Last week I wrote about why book editors are so expensive, and I was overwhelmed by the response — from both writers and editors. Thank you for all your feedback, both here and on social media!
I’m a book editor myself, so you’d think I’d be saying, “Oh no, we’re not expensive, we’re very reasonably priced.”
But I’m also a writer, and need to hire editors for my own books, a situation that I and my bank account dread! So I can see it from both sides of the fence.
Last week, in the Prologue I explained that even though book editing is expensive, editors are, strangely, not rich!
In Chapter 1, I explained the first reason for this: it takes a long time to edit a book well – often around an hour per thousand words. (I gave lots of details for how that works.)
Now we move on to the other big reason.
Chapter 2. An editor’s fee is not their salary
I find that people are often shocked at the HOURLY RATE an editor might charge, because they compare it to the hourly rate of their own wage or salary. (Many editors work on “per word/per page” rates to help sidestep this confusion.)
A freelance editor’s fee is not their salary. Only a small portion of that fee goes to pay their salary. It also has to cover a whole lot of business expenses, and a lot of tasks other than paid editing that are needed to run a business.
When I first started freelancing back in the late 90s, I didn’t actually understand this. I worried that the rates recommended by my national association seemed too high, and no one would pay them. I charged too little, and ended up working 60-80 hours a week for less than minimum wage, even though I had two university degrees and lots of experience.
I burnt out, got cranky and depressed, gave it away. Went back to “workin’ for the man”.
A revelation
During that time of “workin’ for the man”, I was on staff at a particular company. They used to charge out my services to clients for $110 an hour (and this was about 10 years ago, so adjust that for inflation).
I was astonished. It seemed like a king’s ransom to me.
Do you think they paid ME $110 an hour?? Of course not! In fact, only a small fraction of it.
I finally grasped that the hourly rate they charged to the client needed to cover the whole cost of employing me:
- my salary
- leave entitlements — holidays/vacation and sick leave
- superannuation/pension fund contributions (compulsory in Australia)
- computer and software
- my percentage of all the infrastructure of running a business (buildings, desks, cleaners, coffee and tea, insurances, phone and internet connections etc etc etc etc)
- all those support staff whose employment cost they couldn’t charge out directly to any client, like admin and IT and accounting and human resources, etc etc etc.
What about freelance editors?
Freelance editors need to do something similar to that company. A freelance editor doesn’t have the large overheads of a big company of course… but then again, they also don’t have lots of people to share the costs, or the tasks.
Just one person has to bear all those financial burdens, and either do those tasks themselves or pay someone else to do it.
These are some of the expenses that most freelance editors need to cover:
- computers and software
- internet and telephony (mobile and fixed)
- professional assistance from accountants, lawyers, coaches
- insurance of various kinds
- holidays/vacation and sick leave
- retirement savings
- professional development (ongoing training)
- business development, marketing expenses, websites, stationery/business cards
- their professional library, subscriptions and memberships
- etc etc etc.
In case you’re thinking that’s just a couple of hundred bucks, for many freelancers it can easily add up to $20,000 a year or more, for someone working at a highly-professional level.
Billable hours
And if that isn’t bad enough, on average, freelance editors find that they can only spend roughly half of the hours in the week actually doing what are known as “billable hours”. Those are the hours that are charged out to clients.
The other half of the week is spent running the business, doing administrative tasks, interacting with clients and potential clients, building the business.
I’ve had times when it’s taken me up to 8 hours just to prepare a detailed proposal for a potential client — without any guarantee of income from it! If I worked for a big company, that would be someone else’s job, and I could get on with my editing.
And when my internet went down for 10 days last year, I spent a total of 16 hours on the phone to my service provider (talking to call centres in foreign climes who asked me the SAME QUESTIONS over and over again… but that’s a gripe for another day 😉 ).
If I worked for a big company, the IT department would have been handling that while I got on with my editing. As a freelancer, I had to do it myself. More time gone.
So, out of only perhaps 20-25 “billable hours” per week a freelancer has to pay their own salary plus many expenses.
And if you find yourself thinking, “But I shouldn’t have to pay for all those things,” the followup question is, “Well then, who should?” It has to be shared around the freelancer’s clients, that’s the only way.
A tale of woe
I’ve seen so many great editors give it all away after a year or two of working themselves into the ground because
a. they failed to understand what they needed to charge in order to make a reasonable living and
b. they continually yielded to pressure to underprice their services, from clients who didn’t mean to hurt them but just didn’t understand the situation.
