Hilary Powers Editorial Services (Ret’d)

I’m basically out of the editing biz, but might be lured back for an old friend with a fascinating project....

These days, my heart and hands belong to the craft of needle felting, which lets me bring creatures both realistic and fantastical to something like life – a goal pursued for more than half a century in assorted media from ceramics to tin foil and embroidery, now brought the nearest to perfection yet.

Case in point:

lounging beagle

See Salamander Feltworks for the latest on what I'm up to now.

This page helps keep the @powersedit e-mail address alive and provides a home for the support and exercise files for my little books: Making Word Work for You and Making Word 2010 Work for You, both available via the Editorial Freelancers Association.

You’ll find online résumés for people still working in editing and related fields at the Bay Area Editors’ Forum and the Editorial Freelancers Association. Both organizations also offer job listing services free to potential clients.

When you approach someone you might want to work with or advertise a job, it’s useful to include some details about the project beyond the general type of work (novel, nonfiction, and so on) and the subject. Your editor will want to know the word count, the audience, the medium (paper or files? word processing system?), the time frame you hope to follow, and your plans for publication. Wait to be asked, but you can expect that an editor who is seriously interested will want to see the material before quoting a specific price or discussing process in much detail – probably either the whole thing or the beginning and something out of the middle.

Good hunting!