Editorial professional development at Ideas on Fire

Mentoring, conversation, and collective editorial practice
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The Ideas on Fire Editorial Professional Development Series is an internal, mentoring-centered space for team members—editors, indexers, and publishing professionals working with the agency.

The series reflects how Ideas on Fire operates as an agency: editorial excellence emerges through shared thinking, careful dialogue, and collaboration across roles, disciplines, and levels of experience.

The series is a space for team members to think together about craft, context, and the responsibilities of working with interdisciplinary scholarship.

Ideas on Fire supports scholarship that engages material stakes—intellectual, political, and social. Doing that work well requires more than technical skill. It requires judgment, care, and the ability to think alongside others.

Our Editorial Professional Development Series is one way we invest in those capacities and in the people who bring them to our agency.

Our approach to mentoring

At Ideas on Fire, mentoring is about:

  • experienced editors and indexers articulating how they approach complex decisions
  • peers exchanging strategies across disciplinary and methodological differences
  • making room for publishing questions that do not have easy answers
  • reflecting together on ethics, power, and editorial judgment

Some sessions are facilitated by agency leadership and others are peer-led conversations or roundtables. What unites them is an emphasis on shared inquiry rather than prescriptive guidance.

Mentoring here is dialogic, relational, and shaped by the realities of freelance professional life.

How the series works

Every month, we host a live discussion for Ideas on Fire team members focused on a specific aspect of editing, indexing, or running a thriving freelance business.

Sessions take place in our private Slack workspace, and no RSVP is required—team members can join anytime and participate as much or as little as fits their schedule.

These sessions are interactive, informal, and designed to help team members share ideas, swap techniques, ask questions, and explore new tools or resources. Each session is a chance to learn from one another, tackle practical challenges, and strengthen our collective expertise.

Any team member is welcome to facilitate a session or propose a topic.

These sessions are a way our team keeps growing its knowledge, refining workflows, and maintaining the high standards that make Ideas on Fire's work—and our clients’ projects—exceptional.

Upcoming sessions

Time Tracking, Estimating, and Scoping Projects - Torn paper with the word "estimate"

Time Tracking, Estimating, and Scoping Projects

August 26, 2026

Speakers: Cathy Hannabach

Build confidence in estimating complex projects, setting realistic timelines, and using past data to forecast future workload.

Managing Figures in Scholarly Work - Art in frames hung on a wall under a light

Managing Figures in Scholarly Work

September 8, 2026

Speakers: Cathy Hannabach

Develop strategies for managing figures, including checking for consistency, ensuring accessibility, aligning captions and references, handling permissions, and formatting index entries.

Collaborating Across the Editorial–Indexing Handoff - Relay runners hand off the baton

Collaborating Across the Editorial–Indexing Handoff

October 6, 2026

Speakers: Cathy Hannabach

Improve the editorial–indexing handoff, including what information should move between the two stages, how to flag issues that impact both, and how to handle late-stage author changes that affect the index.

New and Favorite Editing/Indexing Tools - Tools on a wood work surface

New and Favorite Editing/Indexing Tools

November 17, 2026

Speakers: Cathy Hannabach

Discover new editing and indexing tools, including new macros that speed up cleanup, project management apps to keep you on track, and analog solutions to organize your business.

Goal Setting for 2027 - Red and white bullseye with arrow in middle

Editorial Goal Setting for 2027

December 8, 2026

Speakers: Cathy Hannabach

Celebrate your 2026 editorial successes and set strategic goals for 2027 professional growth.

Past sessions

2026 sessions

Macro-Level Cohesion for Edited Collections

Editorial Business System Backups and Redundancies

WTF Is Word Doing?!

Stream Decks in Editorial Workflows

  • March 31, 2026
  • Presented by Rita Forbes

Getting Paid through US University Vendor Systems

Editing and Indexing for Multilingual Authors

New and Favorite Editing/Indexing Resources

 

2025 sessions

Editorial Project Management Tools

Recent Trends in Scholarly Publishing

AI and Academic Editing

Supporting Authors with Underdeveloped Manuscripts

Macros for Copyediting

Professional Growth for Mid-Career and Senior Editors and Indexers

Creating Style Sheets That Work

Ensuring Legibility in Interdisciplinary Texts

Academic Editing and Indexing Tools

Editorial Goal Setting for 2026

 

2024 sessions

Editing and Indexing Cross-Training

Exploring Indexing Workflows

Editing Crossover and Trade Books by Scholarly Authors

Writing Dissertation-to-Book Manuscript Reviews

Academic Editing and Indexing Tools

Working with (Not Against) an Author’s Voice

Getting the Most Out of Conference Travel

Editing Interdisciplinary Scholarly Book Proposals

What’s New in CMOS 18

Editorial Goal Setting for 2025

Optimizing Index Cross References and Double Postings

 

2023 sessions

Writing Editorial Reports and Manuscript Reviews

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation for Editors and Indexers

Onboarding and Offboarding Client Projects

Navigating US University Vendor Systems

Mentoring for Academic Editors

Low Tech, High Tech, and Mixed Tech for Editors

Fall Refresh: Copyediting Scholarly Manuscripts

Developmentally Editing Interdisciplinary Academic Book Proposals

Editorial Self-Assessment: Reflecting at Year's End

 

2022 sessions

Reference Editing Tricks

Introduction to Editing Macros

Ergonomincs for Editors and Indexers

Juggling Multiple Editorial Projects and Schedules

Getting the Most Out of Editorial Project Management Tools

Copyediting AAA Journals

Introduction to Interdisciplinary Indexing

Freelancing While Parenting

 

Looking for an agency where editorial learning happens through collaboration and mentoring?

See whether working with Ideas on Fire might be a good fit.

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