Professional Boundaries: How to Protect Your Editing Business with Contracts

Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it’s like to run an editorial business in today’s world. I’m your host, Tara Whitaker. Let’s get to it.

Hello and welcome to today’s episode. So today we’re going to talk about boundaries, but specifically boundaries that should be more official that belong in our editing contracts.

And we talked a bit about boundaries back in episode seven, way back toward the beginning of the podcast, but it was more of a general overview and had an emphasis on self-care, which is all great. If you haven’t listened to that, highly recommend you go back and listen in. But today we’re going to get into the specifics of what and why and how you can not only include, but also enforce boundaries in your business with the help of a contract.

Before we really get into it, just a reminder, this shouldn’t be taken as legal advice. I’d like to think I’m a dang good editor, but I’m definitely not an attorney. I am just fortunate enough to be related to one. So please do not take this as legal advice.

And the reason, or one of the reasons, I wanted to chat about this is because sometimes I forget being in the business for almost thirteen years, the things that I think of as either second nature or non-negotiables or just kind of like, yeah, that’s part of running a business. I didn’t know those things when I started. And other people don’t know these things, whether they just started or they’ve been in the business for a while. What I think might be common knowledge is not necessarily common knowledge.

And I was seeing, or am seeing sporadically on social media, both editors and authors saying things like, “You don’t need contracts. This is creative endeavors and, you know, it makes it too formal and stiff and it takes the creativity out of it.” And those feelings are valid. I get where they’re coming from, but contracts are also put in place to protect both sides of a project, whatever that case may be.

If they’re done ethically and in a legit way, they’re mutually beneficial. Like, they’re good for both parties involved. It’s not meant to screw someone out of something or trick them into doing things. Of course, I’m sure there are contracts out there that have tons and tons of pages of language that you can’t even begin to understand, so that you don’t read it, so that you agree to something that you really shouldn’t or don’t want to be agreeing to.

That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about plain language, clear, concise contracts that benefit both of you. So they are needed and they are important. And I’m going to talk to you about what the bare minimum of a contract is. And then we’re going to go through some specific examples of the types of professional boundaries to put into those editing contracts. The list isn’t going to be exhaustive, but it is going to give you a good starting point. So without further ado, let’s just dive right in.

So, what exactly defines a contract? The definition, because, you know, we love our definitions, a contract in its most basic form includes an offer, acceptance, and consideration.

And if you’re like me, you might have just been like, eh, what is that? What does that mean? Even though those are fairly simple words, it’s not necessarily legalese, I still didn’t know what those were. So, I’m going to tell you.

An offer is basically what one party is going to do for the other. That’s it. Acceptance means both parties in the contract agree to the terms, whatever those terms are. And consideration means that both parties are getting something. So for us editors, it would be something like, I’ll edit your book or whatever the piece of content is, and the other person pays me money, usually. The goal of a contract is to make sure that both parties understand what they’re agreeing to. So you don’t want to have to go to court to enforce a contract, but if the relationship sours to that point, you do want the court to enforce it in your favor. So this is why we have contracts. 

Now those are the fundamentals. But then other things, of course, need to be added to make the contract more substantial. And this is where you can usually find a bunch of legalese and words that you’re like, I don’t have a law degree. I don’t know what this means, which is what we’re going to get into.

But it’s also where you’re going to find those boundaries that I mentioned. So for example, for us as editors, it is incredibly important for us to define the scope of work in the contract. And, you know, I won’t get into the full nitty-gritty, but this includes things like the tools we use, the style guides, the dictionaries we’ll use, how many passes or rounds we’re going to do.

And then what exactly is included or not included with the service we’re providing? Because one of the most common issues that editors come across is scope creep and us performing tasks outside of the service that we quoted. So for example, If you haven’t had this happen to you, just guarantee it will happen at some point.

The proofread that you’re doing somehow suddenly ends up being more like a copyedit, or that manuscript evaluation is creeping into developmental editing territory. And these boundaries of what the service will entail are so crucial to include in the contract. Because that way, you and the client are both fully aware of the expectations.

And like I said, you can also put in the contract what is not included. So for example, let’s say you’re doing a copyedit. You might not include heavy fact-checking. You might not include tables or graphs or something. A proofread, you’re not going to be changing grammar, or moving sentences around, or giving feedback on a character’s development.

Sometimes it can be easier to see what’s not included then it is to see what is included. And you can make that decision for yourself if you want to include what you won’t be doing, but it can help you be a little bit more clear to avoid that scope creep.

Another boundary to include in our contracts is payment arrangements. Now we all know money can be tricky and the topic can be charged and there can be a little less leeway given from both sides. You know, we want to try to avoid that as much as possible. We don’t want conflict. Sometimes it happens. I wish we could avoid it altogether, but the goal is to have as little conflict as possible.

