Entrepreneur launches editing services business

Six months ago, Robert Gibson made the bold decision that he was going to become a full-time entrepreneur.

To that end, he registered his business Passionate Words Editing Services (PWES), a small business that offers different levels of editing (line editing, proofreading, developmental editing), book formatting and design, cover design services, assistance with assigning a book an international ISBN, and assistance in publishing new books on international platforms such as Amazon.

The former student of The St Michael School said that COVID-19 was the catalyst for him to decide that he wanted to begin his editing service.

“COVID-19 was a catalyst of change for the entire world. Suddenly, I was at home, working remotely at my day job as a database administrator for a Government agency.

During this capacity, there were many times that I was on call for the job but not busy, as many of the day-to-day responsibilities had been eliminated because of being remote.

Consequently, I had time to work on my side business at the time – Passionate Words Editing Services. I was able to work on and cultivate more clients, to the point that when it was time to renew my contract in September 2020, I felt it was more viable for me to leave my day job and go into full-time entrepreneurship,” he said.

Gibson said that his friend Sandra Sealy also encouraged him to pursue the business idea back in 2016 as she always marveled at his editing skills but due to him having a full-time job, he never fully pursued it as he should have.

“One major catalyst of starting the business was my literary mentor Sandra Sealy who encouraged me to put my editing skills to the test. In a sense, it is not much of a transition as many of my early clients were friends from within the artistic community that reached out to me or accepted my offer to help them get their books published. Now that I am a full-time entrepreneur, the transition away from working for someone else to working for myself has been interesting. It has been liberating, but now I have to be the jack-of-all-trades for everything surrounding my business except for the things I outsource,” he said.

The entrepreneur, who has won Gine on People’s Choice Award Book of The Year in 2019-2020, said that his business was a one-stop shop for any aspiring author.

“You can do everything here – from conceptualising the idea, to having the book edited – all the way to book layout and preparing it for publication. You should come to Passionate Words Editing Services because we are in the business of bringing your dreams to life as we know that many people have always dreamed about writing a book  and becoming published; we are here to facilitate that,” he said.

Adding that although book editing is a niche service, he has sought to attract new customers by launching his pay as you go system which he has recently launched.

“The Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) system has been implemented as a way to improve cash flow in my small business. I have realized how difficult it was for people at this time to pay for our services, therefore (PAYG) was implemented to assist our valued customers at this time. The premise is that instead of paying one or two lump sums, the client can pay for the project in sections – first the editing, formatting and typesetting, cover design and finally for the assistance to upload the book to Amazon’s platform,” he said.

Gibson’s word of advice for any aspiring entrepreneur is to have self-discipline.

“As I told my two teenage sons, working for yourself is harder than working for someone else. You have to have large quantities of self-discipline and time management. Self-discipline because there is no one over you making sure you get the things you have to do completed successfully – you have to be self-sufficient; and time management, to be able to manage your tasks without burning out or being swamped with too much work.

Everything is at you, and therefore you have to be able to balance all of the aspects of the business. It is not wrong to delegate – so outsource some of your work to people if those areas are not your strong points. And recognize that the business may take time to grow, but you are to enjoy it and be there for every part of the journey.,” he said. (Write Right PR Services)