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Jonathan posted an update 7 years, 7 months ago
Quick question: has anyone here ever paid for the services of an editor, and if so, how much was it?
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I had a detailed editorial report a few years back from Writers’ Workshop. 85,000 words cost £457. Today, Jericho writers will charge you about £547 for the same work. (I say ‘about’ because they quote $720 – which is odd for a UK based firm)
If you go to their site, there’s a drop-down table of charges for a range or word counts.
I did the same as Ath – several times over. Price is often based on the length of your manuscript, and varies from editor to editor/company to company.
But a good editor is definitely worth paying for – just be absolutely certain that your MS is as polished as you can get it before you send it (use trusted beta readers for eg) to save doing it too many times…
I paid ~£600 for a 109K ms via the Cloud, but have since learned it is cheaper, by ~30% to approach an editor direct.
You may find that authors in the genre you write in are willing to edit – there’s certainly loads on the crime circuit.
I have to say I got far more help from beta readers.
Ah yep, thanks. There I am looking at £782. Was yours a copy edit or developmental, or something else?
Not sure who you are asking, but mine was development, ‘does this have legs?’ (In hindsight, I think I might’ve been robbed.)
I’d also recommend that before submitting to an editor, you have someone proofread it properly – get the punctuation right (if that’s not your strength) and typos sorted.
Mine covered the structure, story, development etc. in some depth with recommendations and critique and an assessment of good and bad features and marketability. There was copy-editing but this was not the primary purpose.
Is this for an editorial report, or to actually edit the text?
Mine? I’m looking at a developmental edit rather than copyediting.
Ah, right. I do the latter, but not really the former
I have, Jonathan, a couple of times. Mine was for an editorial report, but included a general text edit. I went directly to a book doctor/editor rather than through Cloud. As I have already seen mentioned, they tend to be more competitively priced and thorough, though it depends what you’re after.
When I’ve looked into developmental editing, the cost seems to come to a couple of thousand at least, for a 140,000 word MS. The JW one is about £780 which is a bit more do-able. Who have people used?
I always ask for Debi, cos she is editrix supreme. It meant I had to wait sometimes, but it was always worth it. Not sure who else they have on the books for editing…