Freelance Editing: Getting Started in 2025

I promise I won’t mention quitting your day job.

A very kind individual slipped into my DMs and asked me a great question: Do you need to be a published and/or successful writer before you become an editor?

And I can confidently answer: No, you do not.

I had the same question when I first fell headfirst into this editing career. It bothered me for a full year and loved to pick and prey on my imposter syndrome. But an editing mentor said one thing to me that reframed everything for me:

Writing and editing, while connected skills, are not the same skill.

So, lets get into today’s newsletters…

• 🎓Where to find editing classes

• 📚How to get clients in 2025

• 🎯Tips that I’ve picked up over the years as an editor

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Photo by Camille Brodard on Unsplash

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Editing Education

Being a reader isn’t enough. It’s a terrific start; being well-read will absolutely help. But editing and leisure reading are different acts.

Step 1: Choose a Type of Editing

Educating yourself will be key, but first, you may want to think about what type of editing you’d like to do. The types are developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, and proofreading.

If you’d like to read more about the different types of editing, visit my website’s blog.

It’s up to you to choose which type and how many types you’d like to do. For me, I started with developmental editing and line editing. I quickly learned that I loathed line editing and dropped it from my services.

The greatest thing about freelance is that it’s a choose-your-own-adventure kind of career. And you can always adapt and change as you grow and learn.

Step 2: Take Some Classes

The EFA

The Editorial Freelancers Association is probably the best place to start when it comes to classes. They offer traditional instructor-led online classes as well as self-faced courses and webinars.

This links you right to their Education Program page.

They have courses for all the types of editing. And recently they’ve bundled a few of their classes together for editors just starting out:

• Becoming a Fiction Editor

• Launching Your Editing Business

• Becoming a Copyeditor

• Breaking into Academic, Scientific, or Medical Editing

It’s up to you to pick and choose which courses and webinars sound good to you. The EFA is a great starting point for editing education.

Club Ed

Club Ed offers instructor-led and self-paced courses, though, their classes are geared mostly towards developmental editing. But they do offer courses for line editing, copy editing, and book coaching.

I’ve only taken their self-paced courses which are delivered as Word documents and include the instructor’s marginal comments in example manuscripts that are wildly helpful. I’m a big fan of Club Ed’s classes.

For those just getting started they do have classes such as:

• Starting Your Editing Business

• Finding (and Landing) Indie Author Clients

• And several marketing classes for editors

ACES

ACES stands for the American Copy Editors Society. Being a dev editor, I’ve never visited this website until today but many of my colleagues have enjoyed their classes.

Check out their course catalog here.

Books and Other Resources

Foundational classes are going to help make you feel way more confident as you find your footing in the editing career, but during and after there are so many great resources out there by way of books, blogs, and articles.

Books (in no particular order):

• Story Genius by Lisa Cron

• Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

• The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne

• The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors by Erin Brenner

• The best punctuation book, period. by June Casagrande

• The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby

• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne

• The Thesaurus collection by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

• The 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing by C.S. Lakin et. al.

Blogs

• Janice Hardy’s blog Fiction University - I love Hardy’s blog. She covers a ton of topics regarding fiction writing and big-picture story elements like pacing, plot, structure, narrative distance, POV and more.

• Louise Harnby’s website - Harnby has loads of resources for both authors and editors on her page, ranging from informative blogs to webinars. She mainly focuses on line-editing, copy editing, and proofreading.

Of course there are loads of other incredible blogs by editors and writers alike, but these are the two I use almost every single day.

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Getting Clients

I started during the early days of the pandemic, when Fiverr and Upwork were still in their glory days.

But they’ve both gone to hell now. Upwork makes you pay way too much to submit for jobs using their credit system. Fiverr recently came out with an ad glorifying the usage of AI on their platform, and doesn’t feel the same as when I first started.

I don’t recommend either, but I won’t stop you from trying them. Overall, they did help me figure out how to freelance, but the 20% chunk they take off the top hurts.

Here’s what I do recommend:

Get on Social Media

When I first started, I mainly posted on TikTok and Instagram. My TikTok is my biggest platform right now with just over 10,000 followers and it’s where most of my leads come from.

