Copy editing US $ 1000

alisarish

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Dear All,
My manuscript is almost ready and I placed a local ad in Qatar for a professional copy editor. I have been contacted by two men and one of them seems to be a professional (At least that is what he is saying) and he is asking for 1000 dollars to copyedit my work, around 54000 words. I will give him about 3-4 pages in order to assess his capability, to see if he can really add any value.

To apprise all members here, I have decided to self publish and a local printer will print the book, they have yet to quote the price they will charge for the printing job and a professional graphic designer is making the title cover of the book.

Any suggestions how can I market it internationally?

Any views on this please, thanks.
 

Cathy C

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Boy, that's a tough one. Will the text be in English? If so, your best bet would be to find an international distributor. I know Ingrams handles English speaking countries, such as America, Canada, Australia, England and South Africa, but am not sure about the rest of the world.

If the local printer can't provide one, you'll need an EAN-13 number to sell it through retailers in most countries, but I'm not sure where to purchase one in Qatar. There's at least one source in Canada, though.

Have you contacted anyone IN Canada? They have some terrific government-sponsored programs to help Canadian authors get published through regular channels, which might work better to get you wider distribution. If you reside there part-time, you might qualify.
 

Prosperity7

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Boy, that's a tough one. Will the text be in English? If so, your best bet would be to find an international distributor. I know Ingrams handles English speaking countries, such as America, Canada, Australia, England and South Africa, but am not sure about the rest of the world.

If the local printer can't provide one, you'll need an EAN-13 number to sell it through retailers in most countries, but I'm not sure where to purchase one in Qatar. There's at least one source in Canada, though.

Have you contacted anyone IN Canada? They have some terrific government-sponsored programs to help Canadian authors get published through regular channels, which might work better to get you wider distribution. If you reside there part-time, you might qualify.

What about using google's ecommerce on you own website. Google is international isn't it?
 

alisarish

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Thanks, Cathy,
I will check the government-sponsored programs in Canada and whether I qulaify for that or not, since I am outside of Canada these days. My book is in English. Regarding the 13 digit international barcode and ISB numbers, yes, I'll do that but the barcode in Qatar would be different as the international barcode providers assign different starting numbers to different countries. I am not sure whether the retailers use the same barcode issued at the time of printing or they need a local number in other countries.

BTW, I had contacted three literary agents in Canada and only one of them bothered to respond, asking me to send my entire manuscript along with C$ 400 as reading or evaluation fee. I have put it on hold after reading here on this forum that one should not resort to these agents as they simply return it later on account of being unacceptable. I am not really sure about it.

Thanks for your help. I feel energized, your advice is like a glass of glucose.
 

James D. Macdonald

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You can be quite sure that whatever agent asked you for $400 is either crooked or incompetent. In either case he or she can't sell your book.

The first digit(s) of an ISBN shows that book's country of origin.
 

citymouse

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A,
$1000 US is a lot of money (for me at least) but it's not out of line for say, a New York City editor. Saying that however, please do shop around.
There are a lot of people out there who "say" they are professionals but aren't qualified to edit the reverse side of a playing card.

BTW some editors do charge an "evaluation" fee (as much as $500) but this amount is normally applied against the total if you decide to have him/her to do the actual editing.

Because you've decided to "self-publish, you are quite correct in having your ms professionally edited.

A note about costs. Some editors charge a "sliding" fee depending on the length of the ms. Others charge anywhere from 1 penny to three pennies per word. Others charge by the page. A page is defined as having 275words. I know one New York editor who charges $9US/page.
Using that formula your book would be~196pages. At $9/page you'd pay ~1700US. Keep in mind that you'll have to sell a lot of books just to recoup this investment, to say nothing of your printing costs.