The alternative is to do such a rush job that they become little more than glorified spell-checkers, and there’s not much job satisfaction in that. (Or many good books, for that matter.)
So what will I do?
I’m not going to lie to you, I’d love to get someone to do a great edit on my book for a tiny price. Who wouldn’t?
And I’m going to find it a financial burden to come up with the editor’s fee, even though I’ve been saving for a while.
But having been on the other side of the fence, I’m going to have to show some integrity, and try very hard NOT to be one of those people pressuring an editor to live in poverty. (Yikes!)
I’ll let you know how that one goes. 🙂 (EDIT: Yes, I’ve independently published several books now. And hired at least one and up to three different kinds of editors on each project.)
Editors are expensive, yes, but very few of them are overpriced. It’s just an expensive part of the publishing process, that’s all.
And I see good editing as something that adds enormous value to a book. In case you missed the significance of this little tale, I’ve been writing and editing for a living for decades, and I had multiple great beta readers on my manuscripts… but I still hire editors for my own books.
That’s how much difference good editing makes.
What about you?
What can you do if you simply can’t afford to hire an editor for your book? That’s understandable. I’m a pragmatist, not one of those people who say, “If you can’t afford this, this and this, you’re not allowed to do it.” Publishing as a hobby is NOT something I sneer at.
I’ve got some ideas to help you maximise the quality of your book on a teeny-tiny budget, and I’ll write another post about that soon.
Plus my downloadable ebook Should I Self-Publish? gives some suggestions about which things to pay for and which to get another way, depending on whether you are a business owner, a self-publishing entrepreneur or a hobbyist.
And how do you find a good freelance editor? Whew, what a task! Well, I’ll write about that soon, too, just as soon as I’ve found one for myself, hopefully without going nuts.
Stay tuned! (Subscribe for updates using the form below.)
And next week, I’m going to give a list of some of the tools I use for writing, publishing and blogging, to see if any of them might save you some time.
For today, let’s give the last word to oil firefighter, Red Adair, shall we?
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” ~ Red Adair
🙂
Are you a writer? What is your experience of hiring freelance editors? If you are a freelance editor, how many hours a week are you working? Feeling desperate yet??
Featured image via Bigstock/Ivonnewierink
Hello Belinda. I’ve had my eye on you, Thought some of hiring you to help me edit my book. fresh eyes, and help in cutting/condensing from about 200,000 words to something smaller than the Bible. I have thought of doing some developmental editing myself, (and in fact do, for friends) but your post today has definitely talked me right out of that idea! I need my time to write MY book, sorry. I’m benefitting enormously though from your blog and links. Thank you.
Hi Victoria, glad the posts are helpful, and yes, it’s good that you know what’s involved, even if it means I don’t get to see your book! 200,000 words is very long, especially if it’s not fantasy (they can often be quite long due to world building)… but do you need to cut it down, or might it be 2 books?? Or even 3 books. Depends on the genre of course, whether or not that could work. But worth thinking about. 🙂 Hope you have wonderful success with it!
I do not feel “some of the expenses most freelance editors need to cover” are relevant. All businesses have overheads which are structured into the fees applied. As a writer, I do not support a “cost per word” as opposed to a cost PER JOB. When my own editor quoted for the job, and I accepted, it was not a case of finality. She courteously indicated that she had not realised so many foreign words needed checking and one or two other items which we both discussed and it was mutually agreed she should receive more than her quote in the first instance. Thank you for your usual thoughtful post.
Hi Christine, yes exactly, the expenses need to be factored in to the fees. And the expenses of running a freelance business are often higher than people realise — even than the freelancer realises, in far too many cases! Wishing you a great week.
Dear Belinda and Carolyn
Thank you both for your comments. Well I am a novice at this book writing thing. This being my first book. The editor had done an initial read through to advise on structure and cutting down what was a very large word count originally 139,000 words). That was very useful indeed. I did a rewrite and then came the copy edit. (using track changes) – her method being highlighting issues that require attention and I make the changes. The editor then did a final proofread.
I then transferred to Creatspace’s template, sorted out layout issues and sent it off – without a final read through because I trusted the proofread and didn’t want to be tempted to make further changes.
Since getting the proof back from the printers and reading through I’ve found up top 20 issues per chapter. Some of those are things are new editorial decisions (not editors fault) and probably not a good idea, some are grammatical issues, and some are typos. The later two I would have expected to have had closer attention to I think. But like you guys seem to be saying some misses are to be expected and I can’t say with any certainty how many she had caught during the three reads of the full text she had done.
