Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Alejandro Moreno-Ramos has released Mox’s Illustrated Guide to Freelance Translation, including 200 Mox cartoons and 13 essays by translator-bloggers. I was excited to be asked to write the essay on marketing and I’m really looking forward to getting my copy of the book in the mail. So if you haven’t picked up a little something for your favorite translator, this looks like an excellent holiday gift!
Book reviews
Some of my favorite non-translation business books
A little note before we get started: none of the links in this post are affiliate links, nor do I get a commission from any of the authors mentioned. I love reading (and writing!) books about translation; some of my new and recent favorites are Chris Durban’s The Prosperous Translator and Judy and Dagmar Jenner’s The Entrepreneurial Linguist. I really enjoy getting insider tips from people who do the same job that I do, and I think that no matter how long one has been in the business, books like these always have some great suggestions for improvement!
I also think that getting perspectives from outside the translation industry is really important. For example, I think that lots of translators spend most or all of their networking time hanging out with other translators and translation company owners, then complain that they cannot find any direct clients. Reading some non-translation business books is a good first step in expanding your perspective. I’ll give you a few of my favorites and I’m sure that some readers have other suggestions!
- C.J. Hayden’s Get Clients Now is one of my top picks. It’s an ultra-practical guide for freelancers and consultants of all flavors. The book helps you analyze where in the sales and marketing cycle you are stuck: do you not have enough prospective clients? do you get lots of inquiries but too few sales? do you have lots of one-time clients and too few regulars?, etc. You then pick two or three major marketing projects that you want to work on, and ten daily actions that will help you complete those projects. For example, I purchased Hayden’s book a few months ago when I decided that I absolutely had to finish the second edition of my book and get Eve Bodeux’s and my webinar series off the ground. I identified some daily actions such as planning ahead for every day, doing half an hour of research three times a week, spending half an hour a day on the webinar series’ website, identifying two potential sales channels for the book every day, and so on. And hey, one of my major projects is completed and the other is almost there! This book will appeal to people who like concrete action plans and are good at executing them; definitely indispensable if you have a major marketing goal you want to achieve. Just for the record, the second edition of my book had been hanging over my head for two years, and I finally finished it with the help of this book.
- John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Books was my bible when I published the first edition of my book: I’ve written this thing, now I need some people to read it! With about 700 pages (seriously) of tips, there is something for every self-published author in this book. Kremer breaks his ideas down into manageable chunks: how to write a book that people want to read, how to market it online, how to sell to libraries as a self-published author, and so on. With 1001 ideas, obviously not all of them will appeal to everyone, but this book is a fantastic resource.
- During my “aspiring freelancer” days, one of my first business reads was Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer, and I also really like his new book The Well-Fed Self-Publisher. I don’t agree with all of Bowerman’s advice. He’s a huge proponent of cold-calling and I think it just doesn’t fit with most translators’ personalities or those of our clients, but I love Bowerman’s “If I can do it, you can do it” attitude and his emphasis on simple, repeatable actions that you integrate into your marketing plan. In addition, Bowerman gets big points for his willingness to share his own examples: he started out as a salesman for a video dating service (again: seriously) and repackaged himself as a six-figure copywriter within a few years. He also really advocates charging high rates for your services and setting high but achievable income goals. Excellent inspiration here, and his book on self-publishing is well worth a read if you’re an author.
Readers, what’s on your business bookshelves these days?
Book review: The Entrepreneurial Linguist
I’ve been meaning to review Judy and Dagmar Jenner’s book The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation since before this fall’s ATA conference…fortunately I took notes when I read it over the summer, so here we go!
The Entrepreneurial Linguist is available from Lulu Press for $25.00 (paper copy) or $17.00 (file download). Judy and Dagmar Jenner co-wrote the book, which includes illustrations by Alejandro Moreno-Ramos of Mox’s Blog fame. Its 11 chapters cover business skills for intermediate to advanced freelance translators and the book’s focus is on running a freelance translation business as a business rather than as a money-making hobby (excellent advice!).
I highly recommend this book, largely because it is light on theory and heavy on nuts and bolts tips that the reader can apply immediately. For example, the section on tradeshows includes a checklist of ways to connect and follow up with potential clients who are tradeshow exhibitors. Likewise, the marketing chapter lists typical reasons why a translator might lose clients, and offers tips on how to avoid each of these reasons. As an added bonus, most of the chapters include business school-style case studies that illustrate how the book’s concepts can be applied in real-life freelance business situations.
