Let’s welcome again Andrea Reider as she shares with us “Staying Freelance Half 4.” Get pleasure from!
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I wrote Staying Freelance to encourage and advise different freelancers on how you can construct and keep their careers for the long-term. My aim is to show folks the artwork of staying freelance, and how you can obtain monetary stability.
An Excerpt From Staying Freelance
The next is an excerpt from Staying Freelance:
I used to be largely arduous at work designing and typesetting books for a wide range of massive and small publishers and self-publishing authors.
My early Macintosh abilities had positioned me in place to draw new clients for my freelance enterprise. If something, I had higher purchasers than I actually deserved at first.
Nonetheless, I used to be extremely motivated to continue to learn and finally grew to become a fairly good ebook designer and an excellent higher typesetter.
I don’t assume I’d have even thought-about beginning my very own enterprise if I hadn’t grown up working at my household’s males’s clothes retailer in Detroit, Michigan.
The shop had a number of folks working as tailors and seamstresses in a walled-off area in the back of the shop. From an early age, I noticed how they labored to fulfill the purchasers’ wants and even whims, whereas producing high-quality work–kind of on schedule.
The tailor store gave the impression to be perpetually at some point behind on their work, however might normally end issues up shortly if a buyer got here to name early or on-time for his or her tailor-made clothes.
I keep in mind many instances having to apologize to clients and inform them that their clothes wasn’t fairly prepared but, and providing a cup of espresso or a glass of wine whereas they waited, and even worse, having to ask them to come back again one other time.
My expertise working on the household enterprise taught me most of the issues I would wish to know to handle my very own enterprise at some point. However no lesson was as vital as seeing how our skilled salespeople interacted with our largely prosperous clients–doing their utmost to please everybody, whereas sustaining their very own private dignity and area.
Freelancing for the Professor
My reference to a coin collector and retired professor got here by means of a referral from one other shopper who had labored on the writer’s final ebook. The brand new ebook had lots of of images of uncommon and historical bronze cash that needed to be exactly organized on the pages.
The professor was a well known coin collector and a professor of psychology at San Francisco State College and had printed many books on completely different matters. This ebook was a listing of his assortment of historical Greek and Roman bronze cash.
The professor was about eighty years outdated on the time we labored on the undertaking, and was one of many few purchasers that I’ve ever typed a full manuscript for–not to mention a ebook filled with Inexperienced and Latin inscriptions. Fortunately the work was unfold out of a number of months and the professor was very understanding of any time constraints that arose for me.
We met every week on the professor’s residence, which was full of partitions and instances filled with uncommon and historical artifacts from his assortment.
I’d give him the typeset pages from the final week, and he would give me new sheets of lined yellow authorized paper with handwritten descriptions of the cash, together with dates and the Greek or Latin inscriptions that appeared on the cash. The descriptions included issues like: “Demeter holding a sheaf of wheat.”
The textual content appeared on one facet of the two-page ebook unfold. The opposing web page had the cash neatly organized in rows by a contract graphic artist that the professor employed for the aim.
Not like me, who did every thing on the Macintosh pc, this artist did every thing by hand, pasting the images of the cash on white boards for the professor to evaluation.
At one level, the artist selected her personal to differ the “uninteresting” and orderly layouts, arranging the cash as if they had been components of a flowery necklace. The professor rejected the pages instantly, however I believe he saved a number of of the necklace coin preparations within the ebook, joking that readers would assume that he had “misplaced his thoughts” throughout the manufacturing of the ebook.
Freelancing for One other Main U.S. E book Writer
On account of one other one in every of my electronic mail campaigns, I linked with a manufacturing supervisor at a division of a extremely revered U.S. ebook writer, who employed me to work as a contract ebook designer and typesetter for his or her textbooks.
I got here up with a good suggestion for the design of my first ebook undertaking, and at first they gave the impression to be very proud of my work. The editor instructed me she actually preferred the preliminary design samples I submitted for the ebook.
I used to be fairly upset, shocked, and shocked after I acquired her subsequent electronic mail, writing that she was “extraordinarily disillusioned” in me for not submitting the right varieties together with the design samples. I despatched the filled-in varieties to her the subsequent day, however the injury was already accomplished.
They’d despatched me a PDF of an eighty-page manufacturing guide that I had skimmed over, however not learn completely.
No writer had ever despatched me something like this earlier than, and I foolishly ignored it, considering that I already knew every thing that they may probably must say about ebook typesetting.
I ended up making a small mistake within the preliminary design samples for the subsequent ebook design and typesetting undertaking, however they had been comfortable sufficient with my work that they scheduled me for a 3rd undertaking.
For the primary time in my profession, the editor despatched me the mistaken information for typesetting the brand new ebook. She despatched me an earlier, unedited model of the textual content.
The editor tried to show the error into a bonus when she realized that numerous my work must be redone, resizing a number of the ebook’s images in a approach that might impact the structure of each web page within the ebook.
I didn’t absolutely perceive what she wished me to do, and after I despatched within the new pages I quickly acquired one other harsh electronic mail, instructing me to return the entire supplies and information that I had, and stating that I’d now not be engaged on the ebook.
I used to be as soon as once more very upset and shocked at this abrupt ending. I emailed the manufacturing supervisor, saying that I might repair the design instantly, however she wouldn’t budge.
Just a few months later, having healed from my wounded delight and funds, I used to be transferring into my first condominium in San Francisco, and despatched the manufacturing supervisor an electronic mail with my new deal with.
I had no thought that they’d be sending me extra work, however wished them to have my new deal with for sending out my 1099 tax type.
I used to be despatched one more unkind electronic mail, detailing the entire errors I’d made on the three books I’d labored on. She wrote that these had been the explanations she was now not sending me work.
A few years later the corporate was merged with an excellent bigger writer and the entire folks I’d labored with misplaced their jobs.
Even when issues had labored out between us, the job would have been short-term.
I ended up in a a lot better long-term place having discovered different publishers to work for with out coming to depend on this writer as a significant shopper.
Staying Freelance is obtainable on Amazon.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Reider has been working as a ebook designer and structure artist/typesetter for publishers and self-publishing authors since graduating from the College of Michigan in English in 1985 with a B.A. in English. It was the 12 months of the Macintosh pc and “desktop publishing,” and her first job was managing a typesetting store in Ann Arbor.
When Andrea moved to San Francisco two years later her Macintosh abilities had been very a lot in demand. Andrea started working as a freelancer for a number of ebook publishers and has been at it ever since. Her purchasers have included John Wiley & Sons, Addison Wesley Longman, McGraw Hill, Rowman & Littlefield, and lots of of self-publishing authors.
Web site: http://www.reiderbooks.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreareiderdesign
andreareider@gmail.com
www.reiderbooks.com
