Jae's Blog, page 45

What does editing cost?

For most writers, the costs of editing matter when they’re looking for an editor. So what’s a reasonable price for having your manuscript edited?

The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) publishes a chart of common editorial rates. The following list will also give you an idea of what editors usually charge. Keep in mind that rates vary greatly, though.

By the way, the industry standard for a manuscript page is 250 words.

Copy editing:

$30-50 per hour. According to the Writer’s Market, the average is $35. Experienced copy editors might be able to edit about 10 pages per hour, which would mean they make $0.014 per word if they charge an hourly rate of $35. That makes $1,120 for an 80,000-word manuscript. According to the EFA, basic copyediting for an average-length manuscript would cost $960-2,560.
Many copy editors ask for $0.02 (2 cents) per word. That would mean between $1.600 for an average 80,000-word manuscript. I’ve seen some editors who copyedit for $0.005 (half cent)/word ($400 for an average manuscript).
According to the Writer’s Market, the average per-page rate is $4 (=$1.280 for an 80,000-word manuscript).

Line editing:

$40-60 per hour. Depending on the hourly rate and how long it takes to edit the manuscript, that would make $2,400-19,200 for an 80,000-word manuscript.
Some editors ask for around $0.02 to $0.03 per word (which would mean $1,600-2,400 for an 80,000-word manuscript).

Content editing:

$45-55 per hour. According to the Writer’s Market, the average is around $50.
Most editors ask for around $0.02 to 0.075 per word (which would mean $1,600-6,000 for an 80,000-word manuscript).
According to the Writer’s Market, the average per-page rate is $7.50 (=$2,400 for an average-length manuscript).

For most writers, that’s a lot of money. Can you get editing for cheaper? Probably. But you usually get what you pay for.

Let’s say an editor can line and substantive edit five pages an hour. That means an 80,000-word manuscript would take her about 60 hours. If the author pays her … let’s say $500, she’ll make about $8 an hour, barely above the minimum wage. Someone who wants to make her living editing can’t afford to work at these rates. So that might mean the editor is forced to work faster and be less thorough, or you will need to hire someone who is just starting out as an editor and charges less. Of course you could also limit yourself to just copy editing, but that won’t help you if your plot doesn’t work or you need help with point of view issues.

What you can actually do to reduce your editing costs is to deliver a manuscript that is as clean as possible. Trim the “fat,” the unnecessary words and fillers, and catch all the grammar and spelling mistakes you can before you send the manuscript to the editor.

Of course, the costs of editing depend not just on the editor, but on various other factors too:

Type of editing: For example, copy editing to correct spelling and grammar mistakes costs less than a substantive edit. See my previous post for an explanation of the types of editing.
Quality of writing: The more work the editor has to do to make the manuscript presentable, the more the editing will cost. Skilled writers with relatively clean manuscripts pay less. So normally, editors will want to see your manuscript or at least a sample before they can determine the costs of editing.
Length: Novels cost more than short stories or novellas, of course. But some editors work on sliding scales, so you’ll pay less per word for a longer manuscript than for a short story.
Editor’s experience: If you hire an inexperienced editor who’s just starting out, you’ll probably save money, but (depending on the editor) you might sacrifice quality.
Deadline: If the editor needs to work on a tight deadline, you’ll probably pay more for editing (most editors charge 25% more for rush jobs).
Number of read-throughs: If you want the editor to go through the manuscript more than once, you’ll probably pay more. Still, it could be worth the money because often times mistakes get overlooked on the first read-through or the edits introduce new errors.

As you saw above, there are different methods to calculate editing fees. Some editors prefer to charge by the hour. Others offer a flat rate that depends on word count, regardless of how many hours will go into editing the manuscript.

Advantage of a flat rate:

Both the writer and the editor know beforehand how much the editing will cost. With an hourly rate, the total costs won’t be determined until the editing is finished.
Some writers fear the editor will drag out the editing to have more billable hours.

Disadvantage of a flat rate: 

Sometimes it can be difficult to estimate how much work is involved in editing a manuscript before you actually start working on it. If the editor underestimates the extent of the job, she ends up working for a very low hourly rate.

