You’ve been an academic for years and probably never imagined that you’d do anything else. So when you begin thinking about leaving academia, it’s easy to experience self-doubt and to question whether or not you have skills that can be applied in non-academic jobs. This is yet another symptom of being trapped in an abnormal world where people are trained to believe that leaving is taboo. I promise you, you do have valuable skills, even if you don’t quite know how to articulate them in “industry lingo.”
It’s much easier, however, to understand how your skills in writing and publishing translate to a career in academic editing.
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Writing, Grammar, and Punctuation
For example, to be an editor, you need to be a strong writer. Some people disagree with me on this and say that being a good writer doesn’t necessarily make you a good editor, but I think that, in general, if you understand how to construct a clear sentence and convey an argument, then you are (usually) also able to evaluate those qualities in someone else’s writing.
You also need to have an eagle eye. If you’re not good at spotting errors in the text, then editing is not for you. Related to this, for copy editing, you need knowledge of correct grammar and punctuation. You don’t have to know all the technical terms, like “split infinitive” or “present perfect tense,” but you do have to understand when these elements are being used incorrectly. Still, if your grammar and punctuation knowledge isn’t strong or if you need a refresher, there are many resources, from books to courses, where you can brush up on these skills before you begin taking on editing work.
Finally, although developmental editing is more about assessing the “big picture” of a text, it still requires you to be sharp and able to offer constructive critiques that will help the author get published.
The Advantages of an Academic Background
If you’re coming from academia–either as a graduate student or as faculty–you likely have read countless scholarly publications and you know what strong academic writing looks like (even if you haven’t published much yourself–although, of course, it definitely helps!). This is a huge advantage, IMHO, because many people who work as academic editors don’t have any grad school training, they’ve never published or even read much peer-reviewed research, and they aren’t familiar with any particular research methods or literature. They are editors who chose to work on scholarly writing, not scholars who chose to become editors.
I’m not trying to be mean, but I think this is an important distinction. I’ve seen editors ask questions about how a literature review should be structured or how to phrase the results of a quantitative analysis (like p-values and coefficients and such), and my opinion is that you really shouldn’t be editing scholarly material if you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. That doesn’t mean that you have to know how to DO the research methods, but you do have to be fluent in the language in which scholars speak.
However, this is a huge advantage for you–a scholar–if you decide to become an editor. If you’ve published before or if you’re trained in a particular field or methods, you can use those qualifications to create a niche for yourself and your business. You certainly don’t have to limit yourself to your specific field (for me, that would be political science), but if you can say that you specialize in a particular area (e.g., the social sciences or the humanities), that helps you sell yourself to clients and to book publishers that may specialize in certain fields.
Technical Skills
While you don’t have to be a computer scientist to become an editor, you do need some technical skills. Most clients send me their files in Microsoft Word, and using Track Changes is the most common way to track edits. If you work on dissertations or theses, then you’ll need to learn how to make tables of contents, lists of tables and figures, and the like using Word’s tools. However, because the process is so similar across documents, it doesn’t take long to learn how to do this on autopilot.
You also need to know how to use email, schedule phone calls with clients, create invoices, and tackle other aspects of running a business, like having a website. But none of this is rocket surgery, and you can hire out things like the website if you really need to.
People Skills
Finally, you do need people skills. Ultimately, you are running a business. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you, hire you, and pay you. That requires flexibility.
But at the same time, you have to be super flexible in academia! You have to bend over backward for your students, your colleagues, your chair, your administrators, and you have to do things all the time that you don’t want to do… like go to faculty meetings (ha!).
The awesome thing about owning your own business is that, aside from making sure that you return a stellar product to the client and that they’re happy with your work, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do! (Trust me; it is, indeed, as amazing as it sounds.) If a client tries to haggle with you too much about your rates or otherwise seems unreliable, just tell them that you’re no longer available. Fantastic, right? So, while you DO need to be client focused in running a business, you DON’T have to put up with abuse, disrespect, or any other garbage that academia subjects you to on a daily basis.
Conclusion
While I never dreamed I would (could?) be an entrepreneur, running an editing business is nowhere near as complicated as opening a brick-and-mortar store or something like that. There are very few startup costs, and the risks are low (especially if you decide to try freelancing on the side before you leave your academic job–which is totally possible, assuming your college allows it).
So what do you think? Do you have the skills to become an academic editor? Did you ever think you’d become an entrepreneur? Send me an email and let’s talk about it! I’d love to hear your story.