Sep 1, 2026 · 26 min · 12 segments
What does it really take to become a freelance editor for a major publishing house? In this episode, I talk with Crystal Yang, owner of Rabbit with a Red Pen, about the skills, experience, and…
Crystal YangGuest
Nadia Geagea PupaHostSo just going back to what you were saying before about not speaking directly with the authors, I know so many editors, like a handful, more than a handful, this would be a dream for them because they actually just enjoy the copy editing.
They just can't wait to just get into that manuscript and just take that dive in and develop that style sheet or whatever the case is.
Or if they're given a style sheet, it's just so just that feeling of getting into it and just focusing on the skill and the work.
And the other part of the business as a freelancer, that's the part is like getting the work, getting referrals and working with authors directly in the self-published space.
It adds to the credibility of the editor to say that you have worked with them.
So have you, you know, I just feel it's just inevitable that the nature of what we do as copy editors is we sometimes feel a little on the defensive because we are you know it is scary for us when we're handing them off to the author but it's also scary for the author to receive those edits so the point I'm making is in the sense of not in the spirit of being defensive but in the having to just respond to an editor's like a query when you see the responses and they're trying to challenge well no this doesn't need a hyphen like Well, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary or like or according to, you know, because because you're told that you're following Chicago.
Do you go in sometimes and you say, according to Chicago style, one point, blah, blah, blah.
OK. figured, but does it happen a lot? That's really what I'm trying to figure out because it's a straight for me.
What is it like on your end? Do you feel that you do that more often than you realize having to cite the rule
book, the Chicago style? Not necessarily because partly I think it can be overwhelming to an author to like be thrown all these like justifications and like citations where they're like well i don't even have access to this i guess i'm just going to trust you like usually i'll like yeah usually i'll copy and paste like the the language if need be but really like it it's about having confidence in what i know you know as copy editors we are the experts in you know grammar style spelling all these things and so If I can look something up and I can confidently make the change, then I usually don't need to explain it.
There might be times where I'm like, well, if the author sees this, they may not really understand right off the bat what like why I made this change.
So just going back to what you were saying before about not speaking directly with the authors, I know so many editors, like a handful, more than a handful, this would be a dream for them because they actually just enjoy the copy editing.
They just can't wait to just get into that manuscript and just take that dive in and develop that style sheet or whatever the case is.
Or if they're given a style sheet, it's just so just that feeling of getting into it and just focusing on the skill and the work.
And the other part of the business as a freelancer, that's the part is like getting the work, getting referrals and working with authors directly in the self-published space.
It adds to the credibility of the editor to say that you have worked with them.
So have you, you know, I just feel it's just inevitable that the nature of what we do as copy editors is we sometimes feel a little on the defensive because we are you know it is scary for us when we're handing them off to the author but it's also scary for the author to receive those edits so the point I'm making is in the sense of not in the spirit of being defensive but in the having to just respond to an editor's like a query when you see the responses and they're trying to challenge well no this doesn't need a hyphen like Well, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary or like or according to, you know, because because you're told that you're following Chicago.
Do you go in sometimes and you say, according to Chicago style, one point, blah, blah, blah.
OK. figured, but does it happen a lot? That's really what I'm trying to figure out because it's a straight for me.
What is it like on your end? Do you feel that you do that more often than you realize having to cite the rule
book, the Chicago style? Not necessarily because partly I think it can be overwhelming to an author to like be thrown all these like justifications and like citations where they're like well i don't even have access to this i guess i'm just going to trust you like usually i'll like yeah usually i'll copy and paste like the the language if need be but really like it it's about having confidence in what i know you know as copy editors we are the experts in you know grammar style spelling all these things and so If I can look something up and I can confidently make the change, then I usually don't need to explain it.
There might be times where I'm like, well, if the author sees this, they may not really understand right off the bat what like why I made this change.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
