Services and Rates
EDITING SERVICES
I specialize in nonfiction and creative nonfiction editing, primarily for memoir, personal essay, and how-to books. I will proofread any manuscript, fiction or nonfiction.
No firm definitions of the different levels of editing exist. Even professional editors cannot agree on the precise definition of each level. So these are the services I provide at each level of editing.
Manuscript Assessment
Overall Analysis
With a manuscript assessment, there is no editing. Instead, I provide a report. Since I work in nonfiction, prior to the assessment I will need to know your answers to these questions: Who is your audience? What is your purpose? What promise does your MS make to the reader? I will tell you what works and what doesn't. I will tell you if...
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you have fulfilled your promise to the reader.
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the subject matter is thoroughly and accurately explored.
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the style, tone, and approach are appropriate to each of the above.
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how much editing needs to be done (see below).
$35/hour to read + $50 to write assessment
Developmental Edit
Shaping Stage
A developmental edit has many nicknames: a deep-dive edit, a macro edit, or a big-picture edit. At this early editing stage, I look at the presentation of the material in the entire MS. This is an organizational edit. I might move chapters around, as well as large chunks of text within a chapter. I suggest how to plug holes in the material. I will...
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make the chapter arrangement logical.
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give the text a cohesive flow.
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highlight jargon to be defined or eliminated.
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check to assure the tone and language is appropriate to the purpose and audience.
$55/hour
Line & Copy Edits
Smoothing & Correcting Stage
It's hard to separate line and copy edits. These are paragraph- and sentence-level edits. I check the flow. I decide if every paragraph, every sentence, and every word is necessary. I make sure...
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the text is clear, logical, and coherent.
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the structure is consistent throughout and easy to follow.
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the tone is appropriate to the material, audience, and purpose.
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spelling, grammar, and punctuation are consistent and correct.
$45/hour
Proofreading
Quality-control Stage
The end of the line to make the manuscript the best it can be. It's the final review, strictly a clean-up, looking for errors of any kind: checking for PUGS (punctuation, word usage, grammar, syntax), any inconsistency of font style, weight, and size, problems with page layout, misnumbered charts, graphs, and images, etc.
$35/hour