Some of my favorite sections of this book are:
- how to get the most out of professional conferences
- options for business phone service
- sample auto mileage spreadsheet
- ways to decrease your office expenses
- the above-mentioned section on using tradeshows as a marketing tool
- specific advice about blogging for business, for example sample post topics
- sample press release and information about how to use press releases as a marketing tool
- how to make a basic professional website on a tight budget
Judy and Dagmar also do a great job of dispelling the negative and self-defeating ideas that many translators have about direct client marketing. In a great section called “Yes, you can!,” they chip away at the typical marketing excuses that many translators make: I’m too busy, I already have enough work, direct clients are too demanding, I don’t know where to start, etc. While emphasizing that finding well-paying direct clients is not easy, the authors prove that marketing to direct clients is mostly a matter of getting out of the translation industry, going where your potential clients are (online and in the real world) and positioning yourself as a trusted authority.
Although I’ve been in the translation industry for nearly a decade and wrote a translation business book, I’ve found myself referring to The Entrepreneurial Linguist on a regular basis ever since I read it. Judy and Dagmar are staunch advocates of charging what you’re worth, finding clients who value your work and giving your clients a very high-quality product: even experienced translators can’t get too much of this message! The only points I found myself disagreeing with are Judy and Dagmar’s selection of Facebook as the most valuable social networking site for freelance translators (I like it for personal use and I think it’s great for event-based businesses but I’d go with LinkedIn or Twitter for professional use) and the fact that the book doesn’t have an index. However, the table of contents is very thorough and it’s not hard to find the section you’re looking for!
In conclusion, I would highly recommend The Entrepreneurial Linguist for freelancers at all levels, especially intermediate and advanced freelancers who are looking to move into the direct client market. Judy and Dagmar also have a great blog, Translation Times, and you can follow them on Twitter at language_news.
Test drive: the Personal Efficiency Program
I’m not generally a fan of time management literature, but during a recent trip to the local library, Kerry Gleeson’s The Personal Efficiency Program: How to stop feeling overwhelmed and win back control of your work caught my eye (published 2009 by John Wiley and Sons, 4th edition). Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m working more and getting less done, and I’ve been hearing similar buzz from other freelancers (“I feel like I could work 24 hours a day and it wouldn’t be enough,” “I feel totally and constantly overwhelmed,” “I’m at my desk all day but I can’t seem to get anything done,” etc.). So, I decided to give PEP (as Gleeson calls the program) a try.
I opened this book with a few motivations in mind:
- My e-mail inbox is out of control. Although I have a well-designed system of folders and filters, I currently have 496 messages languishing in my inbox.
- Lately I’ve felt more stressed about work than I’d like to feel.
- I feel like I’m doing less and taking more time to do it. For example, I somehow managed to publish the first edition of my book when I had a lot less available time than I have now. Still, I just can’t seem to finish the second edition.
The foundation of PEP is the mantra “Do It Now.” For example, many of us check e-mail every few minutes, but we take a long time to respond to or act on the e-mails that we’ve read. This creates a bad situation: the e-mail is hanging out waiting for a response, and we’re using mental energy thinking about responding or acting, or feeling guilty about not responding or acting. Then, because we don’t act or respond, we start getting more e-mail (“Did you receive my message?” “Have you thought about a good time to meet?” “Did you get a chance to read the article?” etc.). It’s not hard to see how this leads to stress and overwhelm. So, instead of obsessively reading e-mail, Gleeson advocates setting aside blocks of time to process e-mail. Then, you take action using one of the 4 Ds: Do it now (respond to the e-mail or act on it right then), Delegate it, Designate it (schedule a block of time to respond to or act on the e-mail) or Discard/file it. Gleeson advises checking e-mail only two or three times a day; personally I’m not there yet because I receive too many e-mails that need a fast response. For example, my European clients are only in the office until around 9 or 10AM Colorado time, so I need to respond to them right away. However, I’m trying to set aside 15 minutes every hour or hour and a half for e-mail, and I’ve decreased my backlog from about 10 messages per day to one or two.
PEP also pushes you to schedule, plan and log your time more than most of us do. Here again, I think it’s worth a try. My normal time management system before reading this book was to scribble a list of to-dos for the day in my planner in no particular order and with no particular time frame attached to them. Inevitably I would end up finishing the really critical items (i.e. work deadlines) and copying everything else over to the next day (and so on and so on and so on). Now I’ve switched to using the calendar feature of my e-mail program (KMail) and I’m amazed at how much it has decreased my stress level. Although my day is highly scheduled, I find that I can actually concentrate on what I’m doing because I’m not thinking about what else I should be doing. Instead of working on a translation while thinking “I really should have answered that message,” “I really need to work on that quote,” I can put it out of my mind because I know I have a block of time set aside for that task.
I think that effective time management has a lot to do with your personality type; for whatever reason, I’m quite good at meeting deadlines that someone else sets and not so good at meeting deadlines that I set for myself. So, I find that PEP is a good fit for me because a very detailed time schedule makes me feel that “someone else” (i.e. my scheduling program) is telling me to stick to that schedule. I also like the fact that Gleeson focuses not just on getting more done at work, but on working smarter so that you have more time for your family and leisure interests. Overall, I think that this book is worth a look if you need to take better control of your work day!