The one quality that determines if you should fire a client

I pride myself on choosing writing and editing clients that pass the sniff test. That is: their project is worthwhile, they have the skills to succeed with a book, they value my input, they can pay what I charge, and they don’t behave like asses. If you don’t pass the sniff test, we won’t start working together, and that will save everybody a lot of time.

But even when working with a client seems promising, things don’t always work perfectly. All clients have strengths and weaknesses. When challenges emerge — and they always do — one thing predicts whether it’s better to keep at it or bail out.

Are they learning?

Reasons that freelance projects go awry

These are some of the problems that can turn freelance projects into challenges or worse, nightmares. Some of the things on this list are specific to book writing and editing projects, but you can probably make a similar list for whatever freelance work you do. Problem clients may:

• Lack a clear idea of the objective of a project, or cannot articulate that objective.
• Ignore mutually agreed upon plans for progress of the project.
• Fail to use common standard electronic communication tools (email, videoconferencing software, electronic markup tools like Microsoft Word track changes).
• Fail to respond to communications in a timely way.
• Fail to show up for agreed upon (electronic) meeting appointments.
• Expect instantaneous response from me, including outside normal working hours.
• Fail to recognize the value of my work.
• Be oversensitive to criticism and take it personally. (You can’t edit or collaborate on writing without an open attitude to identifying problems and suggesting solutions.)
• Generate source material that is hackneyed and undifferentiated; be unable to tell the difference between valuable content and meaningless drivel.
• Be clueless about essential rules of grammar.
• Behave rudely.
• Require an excessive amount of emotional “therapy.” (All writing projects generate an emotional response, and editors and ghostwriters must be sensitive to that. But at some point, I’m no longer collaborating, I’m just providing emotional support, and that’s not what you should hire me for.)
• Behave capriciously, for example, undoing decisions already made or editing documents that were settled. Every project has points at which it become clear that previous decisions need to be modified and previous work revisited, but this should be a mutual decision, not something the client does arbitrarily without consultation.
• Change stuff we’re working on together with no indication that you’ve changed it.
• Fail to pay in a timely way.
• Be unwilling to pay extra for additional out-of-scope work.
• Disappear and become unresponsive for weeks at a time.
• Continually add additional collaborators or reviewers to the project, each of whom brings a new perspective and can undo decisions and work already completed.

None of these are dealbreakers

It may surprise you to learn that despite this long list of potential grievances, I rarely give up on clients. That’s because, normally, they learn.

They learn about the arcane way that the publishing industry works.

They learn to use writing and editing tools in a collaborative way.

They learn to manage the emotional side of writing and editing.

They learn how book chapters are constructed and how to tell stories.

They learn the value of criticism that’s based in objectives and includes constructive suggestions.

They can often even learn to speed up slow payments and stop behaving rudely.

The reason I am normally patient is that for clients, this is typically the first time they are working on a book, even though it is the sixtieth time for me. So of course, much of what’s happening is new to them, and they’re not going to do things “right” the first time. They don’t yet know how to do everything about a book project effectively, which is why they need my help.

That means we are going to face challenges together. And I am going to be clear and direct about those challenges and possible ways to address them.

If the client appears to be getting smarter, learning what works, making an effort to collaborate, and not making the same mistakes over and over, then we’ll get there. Inevitably, when this happens, they feel grateful for the growth that’s taken place. And I feel like I’ve contributed to making something great appear where nothing was before, or improving something valuable. This makes the project worthwhile.

If despite repeated and extended effort, the client isn’t growing and the content isn’t making progress, it’s time to go. Somewhere along the way, I will have said, “For this to work, here’s what has to happen,” and it hasn’t happened. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when the project implodes. (Of course, often it still is.)

Every creative person is capable of growth and learning. I will do everything I can to make that possible, so the client and the project move towards a worthwhile conclusion, and so I can get paid for the work I put in to make that happen.

If you won’t grow and you won’t learn, though, our work will eventually come to a halt.

And you should probably ask, “Is it me?” Because yes, it is.