If you have someone who can format the interior and do the cover art for you, you may want to consider Book Surge, an Amazon.com company. They have a $99 option for writers who have their ms edited, formatted, and the cover art in hand. They provide the ISBN prior to your artist laying out the back cover so it wil be placed properly. I mention them only because you bring up the issue of distribution. With Book Surge, you at least are automatically listed on Amz's worldwide catalog. They distribute through Baker & Taylor. I have a querry into their customer service office asking what the discount rate B&T offers to bookstores is.

BTW, I'm self-published through iUniverse and Author House. I've learned a lot about dealing with bookstores and the realities of short discounts, distributor contracts (very costly) and the art of patience.

Best of Luck,
C


Dear All,
My manuscript is almost ready and I placed a local ad in Qatar for a professional copy editor. I have been contacted by two men and one of them seems to be a professional (At least that is what he is saying) and he is asking for 1000 dollars to copyedit my work, around 54000 words. I will give him about 3-4 pages in order to assess his capability, to see if he can really add any value.

To apprise all members here, I have decided to self publish and a local printer will print the book, they have yet to quote the price they will charge for the printing job and a professional graphic designer is making the title cover of the book.

Any suggestions how can I market it internationally?

Any views on this please, thanks.
 

Silver King

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There is an auction for Editorial Services going on right here on AW. Compared to the prices I've seen in this thread, it's a steal: The high bid is currently at $100 for two hundred manuscript pages.

For those who may be interested, the auction ends tomorrow evening, so there's still plenty of time to place a bid.

(The editor, Kristen King, is a member of AW, and all proceeds from the auction are donated to Absolute Write to help support the web site.)
 

citymouse

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That is a good deal!
C

There is an auction for Editorial Services going on right here on AW. Compared to the prices I've seen in this thread, it's a steal: The high bid is currently at $100 for two hundred manuscript pages.

For those who may be interested, the auction ends tomorrow evening, so there's still plenty of time to place a bid.

(The editor, Kristen King, is a member of AW, and all proceeds from the auction are donated to Absolute Write to help support the web site.)
 

Maryn

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Dang it, Silver King beat me to it! It's so rare for me to have anything concrete to contribute, and he goes and steals my potential thunder...

alisarich, see this site for more information about what's reasonable to pay for what editorial services. Consider, too, that checking the qualifications of people you don't know may be difficult, but many here can and will vouch for Kristen being the real deal.

Maryn, only teasing Silver King (and he knows it, too)
 

alisarish

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There is an auction for Editorial Services going on right here on AW. Compared to the prices I've seen in this thread, it's a steal: The high bid is currently at $100 for two hundred manuscript pages.

For those who may be interested, the auction ends tomorrow evening, so there's still plenty of time to place a bid.

(The editor, Kristen King, is a member of AW, and all proceeds from the auction are donated to Absolute Write to help support the web site.)

Silver King,
Thanks a lot. I want to avail this great opportunity for $ 105/= but somehow I cannot post a reply to that thread, probably there is some restriction or I lack that privilege or something. Can I bid for it?
 

Cathy C

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I didn't realize the auctions were subject to the post restrictions. Interesting... checking to see if we want to consider moving them so they're accessible to everyone. :)
 

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HEAVILY SNIPPED


Others charge by the page. A page is defined as having 275words.


Actually, it's 250 words to the page.

Some editors insist that the word count is based on total character count, including spaces, divided by 6; some will take a straight 250 average. Some will insist on project fees; some will work by the hour with a projected rate of speed from 2 to 10 pages per hour (This should include a second pass of the manuscript, by the way).

Good luck in finding someone.
 

Silver King

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I didn't realize the auctions were subject to the post restrictions. Interesting...
The Bargains forum used to be rife with spammers, and for a while was nearly closed down altogether. Instead, the fifty post rule was put into effect, which seems to have curbed the flow of spam, at least on that board.
 

Anthony Ravenscroft

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Alisa: my feeling is that $1,000 is a bit too high for line editing, & far too low for substantive editing. If you need the latter, get a real editor or a book coach; if the former, turn on all of Word's correction features & give some thought to each gaffe it thinks it finds, & then hand it off to someone to read for stuff like homonyms -- you can often get great comments for the cost of a good dinner, so call it $50 at the outside.
 

