Purposeful Prose Advice Column: Why the Price Tag?

Dear Purposeful Prose,

I put a job listing out asking for editors to work with me on my book. It’s a YA dystopian fiction novel, 75,628 words, and I think it’s well-written. When I posted about my work on social media, people were excited about it. I asked editors to send me a DM with their rates and websites. My inbox was flooded with spam and I’m sure some of them were written with AI. Most of the editors were asking for something into the thousands. I put a lot of work in this book for free, and this edit shouldn’t take that long, so why does it cost so much?

I receive a lot of advice column letters like this, and I don’t usually respond to them publicly. Everyone’s experience with writing, editing, and publishing is going to look different. I’ll usually send individuals breakdowns with the average amount they can expect to pay for editing their manuscript. 

That said, there’s a lot more to unpack here. First, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve written your book. It could be the most immaculate work of literature since Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. If you have no desire to improve or make efforts to heighten your writing skills, they will plateau at best and decline at worst. If you think your book is beyond improvement, you enter into a similar quandary. You’ve been looking at your own manuscript for a long time. Some of the most significant errors will be the ones you’ve missed.

I’m not taking you for a quitter, of course. I think this book is going to get published, and I’m sure that people are going to buy it. I also think that, genuinely, you want this book to be edited by a person, and I doubt that you’re going to subject your work to LLMs that will use your material to train their bots. 

Interest in your book could translate into sales. You could take your book to festivals and market it online, but you don’t know what you’ll get from that yet. If you make decisions based on the interest level you’re experiencing now, you’ll be taking more of a gamble than you should. Yes, as a novelist, you’ve also taken a gamble on yourself in writing the book in the first place. You completed this work for free, and I hope that your product feels as though it was worth the investment of your time. 

Remember, you can’t control the actions of others (whether they buy the book), but you can control your own actions (what you do to improve your book to make it as marketable as you claim it is). 

A book of the length you’re posing, regardless of how well-written it is, will probably take me upwards of three weeks if not a month. If I were just reading your book, I would get through it in less than a day, but I’ll have my editor glasses on. 

Every single sentence and every single word will deserve my undivided attention and be under scrutiny. My style guide will be open on my second screen. I will be composing comments in response to sentences where I have questions and suggestions, watching myself carefully to make sure I haven’t given you a lot of jargon you’ll have a hard time using. If you bring a committed editor on-board, they will devote the time and attention your novel deserves. 

A good friend of mine, who is also an editor, once told me the following:

“You have choices. Do you want a good edit, a quick edit, or a cheap edit? Chances are, you’ll get one. Godspeed if you get two. A claim of all three means something fishy is in the water.”

Now, here comes the cost. Editors have varying levels of experience, education, and cost of living. On average, your editor is probably charging at least .02-.03/word for line editing on a fiction manuscript. We charge per word [on receipt] for transparency. Page count and per hour are more ambiguous. 

How do you know, for example, that we spent a certain amount of hours on a manuscript per day? If two editors work at different speeds, should they be paid differently for doing the same amount of work?

Word count is a more reliable metric because it accounts for both the amount of work to be done by the editor and the unreliability of page counts between fonts, margins, and softwares. 

Many editors also do professional development (certifications, conferences, workshops, etc.) so that they can deliver the best of themselves to you and your work. When an editor takes on your book, they are blocking off time for your project that could have been devoted to a different manuscript or other work. You’re paying for the editor’s time and expertise. 

I am not saying that a more expensive editor means you’ll get a better project. However, editors that drastically undercharge for their services usually do so for the following reasons:

1.) The editor has a strong need for additional clients.

2.) They undervalue their own skill.

3.) They are new to freelancing and don’t know what to charge.

4.) They are scamming you and will probably charge you for AI "feedback."

I estimate that the cost of your edits, assuming a line edit, will be somewhere between $1,512.56 - $2,268.84. 

My suggestion for you is to get three or four samples from different editors that you’d consider for their skill alone. Once you receive those samples, determine which set of edits feels the best for you. 

I understand that not everyone can comfortably afford freelance editing services even with a payment plan, particularly indie authors who are looking to supplement their income through writing. They do their best with self-editing tools (editing exercises) and, sometimes, they work with vetted beta readers. 

We are not here to shame people who are trying their best. 

What I am saying is that if you can comfortably afford to work with a freelance editor, it is reasonable for the cost to be over a thousand for a novel. 

If you have a writing or editing-focused question, I would be more than happy to dedicate a post to you. Contact us for any questions you might have or to schedule a free consultation with yours truly!

All submissions will remain anonymous unless you explicitly request for me to include your name.