I currently charge $45 to $65 an hour for editing. I charge clients for a minimum of half an hour of work, and after that, I charge by fifteen-minute increments. For short, next-day rush projects or longer, next-week rush projects, I may discuss adding an additional $10 an hour to my rates. If your project is a creative one that I find particularly interesting and if my schedule allows it, I may have some flexibility concerning these rates.
You’ll find that some freelance editors or editing services charge by the line, word, or page. I prefer to charge by the hour because an hourly rate seems better able to account for the individual differences in writers and projects than a per line, per word, or per page rate. To help you assess the overall cost of hiring me for a project, I may be willing to provide a one- or two-page sample edit and an overall price estimate that takes into account my hourly rate. I would be happy to discuss these matters further with you in terms of your particular project.
If this is your first time hiring an editor, one of the first things to consider is that there’s quite a variance in the kinds of editing different projects might require. On one end of that spectrum is proofing. This is what a lot of people imagine when they think about editors; it simply means looking for typos, page break errors, and the like. On the other end of the spectrum is developmental editing. Generally speaking, developmental editors ignore proofing matters and instead focus on the big picture—are the themes clear and consistent? Has the writer made his or her point effectively?
When hiring an editor you should either have a good sense of what you want or be open to what your editor thinks your manuscripts might need. For example, most of the academic writers I’ve worked with are looking for something at the midpoint of those two kinds of editing; they feel pretty good about their overall themes or arguments, but they realize that the way their paragraphs fit together or the feel of their individual sentences could use some work. This kind of editing is often called line-editing or copyediting.
Finally, if you’re interested in learning what other writers and editors think about my work, I encourage you to peruse the Published Works & Feedback page. And if I’ve already had the good fortune of editing your work, and you’d like to share about your experience, sail down to the bottom of the page and offer some words of your own.
Cheers,
Andrew