© Sue Littleford 2023
Let’s start in the time-honoured way by defining terms. Price is what you hand over – the money. Value is what you get for your money.
What do you value? A job well done, hassle-free? Or the smallest possible payment from your bank account no matter what?
I hope you’ll be shocked by some of the offers flying around for copyeditors and proofreaders for book edits: a project fee of $100 in the United States; or £8 an hour in the UK (actually priced per thousand words, so you might not even make that).
I know of one very large publisher in the UK that hasn’t increased its rates for more than twelve years. I can no longer afford to work on their books.
Sure, money’s tight. I get that – we all get that – but it’s also tight for the person doing the work as well as the person doing the paying. This article is addressed to authors, and to publishers, whether they use a packager or hire their editors and proofreaders direct.
I’ve written before about what goes into the rate a copyeditor or a proofreader will charge but, in brief, you’re not paying just for the copyeditor’s time (or the proofreader’s): you’re contributing to all their overheads because they have to take on all the costs an employer would usually meet, they have taxes to pay, just like you, the need a roof over their heads and food on the table, and they have invested time and money to build up their expertise so that they are ready and able to do the job you want to get done on your text.
We are professional people offering a professional service, and that doesn’t come at rates under the National Living Wage. For 2023/24, that’s £10.42 per hour in the UK. That’s the least anyone should be earning.
However: freelancers have to bear their own costs of doing business and fund their pensions entirely themselves, instead of their employers stumping up. Freelancers need to be earning rather more than the National Living Wage. Yet we’re sometimes expected to work for rather less.
How much??
“How can it cost several hundred pounds – or more – to edit my little book? You’ve only got to edit it! It’s just reading. Heck, you should be paying me to read my book! Here’s what I can afford.” <proffers peanuts>
Now, what’s the relationship here? Do you walk into a department store, in dire need of a new washing machine, pick a decent quality one that has all the features you want, and then expect to have it delivered and plumbed in, and the old one taken away, for what you can afford, not what it costs?
No, you don’t. And getting editing (or proofreading) done is no different.
You’ve invested your time, your emotional energy and your heart and soul into your text. But that’s your choice, and I understand why you made it. Still, you can’t go to a professional and ask them to make a thumping great loss because you have an emotional connection to your text. They don’t. They can’t afford to. Editing (or proofreading) is their job, not a hobby. They have bills to pay and would also quite like the acknowledgement of their skill and expertise that a sensible fee conveys.
What happens if you’ve contacted several editors asking for prices, and pick the cheapest one?
Unless the editor’s miscalculated their estimate, and ends up coming back saying there’s more work than anticipated, so the fee needs to go up, then you’ll get the least work and the most mechanisation. So you either get a hasty job, or you end up being asked for more money to complete it.
For an individual, that’s bad news. For a publisher or packager that then becomes an argument that will soak up your in-house staff’s time, and you’ll get a rushed or incomplete job, or your budget will take a hit.
Remember the old adage:
Buy cheap, buy twice
In either case, check carefully with the editor so you both know precisely what work is going to be done, and that it is properly covered by the price so there are no nasty surprises when the work is returned.
Approach 1: try to get a lot for a little
Let’s get back to that washing machine. The shop looks at the price on their machine, and what you’re asking for – delivery, plumbing, removal of the old one, beside the machine itself. It looks at the price you’re offering. And they say no, we’re not selling this to you at that price. They know the value of what they’re offering, they know how much money that represents in the marketplace and it just isn’t balanced by the price you’re willing or able to pay. So there’s no deal. You don’t get the washing machine.
The editorial equivalent is a little bit different, true. It’s a bit more malleable. So let’s take a look at that. The editor (or proofreader) is keen to take the job – perhaps they’re having a thin time of it lately and any money is better than no money. But they’ll now need to work as fast as they can, and cut corners, to make anything close to what they need to make.
What do you get for your cut-price edit? Well, not much. What are the editor’s choices? Run it through Word Editor? Grammarly? Perhaps Bard or ChatGPT these days? Sprint through the read, missing out chunks, and then say enough’s enough?
If you won’t pay for more than four hours’ work but want ten hours of effort by your editor, how will the editor reach a compromise between fee and workload?
Some conscientious editors will end up working for ridiculously low rates because this profession attracts thoughtful, often mild individuals who can find it hard to say no, and who do the job because they love working with text, feeling responsible for your book. Seems a bit exploitative to rely on that, though, huh?
Approach 2: try to get something that matches your budget
Yep, this means not getting what you need – or at least, not all of it. It’s disappointing, but it’s realistic. You’re not exploiting an editor, you’re behaving like an informed and responsible client, and that’s a good thing.
I’ve written about what you can do to keep the price down by doing some things yourself by being as ready as you can be for the copyedit, rather than waste money by having the copyeditor do lots of mechanical easy things you could do yourself. Then the editor can concentrate on the things it’s worth paying for.
If you’re an academic then there are other things you can do to reduce the amount of work the editor has to do, as I’ve explained (includes handouts!).
For a novel, the editor’s going to need the whole thing – you can’t edit sensibly if you can’t see the whole picture. Don’t be tempted to ask the editor just to work on the first few chapters, as a way of keeping the cost down. That would lead to a very uneven reader experience and could well lead to poor reviews that will hit your potential for sales.
But have you already asked beta readers for their comments on your book? Make sure the beta readers are invited to be critical and to highlight problems, not just pass the manuscript back full of praise for actually completing it (though, I agree, that is a praiseworthy achievement), afraid of hurting your feelings if they point out things that need to be fixed or improved.
If you’re an academic, you could tell the editor they can ignore the notes and the references, and just edit the text – but then you will have to tackle the notes and the references yourself.
These steps aren’t going to bring down the price a lot, but they’ll certainly bring it down a chunk. I work on scholarly humanities and social sciences, so can’t give a good idea of how much editorial time clued-in beta readers of fiction will save.
However, in a typical article, I can spend half my time sorting out the references and the mechanics of the text (the scholarly apparatus), and the other half actually reading and editing it; in a book, that emphasis often eases a bit, perhaps a third of my time on references and other scholarly apparatus.
Something for you to think about, anyway.
Can you afford a bad job?
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
What’s the cost to you of a bad job resulting from a poor fee?
‘Price’ is more than just cash, as we all know – schedules collapse; there’s hassle; in-house staff’s time is spent in sorting out the problems; garnering bad reviews; problems resurfacing later because they’re not dealt with now; constant churn of your freelance pool. Reputation. Author satisfaction.
What do you value?
Can you afford, really, the time or the money to have the edit done again at a sensible price for a proper job?
I had one client who would increase my fee beyond the stated budget by shifting some money from the typesetting budget because he knew, with my edits and my liaison with the author to resolve problems with the text, they would have cheaper typesetting costs than average, and fewer rounds of proofs. That’s someone who prized value over price.
