Services
Package deals of any of the following are available, as well as hybrid options that can aid the budget of the self-publishing author. Get in contact for a quote, and I will happily carry out a sample edit of 1000 words for no charge, so you can decide if I’m the right editor for you.
The Beefy Beta Read – £3/1k words
For the author on a budget who doesn’t know quite what they want, this is an affordable option for getting an all-round view of a manuscript. It’s not as in-depth as a developmental edit, and not a manuscript assessment/critique.
Perfect for those half-finished nightmare drafts when you can’t work out where to go. In the process, I’ll throw you as many ideas I can think of that might work to pull it together into a tight, cohesive narrative arc.
For this service, I will read your book through, carefully, once. I’ll make comments alongside the text about any issues I find (plot, theme, character, arc, consistency, and any recurring grammatical/language problems that come up) and write up a report of a few pages detailing the areas that I think might need work. I won’t spend extra time coming up with possible solutions to all the problems that pop up as I work through it, as I would with a full developmental edit, but if any occur to me as I’m reading, I will supply them, as I am not a monster.
I realise that this service is more expensive than your average beta reader, but I bring all the experience of a fully qualified, full-time book editor to your manuscript, and will provide plenty of constructive criticism grounded in years of studying stories as an artform and learning the craft of language from approved sources.
If there are particular areas you would like me to concentrate on, then a little back and forth via email both before and after the work is completed will be included in the price and help me tailor my service to your particular needs.
Proofreading – from £4.50/1k words
In which all grammatical, typographical and punctuation errors are carefully spotted and fixed (according to your choice of style guide or your own custom style sheet). Consistency of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, running chapter heads, extra spaces, use of en and em dashes, italics, etc., is also checked and corrected. Any copyright issues will be raised, and there is minimal intervention in your work. (I will probably still bring up any glaring continuity errors or other problems that I spot. Knowledge is power, after all, and best shared.)
Copyediting – from £6/1k words
Where style decisions are taken according to your prevalent usage (or a style sheet you have provided, or standard style guide of your choice) and implemented universally across your manuscript, any sentence construction that feels off is meticulously pulled apart and put back together in as stringent a fashion as you require, ironing out any clunky phrases that may have crept in over the writing process, and all grammar and punctuation errors are found and fixed, according to whichever style you have chosen. Headings and paragraph styles will be applied and page breaks/section breaks added as required and where necessary. Typos will also get picked up and fixed, and continuity errors/plotholes will be highlighted (and fixes suggested if they are simple).
Proof-editing – from £5/1k words
A mix of proofreading and copyediting, in which I will format headings, paragraphs and page breaks, as well as the usual error-spotting of the proofread, and suggest changes to improve the flow of your text without going into as much detail as a copyedit. A budget-friendly option for self-publishing authors to save money, which can be as customisable to your particular needs as you desire. Get in contact to discuss your options.
Line Editing – from £9/1k words
In which I carefully go through all your text, removing unnecessary adverbials and prepositions, tightening up your prose, moving clauses around in sentences to aid understanding, finding stronger verbs where it would help and generally polishing up your work while keeping your unique voice intact. At the same time, I will point out continuity errors, and make comment on the story to whatever extent you wish – while bearing in mind that this is NOT a developmental edit.
Developmental Editing – from £12/1k words
In essence, I’ll pull your whole story to pieces and give you options on different ways to fix the problems that come up as I go through it.
To properly understand your story, and make sure it both holds up to scrutiny and holds interest, I will read through your whole book at least three times, making suggestions on plot, theme, narrative, characterisation, worldbuilding, etc., etc. Alongside this, I will give examples of how to tighten up dialogue, description and style, without losing pace, using Word’s commenting function and track changes. I will also write a detailed report for you, making suggestions for bigger picture issues while explaining in more nuance those things I have commented on in the main text.
At the dev stage, it is not helpful to start correcting every little comma, semi-colon, verb agreement and unclosed bracket etc., so this service is very much looking at the whole book from a macro point of view. With this in mind, most of the small picture stuff is overlooked, since it’s not helpful to be so careful and thorough with sentences that are almost certainly going to get significantly rewritten (although I will make a note of any trend in errors in order to help you easily fix them in your next draft).
I will then happily answer questions and clarify my suggestions via email for no extra charge (within reason) to ensure that your next draft is as good as possible. If you feel you need another round of dev edits after this, they will be less expensive (in most cases) than this initial round.
For developmental editing, because of the time it takes to collate all my notes and findings into a comprehensive report that accompanies the comments, a minimum fee of £550 applies to any manuscripts under 45,000 words (only for the first round).
*All these rates are my base rates, and depending on the condition of your manuscript and how much work it needs, they may increase. Rest assured, I will never raise them without discussing it with you first. I have a minimum price of £150 for any of these services (except developmental, see above). All work is carried out with track changes turned on in Word, with queries and limited explanations added using Word’s commenting function. If you prefer to use Google Docs or Libre Office, that’s fine with me. I can also work by marking up your PDF or using standard BSI markup on paper if you so desire.
