Listing Freelance Work on Resume

[Bennenador]

I'm applying for MA programs in composition and rhetoric. My academic and professional background reflects education and editing. (I currently work in technical writing. During undergrad, I student taught high school English and tutored in my university's writing center. I also spent a year copyediting the university newspaper.)

I graduated with my BA in English in January 2016. Shortly thereafter, I landed my current job. In May of 2016, a history professor at my university contacted me and asked me to edit her book manuscript. She had asked one of my former English professors if he knew any good student editors, and he recommended me. Over the next three months or so, I edited a sizable chunk of this manuscript (three chapters and the introduction: about 240 pages in all). I deep-conditioned this manuscript at every level, from reordering paragraphs to fixing punctuation errors. I left comments in the documents explaining many of the changes I made and offering advice. During this process, the professor and I corresponded regularly via email. (I didn't meet her until the manuscript was finished, when we were both craving a few celebratory drinks.) Though I'm sure it goes without saying, she paid me for all this.

This summer, she informed me the book had been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press. It will be released in March of 2018, and I'm in the acknowledgements.

My two questions are these: Is this experience worth listing on my graduate admissions résumé? If so, what's a good way to go about writing the entry for it?

I've been Googling how to list freelance work on résumés, but none of the suggestions I got seemed transferable to a graduate school résumé. I can certainly come up with a list of bullet points for what the work entailed; that's not a problem. I guess I'm wondering what the heading would look like and where on the resume I would put this experience. Is it "work experience," or would it go better under a "related experience" header? Or even "publications"? It seems to blur the line between work and academics.

This is what I've got so far. I tried to keep the formatting consistent with the rest of the document:

Freelance editing                                                                                             May 2016 - July 2016

       Doe, Jane. The Noble History of Socks. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming March 2018.

• Proofread and copyedited manuscript intended for publication
• Made global and sentence-level revisions
• Conferred with author regarding needs, concerns, and goals for manuscript
• Provided author with targeted feedback

What do you think? Is any information missing? Does it look okay? Any suggestions for revision?

 

 

[Sigaba]

I would be more precise in describing the editorial support. As it stands, the bullet points suggest you looked over the entire manuscript.

I would add information on project completion--did you do the work on time and on budget?

Assuming that she's given you permission to include her name and the forthcoming work's title in your document, I would add more information if the title itself didn't indicate how serious the work of scholarship is.

[Bennenador]

On 11/19/2017 at 7:25 PM, Sigaba said:

I would be more precise in describing the editorial support. As it stands, the bullet points suggest you looked over the entire manuscript.

I would add information on project completion--did you do the work on time and on budget?

Assuming that she's given you permission to include her name and the forthcoming work's title in your document, I would add more information if the title itself didn't indicate how serious the work of scholarship is.

Thank you for your reply. I think your advice is pretty on point, and you brought up some aspects of the editing process I hadn't even been thinking about.

I was debating on whether to specify three out of five chapters or not... While it's definitely more accurate, it looked clunky as hell when I listed it that way the first time around. But I suppose honesty takes precedence over aesthetics.

We didn't really have super solid deadlines, but for her purposes everything was finished in a timely manner. We also agreed on a flat rate per chapter before the work was done so each of us knew up front exactly how much everything would cost. 

She's cool with me naming her and the book in my CV. And don't worry; the title of the book is very descriptive of its contents. (Cambridge University Press isn't known for its riveting titles, which turned out to be an advantage for me. So I guess I see the rationale.)

I also love the quotations in your signature. I only wish the first one were short enough to fit on a t-shirt.