christinaroseandrews:

sailor-lady:

christinaroseandrews:

So here’s some math and numbers for you all…

The average editing speed for a COPY EDIT is 6 pages an hour.

The industry standard for number of words on a page is 250 (this can change but this is the industry standard). So six pages equals 1500 words. So 1500 words an hour. An average novel is around 60,000 words. Divide that by 1500 and you get how many hours it will take on average to edit – which in this case is 40 hours.

This is for a copy edit.

Now because you’re not a horrible person you should want to pay your editor at least minimum wage which currently in the U.S. is $7.25 an hour – which is $290. Except even copy editing requires specialized skills so let’s bump that up to the new proposed minimum wage of $15.00 an hour. Which is $600 for a 60,000 word or 240-page manuscript.

THIS IS FOR COPY EDITING.

And this isn’t even the industry standard rate. the average copy edit rate is $36-41 per hour. (Source)

Higher levels of editing like Line editing, Content Editing, and Developmental Editing all take a higher degree of skill and expertise. As the linked article shows for Non-fiction/journalistic editing there’s a lot of things higher level editors have to be able to do. A lot of these kinds of edits require education and knowledge of the genre. This isn’t looking for comma faults or homophones. This is tightening up language, fixing plot holes, flagging and fixing characterization issues, and more. Not only does this take longer (4 pages an hour on average for a line edit, and 2 pages an hour for a content edit) but it costs more. This is a huge time commitment and work commitment for the editor. With a content edit, the editor may be literally filling in whole scenes mimicking the author’s voice or, more often, cutting huge swathes of text and reordering it. (I have cut so many first chapters you do not even know. And don’t even ask me about how many action scenes I’ve written.) It takes a whole slew of skills to do higher level editing.

I get it, money is tight. But it’s tight for everyone–including your editors. For me, I’ve been editing professionally for 25 years. I am disabled and editing is my primary source of income. I deserve to be paid a living wage for my work and expertise. While I charge on the lower end of editing because I know most of my clientele is as cash-strapped as I am, I still need to be able to pay bills.

Grammarly, ProWriting Aid, Google Docs, Word, Etc. can help but they aren’t a substitute for a professional editor. They will not be able to tell you that your character is an antisemitic stereotype or that you dropped a plot thread or that your plot is the exact same as the previous book or that your sex scene has two too many limbs (extra hands and tongues are a problem) or that your heroine’s eye color changed from blue to brown halfway through. These are all things I’ve caught just this month.

Beta readers are a good start, but again they aren’t professionals. They aren’t trained to look for this. And as someone who is trying to train other editors, it is not easy. Editing requires the ability to think laterally as well as linearly. It is both detail-oriented and macro-oriented.

So to answer the initial question is 3,000 for 100,000 words unreasonable. No. Not at all. Especially if you’re getting a content edit or a line edit. 

^_^

I see you mentioning the different types of editing but what exactly are the differences?

So here are the different types of editing. And I’m going to use an analogy of cooking to do this.

Under the Developmental Editing Umbrella are the following:

Book/Story Doctoring - This is your recipe creation. A book doctor helps you with creating a viable (but not perfected) recipe. It includes things like world building, character creation, story arcs, character arcs, outlining, and making sure the story is in the right order and has all of the appropriate beats. A book doctor will often help write scenes wholesale and they will do a lot of handholding through the process. It’s intensive. And it’s expensive.

Content Editing - This is your fine tuning of the recipe. A content editor will read what should be your second or third draft and help you with pacing, flow, consistent characterization, filling plot holes, and fleshing out action or sex scenes. A content editor will often do some chapter rearranging or suggest you cut scenes/chapters/characters wholesale. It’s not as intensive as a book doctor and it’s about making sure that you have a viable story plot, character and pacing wise. This is not checking spelling or grammar. And it’s not just pointing out problems but also providing solutions for said problems, even if it means rewriting something for the author.

Line editing - This is your plating/presentation. It’s making the language shine and sparkle. This is about the writing–the language–itself. I did a meta on this a few years ago that goes into exactly what a line edit looks like. It’s not rewriting, and a line editor will not fully flesh out your scenes if you’re an under-writer or fully cut extraneous description if you’re an over-writer. They may do some depending on the editor. But mostly they stick with the text they are given.

Sensitivity Editing - This is your making sure your recipe can accommodate people with allergies. Sensitivity editing is more than just looking for things that are racist, sexist, or homophobic. It includes things like consent, populating the world, character description, phraseology, and even global things like plot points/villains/etc. Ideally the sensitivity editor will be from the marginalized community represented, but it isn’t always feasible. Some sensitivity editors can do a general edit, but it requires training and experience. But no one person is a monolith. Keep this in mind. Sensitivity editing can be draining because the editors have to open themselves up to the potential pain to be effective. They are deliberately putting themselves into a traumatic situation to make your story better.

theliteraryarchitect:

How Much Does Editing Normally Cost?

