Staying Freelance: Part 2 by Andrea Reider
Let’s welcome back Andrea Reider as she shares with us “Staying Freelance.” Enjoy!
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I wrote “Staying Freelance” to inspire and advise fellow freelancers on how to build and maintain their careers for the long-term.
My goal is to show people how to “stay” freelance not just “go” freelance, and how to maximize their freelance income and achieve long-term financial stability.
The following excerpt from “Staying Freelance” is about how I got my start as a book publishing freelancer:
A temporary employment agency placed me in my first job in San Francisco, working in the downtown headquarters of a large manufacturing company.
I was hired as part of a test to see whether they should invest in new Macintosh desktop publishing equipment or go with the IBM PC equivalent.
My job was to use the Macintosh computer to lay out a large manual using the popular layout program Aldus PageMaker.
Another woman was hired to work on an IBM computer using the page layout program Ventura Graphics.
At this time, the Macintosh computer and the Aldus PageMaker were much better suited to desktop publishing applications and eventually came to dominate in the graphic design industry.
The advantage of working on the better desktop publishing system and my experience from working at the typesetting shop in Ann Arbor enabled me to finish my project in about a week.
My IBM PC competitor on Ventura Graphics was still working on her project six weeks later.
I found out later that the other woman had been the favorite of most of the secretaries at the company, and that they had all been rooting for her to beat me.
My winning the competition meant that I was hired to help the company to develop their in-house desktop publishing department using Macintosh computers.
I started out making $14 per hour as a temporary worker, which was a decent wage in 1987.
After making myself very useful and with some bargaining, the company bought out my contract with the temporary agency, and agreed to pay me $20 per hour, which they ultimately raised to $25 per hour.
Although consultants in other fields were then charging as much as $50 to $100 per hour and more for their services, I was now making enough steady money to enable me to move out of my parents’ house and into my first San Francisco apartment.
I found a cute and tiny studio apartment in the Nob Hill district, two blocks from the Fairmont Hotel.
It was within walking distance to my favorite hangout, the Caffe Trieste in North Beach. This was a big plus to me at the time, as the Caffe had become the center of my social life outside of my work and family.
There was always something to do when I was working at our family men’s clothing store in Detroit, even if it meant vacuuming the carpet, making coffee, or just straightening up the merchandise on display.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Reider has been working as a book designer and layout artist/typesetter for publishers and self-publishing authors since graduating from the University of Michigan in English in 1985 with a B.A. in English. It was the year of the Macintosh computer and “desktop publishing,” and her first job was managing a typesetting shop in Ann Arbor.
When Andrea moved to San Francisco two years later her Macintosh skills were very much in demand. Andrea began working as a freelancer for several book publishers and has been at it ever since. Her clients have included John Wiley & Sons, Addison Wesley Longman, McGraw Hill, Rowman & Littlefield, and hundreds of self-publishing authors.
Website: http://www.reiderbooks.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreareiderdesign/