March Member Meeting: Quantifying Your Editing Impact

Have you bought a piece of clothing from a store, and, when you took it to the cashier, had the person checking you out say, “this color will look great on you!” This is a sales strategy, a subtle but still manipulative attempt to build brand loyalty—it’s a way for the retailer to assure you that you made a good decision when you chose to buy with them.

How might freelance editors use similar strategies in our own business? What are our options for applying sales psychology ethically, without manipulating our clients? In this short presentation, Letitia Henville will describe how she captures and shares quantifiable measures of the difference her editing makes with her clients. As a group, we’ll then discuss other freelance-appropriate sales strategies, as well as the ethics of applying tricks from consumer psychology and behavioral insights to our business practices.

Letitia Henville (she/her), PhD, is an award-winning instructor and editor who helps researchers to articulate their goals to an audience of their peers. She lives and works on the unceded, stolen territory of the Səl̓ílwətaʔ and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people on the land now called the Dunbar region in Vancouver. She writes the monthly advice column “Ask Dr. Editor” for University Affairs, and can be found online at shortishard.com and writingwellishard.com.

This event is free and open to all editors.