If you are a writer, how do you find a good yet affordable editor? And if you are an editor, how do you calculate your fees? Feel free to leave a comment.

Filed under: writing tips Tagged: costs of editing, editing fees

Writing hours in January

Last year, I kept count of my writing hours every month, and I found the results very interesting, so I will continue the monthly reports this year.

January is over already, and here are the numbers:

Writing


Beta reading / editing




January


46 hours
14 hours


TOTAL
46 hours
14 hours

That’s about the same number of writing hours as in January 2012, but I’ve been doing more editing and beta reading this year. Most of my writing time has been spent on the three short stories that have just been published in Ylva Publishing’s new anthologies.

I’ve also spent a lot of time writing blog posts–on this blog and guest-blogging on my publisher’s blog. It’s fun, but I can definitely see how being a writer can be a full-time job

Filed under: Uncategorized

Types of editing

Yesterday, I explained why even great writers need an editor. But actually, you might need even more than one editor. There are different kinds of editing, and they are all very different skill sets, so it’s rare that one person can do all types of editing–and do them well.

Ideally, your manuscript will undergo each type of editing in the following order:

If you submit your manuscript to a traditional publisher, it’ll land on the desk of the acquisition editor first. He or she decides whether the manuscript is worth publishing and whether it fits into the company’s publishing concept. Some acquisition editors won’t edit or even read your whole manuscript, while others will do content editing. They will never copyedit, though.
The content editor (sometimes called substantive editor or developmental editor) deals with substantive revisions of the manuscript’s content and points out things such as unrealistic dialogue, point of view errors, too much “telling,” flat characters, inconsistent character behavior, sagging middles, info dumps, plot holes, or lack of conflict. Content editors look at the big picture of a story, the structure, not the words. They don’t correct spelling and grammar mistakes. The substantive editor reads the entire manuscript and then writes an in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of plot and characters. They also make comments in the manuscripts, but most of them don’t make any changes in the manuscript. Many traditional publishers nowadays don’t supply content editing; they expect writers (or agents) to send them manuscripts that don’t require much work anymore.
A line editor makes a line-by-line review of the manuscript and points out things such as passive voice, wordiness, weak words, overused words, redundancies, repetitive sentence or paragraph structures (e.g., too many sentences starting with a participle). Line editing has some overlap with copy editing, and the boundaries are not clear, but there’s a difference. Line editing focuses not on content, but on the prose itself—paragraph structure, sentence flow, and word choice. Line editors most often use editorial comments and MS Word’s “track changes” to suggest rewrites.
The copy editor checks for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. They might also comment on continuity errors (“Didn’t she have blue eyes in chapter one?”) or do some minor rewriting for the sake of clarity, but they don’t do any major revisions of style or content. For the most part, copy editing is just following the rules; very little of it is a judgment call. Most copy editors make their changes in the manuscript, using the “track changes” feature if they do onscreen editing.
Proofreading is often confused with copy editing, but a proofreader is not an editor. I’ll still include proofreading to complete the picture. Proofreaders compare the copyedited manuscript to the printer’s proof to make sure that no errors were introduced during the publishing process. They look at the formatting, end-of-line breaks, paragraph and sentence spacing, and typographical errors, but of course they also point out misspelled words or punctuation mistakes if they find any. Nowadays, proofreaders might also check to see how the e-book looks on the small-screen device and whether the e-book conversion created any problems.

So if you need someone who will help you find the weaknesses in your plot, don’t hire a copy editor and expect her to fix the plot along with the comma mistakes.

Also, be aware that different people use different terms for these types of editing. So if you pay one editor to copyedit, what you get might actually be closer to a line edit, while the next copy editor will focus only on the things I described in the copy editing section. Some editors also include line editing in their substantive editing service.

Just ask before you start working with an editor to make sure you’re getting exactly the kind of help your manuscript needs.

Happy writing!

Filed under: writing tips Tagged: content editing, copy editing, editing, editor, line editing, substantive editing

Why do you need a professional editor?

