Episode 25: 8 Tips for Contracting with Your First Tech Editor

This Week’s Episode

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.

8 Tips for Contracting with Your First Tech Editor

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.

Ask yourself why are you getting your patterns tech edited and what you expect from a tech editor

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.

Always check references

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.

Find out what the rates mean

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?

Choose someone who responds promptly

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.

Get an estimate

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.

Start with one pattern

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.

Check your pattern before sending it out

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.

Review the experience before contracting again

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...