Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

I'm going to be posting a listing for editing services on Elance soon (Please do not contact me to advertise your services. Please. Please!!).

My budget is around 6 cents/word or $1.45/page.

There's some concern on another forum that this is way too low. I thought this was a bit on the low side but not crazy low.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Brian

Six cents a word or $1.45 per page? That only makes sense if you have only 25 words on a page.

Most professional editors will charge you at least $.01 per word, which, for a 50K manuscript, means $500. Others may charge you less, but it's good that you're advertising on elance.

My advice: Google freelance editors, e-mail them and ask them for a price quote based on the length of your project and timetable for completion. I like the editors that let you send them a sample of your work, and they will edit that excerpt for free. When you find an editor that seems to share the same mindset as you and that fits within your budget, you've made your choice.

When I was searching for an editor, I e-mailed a dozen potential editors and told them about the novel I was working on. Six of them gave me sample edits, and I could not be happier with the lady I ultimately chose.

This is absolutely NOT an ad, but I charge £450 (British pounds) to critique/edit a normal length manuscript.

I would say that 6 cents per word is actually just slightly above the middle. The best known and well regarded editors usually charge around 10 cents per word in my experience. You can find people who charge less (even the 1 cent per word mentioned above) but very often with editing you really get what you pay for. If someone is only charging 1 cent per word there is most likely a reason why. It could be that they are just young and starting out (and no indictment of quality), but it could also be that they aren't actually that good at it. Before you decide on an editor it would be a good idea for you to ask around. There are thousands of Indy authors on GR who regularly use editors and they are bound to be able to recommend someone who is good at what they do but also charges a reasonable amount.

Really depends on what kind of edit you are looking for. Is your manuscript clean enough that you only need light copyediting? Prices for this range from 50 cents to $2.00 per page. Comprehensive editing can run as much as $10 per page.

When I was editing freelance, my prices started at $0.75 per page, and I outright refused to perform work on an unreadable manuscript. Do what you can yourself, and work with critique groups to polish what you have. Many editors will give a discount based on the quality of your work.

Lady Echo,

What kind of a edit is a good and valid question, and one that, unfortunately, isn't easy for me to answer. Here's the long version :)

This is not my first rodeo, but I'm definitely a rookie on the circuit. My next edit will be my 4th time working with a "professional" editor.

1. Developmental edit for a novelette. Don't remember how much I paid. The comments were fine, but I don't think that the overall improvement to the work or my writing was worth the investment.
2. Developmental edit for the novel I'm about to have re-edited for $550. She had a few minor comments about my writing technique, but she tore me up on tension and character. I learned a ton and completely rewrote the book. Painful process, but worth every penny.
3. Copy edit for a 6000 word story for an anthology. Publisher paid for the edit. Comments were very superficial. I've gotten much more out of casual beta readers. Whatever was paid to the guy was probably too much.

I think that history is important because it informs what I want now - to feel at the end of the process like I got my money's worth.

Besides price, my major frustration with editors is that it seems like they want me to tell them whether I want a developmental edit or a copy edit.

What I want is for my book to get better. If that's a developmental edit - great. If that's a copy edit - great. If it's both - great.

So I guess all that to say that I can't really answer your question :)

Thanks.

Brian

Brian,

If you've already had a developmental edit (and it sounds as though you got a good one), another should not be necessary. Let me ask you this: how confident are you in your work? Are you questioning the relevancy of scenes? Characters? The plotline, anywhere from introduction to resolution?

If you can answer no, confidently, to the above, then I'd say what you're looking for is a basic copyedit/proofread. If you aren't 100% sure, my advice is to enlist 10 beta readers you don't know and ask them to be brutal. Their feedback will point you in the right direction.

Good luck!

Lady Echo,

My problems are twofold:

1. I'm not sure what I don't know. As an aspiring SPA, I really have serious reservations about whether I'll get back in profit what I'm about to put into this book. Therefore, from a pure business perspective, it makes no sense to pay an editor. I rationalize spending the money by considering this a learning experience. A good editor will teach me something about the craft and hopefully many things. If my knowledge of writing is increased for all the books that I'll ever write, then the money is definitely worth it.

2. I tend to write chapter by chapter. I think that, on a scene level, I have decent pacing and conflict, etc. I'm not sure, however, how well the pieces fit together as a whole. Does the fast pace that I prefer wear the reader out? Are the sources of conflict too repetitive? Am I beating my reader over the head too much? I think those things are more covered in a developmental edit than a copy edit, right?

Thanks for your comments.

Brian

Hi Brian,

Sounds like you've already been through the ringer with this book, and I agree with your assessment of getting your money's worth. Putting out a clean book is paramount, but there is a point of leveling off, and each subsequent round of edits gives diminishing returns (but not necessarily diminishing costs). If it's 99% clean, start sending it out to readers.

As Lady Echo suggested, if you feel confident that the book is put together well and free of gross errors, then beta readers would be more useful. They shouldn't always be relied upon to do the heavy lifting, but it sounds like you're at the stage of needing feedback on the finished book, not reconstructing it on a grand scale. And they can also pick up on the odd typo or two that might have slipped through.

