Click on the page "fees and services" and tell me what other services I should offer.
My main areas of expertise are
(1) Prose style. The actual writing part of writing.
(2) Task management. How to get things done.
(3) Career development and mentoring.
(4) Ideas. I can engage your work at the level of the content too.
I want to develop my consulting side-line over the summer. The reason is that, frankly, we are not paid over the summer on our 9-month contracts, and my salary lags behind that of other people in my department at the same or lower ranks. It's called salary compression. There will be no raises again this year. My annus mirabilis, when I published two books, there was no raise for faculty in my university.
Instead of letting the resentment eat away at me, I am beginning this private consulting business to help myself a bit. Between honoraria for talks, royalties, and work like this, I want to earn a few hundred extra dollars a month.
10 comments:
You will also do an invaluable service to our entire field. Recently minted PhD graduates are often left floundering in the sea of new duties that they have no idea how to manage.
If you have the knowledge of what one needs to do to become a successful research scholar and are willing to share it, it makes a lot of sense that you should be compensated for it.
Many people who are brilliant scholars are incapable of being anybody's mentors for the simple reason that they don't know how to do it. You, however, are very good at it. I'm sure that your consulting business will be a great success.
I'm glad you feel that way. If you refer others to me I will be very appreciative.
Would you like me to place a post about these services on my blog?
Yes, that would be very nice of you, thanks.
I'll direct the post at people in the field of Hispanic Studies, right?
I just hope that when you are inundated with clients, you still have time to help me out. :-)
I can do other fields too. English, French. I even have a client in Sociology.
I advise creating a niche where you don't just give standard advice to the not quite informed, but give advice that goes beyond this. I remember not knowing how to truly negotiate with a general editor for a press, and not being able to find someone to tell me. My questions were practical but the assumption was that they were just nervous questions, so I'd get answers at that level. The real answer was, these are legit questions, part of your editor's job is to work with you on them. And I didn't know this, and would have paid to learn it.
I don't know how to negotiate with an editor that well myself. I want my services to reflect my own competencies as much as possible.
It is sort of like the question someone (smart) posed when I was in graduate school: is a job interview like a PhD oral? (No: only superficially, if at all).
Similarly, negotiating with editors, esp. if you have a book in English on a non English field, is *not* like as school test - it's a business deal. Even when the reviewers resemble a virtual dissertation committee. You can talk to these people the same way as you would anyone. This is what I did not know, then.
But, my larger point: if you can get a rep for saying something from a slightly different angle than a dissertation director or an assigned faculty mentor in your own dept. would, I think you'd clean up.
I don't mean: give weird, off base advice.
I do mean: share things senior people know.
Post a Comment