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For a real professional text editor to edit a 200-page manuscript for $100 is an act of charity, no matter where the proceeds go. That price is far too low.

CityMouse, $1000 to copy edit your manuscript might be a fair price, or it might be a ripoff, depending on the copy editor who charges it. Could you tell us more about his professional qualifications? If he's an honest freelancer, those can hardly be confidential.

Some useful questions to try on people who claim to be copy editors:

1. What's your opinion on the serial comma?

They should have an opinion. It should be firm. If it doesn't match yours, start arguing about it now.

If they say "Serial comma?", say "Oxford comma." If they still don't know what you're talking about, they aren't text editors, period.

2. Just speaking personally, what's your preferred working dictionary?

If they just say "Webster's", they're faking it. No publisher owns the rights to that name, so there are any number of "Webster's" dictionaries out there, some of which would be improved by being shredded and used as compost.

If they say "the OED," you should also be alarmed. The OED is an invaluable reference, but it's not an everyday working dictionary.

If they say "whatever dictionary you prefer," they're either a cynical old text-ronin (unlikely), they're being over-deferential for some reason, or they're faking it. Copy editors always have preferences in dictionaries, and they almost always distrust the client's taste in same.

Real copy editors are prone to say things like "I prefer the Concise Oxford, but then I'm British. I assume you'll want me to use American style?" Or: "I know everyone's using Webster's 11th New Collegiate, but I personally prefer the 9th New Collegiate." Or: "Webster's Third Unabridg -- no, sorry, New World College Fourth."

3. Do you have a preferred stylebook?

"I use Strunk & White." Translation: "I am a lightweight. An amateur. An English major who reads a lot. I don't know what a stylebook is for. I may not be aware that copy editing is a separate and specialized professional skill."

"I use the Merriam-Webster Manual for Writers and Editors." Translation: "I am content to use a dumbed-down version of the Chicago Manual of Style."

"I use the AP Stylebook." Translation: "I am a journalist, tech writer, or other unspecified nonfiction writer. As such, I have real strengths; but the conventions of copy editing fiction may be completely unknown to me. I am also prone to believe that there is such a thing as standard style. If so, and if I'm feeling motivated, I can completely flatten variations in characters' voices in dialogue; go through the narrative and regularize what had previously been carefully contrived elisions, ambiguities, inversions, and other non-journalistic constructions; and substitute common present-day locutions for your historical/SF or fantasy/other specialized phrasing and terminology."

(Note: Renegade tech writers and nonfiction copy editors have a long history of doing dreadful things to novels and personal memoirs. However, there's always a chance that you've gotten hold of one of those middling-rare switch hitters who are good at both fiction and nonfiction copy editing. Talk to your prospective copy editor. Ask them about their background. If they've done any work on fiction, find out what kind, and if possible the level at which it was written. It takes no judgement to bash awkward sentence structures and correct near-homophone errors in badly written books. What you're looking for is thoughtful, sensitive work done on manuscripts whose authors can fight back.)

(And find out what they've read. Unless you're writing strictly modern mainstream, in the current version of transparent style, you want them to at minimum have read works published earlier than Thomas Hardy's. This goes double if you're writing historical fiction, science fiction, or fantasy.)

"I have a Microsoft Manual of Style; will that do?" Translation: "I am a tech writer from the computer industry. Bug: I've never worked on fiction or in trade publishing. Bug: The author gets a say in things? That's a new one. Bug: I can't believe how little copy editors get paid. Feature: You can't scare me."

"I prefer the U.S. News & World Report Stylebook." Translation: "My background is in nonfiction and/or journalism, with all the problems that implies (see above); but I learned copy editing from a sterner taskmaster than that guy who uses the AP Stylebook."

"Sure -- I use the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual. It's got everything." Translation: "I have internalized an idiosyncratic set of quirks, crotchets, and rules not encountered elsewhere in the English-speaking world."

