So, it turns out that the creative collaboration website Reedsy is solid! Which is a refreshing change from all the dodgy slop ads for proofreading/copywriting/get-paid-10k-a-week-to-write-movie-reviews websites, where it’s all just an ad-driving site draining a few bucks off every ‘registered editor’ to fish around in what looks like a thriving job pool but where the only fish you’re seeing are painted on the basin.
I was cautious about Reedsy, but I applied anyhow because they had some editors I had worked with, and if they were active there, I trusted their judgment. There are some solid barriers to entry for the editorial side, including years of active work, a portfolio of your titles, honest validation for people claiming to be ‘editors’ when, alas, the title is not enshrined in any legal protection: you can’t qualify in it, you can’t pay for a license in it, and Reedsy seemed invested in only wrangling those who could prove it. That was neat. Scams thrive on fools, so why would they filter out the easy pickings?
Then came the most helpful onboarding I’ve had even compared to corporate, office-based commercial publishing. We went through about three rounds of polishing up my profile before it got submitted to checking, and there followed fast a videocall with a real human from the company explaining all the processes – and these processes sounded nice.
Streamlined instant-messaging portals with solid fileshare limits? Compartmentalised tabs for processing new gigs, talking through specifics, bargaining an offer, and seeking mediation for any trouble cases? Payments held by Stripe away from either party until completion, automatically taken from the writer on agreed dates, only dispensed to the editor on fulfilment of work, and Reedsy only getting their 10% at the end? If that was intended to be shady business, they’d clearly forgotten they’d left the Big Light on, because that was a better system than even commercial publishers are doing these days – I swear, the horror I received doing in-office publishing that I was running projects through approved instant messaging portals instead of Dear-Fellow-Creative-All-Best-Sam emails?? How else would they know my job title after every message?!
Anyhow, this place seems to have a system built from the ground-up for this specific form of collaboration, with no prior knowledge assumed on the writer’s part – which is handy, with almost all the clients working on personal projects rather than contracted or professionally commissioned work. Which is a whole other thing I’m going to do about the difference between editing across a range of experience in your clients. There’s points of improvement, like it would be rather nice to be able to fish for clients on a listing of their projects, but this place also has a pretty great suggestion/support system, so hurray for that. There’s blogs by other professionals, which again – you try to ask too many folks in an office setting how to edit, you’ll get a lot of blank looks back.
Overall, then, if you’ve got some solid editorial credits to your name (or CV) and you’d like to work more with helping early-days writers develop their craft – and feel like someone Robin Williams might’ve played in a heartwarming editor movie – then Reedsy’s a good gateway to that clientele.
P.S. If this is all getting your interest, here’s my referral link: https://reedsy.com/p/sam-fern and if it goes well for you, let me know!