editors

[disclaimer: I conduct editing and proofreading for a contract service] You can shop around to other editing services and compare prices. $6 per page is about 1.5 to 2 cents per word (assuming double spaced pages). However, most editing relationships I know about don't ask for a percentage of the earnings; it's a flat fee for the job and the business relationship ends when the edited MS is returned to the author. What does this mean, anyway? Of the advance? Of all royalties?

I would also want to know (if I were you) what formal training and experience your friend has with BOOK editing and query packages. What type of editing does she do for the newspaper? Does this qualify her to edit a non-fiction book (I'm assuming this is a memoir). For a typical book, you're talking well over $1000 and you should consider this as carefully as any purchase of this size.

Dave Eggers was quite successful with What is the What?, which is non-fiction written as a novel. His other major works, Zeitoun and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are both very novel-ish non-fiction (and both very good).

If you go in calling something non-fiction a novel, you're going to get flagged as someone who doesn't know their genre. I've seen writers use 'faction' (for something with a few changed facts, but mostly true) or novelized non-fiction (same thing, but more "based on a true story"). But "non-fiction novel" is about as big a red flag as "fiction novel" when approaching agents or publishers.

And yes, it's always a problem trying to convince someone your life story is worth putting out money for, but no matter what you call your book, that issue is still going to be there. The celebrity books are still going to be there. You're still going to have to compete with them on the same shelf.

(Also, listen to callalilly, a 10% commission is almost what an agent would receive. Editors generally work on a flat fee.)

I would think so; they aren't really the same genre.

My cowriter and I were in the lucky position of getting free professional editing. We traded off favors with a friend we found from our fanfiction writing community. She edited our book as we wrote it; we're offering to do the same for hers when she writes it. If you learn how to edit well, you could eventually do the same thing.

booker,

I have no idea what rates might be, and I would not pay for editing myself. That said, I write gooder than a lot of peoples tongue) and I'm fairly confident I can clean my own mess.

If you are not so confident, there is nothing wrong with that, but I would highly, HIGHLY recommend shopping around and looking at your friend's "credentials". I know I've seen Chris around here, for example, which doesn't say anything about the quality of his work but at least tells me he is serious about writing, and I know he does his own writing--there is a difference between that and a random off the street. The other consideration is one of the quickest ways to end a friendship is through business transaction--is this something you WANT to do? different expectations on each end can make things go very bad very quickly, so make sure you are both on the same page if you do use your friend.

"Non-fiction novel" is an outdated term. It's what Truman Capote used to describe In Cold Blood--a novelistic treatment of an actual occurrence. The "non-fiction novel" was non-fiction, not fiction.

Writing a novel inspired by actual events, as Dave Eggers did in What Is the What, is something a bit different. What Is the What is fiction inspired by the stories told to Eggers by a child soldier.

In any case, I think that pitching your manuscript as "true crime" is exactly the right thing to do. As someone involved in a headline-making crime, you will have a lot more traction in the true crime market than in the fiction market.

On your friend's suggestion: It is very unusual, to say the least, for a copy editor to ask for a percentage of royalties. You're already looking at paying her something along the order of $2,400 up front--which is a reasonable but not remarkably low fee for the kind of editing your friend will be providing--so a royalty-sharing agreement seems like gouging to me.

If you feel you need an editor (and someone who plans to write one book about one headline-making event that happened to them is just the sort of person for whom it's worth hiring an editor--people who plan to write for a living should, as I say ad nauseam here, learn to edit themselves), I think you could shop around for a better price and/or someone with more directly related credentials and experience (i.e., someone with experience editing true crime books for major publishers).

I have edited for newspapers. I have edited books. It's a somewhat different skill set. Also, there are particular conventions and narrative approaches in the true crime market, with which people who have edited previous books in the field will be familiar and with which your friend will likely not be.