So many editors offer a sort of payment plan. You want to be clear on what that includes, but you don’t want to be unclear about things like when deposits are due or when work begins, if it happens after a payment is given or payments are due in what sort of form, you know. Is it PayPal? Is it ACH? Is it check? Whatever the case may be.

And to go back to what I mentioned about what I see some authors say about how contracts are too formal and too icky, when it comes to money especially, this contract that should be in place is meant to protect both of you. Because chances are the investment you’re making in an editor is not insignificant, and you want to make sure you’re getting what you’re expecting, and the editor wants to make sure they’re providing what you’re expecting and also being fairly compensated for it.

So that might seem formal, that might seem uncreative, but I promise you it’s not meant to be. We’re not raining on any creativity. We’re just trying to make sure both of us feel comfortable with what we’re doing. And that’s really the whole point of a contract in my opinion. Okay.

So another one is deadlines. We all know deadlines and how important they can be, and it really helps with defining expectations, right? We know that ish happens on both sides. We’re all humans. We’re living in, you know, 2024, things happen and your contract should state clearly what the deadlines are for both parties. And what happens if one or both of you miss your deadlines?

Because on the editor’s side, we schedule out our time and our projects. So let’s say an author misses a deadline, it can throw our schedule off completely and potentially lead to loss of income. Because we had scheduled to work on this particular project during X date, and now if we don’t have it, now we have no work during that. And we just lost out on potentially working on another project because of that deadline being missed.

On the flip side, if an editor misses a deadline, that can result in messing up the publication timeline, it might push out the publication date, which is never a good thing. We don’t want any of this happening on either side.

So make sure you and your client are very well aware of deadlines, but also what happens for both sides if a deadline is missed, because if a deadline is missed, that’s already a bummer. It can already lead to some stress on both sides. It’s going to be incredibly beneficial to be able to refer back to the contract and be like, okay, this is what we agreed to.

If this person misses their deadline, this happens. And if the other person misses their deadline, this happens. There’s no wiggle room, unless you want there to be. But you could refer back to that because you both agreed to it. It should be fairly straightforward. I also realize we live in the real world and it might not be, but in theory it should be good protection for both of you.

Now another professional boundary to include in a contract is defining your relationship with the client and your communication in today’s world. I think this is one of the most important sections to have in a contract. 

For us, it’s stating that we are freelance editors and we are not employees. Some clients can get that confused, either intentionally or unintentionally. Signing a contract with a client as a freelance editor does not make us their employee. It makes us an editor providing a service. So it’s good to know what type of control the client has or doesn’t have over, you know, the way you do business.

It’s also where you’re going to include the methods of communication that you’ll use. You know, are you going to email? Are you going to text? Are you going to use WhatsApp or Voxer? And your availability and expectations for response times. Because we’ve all got our computers and tablets and phones attached to our hips, sometimes it can be expected that we are just on 24/7 and we’re not. And the last thing you want is a client, you know, texting you at 9pm on a Saturday and expecting an immediate response. So we’re going to nip all that in the bud right in the contract. You’re going to clearly define your working hours and how long you can expect a response to take from you.

And it’s also where you’re going to define the professional relationship in terms of things like harassment or disrespect or anything else you want to include. I will say in my stage of life as I get older, I have now adopted zero tolerance for disrespect or meanness in my business. I just don’t think it has any place in my business—in the world, quite frankly, but I can’t control that.

I can control who I work with in my business. So in my contract, I have it where if I feel that you’re being disrespectful or anything homophobic, racist, you’re going to try and mansplain me, anything like that, I am able to terminate the contract, period. I just don’t have a tolerance for that. Now yours might be different. You might have different parameters. You might have different boundaries, but again, clearly state those in your contract so if something does unfortunately pop up, you have a way of protecting yourself and going about it in the way that you’ve outlined.

All right, now my next topic, which must be talked about, but I wish it would just not be a thing but it is, and that’s our reality. And that is generative AI. I know it’s a hot topic. I know people have different opinions on it. Especially creatives, you know, artists, graphic designers, editors, authors, publishers, but it is something that needs to start being included in contracts when we deal with creative work.

Personally, I’ve decided in my business that I do not work on any content that has been created using any percentage of generative AI. Now, other editors are going to have different boundaries, and that’s fine. But whatever those boundaries are need to be in the contract. So, as it stands right now at this recording, right now there is no 100 percent accurate generative AI checker out there.

There are checkers that semi-work. There are checkers that don’t work at all. There are checkers that are flagging content as being AI generated but they’re not. So the whole concept of this is going to be basically based on the honor system. And hopefully having it in the contract will make it serious enough for both parties to know that you shouldn’t be lying about this.

