The Pricing Workbook Editing Process

In my fantasy version of life, a book agent would have recognized my prolific ability to write at any point in over a decade of sharing deeply meaningful personal blogs here or concise business advice written over on PhotoLovecat.  I fantasize that an agent would have seen some kind of raw talent in my writing and suggested the perfect book that I could craft to meet market demands- but no, that was not my journey.

I have heard of those journeys and admit to being more than a little jealous of people who have had supportive ushers for their creativity along the way, while also reminding myself to keep that comparison mindset in check so that I don’t lose sight of what I am uniquely learning through my own journey.

What I have learned by not having a red carpet rolled out for me is how to carve my own path and press-on in spite of any obstacles that arrive.  I’ve learned how to gather my own resources and how to find great people who have been willing to help.  I’ve learned that life is too short for me to dwell on what I don’t have, when I could just use that time to move forward and make it happen on my own.

Part of what makes the journey worth it for me is sharing the process along the way.  So, here's an inside look at the process I've gone through to help refine the content and clarity of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives...

The first round of editor comments and suggestions came from people who actually went through the process of applying the workbook material to their life and business.  I wanted to know that people could successfully complete the workbook in DIY format, so I offered to let over 25 people access the material for free.  I wanted to make sure that it would be good enough to stand up on its own without any additional material or hand-holding so I could make sure it was possible to make relevant and meaningful to different creative lives and businesses.

Out of those 25, there were only 2 people motivated to get through the material on their own.  This didn’t surprise me, since most of the people in my network who offered to test the material are already business owners and have little to no need to actually go back into their numbers and start from the beginning again.  When the “need to know” factor is low, so is the motivation to actually go through the process.

The 2 people who dug into the work, Eve Klein - Textile Audio, and Stacey Natal - Life Happens Now, are both smart  multi-passionate creatives who intersect several different disciplines.  This was a great creative match and challenge to put the workbook through. They have been able to apply the process of the workbook to their own creative life and business with really no hand-holding or help from me, and they provided great feedback at just the right points in the book.  They asked all the right questions that I was hoping could be intuited and considered by the prompts in the material.  They also helped me understand that the material in the workbook was easy to understand and that the work itself wasn't holding anyone else back.  Everyone else wasn't being held back by a lack of clarity or understanding, just a lack of motivation.  This is actually an expected problem around self-motivated learning and why a lot of people go to workshops or classes to learn- many people just aren't motivated to do the work themselves.  So, I feel lucky that I had a couple self-motivated learners who were willing to test it out.

I could have stopped the editing process there and probably been just as happy, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist.  I also know that I have a tendency to assume things are easy to understand, so I wanted to enlist even more critical editor feedback to make sure everything appeared clear and easy to understand, as well as grammatically correct.

Finding a couple extra editors turned out to be easier than the recycled printer part of the process, and much more affordable than I expected I might need to encounter.  Thanks to the B-School Facebook Alumni community of people looking to trade services for each other, I was able to find an editor and writing teacher, Rachel Van Horne who could bring a fresh eye to the workbook to edit for clarity, and in trade, I could help her get clarity and focus on moving her own creative business forward.  It was a win-win and we were able to trade our time and guidance for each other before the deadline for publication.

Even though that probably would have been enough, I went even one step further and asked my mother, a professional editor for a publishing company in a former life, also go through and do all the nit-picking work that I knew only she could do and not hold back on.  She’s been so kind as my mother not to correct my daily instagram post errors, but I had a feeling that if asked, she would really put the workbook through the gauntlet.  Gratefully, she offered to do this for free, and she was just as brutal as I hoped she’d be.  In turn I only made her slightly upset by choosing not to use a few of her professional editing notes for personal style and format reasons.  (Thanks for forgiving me, mom!)  I also found it hilarious that she edited out her own name as a listed editor.  She says she doesn’t need to be recognized, but I secretly wonder if she doesn’t want to be held professionally responsible for the suggestions I didn’t take. ;-)  

This week I reviewed all of the combined edits and made the relevant updates to the material.  So now I can officially say that the written part of the workbook is done.  Any edits that I make from here will come after publishing the material and receiving questions and feedback from the first year of people working through the workbook on their own.  I feel confident at this point that the work is good enough to stand on its own so that if I died tomorrow I wouldn’t feel like I left anything out or that it was incomplete.  If I find that there are some common misunderstandings or confusion after the first year, I’ll revise the material to make sure it’s easier to understand and apply to various situations.

This week I also sponsored a short 90min workshop for a group of young NYC musicians to begin to apply this workbook to their creative life.  I did a lot of hand-holding and prompting around what average costs would be in NYC because many of them had never really taken control of understanding the financial situation they’d need to manage to work independently as a creative.  It reminded me of where I started- before I had any experience taking everything into my own hands and learning how to control it all.  I remembered how confusing and confronting it can be to look at everything that needs to be taken care of and getting overwhelmed.

Based on working through a lot of my own issues and working with other people on their issues around money, I know how emotional money can be.  One little word on a page that needs a number can completely shut someone down emotionally because it’s something that triggers a fear, an unsolved need, or brings up extra baggage and issues that haven’t been faced.  I get it.  I've been there and learned how to take back the fear and regain control.  The process in this book is a large part of how I did that.

Being in the room while the emotional money stories start to unfold is always insightful, and gives me a chance to do some empathetic hand-holding and encouragement that the future can be better than the past.  When we know better, we can do better.  Sometimes we all just need that little bit of extra support and dedicated space to face the issues we need to face in order to get on the other side of being in greater control of it all.

Because of this week’s in-person workshop experience, I definitely see the need to offer a few more workshops so that I can help people face those issues head on in a way that helps them have greater confidence in their ability to move forward and do the work.  Eventually this may lead to an online help group or a more robust series of coursework, but I’m also trying not to get too far ahead of getting the workbook published on deadline.  If you’re interested in a future workshop around the workbook- you can sign-up for workbook news and updates at http://pricingworkbookforcreatives.com.

The next steps from here are moving the workbook from its format from Google Docs to the Kindle & KDP Print-on-demand format.  I wish it was as easy as just exporting to PDF format, but there are some page numbers that need to be moved around and some extra pages added for the print version that don’t need to be in the e-book version, and a book cover that needs to be laid out.  It seems like this should be an easy thing, but I’m slightly terrified of screwing it all up, so I’ve hired a designer to help me make sure it doesn’t get messed up.