Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show

Welcome to the first episode of the Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show, hosted by Marie Segares.

This podcast is focused on the unique challenges and joys of being a creative indie business owner in the yarn industry. Whether you’re a crochet or knitting designer, blogger, maker, podcaster, publisher, tech editor, or author; or a yarn spinner or dyer; or you make crochet hooks or knitting needles or accessories; this show will be all about how you can grow your business while hopefully staying productive, creative, and sane! The Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show format combines solo shows and interviews.

This week’s episode is about how to identify the right magazines to target for article, design, and tutorial submissions. The publishing industry has changed so much in the last few years and you may not be thinking about submitting to magazines anymore. There are a lot of reasons you might want to periodically revisit whether submitting proposals to magazines is a good fit for your business, and if it is, which magazines make the most sense for you to consider as possible publishers.

This episode originally included a downloadable chart with crochet and knitting magazines, but since it first aired in 2014, many things have changed. Create your own list by visiting each magazine's website and searching for design guidelines, submissions, or editorial calendar. When proposal guidelines aren’t posted, you can reach out to the contact email and ask to join a proposal call list and/or to submit an unsolicited proposal.

Another great source for current magazine calls for proposals is the Designers group on Ravelry.

1. Distribution Channels and Customer Base
2. Magazine’s Overall Aesthetic
3. Editorial Calendar, Mood Board, and/or Call for Proposals
4. Submission and Pre-Publication Process and the Publication Supports Available
5. Compensation
6. The Team
7. Copyright and Exclusivity Terms
8. Confidentiality/Pre-Publication Social Media Policies
9. Deadline/Timeline for Current and Near Future Issues
10. Cost of Submission

Considering these factors helps you decide if a particular magazine is a good fit with you values, your business goals, and your current schedule. It should also lead to a higher acceptance rate since you aren’t targeting magazines that don’t fit your style, and more satisfaction with the terms of your publishing agreement.

Print magazines are available in local yarn shops (LYS), book stores, grocery stores, big box stores, and other places an indie may have a hard time accessing. Digital magazines may be available on a particular platform that you aren’t working with already. The magazine may expose you to a different (or larger) audience than those who have already been introduced to your work. You may choose a magazine that reaches your existing audience to reinforce your presence among future customers.

Besides the magazine’s website, blog, or Facebook page, Ravelry is a good source for looking through past issues. Some questions to ask to see if the magazine is the right fit for your business are:

• How does the overall aesthetic of the magazine connect with your (current or future) work?
• What type of yarn is used? (Large vs. indie brands, fiber types, weights, price points.)
• How do you feel about the styling, photography, and layout?
• What types of projects and articles are featured?
• What skill level(s) are targeted?

Do you feel inspired to propose something in response to a mood board or posted call for proposals? If not, you may want to target this magazine at another time. When mood boards or call information isn’t publicly available, try to find out about the editorial calendar so you can submit proposals that are timely.

Are you pitching an idea and then moving forward if it is approved by the editorial team? Or, are you sending in the completed content (the complete article or tutorial with photos, or the pattern with photographs of a completed sample) as the proposal?

What types of publication supports are available? Some examples include:

• Editing and tech editing,
• Styling and photography,
• Pattern layout and formatting,
• Content curation,
• Yarn (who selects the yarn, who arranges for yarn support),
• Prom...

I’m sharing an interview today with Ashwini Jambhekar as a bonus episode! I temporarily misplaced the recording (gasp!) while organizing files and, since I also skipped a week of podcasting this year, I thought I’d add this interview back into the fold as a bonus.

Ashwini Jambhekar is a part-time knitting designer with a background as a scientist and ballet dancer. Ashwini has designed her own projects for years, but she got her start as a published designer back in 2011. She frequently shared her finished knit projects on Facebook, and a friend from dance class referred Ashwini to her mother-in-law, who was writing a knitting book. Ashwini ended up submitting the design for the Jive Sweater, which published in 10 Secrets of the LaidBack Knitters: A Guide to Holistic Knitting, Yarn, and Life by Vicki Stiefel and Lisa Souza.