"I use the Oxford Guide to Style/the Oxford Style Manual." Translation: "I am British, or wish I were."

"The Times Style and Usage Guide." Translation: "I am a British journalist. Please buy me a drink."

"I use Hart's Rules." Translation: "My underwear is made of heavy wool tweed."

"I've always used the MLA Style Manual." Translation: "I am a renegade academic, and may or may not be native to your planet."

"Is Wired Style okay?" Translation: "I am in a humorous mood, and am pulling your leg." Other possible translation: "I have never worked on a hardcopy publication. I was brought here from 1997 by a malfunctioning time portal. Do you suppose my stock options are still worth anything?"

"I like Words into Type." Three possible translations: (1.) "Yeah, I know a a lot of people are going over to Chicago these days, but I've been using Words into Type for over twenty years now, and I'm comfortable with it." (2.) "I'm not normally a copy editor, and I don't consult a stylebook more than once or twice a year, but we used Words into Type on my college yearbook, and there was an old copy of it kicking around the offices when I got here, so that's the one I use." (3.) "I have the following highly technical disputes with the underlying theory and overall sensibility of Chicago, and furthermore I loathe the latest revision of it, and anyway who needs to look up all those rules and exceptions when I can just remember them on my own and use the ones I agree with?" (Note: #3 will have a frighteningly long attention span. If you wind up drinking with her, don't ask her about her disagreements with Chicago.)

"H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage." Two translations: (1.) "I am confused, and think you're still asking about personally preferred reference works." (They don't use him as an everyday working reference, but the tribe of English-language geeks and mavens has a persistent fondness for the first and second editions of Fowler.) (2.) "I am a language-besotted weirdo. Please introduce me to that ravishing female who was ranting about her disagreements with Chicago."

"I use the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage." Four possible translations, some of which may overlap: (1.) "My background is in periodicals, not books." (2.) "I didn't learn copy editing from other copy editors, or at least not from book copy editors." (3.) "I can't stand having to wade through all that extraneous material. Just give me the answer as quickly as possible." (4.) "The store had several stylebooks. This one was the cheapest."

"I use the Chicago Manual of Style." Two possible translations: (1.) "I am a professional copy editor, and Chicago is predominant usage." (2.) "I am aware that Chicago is the current default option, and have claimed to be using it. This tells you next to nothing about me. Maybe I'm a real pro. Maybe I took a superficial continuing ed. class in copy editing, and the teacher required me to buy a copy of Chicago, but I'm still not sure how to use it. Maybe I'm a self-taught copy editor and I believe everything Chicago tells me. This may not scare you, but it should. Maybe I asked the sales clerk at Barnes & Noble which stylebook is currently popular, and she told me Chicago, but I haven't actually bought a copy. Et cetera. All you can tell about me is that I know to say, 'I use the Chicago Manual of Style.'"

(And a historical note: Words into Type and Chicago used to be equally preferred standard options for American trade fiction copy editing. Chicago has overtaken Words into Type, but the latter is still a respectable professional choice.)

4. What do you count as privileged forms of speech?

You're primarily asking this question to see whether they recognize the concept. Discussing the extent to which this or that kind of speech is privileged comes a distant second.

Privileged forms of speech include dialogue, internal monologue, and first-person narrative; excerpts from letters, books, poems, or other extant texts; signage and inscriptions; poetry; quotations; prayers and liturgies; and the main narrative itself, if it's strongly voiced. They're the set of all varieties of speech a copy editor is not allowed to re-render into standard English.

Someone who's unfamiliar with this set of practices has not worked as a trade fiction or nonfiction copy editor.

5. How many passes do you normally do?


The question is, how many times do they read through the manuscript on a word-by-word basis, making notes and correcting errors? The copy editor's base fee should cover at least two full passes.

