When I set up my editing business, I thought a lot about how to make my business economically accessible, or at the very least, how to avoid it doing harm. This got me thinking about pricing.

Ugh! Pricing can make small business owners concerned with social justice squirm because it’s natural that we’ll exclude people who can’t afford our editorial services. But a small business cannot serve everyone or solve big issues like income inequality and poverty.

That said, there are small steps you can take to make your business more accessible, with a focus on harm reduction.

With this in mind, I’ve written some possible ideas down below. These ideas are not one-size-fits-all. Some might not work for you and your client base, but they are all tools that you could try experimenting with.

Before I cover them, I’ll explain my journey!

Social justice principles in my editing business

When I set up my business, I had a strong commitment to social justice but was also overwhelmed by all the messaging in the small business space, alongside a bunch of exploitative practices, too, such as creating a false sense of urgency to get someone to buy a service. And the corporate entities that offered poverty-wage (below minimum wage per hour) editing gigs.

My initial instinct was that I should charge low to anyone I thought needed it, but this approach could only ever result in me going broke and making presumptions about people that might not be true while neglecting my needs.

In years two to four, I embraced a content marketing approach focused on making different services available at different price points, kidding myself that this was an accessibility measure.

These were the years in which I learned about marketing, and I still believe content marketing is a double-edged sword: by pricing services high enough to have free time to develop extensive free content, I was able to make many more insights freely available to writers. But that doesn’t help those who actually need editing or coaching and can’t afford my rates.

Then again, this is also not a problem I could solve without neglecting my income needs. In this period, the only accommodation I made was to charge some clients a bit more and some a bit less. Business coaches I consulted helped me immensely, but the main focus there was on raising rates (because almost all editors undercharge) rather than exploring the ethics of pricing.

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking about what else I can do. I’ve just worked on Bear Hebert’s webinar course on social justice–oriented approaches to pricing and have some fresh ideas. Here are five tips:

1) Talk about money

Being transparent and open about pricing is one step you can take to improve the situation for other freelancers in your industry. Talking about rates and what you need to earn creates a benchmark for comparison. Everyone’s needs and rates are different, so direct comparison is impossible. But by getting a sense of what’s out there, and what might be a good realistic minimum rate, you create a more open environment where people can feel emboldened to adjust their rates as needed.

For this reason, I’m really proud of the CIEP for posting suggested minimum rates on their website, and I’ve written several blog posts about freelance earnings.

2) Drop the idea that you need to “grow” your business

This comes with the caveat “provided you are currently meeting your needs.” In the small business space, and more generally, you may have experienced a feeling of never quite being satisfied with what you have—whatever your income. This won’t apply to everyone; it depends on so many things ranging from your financial situation during your childhood to your personal attitudes toward consumption.

This is linked to the messaging that we could or should always be striving to earn a little bit more. This is a feeling, but what do your numbers say? I know that I need to earn around £30K a year to just meet my basic payments, pay for all my business expenses, pension, groceries, etc. And £40K to £50K is a solid zone of comfort. I simply don’t need to earn anymore than that, so why bother?

My zone of comfort translates to earning £200—£300 a day on average, based on five hours of editing work or four hours of coaching—if I earn less than that for some clients, I need to charge more to others to counteract that. That translates to charging £40 to £60 an hour for editing, and £60 to £70 an hour for coaching.

(Side note: traditional publishers generally don’t offer these rates in my niche—but they offer a steady supply of work and I get to work with authors at the top of their game, so it’s acceptable for me right now to take a limited amount of trad pub work on.) These numbers reflect my situation. If you live in a really expensive city or don’t rely on your income, your rates may be higher or lower.

Sure, there are other things to consider, such as established rates in your industry. In the editing world, these are usually too low, but in other industries, say, executive coaching, they may be too high. If that’s the case, you have other levers to pull, such as reducing your hours or earning more and giving some money to charity or similar.

3) Implement sliding scales

This is a strategy you should use judiciously. Some editors post a range, such as £20—£30 per 1000 words. The problem here is that people often assume or hope they will be at the lower end of the range. Coaches sometimes ask people to self-select a rate from within a range based on their income. But this has problems attached, too: people often think they never have quite enough money—their subjective sense of their financial situation does not match the objective situation—especially if they have significant outgoings.

For this reason, I keep my pricing fixed on my income needs, and just adjust the scale slightly myself. If an author is self-funding the work, I offer a 10 percent discount. This is also reasonable because jobs attached to big institutions such as universities or publishers often come with extra admin tasks attached—forms to fill in, etc.

4) Consider payment plans

I’ve offered payment plans for a while, but I’ve never emphasized them in my marketing. By making payment plans freely available that don’t cost authors extra (a tax on affordability) or punish them with a debt if they miss a payment. I will admit—this is a bit easier for services where you build a relationship with someone (e.g., coaching) rather than services where you deliver a one-off report (e.g., manuscript critiques, developmental editing) to someone you’ve barely interacted with. That’s because you build trust through the relationship.

One solution is to make your report-based services more coachlike, by including a chat to understand their writing context before doing the edit, and a feedback session after the edit. I enjoy doing these sessions, so it’s an easy decision for me. Another factor is to gauge what is an acceptable risk for you: once the client has received the report, they have little intrinsic motivation to make further payments. Worst-case scenario: they hate the report and don’t want to pay another penny!

You can get around this situation with clear conditions in your contract and build in appropriate risk. For new clients, you might require, say, 80 percent of payments to have been made. For repeat clients, you might be OK with 50 percent, for example.

5) Figure out scholarships or pay-it-forward options

Sometimes I receive requests for editing from people who can’t afford my services. Sometimes I’ll refer them to another editor, but on other occasions, I’ve wanted to help but have worried about the dynamic involved in offering my services for free. This isn’t tricky as it can have a bunch of negative effects—being paid is highly motivating and editing requires intense concentration.

Would I really do just as good a job for free or for a price that doesn't meet my needs in some way? One useful tip I learned from Malini Devadas is to drop the idea that I have to be the person to solve their problem. Many other editors could jump in and do a similarly great job. Yet we can feel obliged or even flattered to have been contacted sometimes (depending on your personality and how many enquiries you are getting!)

Another possible response to this, once your business is where you want it to be, is to offer scholarships or a pay-it-forward fund. Scholarships are easier to offer for courses where you have paid places that subsidize the scholarship place. So my solution to this is a pay-it-forward fund that people can donate to.

Occasionally in the past, I’ve received advance payments that people haven’t used—for instance, they thought they needed an edit then found out a journal was providing it for them. From now on, I’ll put any money like this in the pay-it-forward fund, and I’ll add £200 myself to get it started. Expect more details soon!

If you have any thoughts on this, ask me a question (in the sidebar) or email me—I'd love to hear from you.