Thanks for you feedback on this. I’m enjoying the interaction.
All the best
Jazz
Hi, Jazz–
Obviously, it’s hard to back up to fix things that went wrong. Going forward, I recommend that you use a different person for editing and proofreading. By the time a given person has been through the same material three times, they are likely to have a blind spot and their “miss” rate will increase.
It sounds like you got a developmental edit, copy edit, and proofread from the same editor. That’s a LOT of changes to process, on both ends! Hopefully the content improvement was significant, enough to compensate for the mechanical bloopers that got through. You’re on the right path, but, per above, there may have been too few eyes on the work prior to publication. Being new to the process, you probably took the proofing accuracy for granted, whereas you should have gone through every change yourself before releasing the files. Ultimately, the author is responsible for content.
Note that the copyediting method — highlighting areas for you to address — could be part of the problem. Most copyeditors will directly make changes in the document, and if anything requires more than tweaking a few words or punctuation marks, they will flag the section with a query to bring it to your attention and get your OK. This doesn’t mean your editor did anything wrong; everyone has their own method. But that system is uncommon, and may have contributed to an accumulation of issues. The wonderfulness of Track Changes is that you can see everything the editor did and accept or reject on an individual-item basis. If you were both new to the process, then the opportunity for a spaz factor to develop was ripe.
Be aware that even in the most established traditional publishing houses, with half a dozen or more very experienced people crawling through a manuscript over many months, typos always manage to escape scrutiny until they show up in print. In self-published books, with fewer people handling a manuscript over a shorter time, the percentage of slip-throughs is generally higher.
Hi Caroline
Thanks for this. Actually the manuscript had been read by three others prior to the copy editor and was a 6th draft by the time she had it. I may be new to the book writing process but I’ve been writing copy for publications and reports for 15 years. My hope in paying for some else to do the final copy edit was that the gremlins and developmental stuff that had come up during those drafts would have been ironed out with a fresh pair of eyes for the last edit. I’m not saying it wasn’t useful. The structural advice was really good, but as you point out having the same person do the final proofread was probably a mistake.
Anyway it’s all done now and we go to print next week.
Thanks ever so for your helpful advice, the whole India publishing process has been a real learning curve.
Cheers
Jazz
“Anyway it’s all done now and we go to print next week.”
Best wishes!
Woohoo, Jazz! How exciting! Congratulations on your new book and I hope it does amazingly well. 🙂
Thank you Belinda!
I recognised all the pitfalls you, or rather Alison, mentioned in her article on proofreading your own work.
I’ve been doing all the PR for the book these last few weeks and I’m learning loads (thanks to your blog and others like it). I’m sure in the days when publishers did all that for you there some value in having a publisher, but as they now tend to leave such things to the author anyway, it’s easier and faster to get on with it yourself.
All good wishes
Jazz
“Going forward, I recommend that you use a different person for editing and proofreading”..
Absolutely.
Hi Belinda
I hope your getting these because I’m not getting any replies, and you seem to be good at replying.
Interesting post. I spent around £750 on a copy edit and proofread for my book. I got the first proof last week and I’m still finding mistakes. Granted some of them are layout issues (missed paragraph style and the like which may have occurred in the transfer process). However, the fact that I’ve had to do another line by line edit and correct mistakes that I think should have been picked up by someone being paid to do so does make me wonder whether I’ve had value for money. What do you think? The whole book is about 110,000.
All good wishes
Jazz
Wondering what kind of mistakes you’re finding, and how many. Some “errors” can be style differences; was there an understanding of what style guide would be applied? Also, how many passes were part of the agreement? A single pass edit usually has a some bloopers in it, especially if there are a lot of details being attended to. In a 110,000-word manuscript, 3-10 of diverse type are common; 10-20 even more common. A second pass will catch more. But no editor, no proofreader is capable of 100% perfection, because we are as human as everyone else.
Hi Jazz
As Carolyn says, there will definitely always be some mistakes, as no one is perfect. However, if you are finding a lot, that’s worrying. I find it hard to put a specific number on what constitutes “a lot”. I recently noticed about 10 typos in a book from one of the Big 5 publishers when I wasn’t looking for them, and that felt like too many (because I would have seen more if I was proofreading, I’m sure).
