"How do you select the editors and designers featured on your marketplace?" This is one of the questions we get most often at Reedsy, probably because we can’t help bragging (loudly and often) about the quality of our publishing professionals.
The curation of our marketplace is what makes us a truly incomparable player in the industry. Over 10,000 publishing professionals (editors, designers, illustrators, publicists, marketers and translators) have applied to be featured on our site. Currently, only 350 have been accepted.
Reviewing thousands of profiles
So how do people apply, exactly? It's pretty simple: professionals only need to sign up through our landing page and indicate during the onboarding process that they want to register as "professionals". Once signed up, we prompt them to fill in a Reedsy profile – a page that compiles all their professional information, from work experience to portfolio items to work philosophy.
These profiles are public, which means Reedsy professionals can use them as websites or landing pages for all professional activity. More importantly, profiles form the core of our quality control process.
First, we make sure professionals who are serious about being listed on Reedsy complete their profile as exhaustively as possible. Our curation team reviews all new, fully finished profiles once a week, at which point they separate the ones who merit inclusion on our marketplace from the rest. If you visit our landing page, you will see a few examples of professionals who have been accepted, and will be able to click through to their public profiles.
Our selection criteria
So how do we determine who to activate? Naturally, the decision is ultimately somewhat subjective as it is made by actual people (not algorithms), but our curation team uses a list of tangible criteria to keep the decision as objective as possible. Here are a few criteria all our professionals meet:
- be a full-time professional in the field you are applying for (editing, design, publicity, translation, marketing, ghostwriting)
- demonstrate experience on at least 5 published books that are well-reviewed on Amazon & Goodreads
- have experience in every "genre" listed in the profile
- have 5+ years experience in your profession
The Reedsy marketplace is competitive, which means professionals meeting all the above criteria are not automatically accepted. These are "minimum criteria" that need to be supplemented with one or more of the following:
- significant experience working at a renowned traditional publishing company
- significant experience working as a freelance contractor for a renowned traditional publishing company
- history of high-quality work with a bestselling author, or on a bestselling book
- receipt of a distinguished award in your field
Some of our editors have worked on books by authors such as Ken Follett, Isabel Allende, George R.R. Martin, Hugh Howey or CJ Lyons. Because of this, we tend to become more and more selective as our marketplace keeps growing, and our current acceptance rate is at 1%. That said, we're always on the lookout for more professionals who meet our criteria.
Naturally, we do our best to ensure that all information entered by the professionals on their profiles is accurate, and will often verify our professionals' portfolios by searching books' "acknowledgements" sections for mentions of their editors and cover artists.
A constant quality control
So, once I’m in, I’m in forever? Well, not quite. Our curation work doesn’t stop once the professional has been accepted based on the information provided in their profile. We closely monitor our professionals’ work through Reedsy and regularly survey our authors at the end of their collaborations.
Rarely so far have we had to “deactivate” one of our professionals because of unprofessional behaviour, but neither have we hesitated to do so – nor will we in the future. Reedsy acts as a third-party guarantor for authors in their collaborations on the platform, so it is our duty to keep monitoring our professionals’ work on the marketplace.
Our team also keeps an eye on the marketplace to ensure we have sufficient professionals listed and available in each genre. It is by successfully juggling supply and demand that we have been able to build a safe haven for authors and professionals alike – and that’s what Reedsy is all about.
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