One thought on “Hiring a Freelance Editor: Pricing and Getting the Most for Your Money”
I have hired a half dozen freelance editors. It is difficult to find one who agrees with your style of telling a story. Many offer a free sample edit of the first thousand words, and while that may show their ability to edit line by line, it doesn’t show what they think about stylistic choices like pacing, pov switching, and other difficult to classify idiosyncrasies about how one weaves a story. That isn’t to say you should find an editor that only says yes, but it is very hard to invest thousands of dollars on an edit by someone with whom you disagree time and time again. I recently found a steal of an editing service with someone who reads my work three times over and offers a copy edit after I’ve fixed the necessary changes. Without having found this editing team, I may have put off freelance editors until other forms of submission publishing gave me the money needed to invest. But even then, it will be hard for me to hire someone I don’t know won’t return a product I disagree with so much that it makes me feel like I wasted so much money.
I have hired a half dozen freelance editors. It is difficult to find one who agrees with your style of telling a story. Many offer a free sample edit of the first thousand words, and while that may show their ability to edit line by line, it doesn’t show what they think about stylistic choices like pacing, pov switching, and other difficult to classify idiosyncrasies about how one weaves a story. That isn’t to say you should find an editor that only says yes, but it is very hard to invest thousands of dollars on an edit by someone with whom you disagree time and time again. I recently found a steal of an editing service with someone who reads my work three times over and offers a copy edit after I’ve fixed the necessary changes. Without having found this editing team, I may have put off freelance editors until other forms of submission publishing gave me the money needed to invest. But even then, it will be hard for me to hire someone I don’t know won’t return a product I disagree with so much that it makes me feel like I wasted so much money.