You don't know what the language in a book is doing until you've read it, which means you can't do it justice in a single pass. Without that second pass, you can't fix or query early continuity errors, or recognize and correct early instances of persistent inconsistencies. Also, there's a rule called "predominant usage" that says that if a name is spelled one way three times and a different way 91 times, the latter is correct. If you just make a single pass, and the three incorrect instances come first (which they often do), all you can do is correct the subsequent 91 instances to match them, which will be wrong.

I've seen copy editors who claimed they could do a good job on a book in a single pass. They were wrong. I've also seen copy editors argue that if they have to make two passes, they can't make a living wage. They have my sympathy, but they need to find another line of work. Two passes, minimum.

6. What's your overall take on copyeditorial latitude?

They should have several sentences' worth of opinions on this, at minimum. This is another question where the specific answer is less important than the fact that they recognize the question and the issues it raises.

Copyeditorial latitude is the extent to which the copy editor is allowed to make changes, and the reasons he or she is allowed to make them. If all they're doing is checking for obvious grammatical errors and misspellings, you're not getting your money's worth.

Every novel redefines the language in which it is written for the duration of that book. One of the signs of a good copy editor is that they can distinguish between errors and bad usage, on the one hand; and on the other, quirks of language that are characteristic of the book. Consider a single pair of words which is arguably a compound adjective. Should it be hyphenated? Good question. Some pairs have to be hyphenated: blue-green algae, fish-shaped jello mold. Others aren't so clear. What to do?

The thumbfingered answer is to go to your dictionary of choice and see whether that pair of words is listed as a hyphenated form, or perhaps as a single word with no hyphen. Depending on which dictionary you get hold of, you might be told that blood red, as in blood red roses, isn't blood-red, but rather bloodred: an uncouth word that's obviously pronounced BLUE-dread, and is guaranteed to make the reader stumble.

Bah! Copy editors who insist on dictionary usage drive authors crazy. Even worse are the copy editors who think that the first-listed or preferred form of a word is somehow the only correct version of it. Listing hijinks or genie first doesn't mean hijinx or djinni are objectively wrong. It just means they're the less-common spellings of the words; and in the context of this book, they may be exactly the right spellings.

Let's go back to that pair of words that's arguably a compound adjective. Again: do you hyphenate them? Here's the good answer: Some authors go light on hyphens. When there's an edge case, they leave it unhyphenated, and trust that the readers can sort out which word modifies which. Other authors are heavy on hyphens. When there's an edge case, they hyphenate it. They may even use en-dashes to distinguish the connection between a single word and an existing compound adjective that are being yoked together into a new adjective: pudding-bowl--shaped.

The answer to whether our arguable case should be hyphenated is that it should be handled in whatever way is least likely to confuse the reader. If the author uses a lot of hyphens, not having one linking that pair of words could read as an unnecessary ambiguity. If the author's light on hyphens, putting in a hyphen could read as an undesirably emphatic reification. It all depends on what the author is doing with language in this book.

7. In your view, what else does a copyeditor do?

For the record, he or she should compile lists of proper names, place names, easily misspelled words, new coinage, odd usage, symbols and other typographical quirks, including the page numbers on which they first occur. They should also record all instances of art, ornaments, charts and graphs, excerpts, footnotes, line-for-line text, other difficult formats, chapter starts, part titles, front and back matter, and all the other design components of the book, and should provide page numbers for all occurrences of same.

If the manuscript's page numbers have gotten muddled, they should set things right, renumbering pages if necessary. It's best if they do this before they record the page numbers of design elements, special usage, and proper names.

They should watch out for potential copyright violations (quotations from song lyrics, for example), and flag them for further checking.

If there are problems with logic or consistency -- a character changes their name or eye color, the moon's phases run backward, the tides come in too quickly for the depth of the beach, two rogues act like they know each other when it's clear that this is the first time they've met, someone who's covered with mud is inexplicably clean ten minutes later, the Ringworld rotates in the wrong direction, a horse runs at a full gallop for eleven hours straight, his rider nurses an unsplinted broken femur over the same period, the currency exchange rates of seons, senines, shiblons, and senums don't add up, et cetera and so forth -- the copy editor should query them. A good query identifies the troublesome material, explains the problem, when appropriate suggests possible ways to fix it, and cites the page numbers of other passages that are or will be affected.