On Lesfic_Unbound, a yahoo group for writers and readers of lesbian fiction, people have been discussing editing fees this week. Editing is expensive, so some self-published authors and some small publishers try to cut costs by skipping the editing.

Needless to say that’s a really bad idea.

Why?

After spending months or even years writing a story, you’re too close to it. You’re so familiar with the story that you don’t see its weak spots anymore. You read the story that you THINK you’ve written, not the one you actually wrote. What was clear in your head might not be so clear on paper. No one, not even someone who edits for a living, can view her own story with an objective eye.

So every writer needs feedback from other people. Writing is mostly a solitary activity, but it takes a village to produce a good book.

The first line of defense against mistakes and weaknesses in your manuscript are beta readers and critique partners.

Beta readers are friends, colleagues, or family members who will read the manuscript and give feedback. What worked for them? What didn’t work? Was there anything that didn’t make sense? etc.

Critique partners are similar to beta readers, but they are fellow writers, so they can give more detailed feedback or might even be able to tell you how to fix some problems in your story. You can also learn a lot about writing by critiquing your critique partner’s story in return.

Beta readers and critique partners can be a great sounding board and support system.

But most of them aren’t trained professionals, and especially friends and family members might not be totally objective. That’s where editors come in. An experienced editor has worked on hundreds of manuscripts and with many different authors, so they have identified and solved the same problems that haunt your book many times before.

So if you’re planning on self-publishing or if you want to make sure your manuscript is in great shape before you send it to publishers, you need an editor. But there are different types of editing and editors, so you need to know what you’re looking for. I’ll blog about the different types of editors tomorrow.

Filed under: writing tips Tagged: beta reader, critique partner, editing, editor

Two new short stories

My two new short stories, each around 10,000 words, have just been published in Connected Hearts, a small collection of lesbian romance stories.

One of the stories, Seduction for Beginners, is a mini sequel to my novel Something in the Wine and gives you a glance of how the relationship between Annie and Drew continues.

Here are the blurbs:

The Morning After by Jae

After a friend sets her up on a blind date from hell, Amanda has enough of dating. A spur-of-the-moment decision to attend an Anti-Valentine’s Day party leads to an unexpected encounter. She wakes up to a hangover and a surprising complication…

Two Hearts—One Mind by RJ Nolan

Kim is a woman on a mission: She wants to propose to her partner, Jess, on Valentine’s Day. But things don’t turn out as planned, because Jess has a plan of her own…

On the Road by Joan Arling

Stella, a long-haul trucker, picks up a hitchhiker on her way south across Europe. Long before reaching Sicily, she falls for her passenger, Rita. Stella is thrilled when she learns that Rita returns her feelings. But because of her job, there seems to be no way for them to be together.

Seduction for Beginners by Jae

For Annie, work always took precedence over romance. But now, recently come-out and involved in a relationship with a woman for the first time, Annie is determined to seduce her girlfriend, Drew, on Valentine’s Day.  Unfortunately, she has no clue as to the arts of seduction.

The e-book is now available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Filed under: News, Something in the Wine

Giveaway

I’ve been a Goodreads author for a long time, but now I’m doing a book giveaway on Goodreads for the first time. If you want a chance to win a signed copy of my newest novel, Something in the Wine, please click on “enter to win.”

As you can see, the giveaway ends on Valentine’s Day.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Something in the Wine
by Jae

Giveaway ends February 14, 2013.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Filed under: Something in the Wine, Uncategorized Tagged: giveaway, lesbian romance, Something in the WIne

Tell, don’t show

This week, I am revising a short story that will be published in February. One of the things I do while revising the first draft of a story is to identify the passages where I’m telling and to replace them with showing.

But I also stumbled across a few “telling” passages that I didn’t change.

While “show, don’t tell” is most often good advice, showing isn’t always better than telling.

Just a quick reminder: Showing is describing things in vivid details that allow readers to come to their own conclusions. Telling is giving the reader summaries and interpretations.

So when you’re showing, everything happens in real time. Events take up more space on the page if you show them instead of telling. If you describe something at length, readers will automatically think that the event or action holds a certain importance. So if you have unimportant, everyday tasks in your story, it might be better to tell.

