Excel Tips for Self-Employed Editors

with Maya Berger

When: Saturday, January 28, 2023, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm PST

Where: Online via Zoom

When a client approaches you about a new editing job, wouldn’t it be great if you had a tool to help you:

• quote a fair rate and accurate time frame for the project;
• track whether you get paid on time;
• compare your estimated hourly rate and editing speed with your actual rate and speed; and
• analyze how valuable this client is to your business?

Wouldn’t it be greater if this tool was already on your computer and included in your Microsoft Office suite? And wouldn’t it be even greater if this tool didn’t intimidate and baffle you?

Whether you’re already spreadsheet savvy or you’ve never used Excel before, this seminar will show you how you can harness Excel’s functionality to manage your freelance editorial business confidently and professionally.

In this seminar, I will show you how to manage your income, expenses, and project data in Excel and take the guesswork out of running your business. It will cover:

• an introduction to Excel basics and terminology;
• how Excel can be used to track project income, editing speed, average rates, and more;
• your business data at a glance, with summaries and charts; and
• Excel troubleshooting tips.

No prior experience with Excel is necessary, but please ensure that you have Excel installed on your computer and that you have no pending updates for your version.

Each participant will receive an Excel workbook that we will work through together. Use of two screens is preferred: one to work on Excel with and the other to watch the presentation on.

Maya Berger (she/her) launched The Editor’s Affairs (TEA) in May 2020 to help fellow freelance editors manage their business affairs. She has presented on Excel and business data at recent Editors Canada, CIEP, ACES, and IPEd annual conferences as well as for SENSE, and she appeared as a guest on The Editing Podcast to speak about editing erotica. Maya edits and proofreads speculative fiction, erotica, and academic texts in the humanities and social sciences. After spending 13 years in the UK, Maya moved back to Canada in 2017 and currently lives in Toronto. She is a CIEP Advanced Professional Member.

Seminar Recording Notice:
Editors BC will be recording these sessions using Zoom’s record feature. The data captured may include your image (including your name if it appears in your video image) and voice recordings. The Zoom recordings will be made available to registered seminar participants for a period of two weeks following the session. After that time, the recording will no longer be available to participants. If you have any questions or concerns about the recording, please contact Claire Majors at pd@editorsbc.ca. Session participants are not permitted to make their own recordings, by any means, and are forbidden from distributing the recording they receive from the session.