If you inadvertently use the same memorable sentence three times in the same half of the book, or if every time a dog gets mentioned it's an akita, or if every time you need a random number it's 56, the copy editor should notice that as well.

===

If the guy you've gotten in touch with can't give satisfactory answers, let me know. A lot of good copy editors have had to get used to working from a distance because they can't afford to live in NYC.
 
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Anthony Ravenscroft

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Oh. My.

God.

Good heavens, what's gotten into you lately?

That piece simply has to be a FAQ, for everyone who thinks that hiring "someone to edit" is just a matter of going through the listings & picking a name that sounds nice.

FWIW: when I was copy chief, I pretty much memorised AP, but my current partner whacks me with Chicago so often that I feel justified claiming I've got it by osmosis. (Ever read UPI? Bizarre -- weirder than Bierce's Blacklist & not half as funny.)

To all: an extremely skilled editor from a narrow field can charge you huge amounts of cash to turn your manuscript into something completely different. I'm one of the weirdos who can easily shift gears from memoir to legalese to fantasy fiction to straight reportage. Left to her/his whims, an editor is a creature of prejudice & can be frighteningly creative in noncreativity. Even "close" isn't good enough: if you're trying to sound like Hemingway, do you really need an editor who thinks you should be Faulkner?

Always spell out exactly what you need, & accept that "I'll leave it up to you" really does mean leaving it to someone else entirely. Paying someone cash to edit your romance according to FDA pharmaceutical submission guidelines might not be what you want.
 

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. . .
Some useful questions to try on people who claim to be copy editors:
. . . .
Brilliant post! I have saved a copy on disk, am printing for reference, and have shared it with a publisher friend for whom certain parts are exceptionally timely. [Edit/addition: shared it for his personal reading, I should emphasize, together with link to this thread as the source.]

--Ken
 

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Thanks! Just observe standard copyright law and we'll be fine.
 

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One of the signs of a good copy editor is that they can distinguish between errors and bad usage, on the one hand; and on the other, quirks of language that are characteristic of the book.
Not surprisingly, copy editors vary widely in ability. The good ones are underappreciated.

When my first, long-ago book (mystery/thriller, lot of colorful characters) was copy edited, the copy editor seemed determined to do everything in her power to alter my style and destroy the tone of the book. I even thought of investing in a STET stamp.

By my second book, I was more prepared, ready for battle. The new copy editor was so good she not only caught all the errors, she improved the writing considerably--and mostly included explanations of why she thought something should be changed. It was almost like a line edit. I ended up writing her a letter of appreciation.
 

NicoleJLeBoeuf

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HapiSofi said:
They may even use en-dashes to distinguish the connection between a single word and an existing compound adjective that are being yoked together into a new adjective: pudding-bowl--shaped.

People do this? This is an actual existent solution? How strange, how obsessive, how elegant! I love it to pieces!

It's like stumbling across Lynn Abbey's Daughter of the Bright Moon and realizing that she's using double-quotes for spoken dialogue and single-quotes for internal monologue (what with italics being reserved for telepathic speech and therefore unavailable). It's terribly non-standard, but for me, it worked. And made the OCD demon in my brain go squee.
 

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Nicole...this thread is 3 years old.
 

veinglory

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He "says" he is professional? Did he provide a resume and list of published books he copyedited? Did he provide names of former clients that you could contact to see if they were satisfied?
 

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Nicole...this thread is 3 years old.
Yes, but was linked today from an editor's blog. It's good to dust off the classics now 'n' again. :hat:
 

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He "says" he is professional? Did he provide a resume and list of published books he copyedited? Did he provide names of former clients that you could contact to see if they were satisfied?
Looks like he said it some time around 03-23-2007.