Editing Kinds and Costs

This is just a quick rundown of the main kinds of editing. There’s a lot of information out there, and I thought it would be nice to have it condensed somewhere. Pricing given is taken from the Editorial Freelancers Association (of which I am not a member, but I found their list to be the most helpful). Estimates can vary wildly, but this is what they found to be the median. I will show both per word and per page (based on their stated standard of 250 words per page), but some editors may use a per character pricing structure. The EFA also provides per hour estimates, if you’re curious.

Developmental Editing

A developmental editor will work with you craft the story as a whole. The editor will tell you what to fix regarding overarching structure, major cuts or possible additions, and things of that nature. This is probably the most painful sort of editor to work with.

Depending on your creative process, it is better to get the help of a developmental editor after you’ve had a chance to polish up your first or second draft. If you’ve got your eye on someone you’d like to hire as a developmental editor, it’s good to plan ahead and find out what stage they expect you to be before they get involved.

Line Editing

A line editor will work with you to polish up your manuscript after the structure as a whole is set. Rather than considering the overall structure, a line editor will go through the work, line-by-line, and polish up the writing with a focus on style. Tone, flow, narrative voice, and so on.

It’s better to get the help of a line editor when you’ve gotten the structure of the story how you like it and you’re getting tired of rewriting but before you’re fed up with the work and ready to throw it in the incinerator. So, let’s say it’s for when you’re ready to make your final draft.

Copy Editing

A copy editor will typically work in isolation, making corrections to spelling, punctuation, and other grammatical issues, often following one of the major style guides. In the case of fiction writing, it will usually be Chicago style.

This is to be done after the final draft is settled.

Proofreading

Proofreading is basically a quick, light copy editing job to be done after typesetting, when the manuscript is ready to go to print. A proofreader will do a sweep of the final copy and make sure everything looks good, just in case something got messed up during the typesetting process. This includes finding any inconsistencies in the layout.

You can probably find people offering to do the latter steps for dirt cheap online. The freelance market is flooded with proofreaders and copy editors, but also bear in mind you’ll likely get what you pay for. That’s not meant to be self-serving, mind, but it’s generally true of most things.

Nowadays, the line between line editing and copy editing is a bit blurred. Some copy editors will attempt to handle line editing issues, and those will likely charge a bit more. I’m something of a nitpick, so I will tend to handle copy editing as I’m doing a line edit – provided the writer lets me make a final inspection. That was self-serving.

In all cases save proofreading, each type of editing averages to about 20k words per week, although the first two might take a bit longer if the writer and editor are having a (hopefully friendly but potentially heated) back-and-forth about a touchy detail here or there. A proofreader should be able to get a 50k novel done in about a week, depending on how long it takes to read through the whole book.