How Tariffs Could Affect Your Editing Business

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. Hello. Welcome to today’s episode. I’m going to be honest, I’m thinking this is going to be on the shorter side, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve debated on doing an episode about this because it’s so timely and it’s probably gonna be outdated very quickly, maybe even outdated from the time I’m recording this to the time it goes live. But we’re going to talk about the T word right now, tariffs, but particularly how they might affect our editing businesses.

Now, before I go any further, let me assure you and remind you that I am not a financial expert. I am not an economist. I know very little about the stock market. I am not sharing this information to be construed as advice. I am simply sharing what my family has been doing to try to alleviate some of the stress when it comes to the tariffs and what I predict is going to happen, which I hope I’m incredibly wrong, but we’ll see.

So this is just me sharing with you because I know how much editing businesses rely on steady streams of income and expenses happen, and when things like this pop up that just skyrocket prices, it can throw us all for a loop, right?

So here’s what we’ve been doing. The first thing we did back when #47 was elected in November of 2024 is we started figuring out what electronics we needed to replace now before the tariffs hit. So we worked on—which let me tell you, that was not in the budget, and I don’t expect this to be in the budget—but for us, things like our laptops or our desktops we need to do our jobs.

So if you’re looking to replace that, I would do that quickly. And also things like tablets or cell phones, keyboards, microphones, cameras, all of the technology that we use on a daily basis that we have to use for our businesses. Take stock of those and see if anything needs to be replaced right now.

Even if it’s like, kind of sorta on the edge, you might wanna think about replacing it if it’s financially possible, because who knows how much it’s going to cost in the near future. I’ll give you one example. My laptop was, I think it was four years old, maybe it was five years old, but it was working fine, and my husband kept telling me like, we need to replace your laptop, we need to replace your laptop. I’m like, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s working fine.

I clearly put it out to the universe because not too long after that, it started dying on me. I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. So I had to go buy a new laptop, which again was not in the budget, but I got into my YNAB app, and I moved some things around and I made it happen.

And now I’m incredibly thankful I did because who knows how much this laptop would’ve cost now or in the near future. So I realize there’s a ton of privilege with that too. If you can’t make that happen, it’s completely understandable. But take stock at least and keep track of how old your devices are and if and when you need to replace them so it doesn’t sneak up on you. Or what usually happens is it just breaks and then you’re like, what do I do now? So think about electronics.

Another thing that we decided to do in 2025, which was more, it didn’t have to do with the tariffs, but also just some personal goals, is that we decided to really home in on our spending and be really intentional with our money.

And that’s not to say we weren’t just throwing money in the wind, like we are pretty good about that, but what we’re not good at is saving for bigger things. We tend to do a lot of smaller things. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we wanted to do bigger projects, bigger trips, that sort of thing. But we would always find out that we, instead of doing those bigger things, we were spending it on smaller things.

That just wasn’t quite what we were looking for. So we’ve become very intentional with our spending. We use You Need a Budget, which I’ve talked about before. We went through line by line going, okay, is this something we need? Is this something we want? Is this something we can’t live without? Is this something we can spend less on? Or is it something we wanna spend more on? Because it’s not all about pulling in or pulling back and spending less. It’s just being very intentional with it.

We’re also attempting to put every single spare dollar into an emergency fund because of the uncertainty. I’m an Enneagram Six. If anybody is familiar with Enneagram, a six is a worst-case scenario kind of person. I think of the worst-case scenario in everything.

So when COVID hit, which was horrific, do not get me wrong, but because I operate the way I do, I managed to get through it okay in terms of we didn’t have to hoard toilet paper or need to do any of that. And we had stuff on hand because I like to be prepared. I’m very big on keeping one thing in stock and one thing in use for things like laundry detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, dish soap and shampoo and conditioner and all of that. So it’s just being very strategic about what we’re spending our money on. Making sure that it aligns with our goals.

And then just a few things of note, I’m not, I wish I could predict this, but I’m going to guess that print books are going to be seeing a huge rise in price. Paper costs are gonna get a lot larger. Printing and shipping because a lot of what we do is in China, that is gonna play a part. So I’m very curious to see how print books are gonna play out.

And like I mentioned before, with COVID, there was, at least in the US, some relief for businesses, which I’m not gonna get into if it was used appropriately or not, but there was some relief available. There’s not gonna be anything available. There’s no natural disaster or something that we can get help with. It’s gonna be on us. So keep that in mind, especially when it comes to things like an emergency fund and having a little bit of cushion, which I know editing businesses are lean.

It’s not like we have millions of dollars sitting in the bank, but trying to have as much padding as possible right now, even if it’s just for a small section of time, is going to help alleviate some of that stress.

And then I have to say this because this is the opposite of what I tend to do, even though—let me just explain it because then it’ll make sense. When I get super stressed about anything, but let’s just say money because that’s a thing right now, I tend to retreat and I’m like, I’m just gonna retreat into myself, not asking for help, not looking for support. That’s just my nature to do that, when in reality that’s the worst time to be doing that.

I should be leaning on others. I should be leaning into my communities, my family, my friends, my support system, and both helping them and allowing them to help me. So if you are in that boat like I am, remember that this is when community shines. Yes, I do run a community, that was not some underhanded pitch to join FEC, although I would love to have you.

But whatever your communities look like, whether it’s an editing community, a small business community, a hobby community, you’re in any sort of community, your small town, your large town, your school, anything, this is the time to not retreat. To be more community-minded as possible because the only fricking way we’re getting through this is together.

It’s not gonna work if we’re all separate and we’re all retreating in on ourselves, even though that is my MO. So remember, we’re all going through some iteration of this right now that wasn’t even necessary, but I digress. We’re going to get through it. It’s probably not going to be lovely and easy, but this is when we need to be sharing ideas, helping each other out, and that’s why I ended up deciding to do this episode because if it even makes you, if it makes one person think about something that they can do that helps, then it’s worth it.

It might be a little outdated by the time you’re listening to this, so take it with a grain of salt if something has changed drastically, which I wouldn’t doubt if it has, but the principles are still there, right? Community. Be intentional with your spending. Take stock of anything you might need in the near future and see if it’s something that you can get now. And just stick together. 

So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep hanging in there.

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.