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Thursday, October 21, 2010

Is Editorial Freelancers Association a Good Deal?

One of our readers wants to ask you all if joining the Editorial Freelancers Association is worth the cost. "It costs $105 to join (because I'm outside the NYC area) plus a $35 processing fee plus $40 a year to access their online job board.  I'd like to know if any of your readers get projects off the EFA job board."

I've considered joining EFA in the past, but ended up back in the classroom, so I have no experience with it. Please comment with your own experiences or even rumors... :)

Thanks,
Laura

5 comments:

Cecelia Munzenmaier said...

I'm an EFA member from the Midwest, primarily because of the jobline and the listserve. Whether it's worthwhile for you to join may depend on your specialty. Medical and academic copyeditors would find lots of job listings in their fields, and EFA membership does distinguish you as a stronger candidate. However, competition is strong. Only a few educational publishers post to the jobline. I've only gotten a couple of jobs through the joblist, but they've been big projects. Several members have also gotten work from their listings in the searchable EFA directory. Quality of discussion on the listserve is high, and posts under BIZ usually have worthwhile information about tools or best practices. There's also a yearly conference, Communication Central, if you want to do some face-to-face networking. You can also post an EFA logo on your site. Compared to other professional associations, the cost is reasonable.

Rebecca Hirsch said...

A few years ago I was a member of EFA for exactly one year. I also subscribed to their listserv. I was only interested in children's/educational writing jobs, so most of the job postings did not interest me. I did, however, get one job out of it—writing a book for a book packager. That led to many more offers from the same packager to write more books, so the EFA membership was worth it for me.

If your main interest is looking for jobs, I would say that whether it is worth it depends on what type of work you are willing to take. If you are picky like me and want only educational writing jobs, then it might be a bit of a gamble.

Good luck!

Laura said...

I received this one by email:

I was a member for about 20 years, signing up when I first went freelance in NYC and continuing for several years after I moved out of the Tri-State Area. While in NYC, I attended a few interesting meetings, but I never got a project through the EFA. After the move, there were no meetings to attend in my area, but I maintained my membership because of my participation in the EFA's health insurance plan. In 2005, however, the carrier (Mutual of Omaha) dropped all of the participants in that plan, creating big problems when it came to getting new insurance. The EFA finally secured a new provider, but that provider would cover only the members in the NYC area. The next time that my membership came up for renewal, I did not renew. I see that the EFA now has an option for members who live in certain areas outside of NYC, so I guess that it depends on where Laura lives (if insurance even is an issue for her). I have nothing against the EFA; it has just ceased of being a benefit to me.

allena said...

HI, first I love your blog and link to it from my site at About.com. I've been an EFA member off and on for a while. The thing is, if you get even one job from the jobline, it easily pays for itself. I've got work from there, yes.

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for sharing your insights into EFA. I'm the one who originally asked Laura to ask the community if EFA was a good deal.

I just joined and will let you all know if I find any work through this avenue.