Between the chaos the lead up to the 13-hour TikTok ban created, and with the ban only pushed off by 75 days, it’s more important than ever to diversify your social media.

Now, I’m all over social media (in order of where most of my leads come from):

• TikTok

• Threads

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Substack

Do I recommend starting on every platform all at once? No. That could send you into overwhelm and burnout. Pick one or two and grow from there.

What do you post?

Anything you want. I like to gear my posts toward the educational and informational. But you could also show the behind-the-scenes stuff, talk about the classes your taking, and talk about your new services.

Let the people know that you’re a new editor. I know that may sound horrifying, but I promise it’ll be okay! Many authors enjoy working with new editors as long as you’re upfront about your experience.

My biggest tip is to be as authentic as possible, even if it’s a little scary at first. Honesty should always be the biggest priority when it comes to working with others.

Create a Website

Creating a website doesn’t have to be an early step you take. I’m fully aware of the upfront cost and the cost to maintain it—I didn’t get my website until almost 2 years in.

When I started, I used carrd.co. It’s a free way to create a legit-looking landing page for clients to learn more about you, your editing services, and testimonials once you start accruing them.

And then, if you want, you can create a website via Squarespace or another website-building and hosting company that allows you to build out more than just one page.

Connect & Create Community

When you’re on socials, interact with others. Be social. Like, comment, and share posts. Message others if it’s relevant to their posts.

The writing community is everywhere and, for most part, very welcoming. I’ve made loads of friends on Tiktok and Instagram.

Build up the community as best as you can.

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My Top 7️⃣ Tips For New Editors

1. Use Contracts

Use contracts. Use contracts. Use contracts.

Got it? Good.

Contracts protect both you and your clients. They lay out the terms, timelines, important dates, policies, payment plans, etc.

They are a core way to establish trust between yourself and a client. And because they lay out the terms so clearly, it leaves little room for confusion and miscommunication.

2. Be Kind

The writing community and the publishing industry are small, meaning news and other important information gets around fast.

If there are editors or any publishing professional acting badly, we will find out eventually. There’s even a whole blog dedicated to calling out bad actors and scams called Writer Beware.

3. Build in Breaks

As you start getting clients, be sure to build in breaks. Take time away from the computer and touch grass—daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

I’m calling myself out here, I still haven’t learned, but I’d rather you guys at least be aware of it before you get into bad habits.

4. Don’t Market Your Services in DMs or Other Editors’ Comment Sections

This one is niche, but it’s happened before.

New editors have placed unsolicited ‘ads’ in other editors’ comment sections. I’ve even heard of editors reading indie books, DMing or emailing the authors to tell them what’s wrong with their book just to market their services.

Resist doing this. While it might feel like you’re simply marketing your services, it leaves a really bad taste in the mouth.

5. Don’t Overbook Yourself

I take on two big services a month.

Two. That’s it. Typically, one developmental edit and one manuscript evaluation. And sometimes one smaller service (either a first 5k pass, outline evaluation, or tennis fact-checking).

More than that and it’s too much.

You’ll find your groove and learn how many projects feels like enough for you as you go along.

6. Don’t Shame Others

Don’t shame readers for what they read.

Don’t shame writers for what they write.

Don’t shame editors for how many projects they take on each month or how many hours they work or what they charge. Everyone’s circumstances are different. And the beauty of freelance is that we get to choose how much or how little we work.

7. Don’t Compete with Each Other

Of course, feelings of jealousy and envy are 100% normal.

I feel it every now and then, but what’s helped negate those feelings is my community of editors that I trust with my life and my business. Freelance is so much more fun with others than it is on your own.

Competing can take the joy out of this work. So, do your best not to get trapped in that cycle. There will always be enough work to go around.

Have a question about freelance editing?

📝A Final Note

Like all things, this is not the end-all be-all of how to get started with editing. Everything I’ve talked about in this newsletters, I’ve gone through and experienced myself.

This is how I started and grew my editing career.

All of our paths will be different. Take what works for you and forget the rest.

- ✌🏼 Kourtney