Collaborative Editing

Presenters: Ingrid Emerick and Leslie Miller of Girl Friday Productions

Day of Meeting: May 12, 2014

Leslie:  There are so many other things you can cover for each other.

Ingrid: We've known each other for a long time. She and I worked together at Seal Press. It was bought by Avalon and the bulk of operations were moved to San Francisco. Then in 2004, we both quit. It was becoming difficult to work part-time. We ended up quitting and both attended to our families and freelancing. We were swapping work for about a year and a half and realized we were too extroverted to be stuck in our houses. We needed to get out of the house.  Why don't we just start a little company? Let's do this with the hope that we have just enough work. We had a friend and colleague who worked for Becker and Maier. She said: get a tax ID, get a proper name. Then my boss won't raise an eyebrow when I try to send you work. That was how Girl Friday was born.

Our first clients were authors. We worked with authors who needed help with navigating the publishing world.  We did a lot more writing than we expected. When someone calls you and you're a company the answer became: Yeah, why wouldn't we do that? We were very used to working in each other's space, ten feet from each other. We were sharing a nanny. We were collaborative on many things. It is a rich opportunity to have this. Just say yes and be open and learn about new opportunities. Having someone next to you when you say that (yes) really helps.  I could say yes to a lot of things I wouldn't have otherwise. Just knowing that I had someone to rely on and talk me through things. And we still go through that a lot. We have 14 people in the company. The decisions we have to make now are still about do we say yes to that? We weren't business majors. Sometimes you just have to leap. So that has been huge, not just in the early years. We can be bold together. It is a lot easier than being bold alone.

People ask how did you structure it? Our naivety lead to an elegant model.  Some clients would come directly to each one of us. Work would come in and we'd divvy it up. It surprisingly was never an issue. In terms of payment we gave 10% to the company. As we grew it had to be more because of overhead. Eighty percent of the intake went directly to the people doing the work. It was a simple model that worked for a long time.

Leslie: We operated much of the time as freelancers. Theoretically, one could problem-solve with a colleague. Even though it worked seamlessly, we figured out a way to allocate work to everyone involved. At that time we were all developmental editors.  We had different skill sets. In that way you can get your work done. That was the aspect we really missed. You don't want a group who are just like you. In the end that is what we sold to the clients. And that team kept getting richer. And then the team involved copyeditors and social media people, etc. I think that is something the clients find very appealing.

We were always willing to look over each other's shoulders.  That spirit and generosity is what we're founded on.

Ingrid: As a freelancer you have to do so much that isn't your work.  IT, marketing, networking, website, that can take up so much time. But if you get a few people together you get people who like doing the different roles.  You wonder if we team up will there be enough work for both us? We have found that wasn't an issue. We could get enough work. In many ways it just made more work. There are pros and cons about it.  At the start I would have done fewer meetings.  You have to really think about who you're partnering with. You have to trust them implicitly. You have to share a common outlook on work/life balance. You need to have clear communication with each other. Courageous conversations. It's great to lay things out on paper. We didn't do that early on. We had to get the legal stuff down.

Leslie: It's not just about approach to work, but the type of clients you want. Some very interesting people come your way and you have to decide is that a client you want to have? Is it worth taking? It absolutely is a marriage. You can't have any  qualms about that.

Ingrid: It's really nice when you can be supported and not lose clients when "life happens." I can't imagine not having that support and I think that is hard to find as a freelancer. When you say no to your clients I'm sure you worry if they're going to come back.

Leslie:  There are all sorts of ways you can make those connections with people who need all these services.
Ingrid: Self-publishing opens up a lot of possibilities. It is so much better for the author if they can go somewhere  that has all those people.

Q&A: 

Is everybody still working on projects or are there salaried people?

Ingrid: This is always evolving. All the maintenance of the business became too much. We couldn't take on more projects, so we added some folks.  Then we did production work. First we got salaried. We looked at the finances and figured it out. Our projects are fewer. Projects become hard to manage. We do both. There are lots of salaried  folks at Girl Friday. We had to bring on project managers and those folks are salary-based.

What would make you turn down a project?

Leslie: If it is too small. Financially it doesn't  pencil for us. There have been folks that had content we didn't believe in. There have been homophobic works. It is not in the spirit of our company. Sometimes you get a sense that the person will never be satisfied. We've had to say no very few times.

Ingrid: That has been a relief. Expectation setting is very important. And making sure the person hears that. We make it clear that we are not literary agents.  We have been and we didn't like it.

Do you advertise as "two sets of eyes"?

Leslie: No. We don't put it in those terms. We talk about the team approach.  We talk about ourselves as a team.

With self-publish clients how do you assess the level of help they need?

Ingrid: We're constantly in conversation about that. We've learned a lot and gone back and forth. Haven't landed on the perfect solution yet.  Some folks wanted just an edit. What you have to remember is that you'll be doing an enormous amount of project management--copyedit, edit, design, etc. Then navigating the publishing platforms can be tricky. Most of it is intuitive, but not everyone finds it that way. What are we willing to be responsible for? It has taken us a long time to get there. Be really clear with the client what the elements are that you are responsible for. We will load the files for you and that's it.

Leslie: It's surprising how many people want to write a book, and don't want to write the book. They want you to handle the details. It is an enormous amount of work to produce a book. You have to talk about the different stages in the process and you have to decide if you want to pay or not for those things. We just had a summit on that.

Ingrid: Ideally you would have a designer who can do ebook conversion,  and put the files together, a copyeditor, a developmental editor, etc. Then how much does each charge for those services?  We have to price that out in a way that we can afford to do that.  We can't take responsibility if CreateSpace design issues ensue. The DIY aspect is super challenging. I would add someone to my team who can do social media and marketing. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your chances. There is a huge need for a team of folks who can do this.

What percentage amount of what you do is book related?

Ingrid: 90%. Some city work , non-profit, some marketing writing, but primarily books.

Who are your clients?

Ingrid: Publishers, individual authors.  Two years ago curriculum guides were 50% of the work. About 30% are individual clients.

What kind of business consultants do you work with?

Ingrid: We hired Libby Wagner when our company was  a third of the size it is now. We were growing and thought we should think about how we wanted to grow. We would benefit from an outside consultant. She was recommended from a connection with the city. It was like having a therapist. She taught us how to have an effective meeting, create communication channels. That was the biggest investment we made in the company so far. It came back to us twentyfold . There was nothing more important to us. We had to love what we were doing. It was a fantastic investigation of who we really were.

She suggested that we hire an assistant. We hired one the next day. You realize you get stuck in your own thinking.

Leslie: We can love what we do, and that it can be a mindset of no scarcity.

Ingrid: It sounds cheesy, but…

Are you still working in the same room together?

Ingrid: Yes, but in nicer digs. Now we have lovely offices on Dexter. But we still sit close together. We have three offices together.

Leslie: If I could have an office by myself, I wouldn't. It wouldn't give me anything.

Ingrid: I believe it generates more work in an office. We tried quiet hours. That never worked.

Can you talk about working remotely? 

Ingrid: Christina is in Portland. Kate Chenowith became our developmental editor.You have to figure out how to share files, version control, meetings, making sure everyone feels included. We get all the staff together at least quarterly.  If you have employees in multiple states you have to manage the taxes. In general it has been worth it.

Upcoming meetups:

Capitol Hill coffee hour 6/3
Portland coffee hour 6/6
July member meeting 7/14 e-formatting and development.