Online Editing

Those people are generally very experienced professionals who can justify such costs by delivering an excellent product. I'm not saying you can't, mind you.

Have you had experience editing manuscripts for publication?

It's also likely that those editors have worked for publishing houses and been trained that way, and/or have had extensive internship experience. Check out their credentials and you might get more detail about how they have been trained and why they're able to command professional fees.

I'm sure you're doing your best to deliver a fine product but editing is so multi-faceted and (as I'm sure you know) detailed, that extensive training and experience is invaluable.

Finchlark said:

Please move if this is the wrong place to post this.

I have been doing some online editing for a couple of online publishers for about two years. I put a lot of effort in and spend many hours on each manuscript and am lucky if I make $40 (about £25 in UK).

Yesterday on another site I saw someone charged 3.5K to edit a manuscript.

I am stunned.

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Editors have to make a living, just like anyone else. 3.5k strikes me as a little steep, but not ridiculously so. It depends on exactly what "editing" means in a given case.

But forty bucks? I might edit a piece of micro fiction for forty bucks, but that's about it.

You do have to take what you can get when learning the trade, but there comes a point when you have learned, and want to make a living. When you divide 3.5k by how many hours it can take to edit something properly, it won't seem like so much money.

How much per hour do you need to live on?

Freelancers make more than $40 off of a manuscript; that's an insanely low rate unless you are working on flash fiction manuscripts. Honestly I would be skeptical of any editor working for that fee. Meaning nothing against you, but it sounds to me like the publishers you are working for are ripping you off. How do you make ends meet?

It is important to note that there are different kinds of editing. A developmental editor is going to get paid a lot more than a copy editor or proofreader. Even still, copy editors generally make at the very least $1 per page/250 words on the low end.

Maybe consider entering the freelance market if you can't find a new publisher to work with. You'd still likely have to accept competitive, lower rates, but nothing as crazy as $40/manuscript.

Totally OT, is that a Dane?

Finchlark said:

Smiles. No that's my labrador.

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Ah. Cool hat!

I did some research for an independent editor in the very recent past and the going rate for a qualified editor was in the $25 per hour range. It doesn't take long to get to the $3.5K or $4K range if they're doing a thorough job.

Hey, Finchlark -- PM me -- I have a couple ideas if you don't mind working for a royalty/commission rate. One small romance epub I worked for (I was an acquiring editor and did developmental editing on up to line editing and proofing for the same book) paid me (actually, I didn't get the money, I had them donate it directly to a women's charity) a percentage of what the author earned. Some authors only sold 10-20 copies of their book and I made very little. But some, over time, earned quite a bit and I believe the monthly donation from my work amounted to around $800-900. Granted, that took around two years to work up to and I had (I think) around 20-25 books in my 'stable'. I have ideas about how to improve on those figures -- things like 1) Edit erotica 2) Edit for a publisher that does a lot of marketing.

The biggest problem with royalty-based pay for me was that it stopped when I left the company. Anyhow, it's just an idea.