09/03/2024
Dear Indies,
We love you, but just a reminder that asking editors to copyedit a 60,000-word novel while telling them you can only pay a three-figure sum of $500 or less because you’re only a teacher, nurse, plumber, or whatever it is you do for a living, is saying to them, "I’m okay with asking you to put your university education and years of experience to work for me for less than I make an hour, and even for less than minimum wage.” [Note that the minimum wage here in Australia is currently $23.23/h.]
If you think paying your editor less than what you pay your barista, childcare worker, cleaner or uber driver, and far less than minimum wage, is fair because they 'enjoy reading', you’re contributing to the death of the industry you’re trying to find a foothold in.
Editing is far more than ‘just reading’. The average word rate an experienced copyeditor gets through in an hour is 1500–2500 words – and that’s on relatively clean text that has passed through developmental edits. If your work has a lot of errors or structural problems, that can drop to 500–1000 words an hour. Often, the text editors receive from indie clients has not been developmentally edited.
So, while editors appreciate that getting a book ready for publication is an expensive exercise, and we try to find ways to make it affordable for all our clients, please don’t expect us to starve so you can get published; it's not fair, and it devalues our skills and the time we’ve spent learning the craft in order to help you.
Thank you,
Your friendly neighbourhood copyeditor
