Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

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Author here! Happy to answer any questions about this post.

I still work with Samantha about once per year for a tune-up. Coincidentally, she edited the article I'm planning to publish later this week.

Trivia: I submitted this article to HN when I originally wrote it[0], but I was still pretty new to this community and didn't realize how clickbaity the original title came across. I changed the title a year later and resubmitted,[1] but it didn't get any traction then either, so I figured it wasn't up HN's alley. I just changed the title this weekend because I realized it was doing well in search queries for the term "blog editor,"[2] and I wanted to make it obvious that the post explained how to repeat my process, so I guess the new title made a difference.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14847499

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17724508

[2] https://twitter.com/deliberatecoder/status/13337813383405936...

I just spoke to Samantha, and I learned that she recently took accepted a full-time position and is unfortunately no longer taking on editing clients.

I can heartily recommend Eleanor Ivory Weber, she was the copy editor of my book ‘Copy This Book’ and I was super impressed (see also my comment below) https://independent.academia.edu/eleanorweber

Hi @mtlynch, can you please share Samantha's profile/resume, since you already found a good editor might as well hire her.

Sure, she has an About page on her website that describes her background and the types of work she specializes in:

https://www.samanthamasonfreelancer.com/about

looks like she is at $95 ~ $200/h now, good for her.

Thanks. I posted simply because I saw your link in another thread and I really wanted to see a lot more discussion of it :-), as I thought it was a really neat idea that most people would miss. (I have!)

Cool, thank you for sharing it! It was a nice surprise seeing it pop up on the front page three years later.

Hey!

How many hours does Samantha work for you on a monthly basis, and how often do you publish?

I aim for about 10 full-length blog posts per year, but I publish other things like book summaries and monthly retrospectives that are less polished.

I work with Samantha on about one article per year, and it takes her 1-2 hours to edit it. She offers different levels of rigor depending on what the client wants. I'm generally interested in high-level feedback and anti-patterns in my writing that she can warn me about.

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