Ashwini can be found online as Ashwini J Designs on her blog, Facebook, Ravelry (as AshwiniJ, on her designer page, and in the Ashwini Sashka Designs Group, which she co-moderates with my knitting tech editor, Sashka Macievich). Ashwini is currently participating in the Ravelry Indie Design Gift-a-Long through December 31, 2014, and she was recently interviewed about it on Sarah Jordan’s blog here. Ashwini also recently got started as a tech editor, and you can read more about her services here.

In this interview, Ashwini talks about how the perspective and skills she learned through her training and career as a scientist inform her knitwear design. In particular, she talks about the concept of grading patterns using a percent difference (or “fold difference”) rather than a flat difference in measurement.

Ashwini also writes her pattern instructions in different ways and then chooses between them considering which write up is clearest, what may be lost by being more concise, and understanding her audience. Because Ashwini targets intermediate to advanced knitters, she places value on in her patterns, but she also includes notes in the Ravelry pattern pages to indicate difficulty.

She doesn’t use a formal style sheet for her own designs but she adapts her writing from previous patterns. Ashwini doesn’t see an intrinsic value to sticking to a very specific style sheet nor to always changing your format.

Ashwini also talks about what she enjoys about collaborating with third party publishers on her designs, as well as the benefits and potential challenges of sharing Ravelry group with another designer.

The Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show is no longer broadcasting. Episodes are available as a service to the yarn community. This episode originally aired in December, 2014. Be aware that content may be outdated.

If you'd like to chat with other yarn-related business owners, join the Creative Yarn Entrepreneurs Facebook group. Support Marie's work by buying one of her books, Make Money Teaching Crochet: Launch Your Business, Increase Your Side Income, Reach More Students (Amazon | Gumroad) or Design It, Promote It, Sell It: Online Marketing for Your Crochet and Knit Patterns (Amazon | Gumroad).

In this week’s episode, I share 8 tips for contracting with a tech editor for the first time for your indie patterns. Even if you have worked with tech editors in the past when your work was third-party published, you may find the experience of finding and hiring a tech editor for your self-published patterns daunting.

1. Ask yourself why are you getting your patterns tech edited and what you expect from a tech editor
2. Always check references
3. Find out what the rates mean
4. Choose someone who responds promptly
5. Get an estimate
6. Start with one pattern
7. Check your pattern before sending it out
8. Review the experience before contracting again

These tips will help make the experience of working with a tech editor for your self-published patterns more manageable and also will minimize the costs.

There are many reasons to use a tech editor. Some of the most common ones are to:

• Reduce errors and inconsistencies,
• Develop a style sheet with assistance,
• Get support with pattern grading,
• Produce symbol charts or graphs,
• Convert symbol charts or graphs to written patterns, and
• Meet an external requirement of a co-publisher.

Not all tech editors provide all of these services, so having an understanding of what you want and expect will help you choose a tech editor who can meet your needs. You may also want to consider whether you are seeking a tech editor who specialized in crochet or knitting, or one who is able to edit both types of patterns.

If you know other designers you can trust, ask for recommendations! You may want to specifically ask for a tech editor who has worked with them on self-published patterns, especially if your pattern writing style is unconventional.

If you don’t know a designer who can make a recommendation (or, more likely, their tech editor is booked!) scour the threads in the Indy Pattern Designers Resources group on Ravelry. When you reach out to prospective tech editors, be sure to ask for (and then check) references.

Tech editors generally bill at an hourly rate. The rate varies quite a bit but $15-$30/hour is not unusual. Some tech editors charge the same rate for the entire project and others may charge a different rate for grading or producing charts.

You should also know what increments of time the tech editor bills in. For example, do they only bill in 1 hour increments, or in 15 minute or 30 minute increments?

