Hello all, I have just sent my finished M.S. to an editor/proof reader, someone I have known for years. the cost of the full reading any rewrites and making it fully ready for an agent is £3,900 is this about average? It's 99.000 words, and as the idea is to give any and all income from the sale (if anyone wants to buy it) to a local community church project for ex offenders and young people who have never worked I'm going to be oooh so much out of pocket, so is there anyone out there that knows if there is a much less expensive way of getting the editing done professionally
Hi Paul,
I would recommend visiting the SFEP site - they have a comprehensive code of conduct and a board who manage complaints (if you have any). That's where I found my editor and I'm very happy with the service I received. It does pay to be very careful - I saw that post recently by the writer who'd had a very bad experience with her edit - and it is a leap into the unknown, sending your manuscript out like that.
Good luck with it all - let us know how you get on :-)
Thank you all, I think somewhere along the line this question has taken a life of its own. she is a ghost writer but that is not what she would do for me, she was prepared to proof read edit and where we had decided on rewrites she would do that with me but she would do the actual typing not her changing my work, more sentence structure. She has said that usually a lot needs removing so be prepared. The bit about publishers accepting the editing she has done is just that when work by authors has been edited by her it hasn't needed any alterations at the point of publishing. but from what everyone has said I should be looking for a lower cost service. having said that I know we have to be careful, I was chatting with a friend last night at his place and he said that one service he used the M S came back with more mistakes than it went with, spellings and punctuation, it took another service to put it right before publishing. I suppose it needs recommendations so please recommend away, Please! Thanks and Regards Paul G
Hi Paul,
That seems incredibly expensive to me as well - please do check out Lorraine's link for recommended rates for editing, as this is nearly ten times the amount I paid for my edit! I had a comprehensive copy and structure edit with recommendations for rewriting. Even if you do the rewriting yourself and then send it back for a final edit on the new sections, it should cost far less than this.
Good luck with your project, what a great cause :-)