How clean was the manuscript to begin with? If your editor picked up 1000 errors and missed 5, that would seem OK, but if they picked up 50 errors, missed 10, and created another 10… then I wouldn’t feel like I’d had value for money, myself. It’s an incredibly subjective experience, as you can see!
As for price, you’d be able to find editors cheaper than that, and editors who would have charged much more. Every editor charges a different amount as they try to balance how long it will take them against what the market can bear.
Does any of that help? Feel free to ask more.
By the way, this is only the second comment I’ve seen from you… have you posted others on my blog and got no reply? Bit worried in case some have gone astray! 🙂
I absolutely love these two posts, and would love to share them on my blog. I think some authors think they are being fleeced by costs, but I always say it’s not the cost- it’s the WHO! You must find the right editor for your book, and then you must pay them their fees because they are putting a lot of time and energy into perfecting your work.
I also encourage self-editing as a first step, then the beta-readers for feedback on the overall flow of the story, and then the editor. The more eyes involved, the happier the final consumer will be!
Thanks Rochelle, yes it’s a bit like dating. You don’t want to end up with just anyone. 😉 And of course you are welcome to quote an excerpt of the posts on your blog with a link back here to the full articles.
I fully agree with your process of self-editing, beta feedback, and then editor. Thanks for stopping by.
When I had to hire an editor after writing my first book, I was something I KNEW I needed to do. I’m in the medical profession, and though my English and grammar knowledge are pretty good, I am no English major or professional writer, so I was not aabout to try to do it myself. When I heard the price I DID flinch at the number, but realized that it would earn me much more on sales, because I knew it would be much better written, and I’m pretty sure I was right about that!
I hope it’s been successful for you, Neil, and has indeed paid off in better sales. I’ve been writing and editing for a living for donkey’s years, but I’m still sending my own manuscript to an editor. A good editor is a partner in the writing business. Thanks for your thoughts.
Great post (both, actually)! I still consider myself to be a pretty new editor, so setting prices tends to be difficult for me. I most likely charge less than I should, but I keep myself within the EFA’s recommended rates chart (even if just barely). I try to remind myself that even though I might not be able to afford to pay me what I’m charging, that doesn’t mean that the client can’t.
Shawna, I think a lot of editors undercharge, and suffer for it. I’m trying not to do that any more, and let the client decide for themselves — but it’s hard sometimes! Best wishes in your career. 🙂
As my colleagues Carolyn and Katharine commented, there are some very good (and reputable) resources available for authors to use when shopping for freelance editorial services–so many, in fact, that you might be intimidated by the sheer volume! Remember that the author-editor relationship is a collaborative one; beyond basic qualifications, be sure to seek out an editor whose experience, working process, and worldview are in sync with your own. A crackerjack sci-fi editor might not be the best choice to edit your memoir, narrative nonfiction, etc. You’re forming a team, so be sure to select your teammate wisely.
Thanks Aden, very true.
In addition to the directories of editors that my colleague Carolyn mentioned, you can find links to quite a few directories for editors in various specialties by going to the “Finding Work” page of the Copyeditors’ Knowledge Base. And if you need to find highly specialized technical editors, see the links on the “Networking” page.
Thanks Katharine! 🙂
Belinda asks: “And how do you find a good freelance editor? Whew, what a task! Well, I’ll write about that soon, too, just as soon as I’ve found one for myself, hopefully without going nuts.”
Look in these places: DocuMania (me), who can also refer to individual colleagues. For a smorgasbord selection, look at the directory on the Editorial Freelancers Association site (http://www.the-efa.org/dir/) and Book Editing Associates (http://www.book-editing.com/). There are many more, but these are pools of professional editors I can vouch for.
Thanks Carolyn, some good places to look. 🙂
AMEN! I have spent well over 100 hours on a single manuscript, and no one would be willing to pay what that effort should have cost. I do content AND line editing. (I don’t know how NOT to do both!) I work in partnership with the author with the understanding that the manuscript ALWAYS belongs to the author. I make suggestions–sometimes strong ones. My goal is to produce a quality manuscript we can both be proud of. And that takes time–time for which I do not receive appropriate hourly compensation. Why? because I enjoy the process and I like working for ‘my’ authors.
Glad you are enjoying the process, Lorna. Wishing you lots of great books to edit in the future. 🙂
Great post! Very insightful. As they say, “you get what you pay for”. If you come across cheap editing services, there’s a good chance that the services aren’t that great. It’s worthwhile to invest more to really get the input that you need to improve your book.