Here are two examples from my short story.

The woman behind the front desk took one look at their sodden clothes and quickly checked them in.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and my main character, Annie, has booked a room at a cozy little inn to seduce her girlfriend. If I wrote half a page of dialogue about the inn’s manager welcoming them, handing over the key, and letting them know at what time they can have breakfast, it would take the focus from what’s really important in this scene. So instead of showing all the details of their interaction with the manager, I summarized and just said that the manager checked them in.

The second example is similar:

They ordered, and within ten minutes the waiter returned with the fries and two Caesar salads.

Here, Drew and Annie are enjoying a romantic dinner, but I want the focus to be on their interaction, the emotions, not on their interaction with the waiter, so instead of showing the ordering process, I summed it up and jumped ahead in time.

So maybe instead of advising writers to “show, don’t tell,” we should advise them to “show and tell.” The trick is to figure out when it’s better to show (probably 90% of the time) and when it’s better to tell.

Here are links to some of my previous posts about showing and telling:

The golden rule

Show, don’t tell

Showing emotions

Filed under: writing tips Tagged: don't tell, show, showing, telling, writing

A look back at 2012

2012 has been an incredible year for me. A lot of unexpected things happened, some of them good, some of them sad.

I switched publishers this year, a move that was planned long before the death of Roxanne Jones in September and the closing of L-Book in October. I joined Ylva Publishing in mid-2012, and it’s been a great six months.

In June, my novel Hidden Truths won a “Goldie” (GCLS Literary Award) in the category historical romance.

I also started writing in German again, after six years of writing exclusively in English. Translating some of my stories from English to German and the other way around has been an interesting experience.

I published my first novel with Ylva Publishing, Something in the Wine, in October, and the sales numbers have been amazing.

I also wrote and published two novellas, Manhattan Moon and its German version, Vollmond über Manhattan. And I wrote a total of five short stories in 2012, two in English, three in German. Three of them have already been published in our Christmas anthologies, Gingerbread Hearts and the German version, Lebkuchenherzen. The two others will be part of a romantic anthology that will be published in time for Valentine’s Day in 2013.

In October, I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest trade fair for books. So many books, so little time…

Same problem with reading. I had very little time to read in 2012. Not counting the books I read for work or for research purposes, I think I read only about fifteen books, among them 96 Hours by Georgia Beers and Silver Collar by Gill McKnight.

At the beginning of the year, I started keeping track of my writing hours and the time I spend beta reading for other writers.

So let’s take a look at the numbers for 2012:

Writing
Beta reading


January
47 hours
5 hours


February
31 hours
2 hours


March
36 hours
3 hours


April
12 hours
31 hours


May
51 hours
15 hours


June
36 hours
4 hours


July
51 hours
2 hours


August
5 hours
13 hours


September
50 hours
12 hours


October
53 hours
12 hours


November
3 hours
7 hours


December
66 hours
11 hours


TOTAL
441 hours
117 hours

On average, I spent about 1 1/4 hours writing and about 20 minutes beta reading each day.

My New Year’s resolution for 2013 is to republish two of my novels, Second Nature and Backwards to Oregon, and to finish and publish the next novel in my shapeshifter series, True Nature. If there’s enough time, I would also love to start a completely new writing project, either an urban fantasy novel or historical fiction.

I’m planning on visiting the book fair in Leipzig in March. I hear it’s even more interesting for readers than the book fair in Frankfurt.

So what were your writing and reading highlights of 2012? And what are your plans for 2013? Let me know in the comments.

Happy New Year to everyone! May it be a healthy and happy one.

Filed under: Uncategorized

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 28,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: News, Uncategorized

Book giveaway

To celebrate Christmas and our first year in the publishing business, my publisher is giving away two signed paperback copies of my novel Something in the Wine.

Anyone can participate in the drawing, no matter where in the world you live. Just head over to Ylva Publishing’s blog and leave a comment and we’ll enter you in the drawing.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

Jae

 

Filed under: Something in the Wine, Ylva Publishing