Building an editorial portfolio

I asked myself this question recently: “What kind of books do I work on?”

I do idea development, developmental editing, coaching, and ghostwriting for nonfiction authors. But nonfiction is an awfully broad category. Books on tech trends certainly feel like they’re in my wheelhouse, and books on local history don’t. But where are the boundaries?

So I undertook a retrospective look at all the books I worked on to get an idea of where I concentrate, where I’d spread out to, and what’s out of bounds. I recommend this kind of review for any editorial professional. Because you should know what you’re good at (and can get paid fairly for), and what’s out of your depth.

My 66 books

I reviewed the 66 books I worked on since becoming an author in 2007. Here’s a look at what categories they were in (the total number exceeds 66 because many are in more than one category).

• Management: 18
• Tech trends: 16
• Self-help: 12
• Marketing: 10
• Memoir: 8
• Leadership: 8
• Strategy: 6
• Politics: 5
• AI: 5
• Social media: 4
• Innovation: 4
• Communication: 3
• Writing: 3
• Customer experience: 3
• Health: 2
• Media: 2
• Small business: 2
• Thought leadership: 2
• Corporate tech adoption: 2
• Data: 2
• Diversity: 1
• Finance: 1
• Product Development: 1

Some things here were not surprises. I’ve been tracking tech trends for 30 years, so those 16 books were a natural fit. I concentrated on marketing and media during my two decades at Forrester, so the ten marketing authors were easy to relate to. The six books about strategy also fit nicely with my Forrester background.

But I was surprised to see I’d worked on 18 management books. I’m no management expert. But management is a focus of many business books, so I’ve needed to develop enough knowledge to edit and coach the steady stream of management-focused authors. A similar logic applies to the eight leadership books.

Similarly, the 12 “self-help” books — books about personal development — felt like good fits because they generally had a technology-enabled element. I’d never edit a pure motivational or psychology book, but that still leaves lots of personal development topics that I felt comfortable with.

Lots of authors these days mix memoir with personal or management lessons. I’ve edited one pure memoir, Watch and Learn, and that was by an author whose work in new television technologies overlapped with my past media coverage.

I’m interested in politics, which is why I eagerly chose to work on the five politics books, despite a lack of deep expertise and training. And I’ve worked for many startups and analyzed many others, which is how I embraced the opportunity to work on four books on innovation.

Other patterns are interesting. The five AI books are a bet on the future. I leveraged my tech trends expertise into this space (as many, many other analytical and thought leadership types have). I had the unique experience of working on two AI books, one as an editor and one as a ghostwriter, in 2017 and 2018, so I was much better prepared to work on books like this as the AI trend picked up in the last few years.

I only did three books on writing (two of which I authored) because there are just not that many people doing books on that topic, or at least not many willing to pay for an editor like me. Even though my first book was on social media, it’s no longer a central area of interest for me; most of the books about it are pretty tactical at this point. The books on health, diversity, finance, and product development are outliers, projects I took on because they interested me and intersected with my other experience, but which didn’t end up leading to a real broadening of my expertise.

Your editorial portfolio is you. Build it deliberately.

Looking back, I can translate this seemingly motley collection of projects into advice for anyone in an editorial role. Ideally, you want to build clear areas of strength, find some spaces to grow into, and sample other topics that interest you, but where you aren’t out of your depth.

I will continue to do tech trends, management, leadership, and strategy books because I’m good at them and have lots of results to prove it. That’s my bread-and-butter as an editor, writer, and ghostwriter.

I’ll keep looking for areas like AI, innovation, and politics that interest me and where I could expand my portfolio for the future. (I keep pitching work on humor books but even thought I’m a total smartass, nobody seems willing to work with me on those.)

I’ll dabble in other topics that interest me, sometimes just because they look interesting and I need the money.

Every project is a chance to grow and cultivate new interests.

What areas are you deepest in, with provable expertise? What spaces are you expanding into? What wild-ass projects did you take on and realize you wanted to do more that were similar?

Unless you’re building your portfolio, you’re going to get bored, or worse, drop out of style.

And that’s no way make a living as an editorial professional.