So true, Kristen. Of course, sometimes you’ll get good editing for cheap, but usually because the editor is either a hobbyist, or suffering financially…
After so many moons of searching the interweb for down to earth, practical, and USEFUL information for hiring an Editor, I finally found a Blog that I can sink my eyeballs into and learn without feeling like it’s all pointless.
Thank you!
Thanks so much, Stephanie, glad it’s helpful! You and your eyeballs are welcome any time. 😉
Thank you for this, Belinda! What you’ve pointed out here applies to almost any freelancing professional. My husband is a photographer, for example, and yes, his rates are expensive too, but he just had to spend about $7k on a server set up because he has such large data storage needs for giant image files. There are so many costs to running a freelance business, most of which the consumer of the services isn’t aware of. And like you discovered, the freelancers themselves are often the ones who underprice their work. Anyway, I have a huge appreciation and admiration for people who run their own small businesses. It takes a lot of juggling, tweaking, and balancing.
So true, Laura. I remember when I was younger thinking, “All plumbers must be millionaires, with the prices those guys charge!” And nowadays I’m thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder if they really were…” 😉
Great article. I’m glad to see someone explaining why editors charge the prices we do. I freelance edit approximately 15-20 hours a week, not including phone, internet, and face-to-face meetings. This is in addition to a 50 hour a week “day” job and my 20 hour a week writing schedule. Few people realize how much work goes into a single editing project; that it isn’t as simple as a quick read through and we’re finished, ready to move on to the next project. It is easy to catch myself wanting to undercharge. Then I stop to remember that my skills are valuable and well worth what I charge for them. My significant other even had a poster printed for me that says it in loud, bold letters! 🙂 In the end, I remember that I wouldn’t want to insult an author by offering them pennies for their hard work and I hope they won’t do the same for mine. It ends up being about mutual respect.
BC, it sounds like your significant other needs to market that poster for freelance editors the world over. We could all have one on our wall!
And of course, my other question is: What do you do in your SPARE time? 😉
Thanks for contributing your insights!
Great article Belinda. It doesn’t surprise me how much is involved to run an editing business as I have learned running my own ‘author’ business. We all find out at that editing stage that we have to cough up the bucks in order to have our work perfected for professionalism and be prepared to cut into those purse strings. It’s nice you pointed out what is involved from the editor’s end because we do tend to look at the end cost for ourselves as writers, without understanding why and how those costs are calculated.
Thanks Debby. Yes, we often look at “what we can afford”, rather than “what it costs”. And that’s natural. But as I look for my own editors I’ll have to remind myself that I’ll need to pay “what it costs”. 😉
Belinda your articles on the process and challenges faced by editors is spot on.
I’m happy I researched the process of publishing prior to taking it on. That’s why as an indie author I use a developmental, line, and copy editor.
I’m dog serious about the quality of the end product and in the long run every editor, if screened properly, is worth every cent. So far my experince has been superb. My editors have been saviors to my limited experience. But no way would I want to have their job.
JM, I am so glad you’ve had a good experience with your editors. It’s tricky finding a good editor, and you’ve obviously found a way to do your research. Well done!
Another excellent post, Belinda. Thank you for laying it out so clearly. I’ve always known this, but putting it into action is another thing. Even after 25 years in the business, I still find myself undercharging sometimes. I think it’s also a confidence thing. I DO know I’m good at the job, but still wonder whether other people think I’m worth the seemingly high hourly rate. And I am aware I work relatively slowly, so I always adjust for this.
And there are always people waiting in the wings to do the job more cheaply, so it is tempting to lower the price to get the work. Ireland is suffering still from the recession and because it’s a small island there are few publishers to go round; indies think editing is too expensive so they do it themselves or get a friend to do it; businesses that need an editor or proofreader still don’t know they need one! Then I go off and happily pay a physiotherapist €50 for half an hour’s work on my back …
It’s tough, but I still wouldn’t do any other job.
Yes, Sally, we yield to the pressure, but I’m doing that less these days. I’ve realised the cost to me — not just in lost income but the life impact — of undercharging. So I’m becoming firmer. It’s a journey!
I think the thing with the physiotherapist is that we don’t need to buy 100 sessions at once, that’s why we pay it. 😉 Books are a big job.
If it encourages you, every good editor I know thinks they work relatively slowly. The timings from CMOS and the US editorial association, mentioned in last week’s post, increase my confidence that “relatively slowly” is pretty normal for a thorough edit. 😉
And yes, I love the editing too. Seeing what a book can become…