer in publishing consumes my life and I am up to my neck in it seven days a week. Actually, to save you a minute, here’s a list of my clients, all of which I’ve worked for during the last couple of years:

America’s Greatest Brands
American Human Development Project
Barter Theatre
Baylor University Press
BlueBridge Books
Bookhouse Group
Brotherhood-SisterSol
Chapel Hill Press
Continuum Publishing
Crossroad Publishing
Dogwood Institute
Executive Books
Health Communications
Indigo Custom Publishing
John Wiley and Sons
Johns Hopkins University Press
Lexington Seminar
LOMA
Mercer University Press
Oakhill Press
Orbis Books
Paulist Press
Pilgrim Press
Publications Development Company
Riverbend Books
Shambhala Publications
Sweet Earth Flying Press
T&T Clark
Templeton Foundation Press
Texas Tech University Press
University of Georgia Press
University of Tennessee Press
Vineyard Stories
Westminster John Knox Press
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Yale University Press

Here is a sample of books I’ve copyedited just over the last three months, in addition to my proofreading and indexing work:

Why Did This Happen? Content, Perspective, Dialogue: A Workshop Model for Developing Young People’s Reflective Writing (Wilcox, for Brotherhood/Sister Sol)

Spiritual Leadership for Church Officers (Gray, for Westminster John Knox Press)

American Cancer Society Tobacco Atlas, 3rd edition (American Cancer Society, for Bookhouse Group)

The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (Le Donne, for Baylor University Press)

A Century of Quality Refreshment: The Story of Absopure Water Company (Distasio, for Bookhouse Group)

Philippians and Philemon, New Testament Library Series (Cousar, for Westminster John Knox Press)

A Memoir of the New Left: The Political Autobiography of Charles A. Haynie (Haynie and Miller, eds., for University of Tennessee)

Insights: Reflections on the Life of Faith (Barth, for Westminster John Knox Press)

Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, 2nd ed., rev and exp. (Sanneh, for Orbis Books)

Prairie Miracles: The Story of the Valley Hope Association (Pogue, for Bookhouse Group)

My work mostly involves use of the Chicago Manual of Style, but I am also well versed in AP style, APA style, and the Style Manual for the Society of Biblical Literature.

As I say, without a second thought I can provide you with a dozen references at publishing houses around the country who can vouch for my work, my reliability, and my attention to detail. I really don’t know what else I can offer you, but if this isn’t enough, well, I can’t say I didn’t try. And, frankly, if you have a stable of editors who match or exceed this level of experience, my congratulations to you for assembling a hell of a team.

Bob Land

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So, as of November 24, about seven days after sending this response to Demand Studios, I have heard nothing.

Let's take a look at the people whom Demand Studios shows on their website as copyeditors and proofreaders, shall we?

"Working for Demand Media as a title proofer has been a great opportunity for me. As a teacher, the flexibility has been the best aspect. This job allows me to work from home around my school schedule. In addition, I am able to take on more work during the summer months when I have extra time. Another perk about this job is once an assignment is complete, the paycheck soon follows."

"Working for Demand Studios as a copyeditor has allowed me to find success in navigating the often uncertain waters of freelancing. Demand Studios gives me as much work as I can handle and allows me flexibility in scheduling so I can work around other projects. I count myself very fortunate to be a part of the DS team."

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Now, I have nothing against teachers or people who are just finding success in navigating the often uncertain waters of freelancing. But, damn, judging from their pictures, I was working 70 hours a week in a proofreading sweatshop before these folks were born. And if they are teachers or are finding the freelancing waters uncertain, they damn sure aren't copyediting or proofreading anywhere near full-time.

Maybe they think I'm kidding about who I work for. Maybe I'm overqualified for the gig, but I also figure that I should be the one to make that determination. And when you consider that I spent many years working a full-time job and multiple part-time gigs simultaneously, and when you factor in that I've put in 80- to 100-hour weeks for most of the last few years, when I say I've got almost 30 years of experience, that's just on the calendar, and based on what most folks would judge by: a 40-hour week. My mileage exceeds my age by a long shot.

Sour grapes? Perhaps. Am I bitter? Maybe so. If anyone has any experience or knows someone who has worked with Demand Studios, I'd love to hear their story. Because at this point, I'm just baffled.

trying one, II: Two geniuses named John

Nothing related to editing here, either. Just figuring out the form.

Different things you can do with an acoustic guitar in your hands. Interestingly, these are from the same stage (different years).

trying one

Just experimenting. Nothing edited related here.