Stumbled upon two interesting articles about conferences for editors. One focuses on why editors should attend conferences, and the other focuses on how to stand out at conferences. Give them a read if you consider yourself an editor!
1: https://www.copyediting.com/attend-clients-conferences/#.WqaatOjwaUk
2: https://www.copyediting.com/make-impact-clients-conferences/#.WqaBXujwbIX
Takeaways:
If you pay attention, you can identify the pain points that people in this niche experience during the publishing process, and that helps you figure out how you can help.
So, what might you present? Let these suggestions get your ideas flowing:
- How to get the most from editing
- Editing yourself: tricks for seeing flubs in material you are too close to
- Making the move into professional editing (from being a peer or technical reviewer, say)
- What to expect from the publishing process
- Getting your manuscript ready for editing
- Writing book proposals
Conferences are a write-off. Your accountant will help you determine how what portion of the fee, travel, meals, and accommodation you can write off simply as a conference (a category in many tax codes) and what can be counted as marketing. In some areas, most of the cost can be expensed.
It’s uncommon for an editor to have a professional booth setup, but several do. They have a tall, professional display “flag”, samples of the books they’ve worked on, resources to give away (like checklists and lists of common errors or proofreader’s marks), and swag loved by conference attendees (pens, buttons, bookmarks). And of course, there’s a jar to drop business cards into for a chance to win a free one hour consult.
[edited to fix quotes]
