How you price the workįor a lot of freelance projects-writing, development, and graphic design especially-billing on the most granular part of a work seems a little strange. Each option comes with pluses and minuses-and how much financial risk you take on with the project. Not just the dollars and cents, but are you billing by the word, the page, the project, or the hour. To make sure the work is even right for you in the first place, you need a clear picture of what’s required.īefore we delve into how those questions affect your rate, let’s talk about how you price your work.
There is a lot of nuance to being a good editor. Editing, like writing and designing, is a creative skill.
These questions just scratch the surface of the things you can ask about a work, but starting with these four will make both you and the client think about the work. What’s the scope and scale of the project?.Is the work fiction, non-fixture, academic, business?.Is it copy editing? Developmental editing? Book editing?.Is the work very technical or in a very specific niche?.What kind editing is it? Simple proofreading or giving in-depth advice on the work?.Successful editors like Miranda Marquit and Blake Atwood talk about things like: When you’re just starting out as an editor, you can’t necessarily charge high editing rates.Įxperts have a proven track record and have honed their skills to where charging based purely on words or hours or pages might not even make sense. Freelance editors who have years of experience and are sought after, charge premium editing rates for their work. Get their feedback on what they charge as editing rates for different kinds of projects based on your experience. Before you set your freelance rates in stone based on these survey, talk with fellow freelancers. The EFA survey is cited as the best industry benchmark you can get, but it’s not the only way to get a feel for how much editors charge. Freelance editing rates range from $61-70/hour for consulting to $30-45/hour for proofreading and everything in between. Then there are pieces where there isn’t enough money in the world for you to take on the job-even as a beginner. Editing work for $60/hour is just fine for a tight piece from an experienced writer. Any freelancer who has a single, one-size-fits-all rate is going to have problems. The EFA surveys its members regularly to answer that immortal question: what’s the going rate? EFA makes it clear they aren’t setting freelance editing rates or saying this is how much members should charge-there are a lot of sticky legal issues around professional groups and rates-only “this is what our members say they charge”.īut the editing rates (see the table below) give you a really good sense of the range and how different kinds of jobs require different rates. Let’s start with some benchmark rates from the Editorial Freelancers Association, an association you can become a member of. And the kind of work takes on a whole new set of questions based on its nature and what kind of editing is needed. Your per hour rate comes from how many pages per hour you can edit. Generally, your per word rate can be converted to a per page rate (assuming 250 words per page) for many types of editing. Whether it's copy editing, developmental editing, or even being a book editor, there are a few resources for finding out how much to charge for freelance editing rates and they all break things down like this: Our other posts about setting your rates and advice to give our past selves, all touch on the topic and all have the same answer: What is that number? What’s that range you start with to work out how much to charge for your freelance editor rate? There are no easy answers (especially a flat rate) to those questions. The picture gets clear and all you need is to give a number. A looming deadline and the job needs to be done fast? That means pricing your editing rates at the higher end, plus 15% rush charge. That’s going to bump to the higher end of the range. Okay, 100,000 words, very technical topic, first time author. As you tease out more information you start to run the numbers in your head.
“How much is this going to cost?” How many times have you been asked that in your freelance career? Probably so many times you could answer in your sleep.īut not with a number, with either “It depends” or “I have a few questions first.” Giving a quick answer to how much something costs-especially when you’re talking about freelance editing or freelance editing rates-without getting some more detail never ends well. Don’t forget dollars are only part of the equation
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