Without giving a sample edit, all I can say is that you're the best judge of where your book is at in the process. Your cover intrigues me, and your book sounds like it has been checked multiple times. If it'll make your book significantly more readable and profitable, go for the extra editing. Otherwise, get it out to the market...and then write the next one.

Hope some of this helps! :P

Thomas,

At this point, I'm really hoping that the final version needs only a little bit of spit and polish. However, I'd be a lot more comfortable running it through another round of editing before making that call.

Thanks for the comments.

Brian

Ahh, I see. Well hopefully it only needs some light proofreading and a generous handful of comments addressing any remaining plot/flow problems! And if it needs more, then apparently it was necessary and that's money well spent, haha. You know how the game is played—shop around and decide what's right for you. :)

Brian wrote: "I'm going to be posting a listing for editing services on Elance soon (Please do not contact me to advertise your services. Please. Please!!).

My budget is around 6 cents/word or $1.45/page.

Ther..."

I charge by the hour (I have more than 20 years' experience); $50/hour for line edits. If we're talking about simple proofreading, I negotiate based on the length of the manuscript.

This chart should give you an idea of what the averages are. http://the-efa.org/res/rates.php

David wrote: "I would say that 6 cents per word is actually just slightly above the middle. The best known and well regarded editors usually charge around 10 cents per word in my experience. You can find people ..."

Think about it. 6 cent/word is $6000 for a 100,000 word novel. That's WAYYYY to high. I'd LOVE to make $50/hr for copy editing, but anyone who would afford that has more money than good sense. And I can't, in good conscience, charge that kind of money.

If you plan to self-publish an eBook, you'll be lucky to sell a thousand copies (more like a hundred).

If you charge $3.99, Amazon will pay you a bit less than $2.79 per sale. Now divide that into your total expenses for editing and cover art and you'll see how many copies you have to sell to break even. That should sober the average author up.

Yes, I know. You hope to hit the jackpot and sell 100K copies. If you do, great! I wish you the best. But don't invest "life or death" money in this; budget it as "entertainment".

I'm curious, Al. What do you think is a fair price for a proper edit?

Brian wrote: I really have serious reservations about whether I'll get back in profit what I'm about to put into this book.

If this is your first (or one of your first) novels then I wouldn't fixate so much on profit. The real value is exposure, building your readership, your social networks and other aspects of your author platform. Especially as a new Indy author (if that is in fact what you are) it is unlikely that you'll make money in the short run, but the fans you get now will be highly useful to your future works the sale of which will also help with sales of this original work AND if your sales and promotional efforts are effective that can help you get signed with publishers later. A lot of publishers (especially small ones)don't just want a good book. They want a good partner who can help them promote whatever they publish and they look more favorably on authors with established readership and effective author platforms.

@Al

Yes, editing can be steep, but again I'll reiterate: Very often you get what you pay for (or more importantly DON'T get what you DON'T pay for). Yes, 6 cents is heading toward the upper end of rates, but I would be leery of anyone charging less than 3 unless they are new to the business. (I will say however that you can very often troll University English Departments and find graduate students who want to get into editing who will work cheap because they want the experience) Also, as someone else already mentioned, those rates can vary depending on the type of editing you want. The more extensive the job, the more it's going to cost you.

Lady Echo wrote: "I'm curious, Al. What do you think is a fair price for a proper edit?"

That's a tough one. If you present a ms that needs a LOT of work, the price should be higher than the toll for a fairly clean piece. After all, you're buying the editor's time. I'll fall back on my own "method" and situation to answer your question, bearing in mind that other editors may be in different situations.

I'm retired, after 8 years as the lead copy editor for an eBook publisher. I'm not the greatest "story editor" in the business. No surprise, since a good copy editor is someone who is good at burrowing into the nitty-gritty details of a ms, while a "story editor" (content editor) is a high-level personality who can do a good job of looking over the entire plot and flow of the piece.

Now, I have a retirement income along with social security, so my financial needs aren't all that great. I only work to add some "wanna have" things to my budget.

So, I try to make $10/hr for my time. To do that, I take a random sample from the ms, do an edit on it, and time myself, then multiply times the total word count. I recently took on a 125,000-word novel at an estimate of $440.

I would expect an editor who does this as his/her only source of income to charge more. Maybe double that -- ASSUMING that editor is good at his job.

Now, bear in mind, that's for just a copy edit and formatting for eBook publication. It doesn't include a story edit (unless I see something that jumps out at me). I'd prefer the ms be story edited before I see it, because a story edit can force a lot of rewriting if the ms has problems. I CAN do a story edit, but there are other people who are better at that than me.

Now, if someone brings me a total mess, I'll suggest the author rework it to save money. If the author insists, I'll gladly charge him through the nose and bank the money.

I just saw an ad for an editor who charges $35/hr on an "editor" thread. Hope that helps.