Anyone here give me a ballpark figure what a Freelance Editor gets for their services?
Per chapter? Per word? Per hour?
Thanks!
I charge by the hour or by the project (by the word doesn’t make sense, since the starting word count and the ending word count may well be different things).
And the amount is based on how much and what kind of work it is – editing and copy-editing are two different things, e.g.
Figure $35-50/hour; when I decide whether to take a per-project job, I figure out how long it will take me and base it on that rate.
Without any collusion with Twickster, that’s my answer, as well. If you’d like to offer me long-term work, I’ll negotiate.
The last I heard for fiction copy editing, it was 1.5 cents per word, but that’s been a couple of years.
I thought that was for the writing of it, not the editing thereof?
And another question, is there much market for it? I was thinking of it as a possibility for self employment. I need something I can do in home, being a gimp and was thinking of it as a possible profession. I want to take archeology as my main profession [so I can have the chops to write articles for publication for my personal desire to educate people] and work it in as a minor.
I’m with Twickster, $35-$50 an hour.
[quote=“aruvqan, post:5, topic:552005”]
There is a lot more content being written for the 'net which badly needs editing and how to find the work is probably the big question. If you google freelance editing jobs, you get a ton of various sites which might help.
I have been on MediaBistro for freelance writing with some success but got approached to do some editing which I am competent to do, but was unsure of how to price out the labor.
My wife does editing, and revising, as well as writing. She sometimes charges by the hour, but prefers to charge by the project. She does medical writing, and because she has a medical background she can check references and check the text for scientific accuracy as well as grammar. There are a lot of on-line encyclopedias which are under an almost constant revision cycle, so this gives her lots of work. I don’t know the market, but we went on an outing with Bay Area Medical Writers, and I heard little or no moaning and groaning about lack of work. I suspect there are fewer people with scientific backgrounds who can edit than people with English majors who can edit.
That is sort of why the double whammy or archeology/anthropology and copyediting, all those lovely tenured people with the publish or perish need … and dig reports, and <squee> articles for popular publishing that need fact checking …
Hell, I would KILL for a job fact checking scripts for documentaries. You can tell when we are watching the Hitler Channel by the resounding cries of bullshit emanating from the house.
Only way to go, for my money. I appraise an entire job, specify a time I can complete the editing, make arrangements as to followup work and any additional charges of the client wants work beyond the initial editing job, and give my bif=d for that work. If it turns out to take moretime, or be harder (or easier) than I thought, then that’s my look-out. The client gets a definite figure for a definite project, and that’s all he wants from me.
My aunt in Minneapolis has been a freelancer since who laid the rails, and although she has no background in law or legal services, she caught on with a legal publisher. They pay well and appreciate her eye for detail, and the material she works with is not arcane - generally summary in nature, such as guides to international trade law. It is, of course, dry as sandpaper, but that’s what pulls the moolah.
She has gotten pretty good at estimating now, and doesn’t have to track when she gets up to start dinner or anything. The other advantage is that a by-project charge rewards your for being more efficient, and an hourly rate penalizes you for it. The rate is actually by entry, with size factored in. She has been doing it long enough for some clients that she’s getting stuff she edited the last go round for updates.
For the IEEE, articles for magazines which get reviewed but are intended for a broader audience, get edited while articles for transactions, which are much more specialized, don’t. Pretty much everything in engineering is written by the author. There does seem to be a company which rewrites medical articles by Japanese authors for English journals - she got one to try, but it was such a mess she didn’t want to get involved. I suspect most anthropologists write their own stuff.
As for the Hitler Channel, start being accurate and see their ratings go down. I’m sure they always can find some fringe scientist to say whatever crap they want to say.