A tech editor may have wonderful references, but if s/he cannot respond to your introduction in a timely manner, it’s likely that you will get a delayed response to your editing requests. An overbooked tech editor will reduce the spontaneity you have in self-publishing.

Ask for an estimate and ask the tech editor to contact you before incurring additional costs. Let’s say the tech editor estimates it will take 3 hours to edit your pattern, but soon discovers a major error or inconsistency. If s/he doesn’t contact you first, you can easily go outside of your budget. You may want to take a pattern with many errors back and make adjustments before returning it to the tech editor. Or, you may opt to have the editor fix it. Either way, you should be allowed to make a choice that impacts your budget.

It can be very exciting to work with a tech editor for the first time, but to minimize costs and ensure a good fit, start with just one pattern. Choose something that is typical of your tech editing needs. Consider this a test run – if it’s successful, it will be the beginning of a great partnership. You will probably learn a lot from the experience of having your pattern edited, and you may want to make changes to your next pattern before sending it along to the tech editor.

Although you can send out your rawest work to a tech editor, it will likely cost more than you want to spend for them to edit the pattern into the right shape. To minimize costs and get the most out of your tech editing experience, check your pattern over before hand. You may want to review it yourself, line by line; ask another designer to review it (and do the same in return); or conduct a pattern test.

Once you’ve received the pattern back and published it, review the experience and decide whether this tech editor is a good fit for you. Some things to consider are timeliness, overall communication, and acc...

Before I launched the Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show, I sent out a survey to a few online friends for feedback on show topics. Kathy Kelly from the Crochetbird blog asked about ways to engage with blogging community. Thanks for the suggestion, Kathy! In this episode, I share 6 suggestions for engaging other bloggers.

1. Commenting
2. Participating in challenges
3. Joining link parties & blog hops
4. Finding blogger groups
5. Attending blogger events and meetups
6. Connecting with bloggers on other forms of social media

Each of these different ways of engaging has its own benefits and challenges. Deciding which ways work best for you will depend on your goals.

Commenting on other blogs is a great way to engage with bloggers. Unfortunately, due to spam, trolls, malware, etc., some bloggers don’t allow comments or have so much security to cut through that it makes commenting near impossible.

Include a link to your blog in the comment form, and, if appropriate, include a specific link to a post that’s relevant. When possible, include a substantive comment. Try not to include links within the comment unless they are highly relevant to the discussion and/or you already know the blogger. (The best analogy I’ve heard about this is that including links in the comment is like a party guest jumping up in the middle of dinner to shout, “Come on over to my house for dinner instead!”)

There are several types of popular blog challenges, including:

• Daily blogging challenges
• DIY challenges, like Me Made May or the Seamless Pledge.
• Yarn-related challenges, like Knit Picks’s 52 Weeks of Dishcloths.
• Blog improvement challenges, like ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog or the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

You can join in a current group challenge, or follow along with another blogger’s personal challenge, or work through an old challenge. Challenges can help you improve or diversify your blogging skills while engaging with other bloggers.

Link parties and blog hops are organized activities that take place on a regular basis. A host (or hosts) write a blog post and participants can add links to their blog post directly in to the post. Link parties come and go so ask for recommendations or use search to find a party.

Each link partu has its own culture and rules. Generally speaking, you are expected to visit several of the other posted links and comment. It’s often the norm to visit every blogger who comments on your blog as well.

You can find blogger groups on every social media platform, so choose a setting where you feel comfortable. Some of these groups are private or secret, so you can discuss some of your blogging concerns more privately. Others are public. Most of these groups combine elements of blog support (discussions about tech issues, posting ideas, etc.) with cross-promotion. Some are open to all bloggers and others are focused on specific types of bloggers.

Some groups you may want to consider are:

• Blogging, The Blog Hub, French Blogs, and Self-Hosted WordPress on Ravelry.
• Facebook groups with the words “blogging,” “bloggin,” or blogger in the title.
• HubSpot shared a list of 20 LinkedIn Groups Every Marketer Should Join. You can also click these links to find LinkedIn groups with blogging or