Hi there! It really depends on the kind of editing, how experienced (and busy) the editor is, the shape the manuscript is in, and a number of other factors. I’ve seen anything from .005/word for proofreading to .08/word for developmental editing. My own rates start at .015/word for an editorial review and go up to .03/word for a heavy developmental edit (consult + lengthy critique + margin comments + follow up call + email support).

A lot of people experience sticker shock with editing, so you’re not alone there. You can find people to do it for cheap, but it’s usually a you-get-what-you-pay-for kind of thing. (At the same time, I always encourage writers to ask editors for a sample of their work before hiring them–don’t assume that because the editor charges a lot you’ll click with their style.)

I might be preaching to the choir here, but I’ve gotten enough asks about editing prices that I think it’s worth pointing out a few things:

• Editing takes time. You can’t just quickly breeze through a manuscript once and come back with helpful, detailed recommendations. In my case, no matter what kind of editing I do, I carefully read every manuscript twice. Because of the level of focus and attention I give to the story, for a 100,000 word manuscript that could mean almost 20 hours of my time just to read the thing… before I even start writing a critique.
• Good editors are experienced and often highly educated. If you can find an editor who is willing to work for minimum wage, more power to you (I guess?). Personally, I’m a published fiction writer, and I have a masters degree and years of experience in my field, so I charge accordingly. Most editors I respect (read: that I would hire myself) have rates starting at $80/hr.
• If you want useful feedback, there’s no such thing as “taking a quick look” at your manuscript. I get a lot of inquiries from writers who hope I can come down on my price if they don’t need as much feedback: “Just take a quick look” or “give me an overall impression.” There are two problems with this. The first (see above) is that even reading the manuscript can take hours of my time. The second is that the only way for me to give “quick” feedback is to give shallow, crappy feedback… which I just can’t bring myself to do.

The bummer, of course, is that all of these factors put editing way outside of a lot of writers’ price range. Every time I get an inquiry from a broke writer and have to turn them down, my heart dies a little. That’s part of the reason I’m working on my self-editing guide The Complete Guide to Self Editing for Fiction Writers. It’s a DIY guide that walks you through doing a story-level, scene-level, and sentence-level edit on your story. Completing it has been slower going than I originally thought (It just keeps getting longer!!), but I hope to have it finished soon.

Thanks for writing! I hope this has been helpful, and good luck to you!

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The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library, peruse my Tumblr Post Guide, or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo

So for instance, my Marginalized identities include: Disabled, Chronically ill, body positivity, bisexual, genderqueer (I prefer just queer), Pagan (Eclectic Wicca), Domestic Abuse Survivor, Rape Survivor, Sexual Assault Survivor, and AFAB. So using my own marginalizations I can check a lot of boxes. My specialty is consent. Particularly sexual consent. I am VERY good at it because of my history. However because of my personal relationships, education, background, and various training I can provide a decently competent generalized sensitivity edit… like I’ll catch antisemitism even though I am not Jewish because my best friend and co-author is Jewish (I’ve even caught things that she missed because she’s gotten used to the microaggressions and I haven’t). I also know when to back out and go – “this is outside of my expertise; you need someone else.”

Manuscript Assessment - Basically this is your food critic. It’s a professional opinion about what is good about your story, what is not so good, what kinds of editing you need, and what you should be focusing on next. It’s often done in very general terms and does not provide solutions. You are essentially paying someone for their professional opinion about where your story stands at that moment.

These fall under the Technical Editing umbrella:

Copy Editing - This is your cleaning up the plate. You know that person with a rag who removes the little bit of schmutz or stray herb? That’s the copy editor. They clean up the story – fixing spelling, grammar, punctuation, consistency (did the character change eye or hair color?), pregnancy length, consistent timing, etc.

Proofreading - This is the person who makes sure the final presentation is pretty. It’s the waiter who sets the plate down in front of you and arranges it just so. It’s checking to make sure that every line has the right open and close quotes, for instance. That you haven’t missed a period someplace. That there isn’t a random extra space somewhere. It’s the final presentation.

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Those are the differences. Some editors do more than one thing when they edit, I know I do a very basic sensitivity edit with anything greater than a line edit because it goes hand in hand with cleaning up language. But basically it boils down to the amount of work, time, problem solving, and hand-holding the editor has to do.

Copy editing is the Technical Editor’s bread and butter. And most developmental editors can also act as copy editors… but not at the same time.

Line editing is the Developmental Editor’s bread and butter. It requires some problem solving, lateral thinking, and hand holding. (Mostly about repetitive sentence structure.) But it isn’t as in depth as a content editor or as intensive as a book doctor.

I hope that explains this.