If you say you didn’t use generative AI, that means you did not use generative AI in any capacity. There might be a question from the client on what generative AI specifically is. That’s something that gets confused a lot in the world right now. I mean, it’s so new, it’s easy to understand why generative AI is something like ChatGPT or Google Gemini or any of these LLMs that are using other people’s content to regurgitate junk for you. It’s not PerfectIt, it’s not Grammarly, it’s not Microsoft Word spell checker. That’s AI, but it is not generative AI. So if you want to include specific examples in your contract, you can absolutely do that to clarify what you mean by using AI in your work.

All right, so acknowledgments. This is something that is very specific for editors. It’s something you’re not going to find in any other client contract template out there, unless it is specifically for editors. So what this means is that editors can require permission from clients in order to list their name in the acknowledgments of a book.

Now why we do this is because editors can’t control what authors accept or reject or change after we return the manuscript to them. I’m speaking in books specifically now because we’re talking about acknowledgments, but it can be for something like a paper or any other thing that the author wants to include an editor in to thank them.

Which is, you know, it’s a nice thing, right? However, what I’ve seen time and time again happen is an editor will edit the book, whatever editing service that is, return it, be thanked in the book, see the final product, and notice tons of typos and errors that they fixed but that the author rejected for whatever reason.

So now the editor’s name is attached to a book that they’re not necessarily proud of, and if it gets, you know, called out for having typos or “Oh, this couldn’t have been edited” or “This editor was terrible,” if they know to look in the acknowledgments to see who was thanked, they’re going to know who the editor was, even though the editor has nothing to do with the final product.

So I have always found that I require, or I prefer, but now I require an author ask me for permission to include me in the acknowledgments. It’s just too risky, especially in this day and age. I sound, whatever, I probably just dated myself saying that. But we can only do so much as editors. The finished product is out of our hands. And so I need to be able to put my name behind something. And if I don’t feel like I can, I want the option to remove or just not be included. Totally up to you. That’s something I had no idea about when I first started editing, but it’s something that’s more and more talked about and more and more common now that authors need to ask for permission.

A little side note with that too—something else to think about your contract is if you and/or the client have permission to speak about your relationship on social media or in a newsletter or whatever. If an author wants to be like, “Yay, Tara’s editing my book right now,” are you cool with that? Do they need to ask your permission? Just, you know, something else to think about because again, do you want to be attached to it? Do you want to be associated? Usually, you know, hopefully it’s a good relationship, but you know, sometimes it might not be.

All right, and last but not least for the episode—termination. What happens if either one of you wants to terminate the contract? If you get to this point where you’re trying to figure out if you or your client can terminate, not always, but there’s a good chance that the relationship has perhaps gone sour. And the last thing you want at that point is to have unclear steps of what to do in your contract. You want to have very clear steps on how far in advance do you need to terminate? Is there any money that’s owed? Either way, you know, make it easy on both of you and have all of that defined in the contract up front so that you’re not adding stress to what could potentially be an already stressful situation.

All right, and there we have it. Those are just a few examples of boundaries to consider including in your editing contracts. And like I said before, it’s not an exhaustive list, but it is going to get you thinking on what you might need to add or adjust in your existing contract, or what to include if you’re creating one from scratch.

There are great resources out there about editing contracts. There’s the EFA, Editors Canada, other editing associations, and the book The Paper It’s Written On are all great resources to check out.

Now if you’re looking for an editing contract that was created specifically for editors, I am super excited to announce that I’ve created an editing contract template. The template was cowritten by myself and an attorney, so it’s legit and it’s written in plain language—there’s no legalese that you don’t understand—and it includes everything you need to feel confident when working with your editing clients.

When I started out—I’m not suggesting this, I’m just sharing what I did—I went on a Google spree for free editing contract templates, and I copied and pasted chunks from I don’t even know how many free templates I found online, and cobbled it together in what I thought sounded good. And called it a day. That’s certainly an option. I did not feel confident in it. I didn’t know what half of it meant because it was all in legalese and I desperately wanted something that was clear and concise, but also thorough and did its job.

Unfortunately, I’m not an attorney. I’m an editor. I think I’m a good one, but I’m not an attorney. And it just so happens that my brother is. So we teamed up. We had so much fun. Took us months because we wanted this to be absolutely legit and as best as it possibly could be. He checked I don’t even know how many resource books. I saw so many law books that are bigger than like, half my body.

But we teamed up and we created something that I’m super proud of. And it’s a fill-in-the-blank contract template so you can make it work for you. And it defines all those enforceable professional boundaries that are going to protect both you and your clients. And both you and your clients are going to actually understand the language in it and not have to bust out a dictionary or have someone try and decipher it for you.

So if you’re interested, it is an attorney-drafted, legalese-free contract. You get immediate access to it. I offer a payment plan as well. You can go to TaraWhitaker.com/contract to grab a copy of it today.

So there we have it. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and make sure you enforce those boundaries.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes. And as always, you can head to TaraWhitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We’ll chat again soon.