I have been doing research and am not entirely unknowledgeable on the subject, however unfortunately I didn't know enough to ask the right question to get the right answer, so I played dumb and asked a couple of general, naive ones in hopes I'd get the information and perspective I wanted (oh, and lucrative was the wrong word, I agree...I realized that about ten seconds after walking away from the computer
). Which I did. Y'all are great.
(Just FYI, I'm coming at the subject more from the perspective of 'if I became a proofreader what should I charge?' rather than 'if I needed a proofreader what should I pay?') I'm a compulsive editor, but I'd never actually taken a certain amount of flawed text authored by someone else and put it all in order (I don't have a brother in editing like Roger, unfortunately
), so I am drawing on y'all's experience instead.
Thankyou hugely.
I am guessing that a job like Chris had, proofreading scientific articles from non-native English speakers, would be considerably harder than just proofreading a book like one I'm beta-ing right now, which only has a plethora of misused semicolons, a few missing words, and a couple comma/period swaps. If someone only proofread for, say, self publishers after they've done all the editing they can and just want another pair of eyes to catch everything they missed, what would be the typical speed that a proofreader could do a good job at, and shouldn't the price reflect the relatively lighter work?